Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for August 08, 2010

I missed what Zonker is studying and even more important what Zonk wants to do with this education

Why do I get the feeling it has nothing to do with edumacation, as such?

Just in case people think GT made it up…

COYOTY Thanks, I found it humorous. Some of you are horrified or even petrified. Relax, it’s a joke. Like I read the NYT and laugh my head off. What, you don’t read the literature of the other side? How do you stay informed. Ahh, the Daily Worker tells you what to think. Last century wasn’t that published in a leftist nation that lasted about half a century. Wonder what happened to that noble leftist experiment? They collapsed because the rewarded mediocrity and not excellence (like the NEA)? Didn’t they call themselves a union. I can see why.

Maybe their system should be used her. If you thought that educated, skilled, ambitious workers should make more than fat lazy ones, they threw you in the gulag for retraining. If you mentioned your tax dollars were used to build government villas on the Black Sea, they deported you. If you leaked Top Secret documents that threatened national security, well, you just disappeared. Here you get a medal for transparency that is guaranteed by the Constitution somewhere.

It’s dem danged rite wingers who can’t see words like transparency, equal pay, church taxes, privacy, safety net, affirmative action, free lunch, and graduated income tax in the US Constitution. dem words be dere as plane as de knows on yer face, if you look fer dem.

Pleese feal free to correct ma grammar. I went to one of those progressive skools that teach minority history but not th two, er three RRRs. I don’t no a thing about no white capitalist Edison, but I know who invented peanut butter.

Trump U couldn’t fulfill Zonker’s needs? Shocking.

@Lewreader: Moderately amusing [pun intended].

If Glenn Beck is involvd there has to be a moron in there somewhere.

“Rah rah rah rah sis boom bah…”

“Be True to Your School”, The Beach Boys

Something form the Beach Boys 60’s?

GBU _IS_ a real university! It has TWO presidents and ONE professor! About right.

Let’s all make Glenn Beck a little richer.

I thought a rich man had a hard time getting into heaven? Maybe not Mormon heaven.

Let’s hear it for consistency…[insert silence here]. heeyuk you!

Coyoty Once again I thank you for answering my questions.

GT As usual brings a very interesting twist about education in the USA, or what passes as education.

In the shopping Mall they always had a pretty young woman at the Information Booth. So of course we called her mis information. That was a very sMall joke. I see that Beck U is a much larger joke, hopefully most people see it that way.

Lewreader: I resent the way you always associate progressives (or liberals if you prefer) with communism.

I hate communism.

Coyoty’s link to its site explains GBU (ambiguous initials, I know), and Zonker’s remark that New York has closed down his “university” may be related to the GAO’s investigation of fraudulent for-profit schools reported in the NYT (4 Aug.).

For political junkies whose appetite isn’t sated by today’s Doonesbury, here’s another “Sunday Diversion.” The link is to the obit for Tony Judt, who, when the New Republic removed his name from their masthead, boasted last January that

“Today, I’m regarded outside New York University as a looney-tunes leftie self-hating Jewish communist; inside the university I’m regarded as a typical old-fashioned white male liberal elitist. I like that. I’m on the edge of both, it makes me feel comfortable.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/books/08judt.html

Ps. RSRussell calls Barton’s work “a travesty on true scholarship,” but why insert the word “true”? Barton is a realtor who publishes books and advises the RNC—-not a scholar (contrast Judt, above).

Barton, and the larger issue, were covered last Feb. in a NYT essay, “How Christian Were the Founders” which you can find at

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=1&%2334&%2359&sq&st=cse&%2359;David%20Barton&%2359;&scp=1

lew, you are almost always incomprehensible to me, but entertaining in a perverse way that has nothing to do with grammar, spelling, your feeble attempts at humor or your ‘knowledge’ of the liberal-progressive mind.

Since I’m on record as having complained once about Lewreader’s lack of focus, I’d like to second Billdi’s last comment. I too find Lew’s rough vitality more entertaining than the mostly impertinent “facts” cited by his supercilious detractors.

Reply to Palindrome:

Political impertinence is the hallmark of Neolib. By showing her disdain for the vox populi (see my avatar), she declares that she stands apart from them and does not share their political interests. And yet she expects them to listen to her!

Thanks, Coyoty. I was sure that G.B. Trudeau had made this up. “Beck University” is precisely the reason that we do not need school-voucher programs. These frauds would trickle down to the elementary school level, parents would fork over thousands for no education but much indoctrination, and we already have plenty of indoctrination via the right-leaning, pro-conspicuous-consumption mainstream media.

Lew, I am afraid that your remark made little sense. You claim that the Soviet Union was “a leftist nation”, when it was a repressive dictatorship loathed by liberals & progressives. It is further evident that you never read The New York Times nor the history of the interpretation of the constitution. I am amazed that you want to dispense with “privacy”. Would you really want Connecticut to prevent your daughter from purchasing a diaphragm? In addition, the words “taxes on incomes” ARE in the Constitution. I suggest that you read & proof your remarks before clicking “POST COMMENT”. Indeed, I suggest having someone else read them, too. On the other hand, with your current narrow-mindedness, girlish hysteria, and misinformation, I suspect that you could teach at “Beck University”.

R.S. Russell, could you cite some sources for the claims about David Barton? Thanks. Thanks, Drome for your source about Barton, but I would welcome more.

Today is August 8th, the 36th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation. It should be a national holiday. August does not have any national holidays, after all.

Brian’s reminder of the date evoked some Joe-Allen Doty, or personal, reminiscences. On this day 36 years ago, I was driving home from my job in the (politically conservative) mountains of Northern California when Nixon came on the air to announce his resignation. “Because my Congressional base has eroded …” he began, but I stopped listening and switched to the ballgame.

I was too callow, and too little interested in politics to appreciate that this smooth-talking car salesman had a genius for political clearsightedness. Even that opening clause about his congressional base has stood up under historical analysis. Nixon meant that he no longer had the numbers to withstand impeachment.

The contrast between Nixon’s reading of this historical moment and the reading offered in Europe could not be more revealing. “Palace coup in the White House!” screamed Le Figaro. Evidently the French overlook Toqueville’s explanation that Congress, not the Presidency exercises the sovereign power under our Constitution. Americans have always understood this, although our media tend to forget it.

So—-most of us yawned at the resignation and waited for the next occupant of the “palace.” We knew this was not a Constitutional crisis, even though a few academic historians tried to get us excited about scenarios involving Alexander Haig and other high-ranking members of Nixon’s team.

(Brian: if you follow Coyoty’s link to the website, you’ll see one of the first courses listed is Faith 101 “with Prof. David Barton”)

(Stebon: your link shows the angry Scouts. For what caused the anger, see

http://www.examiner.com/x-21818-Virginia-Beach-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m7d28-Obama-skips-Boy-Scout-event-to-chat-with-the-ladies-on-The-View

Perhaps Obama could not take seriously a tradition that saw fit to honor the disgraced Bill Clinton.)

BRIAN Can you read? I said graduated income tax. Whadda ya thunk, if one farmer pays 10% and de odder 30%, shud the second farmer get more votes? How bouts if I have2 children I pay twice as much property tax as the man with one. Just want to be fair. Mathematics is incapable of being unfair. One step further, he who uses government services pay more taxes than he who doesn’t. Fair Fair Fair. Lets bring it back to your daddy’s day. Mortgage the house to pay the Doctor or die.Free choice.Sounds fair to me. Oh, you want me to lower my lifestyle for you. You want the government to force me.

Let me know when you find graduated tax in the Constitution.

Thanks for the reminiscence, Drome, but many of us celebrated for the evidence of the strength of our constitutional system. I am sorry that it has not stood up as well to other criminal offenses: Iran-contra & the invasion of Iraq, to name two. The strength of the system is the reason that today is a day always to remember. We need strongly to exercise our civil rights and we need more openness in government and much much less secrecy.

Lew, here is the Sixteenth Amendment: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Note that it does not specify how Congress will lay & collect these taxes nor does it connect taxes to your voting power. The graduated income tax (which benefits you, of course, since you are on a small fixed income and using a great deal of government services) is constitutional.

You are on quite the losing streak, Lew. You stumbled over your feet in your attempt to malign the A.C.L.U. You whined about how “privacy” is unconstitutional, yet dropped it like a hot potato when you saw the results of your plaint. Now, you claim that taxing a billionaire at a rate higher than you tax an employee of Wal-Mart is unconstitutional. Better work on your fastball. You are getting smacked around.

Sounds like Neolib’s hatred of Bush is surpassed only by a hatred of Nixon.

In what kind of Manichaean political fantasy does Neolib dwell, I wonder? Does it really help her in making sense of the real world of history and politics?

http://tinyurl.com/ysvrjs

I know this is not the direction the rest of the commenters went, but I would like to point out something from palin drome’s first post above. In it, you mentioned the GAO’s report on for-profit colleges and some of the less than scrupulous practices that they follow. However, it will be pointed out by some who take more time to rebut than I will that the school’s picked by the GAO already had some prior red flags raised about their practices. Their report was the equivalent of analyzing the type of citizens a community has by closely scrutinizing those in that community with a criminal past. Sure, they might act OK, but there’s a reason many in prison are repeat offenders.

That being said, here’s a link to a “secret shopper” analysis of some of the leaders in the for-profit education industry.

http://www.myusearch.com/admissions-marketing/secret-shopper-report-inside-admissions-at-the-leading-for-profit-colleges/

@summerdog: hard for a rich man to get into heaven? Well, that’s what those “Christian Socialists” would have you believe (with all that tyrannical “social justice” stuff), but the truth, as revealed by folks like Rick Koerber, is that getting rich is okay, even by means of conning one’s fellow parishoners into joining your little Ponzi scheme.

I remember HUGE celebrations on the day Nixon “retired”.