Well I suppose it's POSSIBLE one could mis-interpret the most plain speaking poster we have in Dr. Smooth but...

Anyone who shops at let alone works for Wal Mart (outside of the people who need their $7.50 an hour job to live) and claims to have a social conscience is pretty funny in my book.

TenuredVulture wrote:

jeff2sf wrote:Smoothie, why the thinly veiled line? You know Walmart would love me. They'd love any MBA willing to move to Arkansas and being ready to bust up unions would be a plus.

I think Smoothie was asking if you really want to work for Wal-Mart, a company that doesn't treat management much better than check out clerks, that for years had a policy where you'd have to share your hotel room while on business travel? The living in Arkansas part is merely icing on the cake.

we could learn a lot from him, TV

about cake, and so much else

jerseyhoya wrote:[youtube][/youtube]

Goddamn this is a fantastic ad

How's she doin' with springing vets from all the SD VA facilities?

Since the offending hospital was in Minneapolis she's safe to throw it under the ambulance (tho MN VA facilities rate at least as high as SD's for inpatient care).

So she's for veterans and against the institutions that are for them. Hey, vets! Steffie's gonna take care of each and every single one of youse all by herself!

good choice of descriptives:

fan·tas·tic   [fan-tas-tik] –adjective
1. conceived or appearing as if conceived by an unrestrained
imagination;
2. fanciful or capricious

it's funny when smoothie advises people on communication. By funny I mean like Henry VIII teaching chastity funny.

jeff2sf wrote:it's funny when smoothie advises people on communication. By funny I mean like Henry VIII teaching chastity funny.

you, on the other hand, so seldom are at all

I think as usual, jeff and whoever he's arguing with--in this case, moz--are in violent agreement: there's value in performance evaluation. As it's true in baseball, so it is true in pedagogy. The dispute from moz's side is that the test now used sucks, and jeff as we know just likes to stir shit up.

So forget that specific test; we know standardized testing has huge problems anyway. jeff actually got at what I think is the right concept: you use a few different instruments and metrics to gauge where students are in terms of knowledge and skills at the beginning of a school year, do it again at the end, and use peer comparisons to get one measure of how effective or ineffective teachers have been. Then supplement that with qualitative data: supervisor, peer, parent, and student evaluations.

It's not a perfect methodology because no such thing exists, but it adds to our understanding of the practice, provides a measure by which to reward, remediate or remove teachers, and will get better over time as we have more data on similar students at the point of entry.

I would posit that the extent to which unions resist such a regime is a pretty valid signal of their bad/good faith.

I just wanted to come in here and pat myself on the back because even though you guys make me feel like a complete moron on a regular basis, I've realized I still have a better understanding of the political landscape in America than 99% of people my age.

So *raspberries* to all y'all

Timmy and the admin getting "ballsy"

This is going to cause some waves with the Chinese. I think this is the foreign policy issue that has interested me the most over the last year or so. The most curious aspect about it is that there are no international institutions (save for the IMF in the case of an indebted country) to punish or deter states that devalue their currency. The only recourse is through independent tariff measures, but those are precluded by the WTO.

In short, ain't nothing we can do. China, although you can make the argument, as Krugman has, is ultimately hurting themselves (by slowing global economic development and harming their workers*) with this, they are playing to win. I kind of admire their gamesmanship here, they're helping themselves in the short term, stilting a global recovery, and they'll trounce any attempts to stop them in the WTO. I really don't see anyway the US can act forcefully here that doesn't involve giving the middle finger to the WTO. It's an interesting political play by Timmy though, it looks tough to call out the Chinese, but there's a whole lot of people standing between him and Wen.

*as if they care. Although the attempts to unionize the Chinese work force is an interesting development in all of this.

Take it down a notch for America

This Daily Show/Colbert Report rally is going to be epic.

http://www.rallytorestoresanity.com/index.php

http://www.keepfearalive.com/

I will be there

It will be interesting to see if many people show up. I bet if they get a few of those popular liberal musicians to perform it could be a success. Young people won't just turn out in droves for Stewart/Colbert because they're lazy.

Yeah your definitely wrong about that.

I'm putting the over/under at 150,000

I really hope they draw more than Glenn Beck

I am seriously considering going, but I may have too much other work to do.

Besides, didn't I hear something about a local parade that day?

Wait, never mind... damn do the playoffs drag on this year. last possible date for the WS is November 4th?

Having been in college before, I'll set the number of people who drunkenly make commitments to drive to DC for this at 500,000, and the number that show up, barring them turning this into some concert with JayZ and Eminem and whatnot, at 25,000.

jerseyhoya wrote:Having been in college before, I'll set the number of people who drunkenly make commitments to drive to DC for this at 500,000, and the number that show up, barring them turning this into some concert with JayZ and Eminem and whatnot, at 25,000.

You've bought the Bill O'Reilly line about Stewart's and Colbert's audience being all college kid stoners.

I don't think so...

If you're offering a line on 25,000, I would happily, happily, happily take that bet. think about that number for a minute. You don't think Stewart or Colbert could put 45,000 in CBP, just on their own, if either one of them wanted to do a live show? You are sadly mistaken.

I've bought into Bill O'Reilly's line about something? Jesus fucking Christ like I watch Bill O'Reilly?! Did you just start reading the politics thread like two weeks ago?