I was actually a little embarassed for Talkingpointsmemo when I read its kind of breathless coverage of Obama stating the obvious fact that he "wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth."  TPM's editors seemed to think this was some sort of Oscar Wildean bon mot or Mencken-style broadside worth repeating.

It's a fine thing for Obama to say, though I wish he'd avoid cliche when he does it.  Everybody knows that Obama is self-made and that Romney's dad was a business executive and the former Governor of Michigan.  [Read more]

Last week, New York City released Teacher Data Reports for every teacher in its system. This week, I got my own teaching numbers: last semester's teaching evaluation scores. Getting my numbers was a good thing for me personally; they were very high, and my bosses tend to reward that. [Read more]

Now that I’m officially not with you anymore, I miss you. Is that weird? I thought I’d share some pictures (down below) and thoughts about life away from the craziness of the United States during election season. I still read the political news and I still spout off about it on Facebook, in short rants. The nice thing is that I feel so detached. The political situation here is in some ways better and in some ways worse: Malaysia has its issues. But as a non-citizen and a temporary resident, I don’t care that much. [Read more]

Pssst.  I'd like to be president of the United States but before you vote for me, there's something you need to know.  I believe, literally, that Star Wars is a true story.  I believe in both the Old Testament story of Luke and Vader (parts IV-VI) and the New Testament origin of Vader (Parts 1-3 and The Clone Wars cartoon series).

Does this make me an unfit leader? [Read more]

Hello, friends. It’s been a while. I’ve been meaning to write this post for months. A-man gently reminds me from time to time, but I think he’s given up hope. So, surprise, A-man!

I have loved blogging at Dagblog. It was a privilege to be one of the first bloggers outside of the core DAG and it was a privilege to take part in such interesting and meaningful discussions about wide-ranging topics--and I always loved the snark. Maybe it took me so long to say good-bye because  don’t really want to say good-bye. Perhaps I’ll turn up occasionally with something to say. [Read more]

The brilliant Ramona and Destor have been especially brilliant this week on the Catholic bishops' outrage at having to pay for full employee health insurance. Destor is so smart about the church and state principles involved, and Ramona so good on the women's-health issues, that I have nothing left to add but my own personal experience. I am a former employee of the Catholic Church. I used to have a health-insurance card with the Archdiocese of Boston's seal printed on it. That wasn't an experience of religious liberty. [Read more]

Zandar, at Balloon Juice, points out that Missouri's new Creationism-in-the-schools bill, HB 1227, applies not only to K-12 schools but to the state's public colleges and universities as well. According to the bill, [Read more]

On Christmas Day, 1914, only four months into the brutality of World War I, a spontaneous miracle happened on the Western Front.  On that day German and British soldiers laid down their arms and gathered together in No Man's Land to share food and cigarettes, sing Christmas carols, and play a few games of football.
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Recently, I was in New York for business and had a bit of time to spare.  I am never in New York City and had just a bit of time to see sites.  After dashing through MoMA, I took a cab to the 9/11 Memorial and was able to visit the site just as the day was reaching dusk in lower Manhattan.  If you can, I recommend visiting. [Read more]

Does Paul Ryan want to permanently end Medicare, the way the program is run now?  Well, yes.  Does he want to keep the name Medicare so that people don't think he's trying to end Medicare?  Yes.  Was Politifact wrong last year when it accused Democrats of lying about Paul Ryan wanting to end Medicare?  Yes, by any reasonable measure, yes. 

Politifact was challenged at the time and it doubled down on its claim, saying that Democrats could have avoided being labeled liars had they been ever so slightly more careful with their language.  Which actually means "using language that would have irked Rick Perry a little less." [Read more]

Twenty years ago I got my first teaching job, as one of two young English teachers hired by a little high school in greater Boston. The other new teacher was a guy named Kevin Hogan. Kevin was already a much better teacher than I was, assured while I was struggling, deft where I was stumbling, natural in the classroom in a way I wouldn't be until years later. The kids loved him. I liked and admired him. I certainly didn't feel any shame in being the second-best rookie English teacher in the building (and I was a very distant second); I was just figuring things out, and Kevin was obviously and enormously talented.
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This year we've decided to stay home for Thanksgiving.  Our nearest family is 350 miles away but every year but one (and now this one) we've managed to be together for this holiday.  We'll be seeing them all in three weeks or so for the Christmas holidays, but I'm missing them acutely today. 
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When it rains, it pours. I attended and graduated from GP in the 1970s:

Former priest put on probation for fondling two Georgetown Prep students [Read more]

A former priest was sentenced to five years of supervised probation Thursday for fondling two students at Georgetown Preparatory School, where he taught from 1989 to 2003, as prosecutors compared the school’s initial response in the case to the scandal unfolding at Penn State University.

I recently changed cellphones, for only the second time in my life. I held onto my first cellphone for five dented, dinged and battered years, and did not replace it until it vanished on me entirely -- possibly because it had at long last dissolved into its constituent atoms -- while I was  traveling.
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 I swear, the weirdest thing going last week was the Tea Party debate hosted by Ted Turner's brainchild gone wild.  (When I heard that the once-venerable CNN was going to give free air-time and thus a large dose of credibility to yet another crazy bunch hell-bent on taking back every single right and privilege afforded us by hundreds of years worth of struggle by our more forward-thinking ancestors, this is what I said out loud:  "Waaaaaahhhhhtt??"  (Most people I know uttered a variation of WTF??? but it was all I could muster.  Trying to save an ungrateful country is exhausting.)
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It's strange to be cajoled, everywhere you turn, to "remember" September 11. It's not like we've forgotten it. Who needs a reminder of this? It's like being told "Remember gravity!"or "Remember oxygen!" I am reminded every day, thanks. It's all around us.
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It's college football season, and that means corruption and scandal. (Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about that corruption.) We've actually gotten to the point where Sports Illustrated, not the Chronicle of Higher Education but Sports Illustrated, has called for a major university football team to be disbanded. But the moral conversation about college sports remains so focused on abstractions like tradition and idealism that the "moral" conversation itself is corrupt, and corrupting. Arguing about ideals is fine. Mistreating actual human beings in the service of your ideals is depraved. [Read more]

In a stormy meeting on Thursday, Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives rejected Speaker John Boehner's compromise with President Obama over the schedule of the President's speech to a joint session of Congress.

The White House had sent Mr. Boehner a request for President Obama to address Congress on the evening of Wednesday, September 7. Such requests are considered routine and have been approved 47 times since 1962 without challenge.

But in the volatile political climate of 2011, nothing can be taken for granted. Many Tea Party-affiliated Republicans had campaigned against wasteful speechmaking in the 2010 election, and 216 had signed a "No New Speeches" contract sponsored by Grover Norquist's fundraising organization, Americans for Talk Reform.

"Americans don't need more speeches," argued House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in an hour-long discourse from the House floor last week, "They want the folks in Washington to shut the heck up." [Read more]