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Brought To You By BLUESJUNKY - Honorary Chair of Music - Middle Finger Symphony Music Director
"Decades worth of research attests to the fact that the arts are among the most profoundly important and valuable ways to improve learning and promote success, from early childhood through adulthood . Now, with the shifting priorities of our new presidential administration, artists and arts organizations are at serious risk of losing the support they need to do their invaluable work."
"The arts are fundamental to our common humanity. Every time we attend the theater, a museum or a concert, we are literally feeding our souls, and investing in and preserving our collective future."Ms. Andrews may be correct about the education. But what she fails to see are what the alternatives to Government funding are. And I think there are a few other things she overlooks.
“It could be hers,” Johnston offered. “His wife was a model.”
“Right,” O’Donnell responded. “She’s on here, but she was never at that league.”Johnson then continued to say that she did “very sleazy porn” before Maddow interrupted him. Unfortunately, Johnson did not have the opportunity to explain further. As one can see on the video of the exchange published by the Daily Caller, O’Donnell and Maddow did not share my curiosity.
"If all we get tonight is that Donald Trump paid $38 million to America's government, that's a good night for Donald Trump, I'm sorry,” joked Van Jones, host of CNN’s The Messy Truth, “I was hoping and praying that it would show, not only that he paid no taxes, he actually charged the government and got money back. I wanted something I could get excited about."
The rest of the panel laughed seemingly in agreement.
Thank you Rachel Maddow for proving to your #Trump hating followers how successful @realDonaldTrump is & that he paid $40mm in taxes! #Taxes— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 15, 2017
I must confess to a certain unedifying, if only occasional, habit: poring over the stories of people who got themselves hurt or killed through breathtaking displays of stupidity. Such online rubber-necking is popularly catered for by the Darwin Awards website; but I tend to find more cause for morbid fascination in the antics of a class of people who might be termed 'Doolittles'.
The Doolittle, as the name suggests, is a person who thinks that he or she can make friends with dangerous wild animals. A common pattern is for the Doolittle to experience a long run of luck with this unwise show of affection, which gives rise to an inner conviction of his or her "special connection" with the predatory species of choice, before the fantasy is dispelled in a few violent moments and with a great deal of blood. Unfortunately, what might be a case of individual natural deselection often results in the death or injury of sane bystanders, for Doolittles are hardly shy about dragging other people into their lunacy.
One example of a Doolittle would be Dr. Erich Ritter, who had most of his calf bitten off after standing for more than an hour in shark-infested water...to prove that sharks aren't really dangerous. A more serious case was that of Sandra Herold, who pampered her 200-pound pet chimpanzee and treated him as a "son", until he decided to go on a rampage and rip off her female friend's face. But if there is a King of the Doolittles, it is probably Timothy Treadwell, who went on regular expeditions in a wildlife sanctuary to live with grizzly bears - and ended up, together with his less enthusiastic girlfriend, furnishing a live supper for a bear that attacked his unprotected camp.
It strikes me that Doolittles, for all of their back-to-nature fantasies, are decidely un-natural products of a peculiar kind of modern human society. For one thing, I notice that they are invariably of white European descent; to go out into the wilderness and play pat-a-cake with dangerous predators does not seem to be a general human need. European countries with aggressive, unassimilable Third Worlders, who have long been perceived by them as "noble savages" analogous to the Doolittle's "pets".
Assimilation of non-whites to Europeans ("jihadis are economically disaffected") and sometimes of themselves to non-whites (faux ghetto girl Rachel Dolezal and hoaxer Tom MacMaster); their downplaying of the violence and friction created by mass immigration; their moralistic accusations, suspicions and blame-games aimed at ordinary Europeans; their 'white saviour' self-image (whether they admit to having it or not); their indifference to the consequences of inflicting their personal beliefs on others (on this last point, Doolittles are considerably more admirable, as many progressives never choose to live anywhere near their non-white wards).
Status is no use if everyone is allowed to have it; and this is why both Doolittles and progressives invariably end up castigating the majority of "normal people" (whites by progressives and sensible humans by Doolittles), who are seen as uncomprehending morons perpetually scheming to harm the noble savages/cuddly free-range pets.
(AP) - New York education officials are poised to scrap a test designed to measure the reading and writing skills of people trying to become teachers, in part because an outsized percentage of black and Hispanic candidates were failing it.
The state Board of Regents on Monday is expected Monday to adopt a task force's recommendation of eliminating the literacy exam, known as the Academic Literacy Skills Test. Backers of the test say eliminating it could put weak teachers in classrooms. Critics of the examination said it is redundant and a poor predictor of who will succeed.
Leaders of the education reform movement have complained for years about the caliber of students entering education schools and the quality of the instruction they receive there. A December 2016 study by the National Council on Teacher Quality found that 44 percent of the teacher preparation programs it surveyed accepted students from the bottom half of their high school classes.
"We want high standards, without a doubt. Not every given test is going to get us there," said Leslie Soodak, a professor of education at Pace University who served on the task force that examined the state's teacher certification tests.
"Having a white workforce really doesn't match our student body anymore," Soodak said.
Kate Walsh, the president of National Council on Teacher Quality, which pushes for higher standards for teachers, said that blacks and Latinos don't score as well as whites on the literacy test. "There's not a test in the country that doesn't have disproportionate performance on the part of blacks and Latinos."Ian Rosenblum, the executive director of the New York office of the Education Trust, a nonprofit that advocates for high achievement for all students, called the teacher literacy test "a 12th grade-level assessment" - something a high school senior should be able to pass.