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March 11, 2009

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Terry: You need to start attending the church of the believers. Obama needs to be regressive on all these issues (and on foreign policy, too) so he can be re-elected in 2012. Sure, he will kill and ethnically cleanse many people and he will destroy our remaining democratic institutions (like public schools), but that's all just prelude to what he'll do once he no longer has to run for election (except he'll have to do some more regressive stuff in preparation for the Hillary administration in 2016 - never mind.)

Among the litany of clunkers from Obama's speech, here's my favorite:

"Our curriculum for 8th graders is two full years behind top performing countries."

OUR curriculum?? Since when did the U.S. have a single curriculum for 8th graders? And even if such a thing existed, how could you make the extraordinary claim that this phantom curriculum is two years behind? Does this phantom curriculum have short chubby legs which prevents it from keeping up with our swift-footed competitors?

What's frightening is that Obama is simply mouthing this boiler-plate crap in exactly the same way that Dubbya did.

OK - one more favorite clunker:

"Just a third of our 13- and 14-year-olds can read as well as they should."

News flash: half of all kids are below average. Think about it for a second. Average suggests a point right in the middle. So half will always be above this point, but half will always be below. Reading "as well as they should" is based on a normalized distribution of scores, so half are always above the middle and half are always below. Always. The scores that Obama references are utterly devoid of meaning. But they sure sound scary!

Peter, you're forgetting, thanks to the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act (with an unconscious tip of the hat to Garrison Keillor), all American children will soon be above average.

Munch on that, Canada!

God, it's great to be an American.

Like the multi-headed hydra, the teacher's union will lash out at any effort to carry out reform that threatens their political hegemony in any way, shape or form.

Super cute! My little man would look so stylin' in those!

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