Racist Judge apologizes for people finding out he is a racist

TRIBUNE PHOTO/ RION SANDERS with text added

As reported in the Great Falls Tribune, Federal judge Richard Cebull recently forwarded a blatantly racist email and got caught.  What's his defense?  He said "It was not intended by me in any way to become public," and that  he's sorry if anyone was offended.  It seems to me that not intending for something to become public, and being a racist are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, his racism, and specifically keeping that racism a secret, would be very strong motivators to not have this go public.

Bottom line: U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull is a racist.

Education Inequality

Today I was helping a friend out with a math problem, some algebra, and I hit a thick patch of rust in my brain.  After scratching my head a bit and then working through the problem, I decided to consult with my personal math expert, my dad.  Despite having been taught most of the math he ever learned before 1964, my father has amazingly retained all of that knowledge and is happy to share it with anyone who bothers to ask for help.  So after a quick call home, some description of the exponents in the equations and a little jotting down in my notebook, he had explained everything I in turn hoped to explain to my friend.

After hanging up the phone, I realized that this is one of the big inequalities that exist in our current educational system.  It doesn't matter how much value-added-effectiveness my teachers in school were shown to have by complex and inaccurate algorithms.  It's irrelevant how much test-prep a teacher might have run us through before an important exam.  I and many others, who are fortunate enough to have a parent who can teach and explain the things that are taught in school, learned the concepts we did, and got the grades we did because of the knowledge that our parents were able to share with us.

I had great teachers growing up.  Most of them would probably score very well on the myriad teacher evaluation schemes springing up around America.  Most of them taught a lot of students who, like me, had parents with significant education, and would end up doing well on tests.  But it doesn't matter how great those teachers were because however much time I spent sitting in my 9th grade math class with Mr. Bell, I spent a lot more time learning from my dad.  I learned what math I know from sitting at the kitchen table doing homework with my dad  within shouting distance if I got stuck on a problem I didn't understand.

Obviously, there will always be disparities in how much every child's parents know about a particular subject, and that will always be an advantage that the children of educated parents, who take the time to help them, will have over their peers.  That's fine, there's nothing (sensible) that can be done about that, but it is quite another thing to ignore that fact and judge teachers solely on the successes, or failures, of their students.

The Return

Things have been really quiet over here at Putrid Pundits...too quiet really.  Now that the primary campaigns are firing on all cylinders it seems like a good time to get back into the swing of things.  Check back soon for some political commentaries on the ugliness that is today's politics.

If we can understand this slide...we can win in Afghanistan

Unfortunately, no one understands this slide.

How Weinergate differs from GOP Sex Scandals

Since Anthony Weiner's televised confession yesterday that he had in fact tweeted a picture of his "member of congress" and that his account was not hacked, as he had first alleged, many have called on the New York congressman to resign for the impropriety.  Cable news pundits have been referencing the likes of Larry Craig, John Ensign, and the previous represenative of New York's 26th district, Chris Lee as they denounce Anthony Weiner and demand his resignation, but he is none of those people.

Larry Craig's political career came to a screeching halt when he was caught, by an undercover police officer, soliciting sex in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport.  Prior to his arrest, Larry Craig was known as a socially conservative member of the Senate who supported legislation designed to oppress homosexuals.  Therefore it is not the fact that he was soliciting sex from men in a public bathroom that inspired people to call for his resignation, but the hypocrisy of making life harder for homosexuals while simultaneously engaging in the aforementioned activity.

Nevada's John Ensign was in similar hot water after it was revealed that he had carried on an affair with the wife of one of his closest staffers.  Beyond the simple "you're having an affair with the wife of a very close friend/colleague" Senator Ensign had been an outspoken critic of President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky fiasco.  In calling for the President Clinton to resign, he said the behavior was an embarrassment to the country.

The key difference here, besides the lack of extramarital sex on Congressman Weiner's part, is that Anthony Weiner has not built his career by attacking adulterers or as some self-righteous social conservative.  Unlike Eliot Spitzer who was cracking down on prostitution rings while sleeping with prostitutes, Anthony Weiner doesn't have any public history of targeting lewd tweeters.

That being said it is extraordinarily upsetting, as a progressive, to see yet another politician on the left, who was fighting the good fight, allow his selfishness and his hubris to distract him from the job he was sent to Washington to do.  I don't care what anyone tweets, emails, writes on facebook, or sends through ICQ (remember ICQ?) but politicians need to realize that this kind of crap will become public, and it will derail the important work they are doing.

More Proof that Democrats have no Political "Strategery"

After weeks of howling from not-yet-a-republican-presidential-candidate Donald "The Donald" Trump, President Obama made the incomprehensibly idiotic move of releasing his long form birth certificate.  I'm not sure how old Jim Messina (Obama's 2012 Campaign Manager) is, but someone should check his birth certificate to make sure he wasn't born yesterday.  At the very least, they should take a lesson from Leslie Knope and make a "pros" and "cons" list the next time they make a big campaign decision.  Here's what one might have looked like if they had.


Releasing President Obama's Birth Certificate

Pros:
uhm...we'll come back to this one


Oh, I know, it will put the issue to rest once and for all (how did that go dummy?)


Cons:
It's not going to change anyone's mind
-Birthers will be birthers.  A PDF of a birth certificate is only going to give them more things to talk about
-People who claim Obama is an illegitimate president aren't going to vote for him even if a video is released showing the live birth taking place on the steps of the Hawaii State Capitol


It gives new life to the story


It shows Obama gave in to Trump's public pressure which
a) Makes Obama look weak
b) Gives Trump's demands appear legitimate


It opens the Administration up to criticism for spending money to fly someone to and from Hawaii to get the document


The GOP look like a bunch of lunatics calling for his birth certificate...any of them that are serious rivals for the general election will suffer in the primaries if they denounce the birthers.




Had his advisors taken a few moments to look at the pros and cons, I don't understand how they could possibly have agreed to do this.  It simply shows, once again, that Democrats have the worst strategists.  It's a really good thing that the GOP field is so full of unelectable candidates or the White House would probably go back to them in 2012.

Don't Make Us Work 'Til We Die