StevieslawGuesstherest: Ron Tomalis Talks School Budget Cuts.

Posted on March 30, 2011 by stevieslaw

The Issue: A proposed 1 billion dollar school budget cut by, man of the people, Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania.

Education Secretary-nominee, Ron Tomalis defended the cuts by declaring, “I don’t think that dollars is the way that we drive achievement. I don’t think you can measure achievement in dollars and cents.  For instance, he said, he believes higher quality teachers, not necessarily more teachers and smaller classes, is more important to student achievement.

Guesstherest: Tomalis continued by noting it was his belief, “that a good challenge is the best way to attract higher quality teachers.”  “We believe by offering lower and lower salaries, much larger class sizes, only teacher supplied class materials, and best of all— very, very limited health and pension benefits, that we will attract the best teachers in the nation.”  “Moreover, he said, “our children will wish that they could grow up to be PA teachers, as well.”  “Of course,” he concluded, “that is sort of silly of them, with the kind of education we envision them getting.”

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StevieslawExclusive: Scooping the Fox News Poop.

Posted on March 28, 2011 by stevieslaw

Michelle Obama practices Chavezism

Our intrepid Smokey Diamond reports that Fox News will air an exclusive today that strongly links Michelle Obama to the Venezuelan Socialist Dictator Hugo Chavez.  “I felt there was an inordinate amount of travel to Caracas by Fox News reporters,” purred Smokey, “so I followed them to find out what they were up to.”  “The reporters were attending all of Hugo Chavez’s news conferences and were tracking his every word on Venezuelan television.”  “At first they seemed confused, but that improved when they hired a translator.” “And last night, after his televised speech, they packed up and left in a hurry.”

Smokey was able to catch Ronald Sauron, the mouth of Fox News, on the tarmac at what Ron still calls Idylwild Airport.  Sauron confirmed that they were watching Chavez closely and had months ago discovered the connection between him and first lady, Michelle Obama.  “Chavez has been dropping loaded words now for months, railing about things like TV and school violence and alcoholism,” he confided.  “It’s just the sort of thing we would expect to hear from Ms. Obama and we suspected it was much much more than coincidence.”  “Yesterday, when he went on and on about the dangers of obesity,” he continued, “we knew we had her.”  “Michelle Obama has long been in favor of government control of what we can eat,” he said.

“Like all our exclusives,” Sauron said, “Fox News will not actually accuse Ms. Obama of being a socialist follower of Chavez and a closet Hispanic, but will simply present the compelling factual evidence that she is.”  “We at Fox wonder just how closely Ms. Obama’s birth certificate has been studied, for example” he said.  “We also wonder why she is ashamed of admitting to her Hispanic background and how that will play out with our Hispanic voters.”

In other Fox News, Sauron was able to confirm that Fox’s scientific experts were willing to concede that the earth was probably “not flat,” if their colleagues on the left would stop promoting “all that dribble” about global warming.

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Stevieslaw: I Mean Mean

Posted on March 27, 2011 by stevieslaw

I’ve been carrying this word, mean, around with me for weeks now.  I’ll share.  Yes, I know you didn’t ask.  I will keep it short.

We seem to have lost one meaning of mean now that we need it most.  What a shame.

We use the word “mean” in many ways.  In statistics, it means “average” and is often different from the median or midpoint.  As a verb, we use it for to signify or to have in mind or to intend.  As an adjective—and as a noun —we use the word in at least three ways, although it seems that only one meaning is common. In today’s world, mean is hostile or rude, and I think it’s what your six year old has in mind when she complains that her eight year old brother is “being mean to me.”  It can also have the meaning of poor or in inferior circumstances.  There is nothing noble in being mean in this way—synonyms include base, beggarly or sordid.  But when my mother or father referred to someone as “mean,” they often as not meant it in the sense of “ungenerous.”  The synonyms are wonderful—close, mingy, miserly, niggard, parsimonious, penurious, rapacious, tight and tight fisted. 

My dad is gone now, but for him the word described not only the tight-fistedness that might be a reasonable reaction to living through the great depression, but also—and much, much closer to the point—an “ungenerousness” of spirit—a deep seated, humorless and ugly inability to be happy—to even fake happiness—for any success that others might have. For a spirit that recoils in spite and hate at any tiny advantage, deserved or undeserved, afforded to a neighbor, a relative, or a friend. 

My dad would have had little trouble then in placing the basic tenets of the Tea Party.  He would have understood the motives of the self-proclaimed patriots, the men and women who think that paying a tax, they can afford, to keep our public schools running is somehow an injustice.  He would have recognized them, our real and potential men and women of government, Sarah, Michelle and Scott, as mean—and he would have wondered, as a man of peace, kindness and generosity, what the hell had happened to his country.

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Newsbriefs You May Have Missed: Closing the Invasion Routes.

Posted on March 26, 2011 by stevieslaw

20. Jim DeMint declares Interstate Highway System Unconstitutional.

McClatchy Newspaper reporter, James Rosen, in an article in Thursday’s CDT, used the example of the invention by Dr. David Cull of a valve system for dialysis to highlight the politic wrangling over implementation of the new health care bill.  Cull was able to get a grant under a part of the new health care law that fosters biomedical innovation, although his Senator, Jim DeMint of S. Carolina, refused to write a letter in support of Cull’s application.  John C. Calhoun, spokesperson for DeMint said, “even though the success of this valve will ease the suffering of hundreds of thousands of Americans requiring dialysis and will save the taxpayer billions of dollars in Medicare costs, it is more important for Senator DeMint to remain ideologically pure in refusing to have anything to do with the unconstitutional “Obamacare” bill.” John C. went on to point out that, “Senator DeMint’s strong ideological position in the support of human suffering is not new, but has been the model used by organized religion for some 2000 years.”

Smokey Diamond was down in Greenville, S. Carolina for the rest of the story.  He finds that opposition to unconstitutional “Obamacare” is only the very tip of the iceberg.  “Jim DeMint finds it very odd,” continued Calhoun, “that the Federal Interstate Highway System runs both North and South and East and West through all of the major cities of the Sovereign State of S. Carolina.”  “Jim echoes the feelings of most S. Carolinians when he calls Interstate 95, the obvious federal invasion route from the north.”  “He will introduce legislation in the Senate to deny funds to the unconstitutional Federal Highway Administration in an attempt to bring down the interstate system.”  “Failing that,” Mr. Calhoun went on, “We will take action.”  “In S. Carolina, it is not hard to imagine employing large numbers of undesirables, in what might be termed “Chain Gangs,” to dig up the Interstates.”

We are very happy to report that Smokey Diamond, perhaps the working definition of an undesirable, returned safely from S. Carolina.

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StevieslawCulturalUpdate: Times Twitter

Posted on March 25, 2011 by stevieslaw

StevieslawCulturalUpdate: Times Twitter

In last Sunday’s NY Times, Week in Review section, Randy Kennedy wrote of Tweet Lit.  He spoke of “Twitterature,” a  book of 80 works of Western literature boiled down into Twitter messages, Science Fiction and Mystery work that uses the format, and an apparently successful Twitter Haiku movement—termed Twaiku.  The WIR went on to ask four poets, including two former poet laureates—Billy Collins and Robert Pinsky—to write poems within Twitter’s text limit of 140 characters, title and author not included.  They also provided a site to share your own verse on, hash tag #poetweet.  Here are the Collins and Pinsky poems along with one of mine:

Twitter Poem

The poem creates a space

It hides in a tent in the forest.

Making its own bed it falls asleep in the dark,

wakes up under a lamp or the sun.

Low Pay Piecework

The fifth-grade teacher and her followers-

Five classes, twenty-eight in each, all hers:

One-hundred-and-forty different characters.

Space saver

Today, wind barely

stirs the balding trees, 

the sun’s a sallow

yellow, like the yolk of

a chicken-free egg, and

I have no room to daydream.

I really liked Teeny tiny poem by Elizabeth Alexander

Teeny tiny poem/just enuf 2hold/1

xlient big word/Impluvium/open-eyed

courtyard/collecting rain/as all poems do/

skylife, open/birds do:/tweet.

Give it a try.

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StevieslawExclusive: The Little Known Index of Intervention.

Posted on March 25, 2011 by stevieslaw

Smokey Diamond was in the Mediterranean this week, just north of Tripoli,  aboard the U.S.S. Cutty Shark—a super secret missile launching frigate. The frigate had spent some fifteen minutes launching 100 cruise missiles at a cost of roughly 1.5 million a pop. 

Smokey was able to land an exclusive interview with Dr. Melvin Cipher, head of the Pentagon’s Index of Intervention Office, which is under the direct command of the Secretary of Defense.  When asked about intervention in North Africa, specifically why intervene in country A and not in Country B, Mel was forthcoming.  “People think that these decisions are somehow arbitrary,” Mel said, “but they are anything but.”  “In the U.S., and increasingly in the rest of the world,” he continued, “we use the Index of Intervention to decide not only whether or not to intervene, but at what level as well.”  The calculation of the index is quite complex, but in layman’s terms it may be simply thought of as the ratio of the cost of the intervention divided by the number of human hours of misery—that is, dollars per hour. 

“In North Africa, the number of hours of human misery, which we usually simplify to 24 times the population, is not a driving factor, and it may appear to the public that we are not factoring that in.” “We are.”  “The cost calculation is what keeps the computers busy,” said Dr. Cipher.  “What is the cost of losing our military presence in Bahrain,” he asked? “What is the value—a negative cost— of shoring up a increasingly unpopular ally in France?”

“Sometime we don’t get it quite right,” Melvin admitted.  “Vietnam was largely driven by the value to Democrats in appearing strong against communism, after Truman lost China.”  “Pakghanistan was largely driven by the cost of 9/11.”  “Unfortunately,” Mel said sadly, “the Index is what it is, and we cannot factor in potentially useful information—like the likelihood of a favorable outcome, or the existence of an exit strategy.” 

“What about Iraq,” Smokey ventured.  “No,” Mel responded, “that was just a spelling error by W.”  “Nobody—not the military, not the media, nor the public, caught it,” he said.

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Newbriefs You May Have Missed: 18. Who will look after the big guy?

Posted on March 17, 2011 by stevieslaw

Republicans articulate anthem. Find voice.

House Republicans assailed the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, designed to protect consumers from problems with mortgage, credit card and other lending companies, calling it the “most powerful agency that’s ever been created in Washington.”  Spender Vidal III, spokesman for Financial Services Chair, Spencer Bachus (no relation to the Roman god), said “the new agency represents yet another Obama power grab and addresses a problem that does not exist.”  Spender went on to say that, “Bankers are people too.”  “A careful reading of the charter for the new agency clearly shows,” continued Vidal, “that it allows for Assassination Squads, in the same way Obamacare allowed for Death Panels, to take out bankers and Wall Street executives at will”

After the hearing, Spencer Bachus took the house floor to deliver a heartfelt and passionate speech entitled, “Who will protect the big guys?”  The opening paragraph of the speech is reprinted here.  The full speech may be viewed on UTube, or over and over and over again, today, tomorrow and the next day on Fox News.

Bachus: Who will look after the big guy?  Who will comfort the Mortgage brokers gone to ground in their 5th Avenue penthouses, the Wall Street CEOs driven in desperation to their mansions on the beach at Newport, RI, or the Energy Executives dishonorably displaced to their villas on the Mediterranean Coast.  Who will protect the Polluters, the Lobbyists, the Armsdealers?  Who will make sure that no matter what the cost—to the workers, to the environment, to the future—the big guy will make out…

Bachus finished the stirring speech with a guarantee that the Republicans will always be there for the big guy, saying, “We will. We will. We will.”  As many of our readers are no doubt aware, saying something three times is the new definition of true.

 Bulletin: Smokey Diamond reports, from Mendocino, California, that rumors that Tea Partiers, waving red white and blue books containing the sayings of Chairman Beck, are walking lock-stepped off the cliffs and into the Pacific Ocean are entirely unfounded. Smokey would like to assure his readers, however, that you will be forgiven if the image makes you smile.

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The Old Stone Steps

Posted on March 17, 2011 by stevieslaw

The Old Stone Steps

The grass covered path to the stream

runs along the edge of an old growth

of hemlock trees, deep, dark green

and fragrant. The trees hug the rising

ridge and provide screen for the spur

of interstate they have scoured out

of its limestone top.  The locals quip

that they have managed to pave

the only spot in the county that is

sure for snow through mid-April, and

ride, as custom dictates, along the two

lane in the valley below.  A different

kind of craftsman has cut and lined,

with large flat stones, the last five yards

to the icy water, along a slope too steep

to balance on.  I have watched as power

shovels plowed the limestone from

the ridge this year and last, but can only

imagine the man who took the time,

some spring and summer, a hundred years

or more ago to pave the path so we might

walk down to this fine creek, with  rod and

rusted can of fresh dug worms, in easy comfort.

The acid run-off from the sleek new road

along the ridge has killed the trout that

once swam in number in our creek.  But

it is still a fine place to sit and dream in

the late afternoon, when the sun in the west

warms the very edge of the water, and

the splurge of that water about the gray

river stones is just loud enough to drown

the hiss of progress from the road above.

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AStevieslawRetraction: Fox News

Posted on March 16, 2011 by stevieslaw

Lighthearted Fox scores points.

When we are wrong, we admit it—so here goes.  Smokey Diamond and the editorial staff at Stevieslaw fell for a Fox News exclusive, as reported to us by Sterling Fibber, about a format change at Fox that would allow them to present sitcoms.  Smokey admits that, “I went for it like a cat goes for catnip.”

As many of our readers have pointed out, Fox News is, and has always been, a 24 hour network specializing in the presentation of sitcoms.  The three we spoke about, in yesterday’s exclusive, were just part of the existing mix.  Sterling Fibber, Fox News spokesperson, said laughingly, “Gottcha.” “Yesterday’s interview was only part of our continuing campaign to put “lighthearted,” he said, “into our motto—fair, lighthearted and balanced.”

Smokey, shrugging off the bad news, was in Pakghanistan today pursuing the story about an American contractor who got out of jail by paying the families of the people he killed, “blood money.”  It has never been established whether or not the contractor had murdered the Pakghanistanis or had been acting in self-defense. 

Smokey was able to speak to General Petraeus about the story.  He caught up with the general in his super-secret bunker deep underneath the new Justice Ministry building, paid for by American tax dollars, in Kabul.  “This is just another example,” said Petraeus of how much we have learned about the socio-economic aspects of war in this part of the world.”  Petraeus refused to confirm, however, that the Pakghanistanis were currently toting up a bill for how much it would cost to get American troops out of this medieval hell-hole.

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StevieslawEntertainmentNews: Fox News to Revamp Format

Posted on March 15, 2011 by stevieslaw

Fox News plans three new “fair and balanced” sitcoms.

In an effort to “balance out” commercial network sitcoms that portray blacks, latinos, gays, women and other minorities as people, Fox News today announced it is revamping its format to be able to present sitcoms of its own.  Sterling Fibber, spokesperson for Fox, announced that pilots for three FBS have been written.  Fibber said, “These gentle comedies will help the American people understand the important events going on around them, in a manner they can relate to.”  “These shows will be very current,” he added, “and we will not shrink from taking on the major issues of the day, while at the same time maintaining a folksy, humorous tone that one has come to expect from, say, a Mike Huckabee.”

Fibber would not release details of the shows as they are still in editorial.  He did, however, discuss the basic plot lines.  In the first, a swarthy, sinister President, whose birth nation and religious beliefs are shrouded in mystery and whose election has been engineered by Walnut, a communist front, is thwarted in his attempts to turn the United States into a Muslim, Marxist nation by a shy, funny overweight radio talk show host, a kindly professor and an emotional congressman.  In the second, a tough-minded, though fair, young governor has no choice but to take on the special interest groups—unions, public employees, and democrats, with the help of the clumsy yet wise Republican Whip of the State House who looks, dresses and sounds like Fess Parker playing Davey Crockett. In the third, an attractive, fiery ex-Governor of a state in the shadow of the former Soviet Union chooses, after minutes of soul searching, to run for election as the first woman president of the United States.  There is no one to help her as she must balance her presidential ambitions against the care of her large boisterous family of talented dancers and moose hunters. 

The pilots will air this summer.

In a related newsbrief, Fox announced it will be changing its slogan from ‘fair and balanced” to “fair, lighthearted, and balanced,” to welcome the new sitcom format.

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