Choices are all things we have to learn to make. The fortunate among us are guided by loving responsible parents. Others have equally responsible and loving relatives and family mentors.
One of the things my Grandfather taught me about making choices was that `you will be known by the associations you keep'.
Barack Hussein Obama has some very interesting associations. He has also had some interesting mentors. From Frank Marshall Davis to Alice Palmer, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Mike Krulik, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Gregory Galluzo. Hard core leftists all. An exponent of the Saul Alinski school of radical organizing, he forged many other interesting associations such as Wayne Radke's ACORN for whom he taught classes as a community rabble rouser.

Should students be banned from buying Custom papers?  

This week's newsletter includes another discussion about the Republican neglect of our infrastructure. Since I wrote it two more levees have failed, flooding Des Moines, which aren't included in my analysis. If you want to help the Midwest, you can go here.

Turning to the election, the attacks have begun in earnest. Republicans rolled out a whole slew of attacks against Barack and Michelle Obama...some borderline racist, some merely lies, and none all that effective. In most states Obama's popularity has surged such that if the election were held today, Obama would easily win with over 300 electoral votes, just like Senator Chuck Schumer predicts will happen. But keep in mind, this is just the first volley of attacks.

Islamic fundamentalism undermines the politics and the educational system in Sudan so much so that the people of this country need to start envisioning a New Sudan

As a parent, one real challenge is how to deal with the most serious issues, how to communicate the world's ills without terrifying and creating utter despair while remaining honest.  

Might it be surprising that the dinner table conversation in my household can range from Constitutional violations to terrorism to national debt to the need for national health care to environmental challenges.

How do you explain 9/11 to a five-year old?

Well, as one actively working to help find (and shape) a path toward a sustainable and prosperous future, my challenge is often toward Global Warming and children.  

And, the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) has just put the Climate Classroom online.

Let's take a tour together ...

As a parent, one real challenge is how to deal with the most serious issues, how to communicate the world's ills without terrifying and creating utter despair while remaining honest.  

Might it be surprising that the dinner table conversation in my household can range from Constitutional violations to terrorism to national debt to the need for national health care to environmental challenges.

How do you explain 9/11 to a five-year old?

Well, as one actively working to help find (and shape) a path toward a sustainable and prosperous future, my challenge is often toward Global Warming and children.  

And, the National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) has just put the Climate Classroom online.

Let's take a tour together ...

Population Action International's latest documentary "Abstaining from Reality: U.S. Restrictions on HIV Prevention" provides a compelling snapshot of the Bush administration's abstinence-only approach to global HIV prevention.  A short preview of the article is posted here. Watch the eye-opening documentary short that accompanies Tamar Abrams' full story on eye-opening documentary short that accompanies Tamar Abrams' story on RHRealityCheck.org.

Your life is being shaped by people you don't know, making discoveries and decisions of which you're mostly unaware, and those decisions have implications far more wide-ranging than any of the most controversial issues discussed in the halls of congress.  Sound frightening?  In a sense, it should.  These men and women don't work for the NSA.  They're not laboring in the depths of the Pentagon.  Despite the title of the diary, they aren't generally fans of spandex and capes, though some of them have been known to adopt an archetypical costume: a white lab coat.

The people in question are scientists, and more than any elected official, they will shape the world you live in for good... and for bad.

Why do we continue to be surprised that year after year, we're producing high school students that can barely read or write?  That can barely add or subtract?  Why do we continue to express shock and outrage that our high school graduates aren't equipped to deal with life in the "real world?"

It's no secret that we don't put our schools or our students in a position to succeed.  Funding tied to religious ideologies, programs like "No Child Left Behind," further burden schools that are barely managing to scrape by as it is.  And there is a group of people, here in California that are adding to the problem by taking steps to make sure our schools and our students continue to languish.

[ crossposted in its entirety from Talk To Action

[Public] Schools have been the single most effective institution in our society for equipping immigrants and the children of immigrants with the skills necessary to find a place in our society. They are one of the few institutions consistently encouraging immigrants, minorities, and the disadvantaged to aspire to accomplish more than had previously been thought possible within America's network of social, civil and economic systems. - Dr. Bruce Prescott

In "The Manufactured Crisis: "Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools" Dr. David Berliner and Bruce Biddle argued that ongoing criticism of America's public schools is baseless and partisan.  [ read review of book in Christian Ethics Today ]. A new study released January 2006, funded by the US Department of Education, by researchers at the University of Illinois at Champagne Urbana rebuts  claims on the alleged low performance of public schools [ click here for PDF of full report ]:

[ NCSPE study summary ] Findings reveal that demographic differences between students in public and private schools account for the relatively high raw scores of private schools on the NAEP.  Indeed, after controlling for these differences, public school students generally score better than their private school peers.....Conservative Christian schools, the fastest growing private school sector, are the lowest performing private schools.[ emphasis mine ]

Meanwhile, the ongoing assault on America's public schools comes from many quarters   [ see full story ]

For that matter what are the job prospects for any of us? A soft economic recovery and an increasingly level (or "flat," to borrow Thomas Friedman's  strange phrasing) global marketplace are rapidly reducing the options of American workers across a range of careers and vocations.  Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post asks "Will Your Job Survive?" Meyerson's alarm bells were tripped by a disturbing report from Princeton University economist Alan Blinder. I hate to go all "Lou Dobbs." But Blinder's prognostication about the job market of the not too distant future should send a chill down the spine of any American concerned about the future of the US economy.

In the new global order, Blinder writes, not just manufacturing jobs but a large number of service jobs will be performed in cheaper climes. Indeed, only hands-on or face-to-face services look safe. "Janitors and crane operators are probably immune to foreign competition," Blinder writes, "accountants and computer programmers are not."

There follow some back-of-the-envelope calculations as Blinder totes up the number of jobs in tradable and non-tradable sectors. Then comes his (necessarily imprecise) bottom line: "The total number of current U.S. service-sector jobs that will be susceptible to offshoring in the electronic future is two to three times the total number of current manufacturing jobs (which is about 14 million)." As Blinder believes that all those manufacturing jobs are offshorable, too, the grand total of American jobs that could be bound for Bangalore or Bangladesh is somewhere between 42 million and 56 million. [emphasis mine] That doesn't mean all those jobs are going to be exported. It does mean that the Americans performing them will be in competition with people who will do the same work for a whole lot less.

In my last article on this topic, I reintroduced KIVA and showed how 1.) what they do really can help create successful small businesses in East Africa and how those businesses help the community in which they exist, and 2.) how our efforts on the blogsphere have helped KIVA become so successful that they cannot keep up with the outpouring of help. But they are also bringing on the businesses in need of loans faster than ever, so jeep checking back. Congratulations to all who are making this such a success.

In this diary I want to reiterate the context in which KIVA works and how we also have to help that context. This will partly be a reiteration of diaries I have written before, explaining why I am calling for an "integrated" approach to development that we in the blogsphere can participate in. This is my vision of how you and I can change the world from the bottom up.

The New York Times today published an article on the topic of outsourcing. Steve Lohr, the author of the article, contends that outsourcing is climbing the skills ladder. What he means by this is that the jobs that were originally outsourced were simple assembly tasks. After these jobs were outsourced, companies began to outsource higher skill jobs, such as computer programmers. Now, outsourcing has progressed up the skills ladder to include such highly skilled jobs as engineers and scientists.

Cross Posted with Talk to Action, Political Cortex and Gene's Thoughts

This is not an original idea with me, but one I think would solve several problems and one I have been interested in for a while Given the current situation in this country regarding the encroachment of religion into the public space, it is necessary that we give our children a sound, fundamental grounding in religion. I propose an intensive religious education beginning in the fourth grade and culminating senior year. This would be a nine year course of study taking students from the founding myths of the world's major religions through comparative religious instruction with emphasis on similarities and differences and why these differences exist. Finally, the last two years would consider the philosophy of religion, how religions start, what makes them important to their adherents and how our lives are shaped by our religious beliefs. Along the way topics on science and religion, science as religion, religion as science, worldviews, and the psychology of religion would be studied. By the time students reach the end of this study, they will be in a much better position to recognize religious issues and make their own decisions regarding such issues.

Update [2006-1-8 19:14:27 by mole333]:I received a personal request from KIVA. They are looking for ways of expanding their efforts but they need help. Our efforts on their behalf have been so successful, they are having a hard time keeping up with the strong interest in their work and they are looking for more partner organizations. Here is their request. If anyone knows of any groups that can help them, let me know and I will pass the info along:

Kiva is currently expanding by signing up partners to work with us in Africa and beyond. We are looking for organizations who conduct lending to the poor and have the flexibility to blog and post pictures online. If you know of any such organizations, let me know.