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Dec
7
Remains of the Day, 12/7/07
Filed Under Politics, Remains of the Day | Comments Off
1. Family Research Council supports the fear and use of corporal punishment as an acceptable way to motivate children to behave. Don’t buy it for a second. Fear should be used only when it is actually present (i.e., when a child is about to put his or her finger in an outlet). The use of fear as a way to motivate your child – to peform well or to avoid certain behavior, will have consequences that parents can never redress. Trust me on this one.
2. “Play office politics without getting dirty” – I receive Ask Annie but I don’t read it all, all that often. This was a good one.
3. Quote from Political Wire:
“What exactly would it take for the president to conclude Musharraf has crossed the line? Suspend the constitution? Impose emergency law? Beat and jail his political opponents and human rights activists? He’s already done all that. If the president sees Musharraf as a democrat, he must be wearing the same glasses he had on when he looked in Vladimir Putin’s soul.”
– Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), quoted by the Washington Post.
4. Phrom Pho, I learned that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has purchased Beliefnet.com. My eyebrows are starting to get stuck in a raised position. A good post about it is here on BlogHer.
5. Italian city councilman suggests using SS tactic of killing 10 of theirs if they kill one of his in regard to punishing immigrants who break the law. Objectively outrageous? Requiring an apology?
6. Syrians blame Israelis for why they must block access to Facebook.
7. If you are serious about criticizing or lauding our county board of elections, then you won’t get any credibility unless you keep up with Adele Eisner’s blog, which contains great information to help you keep up.
8. Kids like this aren’t rare if you work at a children and family mental health agency. If you’ve never worked with the kind of child described in this article, you might want to reserve judgement, or at least ask some hard questions about life and what we owe one another just because we’re human before you decide who to condemn and what you think needs to change – if you think we can change anything that will lead to fewer lives ending like Robert Hawkins’ did.
10. Look at this amazing work on an Ohio City home. Hattip to realNEO.
11. Some great Chanuka links from Roland.
12. Gloria Ferris on what we do.
13. Scott Bakalar at the Wom Blog and Jeff Hess on something I anticipated here.
14. Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use blog.
15. Again, I wish someone would bribe me and make me have to think about this problem.
Good shabbos and Chappy Chanuka, the fourth night.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:30 pm December 7th, 2007 in Politics, Remains of the Day | Comments Off
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Dec
7
Will CIC (Commander in Chief) give way to CIC (Clergy in Chief)?
Filed Under Campaigning, Civil Rights, Elections, Government, Politics, Religion, WH2008 | 10 Comments
I really enjoy the mailings I receive from The Interfaith Alliance, headed by Rev. C. Welton Gaddy. One of the most recent ones was about their tongue-in-cheek “Pastor-in-Chief” contest. From that e-mail (I can’t seem to find it online):
Gov. Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, paid visits to two Baptist churches in South Carolina on Sunday. At Gateway Baptist, in Irmo, SC, he preached a sermon that included his reminder to the assembled crowd that he wasn’t going to talk about politics.
“I’m not here today in a political capacity.”
Of course not! Gov. Huckabee just happened to be passing through Irmo, SC, (pop. 12,000+) on a Sunday morning. It’s just a coincidence that his visit happened seven weeks before the state’s First-in-the-South Republican primary election.
“Now, it’s hard to do what I do and not have the trappings of politics follow me around.”
It is! It’s hard to run for president and not bring along the campaign staffers and national media and sign-wavers and glad-handers.
“But I really, absolutely want you to understand that I’m here today to talk about Jesus and not to talk about me.”
Gov. Huckabee talked about Jesus, but his presence in the pulpit of a church sent a political message. Though his personal faith clearly is real and meaningful, the combination of Sunday services with a tightly managed campaign stop dishonors both religion and the political process. To claim that he can separate his ministry from his campaign less than two months before the primaries is to underestimate the common sense of both national observers and South Carolina voters.
Congratulations, Gov. Huckabee! You are The Interfaith Alliance’s First nominee for PASTOR-IN-CHIEF! *
* Contest winner will receive copies of The Interfaith Alliance’s “One Nation, Many Faiths” guides to religion and the election process, including our new video companion. Runners-up will win handmade cross-stitch samplers of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
More Pastor-in-Chief possibilities: Mitt Romney then and now. And from the left, Rev. Gaddy has concerns there too, one of the reasons I like Rev. Gaddy. I didn’t know about Tim Russert’s request for the Dem candidates to name their favorite Bible quotes during a September debate at Dartmouth until I read that article. Sigh.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 5:07 pm December 7th, 2007 in Campaigning, Civil Rights, Elections, Government, Politics, Religion, WH2008 | 10 Comments
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Dec
7
Value-added analyses for education evaluation have been in the works through Battelle for Kids since at least 2004. I don’t know if they ever completed the writing project they’d mentioned to me about a few years back, but it was a fascinating possibility. The Plain Dealer’s editorial is nice – complimentary. But, as someone who follows gifted education, I am not appreciative of its dismissive attitude toward the concern that the highest achieving kids are in fact learning every year.
The editorial ties together affluence with getting As, thus furthering several stereotypes and myths about good students only existing in wealthy districts. We know that’s absurd. And if we say that it isn’t absurd, then we’re saying that the As earned in schools that aren’t, as the PD says, “affluent” aren’t equivalent to the As in the affluent districts. Again, that too is absurd. Are there differences? Hell yes. But does it have to do with the amount of money? Well – I thought we were always arguing about how it isn’t about the money and that we don’t want to throw more money around and so on.
So – can we please not make it about the money – unless it really is about the money?
And in the case of high-achieving students – all districts who have them, and all districts of course do have them – should be concerned. Those students often aren’t in any measured subgroup. And so we should be concerned about whether they’re learning from year to year or not.
I feel another LTR coming on.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 2:59 pm December 7th, 2007 in Education, Media | Comments Off
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Dec
7
Matthew Dowd, ABC News, his lobbying business & those darn ethics standards
Filed Under Blogging, Government, Marketing, Media, Politics, Wide Open | 2 Comments
Read this Washington Post story from today, but especially the nearly first and last paragraphs:
ABC News will announce today that [former Bush strategist Matthew] Dowd has been tapped as an on-air contributor and blogger, the latest member of the Bush team to embed himself in the media while their ex-boss still runs the country.
[snip]
Dowd isn’t giving up his Austin-based lobbying business, ViaNovo, whose clients range from Fortune 500 companies to elected officials and governments, including the Texas Transportation Department, through a contract that Democrats complained was hidden from them. But he is intrigued by the challenge of shaping public opinion from the other side.
Okay then, professional journalists: what do you – what does and should the profession expect of Dowd? Of ABC? Will his entire list of clients be subject to…what exactly?
1) The list will be handed over to ABC and Dowd will be forbidden to talk about them.
2) The list will be handed over to ABC and will be displayed, as full disclosure, as a running ticker every time Dowd is on air.
3) The list will be handed over to ABC and will be displayed, as full disclosure, on every webpage where Dowd’s work is published.
4) All of the above.
5) None of the above.
More questions:
Who asks whom? Should ABC raise this with Dowd and be sure it’s in his contract? Should Dowd offer up the list without prompting? Read more
By Jill Miller Zimon at 1:59 pm December 7th, 2007 in Blogging, Government, Marketing, Media, Politics, Wide Open | 2 Comments
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