Les Miserables---On Going Back to Work

Nothing for me to say here. Just watch. (if you can't stand the blather, skip to the 1:20 mark).

The Worst Person on the Planet

Arne Duncan was the first to say it. He said that Hurricane Katrina was the "best thing that happened" to education in New Orleans. So what, he seemed to be implying, if a bunch of people died? They were mostly poor black people, and it's important to implement your charter school wet dreams no matter what. If some minorities have to drown, well, that's the price ol' Arne was willing to pay.

You'd think everyone would have learned that it isn't a good idea to root for death and destruction in order to implement your "reform" plans. And you'd really think that no one would be stupid enough to echo Arne Duncan's idiocy on the tenth anniversary of Katrina.

Enter Kristen McQueary of the Chicago Tribune, with her knuckles dragging. She wrote an Op Ed for the Tribune that looked wistfully back at Katrina, and wished a similar fate on the residents of Chicago. Here's part of what she said:

I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago — an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops...That's what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak.

Nice, huh? And she tips her hand in the next paragraph (italics mine):

An underperforming public school system saw a complete makeover. A new schools chief, Paul Vallas, designed a school system with the flexibility of an entrepreneur. No restrictive mandates from the city or the state. No demands from teacher unions to abide. Instead, he created the nation's first free-market education system.

Yep. That's the giveaway. Katrina was fine--as long as it did away with those nasty teachers' unions and put the "free market" (i.e., hedge fund billionaires) in command.

This is why our unions should not be dealing--ever--with the proponents of "reform", like Duncan, Gates, Eva Moskowitz, or Campbell Brown. They don't give a damn what happens to people, including the kids they claim to be "saving". To them, anything goes as long as they can break the back of the unions and scoop up the lion's share of educational dollars for themselves.

Kristen McQueary offered a non-apology for her tirade, claiming that she was engaging in "metaphor and hyperbole", and basically that the great unwashed really didn't understand the point she was making or how she was making it.

No, Ms. McQueary, we know exactly what you were doing. And the reason you didn't offer an apology for your reprehensible words was that you are not sorry you said them.

That makes you the worst person in the world.

Christie Gets Booed

It appears that Chris Christie got booed as he tried to present an award to the winner of a horse race.

Apparently, the crowd was confused as to why there were two horses' asses in the winner's circle at the same time.