RheePulsive, RheePugnant, and Rheevolting

Mouth-taping, achievement-exaggerating, bullying, arrogant, and downright dishonest darling of education "reform" Michele Rhee will probably be on NPR a lot more in the future now that she's started her own "advocacy"/lobbying organization called Students First. Who can resist someone who loves children so much that she's willing to attack teachers to prove it? Amazingly Oprah loves her, while Diane Ravitch (who once peddled Bush's No Child Left Behind snake oil) doesn't.

But if you're someone who ignores policies that drastically benefit the wealthy and increase poverty (which is the single greatest factor in ruining the educational opportunities for EVERY child) and instead focus on destroying the rights of job security won by unionized educators, then NPR has lots of airtime for you. In fact this past week Michelle Rhee was the NPR star on Wednesday's ATC and Saturday's ATC. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join em: l

Tales from the Slick Adventures of Students-First Lady

Less Tea Drinking, More Drone Strikes

NPR's perky sock monkey has earned her own comic strip with her latest effort. All Ms. Martin's statements are straight from Monday's ATC "report" which is introduced by Audie Cornish. Hover over panels to see which ones have superpowered hyperlinks!

CONNECTING THE iDiOTS

NPR's web scribes, for the Friday ME story "US 'Connects the Dots' to Catch Roadside Bombers" tell us

"With his doctorate from Princeton, Army Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has become the prime example of a special breed of soldier: the warrior-scholar, trained in history and politics as well as how to fight wars. Now there's a variation on the theme: the warrior mathematician, adept in the complex modeling that has become a key part of military planning."

Hey, if it's all about scholars, war, and deep cover thoughts then who better than the CIA's best friend in journalism - Tom Gjelten. And why not honor Reporter Tom with another installment of his own dynamic, hyperlinked comic strip [click on each panel to visit the super-brainy links] :

It's Time for 'The Interesting Comparison' Game

This morning Audie Cornish got to reflecting on the Tea Party movement and the Civil Rights Movement. She said,

"This week, Sarah Palin compared the Tea Party movement to the civil rights movement, saying that the same patriotic indignation drove both efforts, as well as the American Revolution. It's an interesting comparison. After all, the civil rights movement led to two landmark pieces of federal legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965."

Poor Audie Cornish; it's no wonder she's a bit confused. After all, she works at a Tea Party friendly news organization, which in the past week has run piece after piece bestowing the mantle of legitimacy on the Republicorporatist Tea Party movement. Tuesday morning featured a glowing account of Tea Party "star" Keli Carender whose blog profile states, "I will not allow corrupt socialists and communists to infect this country without a hard, hard fight." On Friday afternoon Don Gonyea was at the Tea Party convention in Nashville chatting up some real winners like Susan Curran who "sees President Obama as a threat to the Constitution and a threat to the America she loves." He also played a clip of Tom Tancredo's convention speech : "People who could not even spell the word vote or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House." Fortunately, by Saturday morning Gonyea was back to explain what socialism actually is and demonstrate that only a liar, fool, or ignoramus would accuse Wall Street friendly Obama of being a socialist (JUST KIDDING!). What Gonyea actually did was let Judson Phillips, the convention organizer, comment on Tancredo's speech by saying, "The word socialist ....has a very specific political meaning. It refers to a specific political ideology. And I think it's very clear that that is the political ideology of Barack Obama."

With all the tea vapors and talk of socialism swirling around the newsrooms at NPR, it's no wonder that Audie Cornish just got a little mixed up. So I figured I'd have one of my cartoon friends on to help Audie to play Who's the Civil Rights Hero?

Let's Have a Tea Party

In case you missed it last Wednesday's ATC gave a whopping 12.5 minutes of airtime promoting the sophisticated political maturation of the Tea Party movement - especially in Texas. Bob Siegel was hosting...
(cursor over each frame and click the hyperlinked ones you want to follow - nos. 1,2,3, 10, 13, & 14)