End of Issue #80


Any Questions?

Editorial and Rants

How many times do we have to babysit and bail out these European assholes?

Guess Who's Paying for the Greece Bailout?  That's Right -- YOU

From: www.businessinsider.com

By Henry Blodget

The bailout outrages never stop.  Of the 110-billion Euro Greece bailout, 30-billion (approx $40 billion) will be paid for by the IMF.

The U.S. supplies almost 20% of the IMF's funding (per quotas).  So that means U.S. taxpayers are providing ~$8 billion of the $145 billion going to kick the Greek can down the road.

That's the first outrage.  (Why is this our problem?)

The second outrage is that, as in some of the U.S. bailouts, our bailout money is JUNIOR to Greece's existing debt.  That means that, over the next couple of years, the idiot banks that loaned bankrupt Greece money will get their money back.  And then, when Greece runs out of cash again, we'll be left holding the bag (along with Germany and the rest of the folks who bailed Greece out).

In any normal financing, the lender of last resort would be SENIOR to all existing debt.  It would get its money back first, before the other idiots got a penny.

In the Greece bailout, however, the new money we're putting in will be going right out the door to pay off existing lenders who would have lost their shirts.  And if the Greece austerity measures don't work and there's nothing left for us?  Tough.

(Why don't the existing creditors have to lose a penny?  Same reason the AIG creditors didn't lose a penny.  Because it would apparently be too traumatic to ask them to do that.  The idea that the existing creditors might have to lose money was apparently so unthinkable that it was never even on the table.)

It's nice of us to bail out Greece, isn't it?  Can't we at least get the Parthenon as collateral or something?

Welcome to Obama's World and our quest for 'mediocrity.'

Heaven forbid hard working students get acknowledged for their work!  They might fly off to the moon or cure cancer or something...

Suburban School District Eliminates Class Rankings

December 7, 2010 - From: www.chicagobreakingnews.com

By Jack McCarthy

West suburban Indian Prairie District 204 has become the latest in the Chicago area to eliminate high school class ranks.

The District 204 school board on Monday voted unanimously and without discussion to eliminate traditional valedictorian and salutatorian honors at each of the district's three high schools.

Instead, new honor designations will salute groups of top academic performers beginning with the 2011-12 school year.

"It's not perfect, it'll never be perfectly just," said board member Mark Metzger.  "But it's a heck of a lot more just than what we have (now)."

The new system would cite students with a 4.6 grade point average as Summa Cum Laude, or highest honor.  A Magna Cum Laude -- with great honor -- designation would go to students with grade point averaged between 4.4 and 4.59.

Students with 4.2 to 4.39 grade point averages would receive Cum Laude -- with honor -- citation.

District 204 joins other districts and schools who have already eliminated class ranks, including New Trier, Illinois Math and Science Academy, Naperville District 203 and Benet Academy.

If designations were in place in 2009-10 school, nine students would have been Summa Cum Laude, 29 would have earned Magna Cum Laude and 60 would have been Cum Laude.


And it gets even worse!  Fitting that all this is taking place in Obama's Chicago...

Honors Class Leads to Diversity Debate

November 23, 2010 - From: www.chicagotribune.com

By Diane Rado

When he scans the faces in his honors science courses at Evanston Township High School, chemistry teacher William Farmer can easily see who's missing: minority kids.

"Out of 26, you might have three nonwhite students," he said.  One of the most racially mixed high schools in Illinois, Evanston has a mission of embracing diversity and promoting equity and excellence for all students.  But its own data show that few minority students make it into the school's most rigorous courses that will best prepare them for college and the future.

Honors classrooms dominated by white students have been common in Illinois and across the nation, a byproduct of a century-old and controversial tradition of tracking, or sorting, students into different levels of classes.

Across the Chicago region, high school officials say they are making inroads in diversifying their advanced classes, but Evanston is considering the boldest step of all: eliminating an elite honors English course that has traditionally been offered to the highest-achieving incoming freshmen -- usually white.  The proposal has spurred an emotionally charged and race-tinged debate in the liberal, multiracial community that his home to Northwestern University.

For the most part, freshmen of all races and socioeconomic and achievement backgrounds would learn together in the same freshman humanities class, an English course that blends literature, history, art, music and philosophy and is required for graduation.  The class would be taught at the honors level, according to district officials, and all students would have the opportunity to earn honors credit depending on their grades on assignments.

The superachievers -- freshmen who outscore about 95 percent of their peers nationally on eighth-grade achievement tests -- would no longer have their own class, beginning next fall.  A year later, the same approach would be taken with freshman biology classes, if the school board approves the proposal.

Evanston Township High School District 202 Superintendent Eric Witherspoon said he hopes Evanston's plan will become a model for schools across the country.

"I'm excited about moving away from racially segregated classes," he said at a packed school board meeting earlier this week, adding that all freshmen should be taking challenging courses that will propel them to even more rigorous classes as upperclassmen.  Applause broke out in some, but not all, parts of the mostly white audience.

Some parents and community members are skeptical, questioning everything from how quickly the proposal is moving forward to whether all students will benefit from being in the same class.

"What in this proposal is better for the top students?" asked Susan Mendelsohn, one of more than 20 speakers at the board meeting.  Trying to tailor instruction to such a wide range of students in one class "will not work out," she said.  "It is unreasonable.  It expects too much."

The new humanities class would include all students able to read at the ninth-grade level, which the high school defines as scoring at or above the 40th percentile nationally on an achievement test given to eighth-graders.

A small number of students below the 40th percentile will be in a different class, to get more help.  This year, 50 students are in that support class -- about 8 percent of students enrolled in all freshman humanities courses.

Administrators insist that the new humanities course will be rigorous and challenging to all students.

"I can assure you that we will not be dumbing down the curriculum,'' Assistant Superintendent Diep Nguyen told the Tribune.

But not all parents are convinced, believing that students could be shortchanged if teachers are unable to devote enough attention to both struggling kids and high-achievers who need the most challenging material to be able to compete against the best and brightest kids across the country.

Mindy Wallis, whose children have been in top honors classes, pointed out that the high school already has mixed-level freshman humanities classes that combine students of varying levels -- except for the very top honors students -- so there shouldn't be a rush to make more changes.

Karen Young, also a parent, agreed, saying the district hasn't even completed its evaluation of changes made to those classes two years ago.

High school data show that nonwhite students make up the majority of the mixed-level freshmen humanities courses, while white students make up most of the honors-only classes.

"It's time for all students to experience excellence," said Naomi Daugherty, co-president of the Student Council this year.  She said she once heard a substitute teacher say he could tell he was in an honors course because there were so few minorities in the room.

The proposal to eliminate the honors-only class comes at a time when the Evanston high school has repeatedly failed to meet federal academic standards, requiring a major school overhaul to increase student performance.

The school spends more than $20,000 per student, one of the highest per-pupil expenditures in the state.  But while white students have consistently scored high enough on state tests to meet the standards, black and Latino students lag far behind, according to state data.

In Washington, the federal government is pushing for states to increase academic standards to better prepare students for college and work, and the U.S. Department of Education has stepped up civil rights monitoring that gauges whether schools are providing minority students access to rigorous programs.

In Illinois, about 71 percent of students in Advanced Placement classes were white in 2006, the most recent Office for Civil Rights data available.  That compares with 9.7 percent black and 9.4 percent Latino students in AP that year.

Likewise, at Evanston Township High School, white students by far take the most honors and Advanced Placement courses.

In an interview with the Tribune, Witherspoon said the school's stratified classes have been trapping minority students in lower-level courses for their entire time in high school.  "They almost never ended up leaving that level, so they'd be here for four years, but they'd never make it to honors or AP classes," he said.

In Evanston and elsewhere in the Chicago region, students have been placed into different levels of classes based on several factors, including eighth-grade teacher evaluations and recommendations, as well as test scores, often on the EXPLORE test that is a precursor to the ACT college entrance exam.

Witherspoon objects to tracking incoming freshmen before they even walk in the high school doors.

"These are eighth-graders; they are just 13 years old," Witherspoon said.

The placement process has generated controversy elsewhere as well.


In June, an Oak Park parent filed a lawsuit against Oak Park Elementary School District 97, claiming her son's middle school violated student records laws when it provided information to Oak Park and River Forest High School officials involved in determining which classes her son should take.  She said she wasn't allowed to review and challenge the information, and that her son was "adversely affected."  The elementary school district declined to comment.  High school spokeswoman Katherine Foran said the district will likely review its placement procedures as a result of the lawsuit.

The practice of tracking students has both proponents and detractors.  Critics argue that it hurts minority and low-income students and those who just miss the cutoff for honors courses and might have benefited from learning alongside higher-achieving students.

Some educators support the practice, saying it's easier and can be more effective teaching to students at the same or similar levels.  Parents of high-achievers often like their children in the highest tracks because they feel their children are bored or held back in classes that have to cater to the abilities of a wide range of students.

Research findings have been mixed, with some studies pointing to successful "detracking" initiatives that have boosted minority achievement, while others suggesting disadvantages, including average and high-ability students becoming bored or doing worse.

Among other findings, a 2008 study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago found that absenteeism increased among average and high-ability students after Chicago Public Schools eliminated remedial courses and mandated college prep classes for all students in 1997.

Officials in some of Illinois' largest school districts say they have been eliminating the lowest-level classes at their schools, and pushing more students into Advanced Placement classes.  Still, they have continued to track students.

Farmer, the chemistry teacher, who is president of Evanston Township High School's teachers union organization, said teachers in departments affected by the proposal generally favor it, as long as they get support from administrators and training in how to effectively teach the heterogeneous coursesx.

For now, the proposal is aimed at freshmen English-humanities and biology; other subjects, such as math, continue to offer courses at different levels.  The district has made no final decisions on whether sophomore classes will be detracked if the freshman proposals go through.

The school board will hold another public hearing on the plan Monday and is scheduled to vote Dec. 13.

Farmer believes the school board will approve the plan, saying, "I get the sense in working with the board that they really recognize the moral imperative of needing to make some drastic changes to the school structure, to reduce the predictability of student achievement based on race."









So the idea-stealing assholes at MAKE magazine have new scam to whip their idiot followers into a frenzy.  After Microsoft released the Xbox 360 Kinect, people started buying them up for hacking purposes.  The idiots at MAKE posted a couple stories to rile up their readers that Microsoft "didn't want them to do this," or whatever.

This is ironic, as Microsoft was a sponsor of the "Maker Faire" and has run several backpage ads in MAKE.  Hmmm...  Can you say propaganda to sell more Kinect units - and just before Christmas, too!

What a bunch of fucking tools...





This "Barack Obama Male Leadership School" in Dallas, Texas sure sounds interesting!  I'm sure that school is pushing out future engineers, doctors, lawyers, "community organizers," etc. left and right!  LOL!

From: www.dallasisd.org/parents/magnet/magnets.htm


Funny how "diversity" doesn't really involve diversity of thought.

Note that Helen Thomas was born in Lebanon, making her of a member of the Semitic race, but we all know what "anti-Semitism" really means...

Also note that the ADL was formed to use Jewish media interests to come to the aid of the kike pedophile, Leo Frank.

College Scraps Helen Thomas Award After Remarks About 'Zionists'

December 4, 2010 - From: www.aolnews.com

By Hugh Collins

Wayne State University has terminated its Helen Thomas Spirit of Diversity in Media award after the former White House correspondent claimed that the United States is controlled by "Zionists."

Thomas, 90, told a workshop on anti-Arab bias in Dearborn, Mich., that Jewish influence made it impossible to criticize Israel in the United States.

"Congress, the White House and Hollywood, Wall Street are owned by the Zionists," Thomas said on Thursday.  "They put their money where their mouth is."

The university yanked the award Friday and denounced her comments.  Wayne State "strongly condemns the anti-Semitic remarks made by Helen Thomas," the university said in an e-mailed statement, according to The Associated Press.

Wayne State's Journalism Institute for Media Diversity has given the Helen Thomas award for work that promotes diversity.  The award "is no longer helping us achieve our goals," Matthew Seeger, an interim dean, told The Detroit Free Press.

This is not the first time that Thomas has made explosive comments.  In June, she was caught on camera saying that Jews should "get the hell out of Palestine" and go home to "Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else."

Thomas, the daughter of Lebanese immigrants in Detroit, was once a pioneering political correspondent.  She was the first female officer of the National Press Club and the first female member of the White House Correspondents Association.  She has covered every president since Eisenhower and was known for her aggressive style.  Thomas quit as a columnist for Hearst newspapers following the June incident.  She later apologized for the remarks.

The Anti-Defamation League blasted Thomas on Friday and said her latest comments tarnished her legacy as a journalist.

"Helen Thomas has clearly, unequivocally revealed herself as a vulgar anti-Semite," ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said in a statement.  "Her suggestion that Zionists control government, finance and Hollywood is nothing less than classic, garden-variety anti-Semitism."

Robert Cohen, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Metropolitan Detroit, applauded Wayne State's decision to withdraw the award.

"I think it was just very ironic that she made these comments at an event, the purpose of which was to address stereotyping," Cohen told the AP.  "And it was very disappointing to know that she received a standing ovation from that audience."

Thomas's words also drew criticism from members of her own profession.  In a New Republic article titled "Helen Thomas Lets The Mask Slip," Jonathan Chait wrote that she has a problem with Jews.  Chait previously said Thomas' comments about Jews in Palestine were anti-Zionist, rather than anti-Semitic.

"I prefer to hold off on imputing motives of bigotry without strong proof, but there's not a whole lot of doubt remaining here," Chait wrote in The New Republic.

The ADL called on all institutions that have presented Thomas with awards to withdraw them.  Thomas has been honored by the Society of Professional Journalists and holds more than 30 honorary degrees, according to the ADL.

"Through her words and deeds she has besmirched both herself and her profession," Foxman said.  "This is a sad final chapter to an otherwise illustrious career."