A Bad Penny Always Returns

A famous sociopath wants American children to be just like him. The way to achieve that goal is to get rid of teachers and throw kids on computers all day long. At least the goal is to get rid of "expensive" teachers in public schools. The hoity-toity private schools can still have live teachers and so forth. Only the 90 percent of losers who are in public schools should get shitty education via computers and teacher aides supervising them.

Somebody should tell Newt there is a LOT more to education than just regurgitating information.

Computers are only tools. They are NOT supposed to be used in place of real human beings.

This of course is all about the money with these dirtbags. Newt is clearly bought off by the billionaire bunch.

Etc.

In what other profession or field are those who are in it are considered not competent enough to comment on the reality of their jobs?

It's the craziest thing in the world, but those who don't know anything about schools other than having once attended them think they know what REALLY goes on.

They don't.

Note they complain to no end but they wouldn't consider going into this "cushy field" themselves.
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Once again unions are guilty of giving away the store in order to survive in name only, I guess.
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Any resemblance between Obama and George W. Bush is purely coincidental.
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Another harebrained scheme being floated about is the idea students should be allowed to "evaluate" teachers. They do it in colleges (though the evaluations don't actually make or break professors and mean little if they are tenured), so why not in K-12?

Well, I can tell you by looking at sites like RateMyTeachers that the teachers rated the most highly by students are those who are young, "popular," and are easy graders. It's true kids wouldn't be worse than most administrators, who wouldn't know "good teaching" if it bit them in the ass, but still it is a crazy idea.
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The Kiss of Death? Will Romney trump Trump's endorsement of Newt in this Saturday's Nevada caucuses, to say nothing of future contests?

Update: Mitt did "trump" Newt because Trump endorsed him. Mitt, that is, not Newt.
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Just I thought, a teacher at WCSD who had been on paid leave for almost a year has reached a settlement with the district, or more likely, it is vice versa.

The district had no defense when its principal decided she would try and force this teacher out on trumped-up charges (testing violations).

I think the teacher prevailed in part because she had an outside lawyer and didn't rely on WEA to help her.

If one has an account with the site, the case is here.

Newt Melts Down

again, of course. He is upset Mitt Romney was being "dishonest" in last night's debate.

It's the pot calling the kettle black:

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich said Friday that the reason he seemed less combative during Thursday’s televised debate was that he was shocked by what he described as rival Mitt Romney’s “totally dishonest” replies to several questions.

In a telephone interview, Gingrich cited Romney’s remarks on immigration, his vote for Democrat Paul Tsongas in 1992 and whether he knew about an ad his campaign is running against Gingrich.

“I think it’s the most blatantly dishonest performance by a presidential candidate I’ve ever seen,” Gingrich said. At several moments during the debate, Gingrich simply leaned away from his lectern and looked down at his feet because he was so stunned by some of Romney’s statements, he said. He didn’t engage Romney at the time, he said, because “I wanted to fact check. I wanted to make sure he was as totally dishonest as I thought he was.”

I Got a Glimpse of Tonight's Bloodbath

also known as the Florida GOP debate. I caught the part where Gingrich and Romney were talking about immigration, and Mitt appeared to have gotten the upper hand in that exchange:

The clash took place at the opening of the final debate before Tuesday’s high-stakes Florida primary and reprised a long-running argument between the two leaders in the Republican contest. Earlier this week, Gingrich pulled a political ad that had applied the “anti-immigrant” label to Romney, but when asked whether he believed that description was accurate, he said he did.

That brought rebuke from Romney. “I’m not anti-immigrant,” he said. “My father was born in Mexico. My wife’s father was born in Wales. They came to this country. The idea that I’m anti-immigrant is repulsive. It’s simply the kind of over-the-top rhetoric that has characterized American politics for too long.”

For all of the squawking about illegals, the GOP really likes illegal immigration because it helps to bring down wages for citizens. They just play the illegal card as another form of the race card.

Could Obama Be Re-Elected By Default?

God forbid he gets another term, but the clowns on the other side are making such fools out of themselves, it could indeed happen.

Newt is throwing yet another one of his famed tantrums by threatening to boycott future debates if crowds aren't allowed to make spectacles of themselves.

In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech. In what has become a standard line of attack for his anti-establishment campaign, Mr. Gingrich blamed the media for trying to silence a dissenting point of view.

The audience members in the debates have been allowed to be rude and hateful. This is completely opposite of previous years when one could hear a pin drop.

Newt Gingrich Is Making a Comeback

in all senses of the word. He has made a comeback on the national stage, and he has made a comeback into being one of the most reviled people in the country.

However, the issue in this campaign will be Obama, not Gingrich. Obama isn't LBJ; he is one lameassed excuse for a president. He is vulnerable to being the target of demogoguery.

A little bit of populism like what Gingrich is peddling, has gone a long way.

Gingrich is a deeply unpopular figure, dating back to his role as the leader of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the 1990s, which twice forced the partial shutdown of the federal government in an effort to push through drastic cuts in Medicare and other social programs, and then impeached President Clinton in a scandal engineered by Clinton’s ultra-right opponents.

According to recent polls, Gingrich is viewed unfavorably by 60 percent of the American public, compared to only 26 percent that view him favorably.

That such an individual could seriously challenge for the presidency underscores the dangers confronting working people from the monopoly on US politics exercised by the two right-wing big business parties. The Obama administration has carried out the bidding of Wall Street interests throughout its three years in office, beginning with the extension and expansion of the bailout of the banks begun under George W. Bush. The White House exudes indifference to the plight of the unemployed and poor, thus lending a shred of credibility to Gingrich’s demagogy about Obama as a “food-stamp president”, and not a “jobs president”.

A Newt Never Changes His Slime

Anybody who scoffs at Newt Gingrich's chances of winning the GOP nomination, let alone presidency, needs to look at his past history.

Look no further than how he got to be Speaker of the House. He knocked one Democrat after another aside through the art of smear and under the guise of "ethics charges," and then, when there were many retirements by Democrats in the U.S. House in 1994, Newt helped create the "Contract with America" and engineered the first GOP takeover of the body in decades by mostly targeting those vacant House seats:

As nasty as Karl Rove is, he has nothing on Newt Gingrich. Rove also isn't as self-destructive and therein lies the danger of a Gingrich presidency.

Almost as soon as Newt got the speakership, he unraveled. It was really something to watch how he reached the pinnacle of his career, and then it all crashed. His "tantrums" and his attempt to oust Clinton over the bogus Lewinsky nonsense actually HELPED Democrats in the 1998 elections. He was forced from the speakership and the House after those elections. Eventually Tom DeLay, an even more corrupt and ruthless politician than Newt, took over the House via a puppet named Dennis Hastert, and forced through the ridiculous impeachment as "payback" for those congressional losses.

So Newt left Capitol Hill, but I always knew this guy would never completely disappear. He ditched his second wife, got a shiny new model in Callista Bisek, and started reinventing himself ala Richard Nixon. Remember, he has a Ph.D. in history and was a history professor before going into politics, so he knows about historic trends and how they seemed to favor Republicans. He also knows what it takes to get elected, and it has little to do with ethics or truth. Despite his many outrageous statements about various issues, Newt is NOT stupid by any stretch of the imagination. But his self-destructive tendencies whether or not as a result of some psychological problem (and speculated as far back as 1995 by Gail Sheehy) are causing a lot of worry among the big wigs who run the GOP. Or at least those of whom are looking at the electability factor and are banking on Mitt Romney. These big wigs can't be concerned over Newt's extremism, because he isn't any more extreme than Santorum, Paul, or any of a number of other has-beens or never-wases who sought the presidency. The concern is over his psychological stability.

One can draw a parallel between Newt Gingrich and John McCain regarding this issue. Gingrich is more of a concern than McCain ever was because he really thinks he is one of the "great men" or "visionaries" who can make an impact on world history. He has illusions (and delusions) of grandeur.

From the Sheehy piece, required reading for anybody interested in the career of Newt Gingrich:

Under the pressures of his racing internal time clock, Newt is likely to betray the core issues he sounded so passionate about yesterday. "Newt is decisive but changes his mind, so whatever he's doing might change in six months," says Frank Gregorsky. "But when it changes he is blindingly defensive and assertive about it." The biggest change may be yet to come. Newt, who started out as a moderate, may shed another skin when the pain of the budget revolution kicks in. Newt's loyal point man, Congressman John Kasich, head of the Budget Committee, may be the fall guy.

Newt's military mind-set, formed by Bob Gingrich and the battles of his psychic heroes, is deeply ingrained and an essential part of the way he operates. In a recent appearance on the Charlie Rose show, Newt quoted Mao: "Politics," he intoned, "is war without blood." Gingrich's pal Stephen Hanser says that part of Newt's strategy in the House is based on combat theory, namely the German armed-forces doctrine of Auftragstaktik, or "mission orders." The problem is that in the heat of battle subtleties are lost. Standards fall. Atrocities are forgiven. Especially if the action is rapid-fire.

And with Newt, it always is. Speed is unfailingly of the essence. The 100-day Contract with America is the best proof. The Speaker has the tendency to set up accelerated timetables and artificial deadlines, based on the necessity to keep his "frenetic psyche" within some boundaries. In Newt's world, dominated by hungry media perpetually in need of bigger jolts of adrenaline, there is no debate, no moderation. As Marcella Mc Pherson said, "If he wants something, he wants it now."

"I think the manic part of Newt's personality is troublesome," says one moderate Republican in Congress. "The hyperactivity, the racing thoughts. He flits from one subject to the other and sometimes fails to make the connections."

Gingrich is dangerous indeed. Obama's people are begging for a matchup with Gingrich rather than the more electable Romney, but they would get far, far more than they bargained for if Newt becomes the GOP nominee.

It's OBAMA'S campaign that needs to be reading history.

In Case You Didn't See It,

here is THE interview:



Not the best quality in the world, and a Ron Paul supporter put it up, but it's still historically important.

The interview didn't stop Newt from winning South Carolina. As one could see in the interview, Newt wasn't above using his daughters from his first marriage, a marriage where he cheated on their mother and didn't pay child support for a time, to trash the second wife for merely criticizing him for not wanting an "open marriage" involving now-wife number three.

Lots of irony there, but when it comes to Newt, EVERYTHING is irony. Or hypocrisy.

Here's the Pious One after his win tonight:

Ends and Odds

It was the end of the odd as Ben Roethlisberger's insurance company decided to settle the lawsuit filed by Andrea McNulty, the woman who claimed he sexually assaulted her at a Lake Tahoe hotel back in 2008.

Thanks to gag orders ("confidentiality clauses"), nobody is saying how much money McNulty got, if anything.
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It would have been great if "uncommitted" had actually won the Nevada Democratic caucuses, held this morning, for Obama deserves a "no confidence" vote.
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Washington state wrestles with the charter school issue.

Washington, of course, is Bill Gates' home field, and there is no way he and his ilk are going to be denied their right to rip off taxpayers.
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Despite the best efforts of the Ex-Wives Club, it appears Newt has won the South Carolina primary.

The State homepage with election results

Odds and Ends

Will Marianne torpedo Newt's political career once and for all like we hope?

Or will Newt survive or even thrive after South Carolina's primary and make himself Teflon Man?

No Newt is Good Newt

It is rumored Newt's second wife, Marianne Ginther Gingrich, has plenty of dirt to spill on her ex-husband, and it is believed it will air before the South Carolina primary.

All one has to do is read the Vanity Fair article about her to know all of the dirt and more about him.

Marianne Gingrich has said Gingrich proposed to her before the divorce from his first wife was final in 1981, and they were married six months later. Marianne’s marriage to Gingrich ended in divorce in 2000, and Gingrich admitted he’d already taken up with Callista Bisek, a former congressional aide who would become his third wife. The speaker who pilloried President Bill Clinton for his affair with Monica Lewinsky was himself having an affair at the time.

Frankennewt

A monster is on the loose in Washington and throughout the United States, but the Republican Party has decided to do very little about it:

In fact, Gingrich’s rise is the revenge of a Republican base that takes seriously the intense hostility to President Obama, the incendiary accusations against liberals and the Manichaean division of the world between an “us” and a “them” that his party has been peddling in the interest of electoral success.


The right-wing faithful knows Gingrich pioneered this style of politics, and they laugh at efforts to cast the former House speaker as something other than a “true conservative.” They know better.

You Know the GOP Has Gone Off the Deep End

when some of the power brokers believe Newt Gingrich isn't "conservative" enough, i.e., isn't fascistic enough.

Here is a candidate who waxed eloquently about bringing back orphanages and abolishing child labor laws, and because he hasn't yet promoted outright slavery, he's not making the grade.

The GOP may be trying to put their most electable candidate, or the one who has more of a chance than Huntsman of getting both the nomination and the presidency, Mitt Romney, on the back burner in yet another quest to throw the election to Obama. Or else Romney is playing rope-a-dope, letting all of the other candidates crash and burn before he gets the nomination himself.

You Can't Lose What You Don't Have

It has been speculated for years our friend Newt has been suffering from some kind of mental problem, especially regarding those delusions of grandiosity, but one could say the same for Obama or for any other politician.

Seriously, I did read some article many years ago, when he was Speaker of the House or just following his tenure, where it was speculated by the author he had bipolar or some similar disorder.

It really isn't anything to make light of if he had something wrong. I am just worried about his POLITICS, which can be summed up as having the only cause as himself.

This article, by Gail Sheehy and written back in 1995 for Vanity Fair, is the one I was thinking of regarding speculation of possible mental illness. It has some interesting insights into Newt and his family:

Dr. Frederick Goodwin, director of the Center on Neuroscience, Behavior and Society at the George Washington University Medical Center and a national authority on manic-depression, made no attempt to diagnose Newt Gingrich but did provide some illumination on the Speaker's possible genetic inheritance. "There is interesting new data on first-degree relatives," he says. "It sounds like he has one first-degree relative with manic-depressive illness, his mother, and at least one second-degree [his maternal grandmother, who "wiped out"]. What generally gets transmitted in offspring that don't have the illness itself is the drive and creativity...the positive aspects without the negative aspects, the silver lining. First-degree relatives of manic depressives often become successful...Gingrich's quickness, his ability to pick things up quickly, are not inconsistent with what the studies of first-degree relatives of manic-depressives have shown."

Some children of manic depressives exhibit traits of a less severe form of mania known as hypomania. Another expert, a psychiatrist at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, elaborates on hypomania, describing it as a state below mania. "There are people who are close to manic but don't become flamboyantly manic...You can call it a biochemical imbalance. It is part of the consideration of manic-depressive illness today. I have seen it in families." According to this expert, grandiosity is a frequent symptom of this condition. "And in Gingrich, his upbringing and the hypomanic flair of the personality might create a double reason for his being grandiose because he's trying to overcome the feeling of tremendous inferiority."

In Manic Depressive Illness, which Goodwin co-authored with Kay Redfield Jamison, he describes the usual mood in hypomania as "ebullient, self-confident, and exalted, but with an irritable underpinning." He goes on to quote earlier studies that characterizes the thinking of a person in a hypomanic state as "flighty. He jumps from one subject to another, and cannot adhere to anything." Another study describes the role of hypomania and extroversion in some leaders, noting behavior that is "often intolerant and unyielding...given to impulsive action...full of energy and at the same time full of strong purpose and burning conviction...the outcry attracts other extroverts and soon there assembles a group of dominant men who unite in a common cause."

Laugh of the Day

"I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others."--Newt the Coot regarding his third marriage

Recall, if you will, Newt cheated on his first wife, Jackie Bentley Gingrich, with a variety of women, including future wife Marianne Ginther. He decided to reward his older first spouse (who had been a high school teacher of his) with divorce papers served on her while she was recuperating from cancer surgery. When that divorce was finished, he married Marianne, but unfortunately for Newt, she wasn't much of a political wife. She preferred to stay in Georgia or Ohio pursuing her own career.  Unfortunately for Marianne, she too had health problems, so Newt did what he does best, and that was to cheat on her with presumably Calista Bisek. Newt's carousing (during the time when former president Bill Clinton was undergoing a sham impeachment over the Lewinsky silliness) became the subject of much gossip, including a great article by David Corn that is as unforgettable as the 1984 Mother Jones piece. (Edit: 2016: The link no longer works. I cannot locate the article online, but I am sure it is someplace.)

One can assume--or not--the woman in question was his current--and perhaps last, unless she gets sick--wife:

Democratic aides on Capitol Hill, who long had traded in gossip about Gingrich's extramarital recreations, were beside themselves with anger. From such sources, I received a number of leads and tales. My favorite was from an aide who swore she had once spotted Gingrich's pale-green Mustang bouncing up and down in an underground House parking garage, with the windows all fogged up -- signs that not-so-conservative behavior may have been occurring within.

The aide said she had tried to peer through the condensation to determine with whom Gingrich was rocking and rolling, but that she just couldn't get a clear-enough view.

After all, it could have been his wife.

His supporters have decided to gloss over the inconsistencies of his life and appreciate his support for marital fidelity. I don't doubt he is faithful NOW--he's close to 70. My understanding is Calista watches him like a hawk, so he doesn't DARE cheat.

Calista should be watching her health and should be regularly seeing a doctor, just in case.

Crazy is as Crazy Does

Despite having some pretensions of being intelligent, Newt Gingrich has often come up with some of the most batshit crazy ideas ever put forward by a politician.

One of the most infamous was his "orphanages" remark.

The election season otherwise has turned out to be one hell of a crashing bore. No wonder I am disinterested in politics this time around.

News, Etc.

It appears the Amish aren't the quiet, low-key type of people after all.

Of course the paper describes this group as a "renegade" group.
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Newt goes out of his way not pleasing anybody who isn't a mistress. Not only did he offend most people with his child labor nonsense, he has pissed off the right by saying some illegals should be legal.

Both stands make sense if you subscribe to the notion that living standards should be lowered to the very bottom of the barrel.
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Blago-Obama flunky Tony Rezko is sentenced to 10 1/2 years in the big house.

Obama Might Win the 2012 Presidential Election by Default

at the rate the Republican candidates are being buried by scandal, gaffes, or whatever. The GOP might actually be throwing this coming election to the Democrats as they did in 2008. After all, Obama gives them what they want anyway.

The latest "victim" of media scrutiny is Newt Gingrich, and this has nothing to do with his failure to keep his pants zipped.

link

A think tank founded by GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich collected at least $37 million over the past eight years from major health-care companies and industry groups, offering special access to the former House speaker and other perks, according to records and interviews.

The Center for Health Transformation, which opened in 2003, brought in dues of as much as $200,000 per year from insurers and other health-care firms, offering some of them “access to Newt Gingrich” and “direct Newt interaction,” according to promotional materials. The biggest funders, including firms such as AstraZeneca, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Novo Nordisk, were also eligible to receive discounts on “products and workshops” from other Gingrich groups.

The health center advocated, among other things, requiring that “anyone who earns more than $50,000 a year must purchase health insurance or post a bond,” a type of insurance mandate that has since become anathema to conservatives.

Newt will be tossed under the bus.

If You're a Republican,

the more baggage you have, the better you do in the polls.

I don't give Newt a chance to get the nomination. He's smart and ruthless, but his sexploits from the past will catch up with him.

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Hypocrite for President

Now that we have Republicans running for president who have had marital problems, even one who is a two-timing, two-time loser, Newt Gingrich, it is now acceptable.

Think of how John Edwards was completely ruined over getting involved with a sociopath, yet these guys are allowed to engage in all kinds of piety while screwing around on their spouses.

Newt didn't just cheat on his second wife Marianne Ginther with his third wife Callista Bisek, he cheated on his first wife Jackie Battley WITH Marianne.

But Newt has converted to Catholicism, so supposedly he's forgiven for all of his indiscretions.

I won't mention the rumor of the prostitutes and credit cards which allegedly contributed to his resigning his Speaker of the House job.