A Cleveland Walmart has an employee food drive going, asking associates to donate food to feed....

A)the homeless.
B)the typhoon victims in the Phillipines.
C)Walmart associates.

"The most recent discussion about cutting benefits has focused on something called the Chained-CPI. Supporters of the chained CPI say that it's a more accurate way of measuring cost of living increases for seniors. That statement is simply not true. Chained CPI falls short of the actual increases in costs that seniors face, pure and simple.  Chained CPI?  It's just a fancy way of saying cut benefits.

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics has developed a measure of the impact of inflation on seniors. It's called the CPI-E, and, if we adopted it today, it would generally increase benefits for our retirees -- not cut them.

"Social Security isn't the answer to all of our retirement problems.  We need to find ways to tackle the financial squeeze that is crushing our families.  We need to help families start saving again.  We need to make sure that more workers have access to better pensions.  But in the meantime - so long as these problems continue to exist and so long as we are in the midst of a real and growing retirement crisis - a crisis that is shaking the foundations of what was once a vibrant and secure middle class - the absolute last thing we should be doing is talking about cutting back on Social Security.

"The absolute last thing we should do in 2013 - at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors -- is allow the program to begin to be dismantled inch by inch.

US Government Says CIA Black Site Prisoners' Memory Of Their Own Torture Is Classified And Cannot Be Revealed

I'd missed this story when it came out a few weeks ago, but thanks to Rob Hyndman for calling it to my attention.  There was plenty of press around the fact that one of the guys being held by US forces in Guantanamo, and who faces trial as one of the co-conspirators for 9/11, supposedly sustained head injuries while being held by the CIA.  But, that's just the tip of the iceberg of the story.  Apparently Ammar al Baluchi, and some of the other prisoners are trying to argue that the US violated the UN Convention Against Torture with how they treated prisoners at the infamous black sites.  But here's the crazy part: the US is arguing that the prisoners' own recollections of what was done to them cannot be used in court, because it would reveal classified information.  Talk about adding insult to injury.

Yes, the US government is arguing that it can torture people (though, of course, it won't call it that), but if you try to call them on it via various courts, domestic or international, the very people who were tortured are not allowed to present evidence of their own torture, because it would reveal classified information.  Classified information like how the CIA tortured people.

Volume 191
Volume 190

Volume 192
Volume 191

And the day goes on.

Good times, good times.

Whoda thunk?

The stupid comment by Arne Duncan, while the focus of the headline, isn't what really bothers me.  I think the more important issue is this:

The Common Core was designed to elevate teaching and learning. Supporters say it does that; critics say it doesn't and that some of the standards, especially for young children, are not developmentally appropriate. Whichever side you fall on regarding the Core's academic value, there is no question that their implementation in many areas has been miserable -- so miserable that American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a Core supporter, recently compared it to another particularly troubled rollout:

You think the Obamacare implementation is bad? The implementation of the Common Core is far worse.

New York was the first large state to implement the standards and give students new standardized tests supposedly aligned with the Core. Test scores plummeted earlier this year. State officials had predicted the scores would drop 30 percent -- and that's exactly what happened. (How they could predict that with such accuracy was addressed in a previous Answer Sheet post.) Opposition to the standards, both their content and their implementation, has been growing in New York (and other states) among teachers, principals, superintendents and parents, some of whom have refused to allow their children to take the exams.

SNIP

There are people on the political fringe, right and left, who oppose the Core initiative  for different reasons, but that's not where most of the substantive opposition is coming from. Educators and researchers questioned the way the standards were written (whether, for example, there was any or enough input from K-12 classroom teachers) and some criticized the content of the standards (while others praised it). Some critics don't believe in standards-based education, and others felt it usurped local authority. More recently, tea party members have accused the administration of a federal takeover of public education, extreme right-wing rhetoric that clouds a real discussion about the Core. This year some states led by Republican governors began to pull away from the standards.

Protests by educators, parents, students and others began to grow as it became clear that the Core implementation was being rushed, and some students were being given tests said to be Core-aligned even though teachers hadn't had enough time to create material around the standards.  That's why Duncan announced in June that he was giving the 37 states plus the District of Columbia, which had won federal waivers from the most egregious mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act, an extra year to implement teacher evaluations linked to new assessments that are supposed to be aligned to the new Common Core State Standards.

apparently on a domestic violence complaint.

What's he to do ?  Tweet it of course.

My favorite part is when the guy stops and says:

Are we getting pizza or what? I don't mean to change the subject but are we?

It's not really the process at this point - it's the fact that the original quote she received has been changed at least twice and has doubled (and she will receive no tax credits nor subsidies).

Before the flamers start, this was not Obama's fault.  This was the result of poor vetting by the WH staff - this should have been checked, double checked, triple checked and vetted with the state before the presdient held her up as an example.  

For a conservative, Jack Kemp, should be a good role model.