This week, with the education "reform" propaganda machine roaring in the background - in the form of NBC's Education Nation and the debut of Waiting for Superman - I attended Open House at my child's high school. In this annual ritual, anxious and animated parents bustle through the hallways of their children's school, following in condensed form the sequence of classes and teachers that their children experience each day, eagerly collecting handouts from faculty, writing down contact information, and happily introducing themselves as "so-and-so's Mom or Dad."
I've attended these events for nearly twenty years, beginning with my oldest child's kindergarten, but I couldn't help but notice this year how the constancy of the ritual differs from the furiously unreal diatribe about education in the mainstream media.
You see, in "real-world" talk about education that's going on at Open House, standardized testing does not take center stage. Teachers introduce parents to the curriculum they'll be teaching. They explain their grading and assessment philosophy. They describe some of the instructional methods they like to use in class. And they ask parents to offer whatever kind of insights they have about their children's interests and learning styles. Parents don't ask to see the teacher's test scores from last year. They don't want to know what kind of incentives are in place to motivate the teacher. And they don't threaten to leave the school for a "competing" institution if the teacher's "results" don't measure up to snuff.
Despite what they're being told over and over, by politicians and pundits who eschew public schools for their own children and by a parade of education "experts" who've never set foot in the classroom, that our nation's schools are "broken" and populated with "ineffective" uncaring teachers, parents engaged in real-world education talk like their local schools and expect them to evaluate teachers, not to punish them, but to help them improve.
In recognition of today's celebration of our nation's birthday, I was planning on writing something inspirational and patriotic. Perhaps something about how America's "noble experiment" of universal education for all, regardless of social and economic standing, epitomizes the democratic spirit of our country. I thought I would expound on how public schools present us with the perfect example of how the future of humanity relies not solely on the rights of the individual but also on a "shared effort" among everyone in a community to ensure the well-being of future generations.
I thought I would take the patriotic bond we're all feeling today as an opportunity to remind people that the functions of schools extend way beyond, as Larry Cuban puts it here, "transferring knowledge and skills from adults to children." From the early grades - where little children are taught about "taking turns, no hitting or biting, washing hands, working independently, cooperating with others who look and act different" - through the middle and upper grades that prepare students for the the workplace and citizenship. I felt today would be the perfect time to point out that public schools are a "hotbed for democracy".
While it's true that our educational system cannot right the wrongs that are inflicted on children in every corner of American society - especially in violent, impoverished cities like Chicago and conservative, rural states like Oklahoma - that does not mean that universal public education is a systemic failure. After all, businesses fail all the time and our economy is currently in shambles, but there's no broad based movement to declare capitalism a failure.
So I was getting set for an emotional appeal to acknowledge the history and value of our public schools - what they really mean to this country. And then this flashed across my monitor. Resembling the bland countenance of Kim Jong Il, here we have the nemesis to everything American public education reveres: democratic input from the citizenry, local control, education of the whole child, equality of opportunity and access. And my friends, when you see the arsonist setting your house ablaze, you'd better not pause to reflect on what the house means to you. You'd better man the fire brigade.
"School's Out" may be on the minds of most children and teachers right now. But in the halls of Congress, the debate over education policy and reform raged on this week.
As a broken Senate failed America's children by not passing legislation that would prevent mass teacher layoffs, politicians in another committee room held a hearing on oversight of the for-profit college industry. Many of the same rhetorical points from the argument over K-12 reform were brandished in that hearing as well.
The rapid expansion of privatization in education is the overwhelming trend at all levels. "While enrollment at institutions of higher education increased by 31 percent from 1998 to 2008, the number of students entering for-profit schools soared 225 percent over the same period."
This explosive growth of for-profit higher education is being likened to the housing bubble and the unscrupulous profiteering by the home mortgage industry that recently wreaked havoc on our economy:
"Steven Eisman, portfolio manager of the FrontPoint Financial Services Fund who has studied how the for-profit education industry operates and derives its revenue, did not mince words in his testimony. 'Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive as the subprime- mortgage industry. I was wrong. The for-profit education industry has proven equal to the task,' he said. 'It is my hope that this administration sees the nature of the problem and begins to act now. But if nothing is done, then we are on the cusp of a new social disaster.'
Eisman testified that the for-profit industry has grown at an extreme and unusual rate, driven by easy access to government-sponsored debt in the form of Title IV student loans, where the credit is guaranteed by the government. Thus, the government, the students, and the taxpayer bear all the risk and the for-profit industry reaps all the rewards, he said. When the Bush administration took over the reigns of government, the Department of Education gutted many of the rules that governed the conduct of this industry, he said. Once the floodgates were opened, the industry embarked on 10 years of unrestricted massive growth. Federal dollars flowing to the industry exploded to over $21 billion, a 450 percent increase."
On the K-12 side, the same Wall Street operators who recently sent our economy into oblivion are now amassing huge amounts of wealth behind the charter school industry. The reason:
"There are about 5000 charter schools in place now at about 4% of the total public school system in the United States and it's grown at about 400-500 units per year, which is about a $2 billion dollar annual investment opportunity set. So it's a very big and high growth category that is going to continue to represent opportunities . . ."
Perfectly symbolic of this "partnership" between public schools and the private sector was the recent announcement that former Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will now be working for America's most prominent and well-funded lobbyist for big business, The US Chamber of Commerce.
Meanwhile Diane Ravitch, one of the most well-known and outspoken critics of the Obama administration's education policies, reported on having her say in DC and at the Whitehouse. Her conclusion:
"Living outside the Beltway, I am struck by the fact that the education think tanks in DC are like an echo chamber. Almost all share the 'consensus,' and because they agree with one another, they think they are right. The Obama administration bought into that consensus, and seems utterly tone-deaf to how their agenda is received outside the Beltway."
The frustration that educators are feeling at the tone-deafness of the political debate in DC is palpable, impassioned, and pervasive:
"It is really interesting to me that President Obama can let BP take the lead in cleaning up the disaster in the Gulf, and yet teachers have got hedge fund managers, mayors, think tank policy wonks, billionaire vulture capitalists, and no real education experts, calling the shots on public school 'reform,' with Arne Duncan as department head, whose teaching experience comes from volunteering at his mom's after school program (He actually says this, as if it means something!) . . ."
(emphasis not added)
It's not just educators either. Parents don't like Sec. Duncan's "overly disruptive" turnaround models that rely on closing schools and firing teachers. Christian churches are appalled at "the administration's effort to push states to increase the number of charter schools, its plan to turn some of the federal money used to help poor children into competitive grants, its punitive approach to dealing with low-performing schools, and the 'ugly' demonization of public school teachers." (h/t FunkyGal)
Yet so little pushback against the Washington DC Consensus on education reform is registering among politicians. Even the most progressive Democrats in Congress have mustered an opposition that can be characterized as mild at best.
So one wonders why the messages about the Obama administration's education policies aren't getting through - not just to the politicians, but also to the media, the progressive blogosphere, and even bloggers in the education industry.
True, there are fundamental structures standing in the way of ordinary people getting their voices heard in our corporate-media dominated society. But that set of circumstances does not absolve one from straining harder and striving harder to get better at being heard above the fray.
It's also true that it's not that unusual for professionals in a specific discipline to feel that their voice isn't being heard. For instance, doctors and nurses frequently complained that their voices weren't being heard in the recent debate over health care reform. But the scale at which educators are being ignored in the Obama administration's education agenda is truly off-the-charts. And no one in the Democratic Party ever went after the American Medical Association with the vehemence that teachers' unions are being vilified in the debate over education policy. So what gives?
It's not that educators aren't able and articulate advocates for their side. And people voicing their discontent with President Obama's education policies certainly know what they're talking about. But it could be that "knowing what they're talking about" may in fact may be part of the problem.
Similarly, my Quick Hit linking to Charles Murray's ridiculous NY Times op-ed exempting voucher schools from the same kind of accountability being used to pummel traditional public schools also drew the attention of Diane Ravitch, who quite rightly pointed out the "double standard" that "when public schools fail to raise test scores, it is a sign of their decrepitude and failure; when voucher schools fail to raise test scores, well, so what, they weren't supposed to do that."
As if on cue, charter school cheerleader Paul E. Peterson anted-up to the stupidity of school "reformist" arguments by claiming that "what makes charters so important today is not so much their current success, on average, but their long-term potential to innovate." Got that? Charter schools don't have to prove they're any good at all. It's all about "choice" and "innovation." But in the meantime, those traditional public schools had better measure up!
In the meantime, what is the track record for "innovation?" When it comes to teacher preparation - another whipping post for the reformists - not so hot. Edublogger Claus von Zastrow uses a new report from The National Research Council as evidence of the whole folly of chasing after reformist innovations:
"We spend an awful lot of time in this country debating the relative merits of 'traditional' and 'alternative' approaches to education. We'd do far better to spend our time looking for what works, whether it's new or old, sexy or boring, alternative or traditional.
The National Research Council's new report on teacher preparation bears out this point. The report's authors found that 'there is more variation within the "traditional" and "alternative" categories than there is between these categories.' What's more, they found 'no evidence that any one pathway into teaching is the best way to attract and prepare desirable candidates and guide them into the teaching force.'
And that's our biggest problem. We lack evidence to inform our ever more strident debates between new and old."
(emphasis not added)
In the meantime, the number of scandals involving those "innovative" charter schools has grown so large that there is now a new blog devoted entirely to keeping us up to date on the whole disgraceful matter. (BIG hat tip to Jim Horn.
My reason for these scattershots across the arc of the education debate is to hammer home the point that the policy ideas of the Obama Administration and other school reform enthusiasts are not based on any evidence whatsoever that any of the new "innovations" they are pushing for - charter schools, basing teacher evaluations on student test scores, alternative certification - will work.
A man who worked for the Urban League back in the 60's once told me a story about how people's perceptions are influenced by the powerful in our country. He was working on a project to encourage local business start-ups in a rural black community, and one of their first projects involved setting up an icehouse run by a black family. This was before most poor rural communities had refrigeration, so ice was a necessity that they felt the community would buy into right away. Unfortunately they were wrong, and the business struggled.
What they found was that the blacks in the community continued to purchase their ice on the other side of the tracks at the white-owned icehouse. So they sent a task force back to the neighborhood to interview the locals and ask why they weren't buying their ice from their black-owned neighborhood icehouse. What they were told again and again in their interviews was "the whiteman's ice is colder."
This story is analogous to the way that school reform is being sold to us. Just as ice can be made colder only by its chemical substance being altered, schools can only be made better if the very substance of them - their safety and inclusiveness, the curriculum and instruction, and the involvement and engagement of the community - is altered.
But in the face of this undeniable fact, what we're hearing from the Obama administration is that a strange alchemy of "test scores," "data tracking," and "charter schools" are going to alter the substance of education.
On April 19th, on the fifteenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City Bombing, MSNBC will televise live footage of interviews with Timothy McVeigh, the right wing mastermind of the attack. In light of all the turbulence and controversy surrounding the administration of Barack Obama, is this just another case of crass sensationalism or does it serve as a timely, in your face, reminder of what constitutes an extreme threat to public safety?
In my last two articles: Coming Unhinged on the Far Right and Hutaree Militia: Foiled Fantasy of a Citizen's Uprising, I pointed out what I believe to be an undeniable trend towards a violent confrontation between the government and the far right. I experienced some degree of pushback from conservatives who fell back on the argument that the left had committed plenty of violent acts in the sixties, as if that were somehow relevant today. Nowhere in either of these articles did I ignore, condone or endorse left wing violence. In fact I roundly deplored all political violence:" It is time for Progressives to stand up to thugs and fanatics of any stripe, be they far to either the left or right, and to no longer tolerate threats of violence on the part of those who having lost out in the political arena, have chosen to attempt change through extra legal means."
Many conservatives would point to an incident of labor thuggery by SEIU members, the Weathermen Bombings or the Seattle World Trade Organization anarchist riots as being somehow equivalent to the damage done in Oklahoma City or on par with the numerous deaths thus far committed by anti-government extremists since the inauguration of Barak Obama. In doing so, they are deliberately ignoring the facts that currently exist. Some critics went so far as to label the recent reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center as just a bunch of "liberal propaganda" for having pointed out the exponential growth in hate groups and anti-government "patriot" organizations since the Obama election. This argument, that past left-wing terror is somehow relevant to dealing with today's clear and present danger, is a straw man argument being made by people who are fooling themselves with a historically challenged analysis in assessing the present situation. Its either that or they are so heavily invested in an anti-Obama crusade that they have become complacent in accepting this threat as it has yet to produce another Oklahoma City. Thus far it serves to support their anti-government animus so they have implicitly accepted the rhetoric while not actually endorsing violent acts.
I spent the last week with my reserve unit where I am part of an armed maritime security / law enforcement team. One of our team leaders is also a U.S. Marshall and SWAT team member with a background in having dealt with anti-government groups. We got on to the topic of domestic terror and his name and office will remain anonymous. I asked him if he had witnessed a significant rise in the number of anti-government organizations and he answered yes to that question. I asked him if they were predominately right wing and he said while there are some on the left, there were more on the right. Furthermore, I asked him if the findings of the Southern Poverty Law Center constituted legitimate research, again he agreed with me that their findings are consistent with what he was seeing from with inside the Marshall's Service. He went on to say that the Secret Service was working overtime to keep up with all of the potential threats that have emerged in the last six months.
On this Sunday's Chris Matthews Show the topic of domestic terror was front and center and Matthews presented two quotes from right wing extremists to underline his point that this is a serious problem. Michael Savage on his April 9th Savage Nation Show said: What we need is a vigorous right-wing movement in America, not a Tea Party. And you need to face off against those scum on the left and then you'll have a nation. Then there was Mike Vanderboegh of Freedom Radio on March 17 who advocated going for the throats of the country's elites. Finally, Nora O'Donnell pointed out how Sarah Palin starts off so many of her speeches with "Do you love you freedom." implying that the current administration is bent on taking it away. If anyone can claim, that at least the Savage and Vanderboegh quotes are not an incitement to violent behavior that would to me constitute an act of outright self-denial.
If individuals are being complacent in their implicit acceptance of this incendiary rhetoric, what then is the position being taken by the Republican Party? I found it interesting that every one of Matthews' panelists pointed out that to date, the G.O.P. has said very little in the way of condemning those on the far right who have put forth politically violent and vitriolic commentary. A salient point made by the commentators was that Fox News had allowed both Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck to run wild with their comments and that the G.O.P. of today lacks the moderating forces of thirty years ago who would have distanced the Party from the likes of Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. Joe Klein, having looked up the meaning of sedition said, the current language of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin "came up against the seditious." Even Kathleen Parker who is listed on the conservative TownHall.com website of conservative columnists said:" The Republican Party must distance itself from the far right otherwise it will be seen as complicit."
In the final analysis, when you take in to account the totality of the present situation, I think the MSNBC airing of the McVeigh Tapes should serve as a reminder of just how dangerous and incendiary rhetoric can become. That said, it is impossible to deny that there is an element of the sensational in the airing of McVeigh's interviews. But it is also hard to deny that there are those among us who in their deep dislike of Barak Obama and dynamic social change are silently endorsing the very language on the part of leading right-wing politicians and media personalities, which could lead us, God forbid, down the road to another Oklahoma City.
One of the more important items in this week's education news was a new bill sponsored by Iowa Senator Tom Harkin proposing a $23 billion "bailout" fund for saving tens of thousands of teaching positions that states and school districts will not be able to fund in the coming school year. A WaPo article reported that Education Secretary Arne Duncan stopped just short of endorsing Harkin's bill but said that unless Congress acts, there will be "an education catastrophe" resulting in 100,000 to 300,000 teachers losing their jobs. "It is brutal out there, really scary," Duncan waxed empathetically and took care to note that schools and kids "suffer" when teachers are laid off, class sizes balloon, and summer sessions get canceled.
At the same time Duncan was lamenting the effects of teacher lay-offs on children, his staff was busy on Capitol Hill pushing a "blueprint" for education reform. A key element in the blueprint is that at least 5% of the nation's schools - potentially 10% - that are deemed "lowest performing in state" will be forced to adopt a federally mandated "intervention model." Of the four models prescribed in the blueprint, only one does not involve mass firings of teachers.
As Randi Weingarten, the leader of the American Federation of Teachers, pointed out, adopting Duncan's blueprint will quite likely "cost teachers their jobs."
In another fit of cross-purposeful policy making, Duncan's team is also pushing a National Education Technology Plan (NETP) that urges schools to pursue ambitious learning goals such as teaching students twenty-first century skills, critical thinking, complex problem solving, collaboration, and multimedia communication. The plan also "calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all students," where teachers conduct "personalized learning instead of a one-size-fits-all" approach to curriculum and instruction.
While most educators would probably regard NEPT's goals as worthy, they can't help but point out how these goals conflict with the Obama administration's overall blueprint for education. How can a school system that emphasizes high-stakes testing in just two subjects - reading and math - fulfill the curriculum goals of teaching "collaboration and multimedia communication?" How can an approach to schooling that values test data more than any other output at the same time assert that it is "personalizing learning? "As one commenter in the previous link states,
"The focus of the federal and state governments on high-stakes testing is in direct contradiction to creating an environment where humans learn best... Stop attaching funding to only standardized test scores. Then, perhaps schools could begin moving towards creating an environment where 21st-century skills can develop."
So here's the deal: At the same time that our federal government is mustering financial resources to save teachers' jobs, it's also pushing measures to eliminate them. And at the same time that the US Department of Education is urging educators to focus their programs on ambitious learning goals and qualitative learning experiences, it's doing everything it can to undermine those goals by focusing on a narrow curriculum and strict, quantitative measures. This cognitive dissonance that characterizes the Obama administration's approach to education reform isn't anything new.
OpenLeft has asked me to turn my semi-regular diary on education into a weekly feature that updates our community on what's happening with K-12 public schools -- giving Paul a bathroom break every Sunday at 4:00pm. I'm calling the feature "Left Ed" unless someone's got a better idea.
My hope is that each recurring post will use a progressive political lens to review weekly education news (veering occasionally into in-depth commentary on a specific topic), follow-up conversations from previous diaries with pertinent new events, and counter-balance the typical blather from the MSM with what real educators and people who actually know something about education are saying about the trends in public school policy.
The feedback I've gotten on this site to my previous diaries has run the gamut from effusive to frustrated to perplexed. I'm very grateful for this response and want to continue to generate conversation that can lead to a broad understanding of where the progressive community stands on public education issues, school reform, and the Obama administration's policies regarding public schools.
So why am I doing this? Mainly, as I stated in a comment to Mark Matson in my most recent diary, to "bridge what I perceive to be the gap between progressive views of education and what most liberals see as sane and responsible policy."
To kick-off Left Ed, I'd like to hear what others in this community want my weekly effort to address. What can I provide to better prepare us all to understand and, hopefully, influence the broader public dialogue about education policy? What should we track from week-to-week to keep ourselves informed of the pros and cons of the Obama administration's actions? What should we be advocating for at local, state, and federal levels? And who are the politicians that get it right and how can we support them?
Somewhere on Wall Street there is a frustrated investment banker. He's run model after model and he can't understand it. No matter what he tries, he's just not seeing the kind of numbers his high high-flying clients expect.
Instead of generating markets where more people are either buying more stuff or buying more expensive stuff, the fundamentals of the American economy just don't grow anymore. Population growth is treading water. Disposable income for most people is on a sharp decline. And globalism and the Internet have reduced everything to a commodity, so prices are driven into the dirt.
If only there were a way to break into a whole new market. A market where demand is certain, but competition is weak, and pricing can be highly controlled. Kind of like what those guys in the defense business have been enjoying.
Take public schools, for instance. It's almost 6% of our economy that is mostly off-limits to big business. Sure, you can get a contract here and there. But what about something going nation wide! Now that could yield double-digit growth right away. Maybe 20% or more!
The infrastructure has already been built. R&D; is minimal. We've all been to school. We're not talking rocket science here. And everyone pushes education in a bad economy.
Once you get around the unions, teachers are a dime a dozen. Heck, some will practically volunteer for the job. And I'm sure we can get foundation money for the start-ups. After all, "it's for the kids."
Only problem is that each school and district is so different from one another. Everything is geared to the local population, and what works for one school doesn't necessarily work for another. That makes every deal a one-off with no economies of scale to work to your advantage. If only there were a way to get some standardization across the board.
Maybe our guys on the Hill can help us out with that . . .
The book sweeps across more than 50 years of American education, pivoting on key events that forever changed the landscape of our nation's schools: from 1950's-era segregation, through the 60's and 70s' years of experimentation and its backlash during the Reagan Presidency, through the promulgation of No Child Left Behind legislation, and up to the current education policies of the Obama administration. Ravitch, a historian by trade, describes a ruthless power grab, carried out ostensibly "for the children," that is bent on dismantling our national education system. The cast of characters is surprisingly small but immensely powerful, including a Nobel Prize economist, influential think tanks on the right and left, five U.S. Presidents (Democrat and Republican), deep-pocketed education philanthropists, and a raft of bullying and dictatorial mayors and school chiefs. The recurring theme throughout the story is that a "great hijacking" of American public education is putting education at risk to "the vagaries of the market and the good intentions of amateurs."
What's perhaps more startling than the message of the book is the nature of the messenger. Ravitch, a self-avowed "conservative," was an early and eager advocate for market-based, NCLB-implemented approaches to education reform. She was Assistant Secretary of Education and counselor to Education Secretary Lamar Alexander under President George H.W. Bush and appointed to the National Assessment Governing Board under President Clinton. She also co-founded an influential task force at the conservative Hoover Institution that advocated for "education reforms based on principles of standards, accountability, and choice." In her own words,
"I was attracted to the idea that the market would unleash innovation and bring greater efficiencies to education. I was certainly influenced by the conservative ideology of the other top-level officials in the Bush administration who were strong supporters of school choice and competition . . . . Like these reformers, I wrote and spoke with conviction in the 1990s and early 2000s about what was needed to reform public education, and many of my ideas coincided with theirs."
But when Ravitch went beyond the rhetoric of reform and actually looked at the reality of what choice and competition were doing to public education, she experienced an "intellectual crisis." The ideas she had been promoting so passionately were not working, and in fact, were becoming powerful weapons of destruction.
In this two-part diary I argue that the moment of truth that Diane Ravitch describes is a clarion call for progressives to forcefully push back against the Obama administration's misguided education policies. In part one, I specify the talking points that Ravitch arms progressives with in the fight to reclaim public education. In part two, coming next Sunday, I put the book into the broader context of what's driving a "Washington consensus" on education that is being pushed by politicians and mainstream media.
Last week, President Barak Obama proclaimed that the firing of teachers at a Rhode Island school was a rational and effective solution for low test scores and high dropout rates. He said, "If a school continues to fail its students year after year after year, if it doesn't show signs of improvement, then there's got to be a sense of accountability." The "accountability" that the President is referring to continues the drumbeat of rants against educators and schools that has been ongoing for decades. Only now, the rant has been adopted systemically as policy by the federal government in the form of Race to the Top and other incentives.
Goaded by the prospect of getting a share of the multi-billion-dollar RTT funds offered by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, state leaders, mayors, and school superintendants are implementing "turnaround models" for school improvement that rely on taking severe measures, measures that make educators primarily bear the full burden of school reform.
All four turnaround options being pushed by Mr. Duncan have profound effects on teachers and how they do their jobs, if they're lucky enough to be left with one. And all four are based on a notion that improvement will happen only through threatening educators.
This whole notion of making increased "accountability" the leverage point to push failing schools toward success is borne from the musings of free-market enthusiasts and corporate leaders like Bill Gates. The rationale, we are told, is that "our students are falling behind those in other countries." The reason for this is that schools lack the "marketplace accountability of schools competing with one another." So therefore, "accountability is sorely needed," but educators so "resist the idea" that they need to be subjected to harsher threats and incentives. Never mind that the record for turnaround approaches used in the private sector has shown no "evidence of boosting performance."
The desire to make schools "more accountable" has been so broadly accepted by politicians and the media that virtually no one outside of the education profession speaks out against it. But the finger pointing solves nothing other than continuing to give life to the notion that education is something other than a shared, community obligation - in short, that we're all accountable for educating children.
The war drums for Iran are beating loud and clear. Bush's placing their state army unit on the terrorist list, an uprecedented and unbelievable move, and his high gear "nuclear holocaust" rhetoric are just a couple more ridiculous episodes in his pre-emptive, corporate-war-economy policy known as "the war on terror". Confounding the latest intelligence concerning Iran's perceived threat with a dangerous sense of wish fulfillment, Iran has some how become more immediatedly threatening. Amazingly, Bush and company have answered the overwhelming public call for ending the war in Iraq and withdrawing from the region with a scheme to actually expand the war further and attack another country.
We have all been reading about Barak Obama's criticism of Hillary Clinton's vote on Kyl-Lieberman Iran resolution.
I am more than a little upset that Obama not only failed to actually vote on the resolution, he did not speak out against it on the Senate floor. If this resolution is important as he is saying now, than he failed completely to try and defeat it.
To my mind, Obama is using Hillary's vote on this resolution to attack her even though he didn't have the nerve to actually go on to the Senate floor and argue against it directly. Is this the act of a coward or someone who is nothing more than a political hack?
