No, really! My mailbox is overflowing with tests and people questioning things!
Rep. Peter King asks the WH, Are you out of your freakin’ minds (believe me, he talks like that and this is why we love him!) Michelle Malkin has the round-up of people asking that question.
Aside: Hey, even I jumped in here and called the White House and said, “Bad idea, Mr. President - BAD idea. VERY Bad! You can weigh in, too: White House Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 FAX: 202-456-2461
Christopher Alleva asks in the American Thinker what is the difference between Vince Foster and Dick Cheney?
Maggies Farm brings us the 8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS -1895. Can you pass it? I admit, I cannot. Heaven help us - those are interesting questions, though. What IS the purpose of a river?
RightWing Nuthouse asks What Would Hubert H. Humphrey think of all this?
Dan at Gay Patriot West has a test question for Kofi Annan:
Now that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said that the U.S. should close its detention facility for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, I’m just wondering if he also has asked China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe and other nations which incarcerate and torture political opponents to close down their detention facilities.
John Bolton wonders if we shouldn’t replace Kofi.
Dick Meyer at CBS asks whether President Bush is responsible for the CEO’ing of the American Presidency. Also, note that the Public Eye, which I like a lot, has a conservative view posted in “other voices,” once again. PE is the most balanced mainstream media effort I’ve seen in a while.
Dymphna tests whether art is offensive when offered without context.
Siggy tests whether Islamofascists (or some in the West) understand what slavery is.
A Healthy Fear of Botulism links to David Brooks who asks a similar question.
Bookworm asks what’s your favorite slogan?
Benning has a citizenship test and a faith test
Gateway Pundit asks which side is Judge Henry Kennedy on?
Rick at Brutally Honest wonders who pulled whose Cheney?
February 17th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
A river is a vehicle necessary for folded paper boats.
Didn’t those nuns teach you that???
February 17th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
My background is in the steamship business. Here’s my comments on the DP World takeover of P&O’s terminal operations:
http://marchhareshouse.blogspot.com/2006/02/on-ports-and-terminal-operators.html
February 17th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Madame: I am distressed that you fell for that urban legend “eighth grade test” that has been floating around for years. http://www.snopes.com/language/document/1895exam.htm
Now, as a teacher myself, are there problems with education content, specifically history, my discipline? Most certainly yes, but a lot of rote memorization that was instantly forgotten two hours after taking the final does not constitute real learning either.
February 17th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Bob: read the Snopes entry - it doesn’t classify it as a hoax, which is the implication when someone mentions Snopes.
Anchoress: Your email musta been full!
Siggy: I thought it was to carry off dropped coolers.
February 17th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
A river drains away excess rainwater(ground water runoff) to a nearby pond, lake, or ocean. Without rivers, the ground would be oversaturated and form marsh lands-unsuitable for most farming.
February 18th, 2006 at 6:35 am
> Maggies Farm brings us …
An apparent hoax. Later comments call attention to this as something Snopes has labeled as, if not false, then specious.
February 18th, 2006 at 10:28 am
Rep. Peter King asks the WH, Are you out of your freakin’ minds
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There is absolutely nothing at all inconsistent about this. From the Battle of Tora Bora forward, the War On Terror has been a part-time job at the White House, pursued if and only if it does not interfere with other, more pressing, agendas of political power and corporate influence.
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The most dangerous possible terrorist target–in terms of lives that could be lost in America–is any one of our chemical plants close to a major city, as most of them are. A simple truck bomb, like McVeigh’s in Oklahoma City, could kill thousands if detonated at a plant making, say, anhydrous ammonia.
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This has been brought up over and over in Congress, news programs of all sorts have repeatedly demonstrated that reporters can simply drive in the front gate of most plants without even being challenged, and there would be no reason why the White House couldn’t take up the bully pulpit and get this fixed. Have you heard a peep out of them about it? You can ask the Chemical Maunfacturer’s lobby why.
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The President has defiantly told us that he will order, if he has to, the screening of every phone call and e-mail in America, to identify people using words like “bomb” and “terror”. So the NSA goes dilligently deviling after everybody who tells someone else, “Dat’s da Bomb!”
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But you will never hear a peep out of the White House about the one surveilance measure that would destroy virtually every avenue that funded terrorist cells in this country but gold smuggling and halwala banking: make every electronic fund transaction completely transparent to Government scrutiny.
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This has also been proposed since the very first days after 9/11, because the principle is obvious: terrorism costs money. Lots of it. Stop the money and you stop it. Even Bill Clinton suggested this long before 9/11. But it will never happen. Guess why, and guess who doesn’t want it to happen. Besides the terrorists, of course.
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Way back when, Charles Schumer made a very intelligent proposal to increase security in the Trucking Industry nationwide. And even Michelle Malkin supported it. Heard much about it lately? And did you hear anything at all about it from the White House?
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It’s almost embarrasing to mention, but we still have the longest virtually unguarded borders in the world. They have remained so now for about four and one half years, despite repeated calls to fix this from those in the President’s own party who think fighting terror should be a full-time job.
/Finally, how much have we heard from the White House about the scathing, and bi-partisan, Congressional criticism report on the Department of Homeland Security’s response to Katrina? Are we really ready to cope with someone blowing up one of those completely naked chemical plants? I don’t think so!
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Of course, I haven’t run into too much about this one on Conservative blogs, either.
February 18th, 2006 at 11:59 am
I dug up this quite thorough investigation of the 1895 examination:
http://www.republic-of-gilroy.com/1895exam.pdf
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The exam was apparently real, given for the first time in 1895, and continued to be given for at least ten years afterward. However, the great majority of Salina’s 8th graders failed it, even when they took it a second time.
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In 1894 28 students passed the 8th grade examination. In 1895, with our wonderful “good old days of real education” exam, 7 students passed it.
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In 1895 there were apparently seven different county schools where the exam was given, so that averages out to one student graduating per schoo1!
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As we will see below, there were probably about 100-120 students total, enrolled in each school. Of course, the 1894 test allowed only 4 students per school to get through. These small numbers suggest strongly to me that multiple grades were being taught by the same teacher, probably 2-3 grades each.
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By 1905 a second chance at the same exam within a month after the first was routine and, even then, a total of 34 passed and 92 failed.
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A graduation rate of about one in four is not exactly No Child Left Behind.
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Moreover, there are other reasons to suspect that education in the “good old days” in Salina was not all that good.
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The article goes on to point out that in 1882 [using rounded figures] less than 900 of the 1200 school age children in the county were actually attending school, and of these, less than 600 were actually in school on any given day.
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That works out to an average absence rate of one day in three per pupil.
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These days we would probably call it Flex-Time.
February 18th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
World’s longest unguarded border? Give me a break Joseph. When was the last time you compared it to the Chinese borders? There aren’t enough people to guard every border of every country and get anything else done around town. And just 4 and a half years? It’s been way longer than that kiddo.
February 18th, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Of course it’s been longer than that. And I can even remember when it was a point of pride to note this about the Canadian border in Social Studies books and tourist flyers.
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Back then, of course, there were “wetbacks” which was why the Social Studies books were far more discreet about the Mexican Border, or, indeed about anything remotely hispanic except Fidel Castro and large sombreros.
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I wonder how many still even know what the word meant back when the dollar was unthinkably strong [think $2.35 bottles of regional Bordeaux wine of the great 1962-63 vintages], common stocks didn’t climb like rockets to drop like stones, and most common and ordinary things in life were actually made in the United States.
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In any event, I do, and I know the borders have been open a very long time. But that really wasn’t my point. Anyone with eyes ought to be able to see that if you can get into Mexico, you can get into the United States, and who can’t get into Mexico, whether they are on the terrorist watch list of 325,000 people or not.
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That list, of course, is an absurdity–trying to keep close track of the population of a medium-sized city, most of whom don’t even live within our borders! Which is why I have made the gentle suggestions above, which would probably prove more productive and leave us lots safer.
February 18th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
Dubya willing to give up control of US sea ports?
Proof that even the US government, given the chance, can risk state security, just like Israel’s has, by giving up control of a most crucial part of the country, that being its sea ports. Michelle Malkin provides the details on a deal made by the Fori…
February 18th, 2006 at 3:25 pm
[...] The global war on terror (GWOT) is fast becoming a shell game of the Bush administration: now you see it; now you don’t. LOGIC, that is. And Americans are being duped by the sleight of hand, drawn to the carnival stall by the consumate carnival barker, George W. Bush. Bad enough that we’ve been told over and over again since “9/11″ that we must fight Islamofascist-sponsored terrorism overseas so we won’t have to fight it here in our homeland, when the Bush administration has purposefully maintained a porous borders’ policy, willing to allow a veritable human invasion of illegal aliens from Mexico until it can get its amnesty-in-disguise Guest Worker Program launched. But now there’s something so fundamentally outrageous afoot that any semblance of logic behind the GWOT dissolves and leaves Americans aghast at the utter stupidity (and disingenuousness) of the federal government — a government that can’t (and won’t) secure our borders, deal effectively with the devastating aftermath of Katrina and Rita, or implement a strategic energy initiative that reduces our country’s dependence on foreign oil. The outrage? At a time when the Department of Homeland Security — George Bush’s boondoggle of last resort — continues to soak taxpayers without protecting them, the Bush administration is about to permit ownership of major American ports by Dubai Ports World, a United Arab Emirates’ government-owned firm. Arabs can own our ports and enter our country without proper documentation from Mexico (and even develop nuclear weapons), but American men and women in uniform must be maimed and killed in Iraq and Afghanistan so that we don’t have to fight terrorists here in America? Come on! Where’s the outrage? Who’s kidding whom? Where’s the logic in that? My friend Frank Laughter has said it best. FOLLOW-UP: More on this from Michelle Malkin. FOLLOW-UP II: Here’s a pertinent Newsday.com piece (H/T: The Anchoress) FOLLOW-UP III: Here’s more from Frank Laughter. And, I must say, I’m close to pulling that “I Still Support the President” banner from my site’s right sidebar. Seems the president’s kowtowing to business interests — domestic and international — is making a mockery of the DHS’ obligations (and our country’s chief law enforcement officer’s) to secure our borders and our ports, and protect us from terrorist threats. FOLLOW-UP IV: READ THIS and tell me if you’re now mad as hell and not going to take it anymore?! [...]
February 18th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
[...] - SO THIS MEANS God Is On Our Side, Right? Via Anchoress … (gatesofvienna.blog) [...]