Taking Offense

Let’s see. Dick (his Cheyenne name is "He who shoots my friends in the face") Cheney is offended that our Prez lied to him about the Affordable Care Act.  I don’t know about you, but the claim that Dick Cheney takes offense when someone lies to him is just so . . . unbelievable. I mean, it’s similar to how I would react were the Faux News Network to take offense at the Colbert report, because it pretends to be a news show.  What is amazing is that Cheney actually surfaced from his spiderhole and engaged the public in this way. I guess I knew the man had chutzpah, but wow!

And on one of the other republican exoplanets, the state of North Carolina’s republicans, in their zeal to kill off the state’s public school system is now engaged in licensing “virtual” charter schools. Now, as best I can understand it, charter schools are already virtual public schools—that is they are fake public schools—they take public money but don’t have to meet any of the standards of public school systems.  So, what would a virtual fake public school look like? Well, turns out, it’s on-line. So, the kids can sit at home and “attend” the fake classes at their leisure, or let their parents attend the fake classes.

I’m wondering why we just don’t abandon schooling altogether (the preferred option for our republican legislators from what I can understand) and just operate a for-profit, on-line testing service. Kids can study, or not. It wouldn’t matter. If they can pass the standardized test (or get their parents to pass it for them) they get a GED (fake diploma). That way, we wouldn’t have to worry about teacher salaries, or even teacher certification. And all that dough we now put into brick and mortar? Sell it to the nearest Wal-Mart, or offload it on E-Bay.  Then our republican legislators will have more time to figure out when the state should secede from the Union.  I know, they could link up with other like-minded state legislatures and form a “more perfect union”, calling it something snappy. I know. How about the Neo-Confederate States of America. Catchy, huh?