Morning Thoughts

On the way to work this morning, I got to thinking about the Republican cuts to Obama's stimulus package and one of those cuts was to the funding to local health agencies to prepare for a pandemic. What are we possibly facing - Wow Swine Flu! It isn't a real problem just yet (except for those families that have lost a love one to it) but clearly it is something that could be because of our quick and broad array of travel locations. But why did the Republicans pick this issue to take a stand on?

Here is my understanding of Republican positions. They only want to protect the rich and successful in life. They think that because we are born equal under the law that we are born equal in all things. Like an intercity kid or a kid born to migrant workers is going to get the same opportunities as a Bush kid or a Rockefeller kid. If you think about that you should come up with a lot of thoughts about what really makes or breaks a successful citizen.

Likewise they fail to understand that the business successful never achieve success solely on their own efforts. They are successful because (in part) of those of us that work for them and those of us that buy from them, i.e. the non-rich. (We the non-rich measure success quite differently.) Without workers and purchases (those with needs to be filled) they wouldn’t have any success at all. I’m not ignoring their contribution to success. I’m just saying they need to remember that it takes all of us to make it happen. I by no means think the working class is without it’s faults. But if we the non-rich died in the next month from a pandemic what would happen to all those successful people the Republicans are protecting? You can legislate an increase population, at least no overnight. I guess you could five tax breaks to the wealthy for each successful conception they produced. (LOL)

All I’m saying is we are a diverse nation and our diversity is not just culture or ethnic. In fact the diversity of our work ethic and our emotional goals are a great contribution to one of the most open and free societies in history and that our government has to look at protecting more than just the financially successful.

It's all about education, stupid.

When I read this article I felt I could replace the word "Florida" with just about any state in our nation and most assuredly I could pick any southern state. Just image if we spend the kind of money on our educational system that we wasted in Iraq this last 5 years. Our return on investment would be so much more rewarding.

Our reputation for flakiness is at stake
Posted on Sun, Feb. 17, 2008

By CARL HIAASEN
In a move that could endanger Florida's flaky backwater reputation, the state Board of Education is poised to endorse the teaching of evolution as a science.
This is a dangerous idea -- not the presentation of Darwinism in schools, but the presentation of Florida as a place of progressive scientific thought.
Over the years the Legislature has worked tirelessly to keep our kids academically stuck in the mid-1950s. This has been achieved by overcrowding their classrooms, underpaying their teachers and letting their school buildings fall apart.
Florida's plucky refusal to embrace 21st century education is one reason that prestigious tech industries have avoided the state, allowing so many of our high-school graduates (and those who come close) to launch prosperous careers in the fast-food, bartending and service sectors of the economy.
By accepting evolution as a proven science, our top educators would be sending a loud message to the rest of the nation: Stop making fun of us.
Is that what we really want?
On Tuesday, , the Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a proposed set of new standards that describe evolution as the ''fundamental concept underlying all of biology'' and ``supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.''
Certainly that's the position of every reputable academic group on the planet, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association.
But forget the fossil record, OK? Forget DNA tracing. Forget the exhaustively documented diversification of species.
This battle is about pride and independence; about boldly going against the flow, in defiance of reason and all known facts.
In recent weeks, the Board of Education has been swamped by e-mails and letters from religious conservatives who advocate teaching creationism or intelligent design, and who believe evolution should be discussed strictly as a ``theory.''
For those who wish to see Florida standing still, if not sinking, this is a fantastic strategy. In fact, it could be expanded to revise other educational doctrines.
Let's start teaching gravity as a ''theory,'' too. And don't forget the solar system -- what proof do we really have, besides a bunch of fuzzy, fake-looking photos, that Mars really exists?
At a recent public hearing in Orlando, opponents of evolutionary teaching rose one by one to assail the proposed curriculum standards. Some had traveled all the way from the Panhandle, and were, like presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, exclusive believers in the Bible's version of creation.
According to The St. Petersburg Times, one speaker compared Charles Darwin, the father of evolutionary science, to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, well-known tyrants and mass murderers. Such loony gibberish is actually good for the anti-evolution crusade, providing the best evidence that the human species has not advanced one iota in the last 100,000 years.
With this in mind, several school boards in North Florida have passed resolutions opposing the teaching of evolution as fact. True, students in those same districts have produced some of the worst science scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but who needs Newton or Copernicus when you've got the Corinthians?
The notion that humans descended from apes has never been popular among fundamentalists, but what of the apes themselves? Given the gory history of Homo sapiens on Earth, no self-respecting chimp or gorilla would claim a genetic connection to us.
The outcry against evolutionary instruction has been so heated that 40 members of the committee responsible for the new science standards felt compelled to sign a letter stating, ``There is no longer any valid scientific criticism of the theory of evolution.''
Caving in to groups that question the soundness of science, the letter warned, ``would not only seriously impede the education of our children but also create the image of a backward state, raising the risk of Florida's being snubbed by biotechnology companies and other science-based businesses.''
Nice try, pinheads, but there's no sin in being a slightly backward state with extremely modest expectations for its young people. That's been the guiding philosophy of our tightwad lawmakers for years, and the degree to which they've succeeded is illuminated annually in the FCAT charade.
If snubbing is to be done, Florida should be the snubber, not the snubee. Keep your elite biotech payrolls up North and out West -- we've got hundreds of thousands of low-paying, go-nowhere jobs that require little training and minimal education.
Should state officials vote this week to put evolution on the teaching agenda, it will be a small yet radical step out of Florida's backwarding-thinking past.
Resistance is not futile. We've worked hard to keep ourselves so far behind in education, and we must stay the course.

Just a Ponder

History is what was and the cause of what is. We can never know what it could have been. I think of this every time I think how different the world would be today if Al Gore had won his own state in his bid for president in 2000.