No War Left Behind

U.S. military and diplomatic officials recently gave the Iraqi government a satisfactory rating on eight of 18 political and security benchmarks, a mixed rating on two and an unsatisfactory rating on eight benchmarks in a White House report prepared for Congress.

The interim progress report out Thursday — a second one due in September — says progress in Iraq has been good on key security areas such as the deployment of Iraqi forces in Baghdad, the establishment of joint security stations in Baghdad and the increased capability and independence of Iraqi military units as well as a few economic and political matters.

“U.S. military and diplomatic officials gave the Iraqi government a SATISFACTORY RATING on eight of 18 political and security benchmarks.” (?)

When I was in high school, all of my teachers used the same scale for determining grades.

If a test had 100 items on it, students were expected to achieve the following in order to obtain the grade:

100 - 94 correct answers = A
93 - 89 “ = B
88 - 80 “ = C
79 - 70 “ = D
69 or below “ = F

The Bush administration has given a satisfactory rating to Iraq for meeting 8 of 18 political and security benchmarks. That means that Iraq passes as SATISFACTORY with only 44% of the benchmarks met. Not on my teachers’ grading scales. That would have been one big fat “F”! Apparently, the Bush boys are grading on a curve.

Now let us take a look at Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” program. The phrase "no child left behind" was not only a mantra of George W. Bush's presidential campaign, it provided the name for Bush's ambitious education-reform bill. Keeping that promise is a tall order, and the president's supporters are fervent in their belief that the only way it can be done is by enforcing higher standards for all students through increased testing and tougher accountability for schools.

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, President George W. Bush's education-reform bill, was signed into law on Jan. 8, 2002. Under its provisions, states had until the 2005-06 school year to develop and implement their tests. Schools and districts are required to show "adequate yearly progress" [A.Y.P.] toward their statewide objectives -- that is, they must demonstrate (through their test scores) that they are on course to reach 100 percent proficiency for all groups of students within 12 years.

That is a fairly tough standard given to the schools to meet from a president who thinks 44% on a test is satisfactory.

Diller’s a Dilly

Phyllis Diller, who celebrates her 90th birthday today (Tuesday) , has filled so many roles in her lifetime - mother of five children, wife of three men, professional comic, film star (16 movies), TV and stage actress, supper-club entertainer, author of several books, recording artist (5 comedy LP’s), spokesperson for charitable causes, a gifted painter, and an accomplished concert pianist, having performed as a piano soloist with over 100 symphony orchestras. Many of her fans do not know that she attended the Sherwood Music Conservatory in Chicago for three years and went from there to Bluffton College in Ohio.

This woman can serve as an inspiration to all those aspiring housewives with real talent. She was a late-blooming 37-year-old mother of five children before she came to public attention on Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life” TV program in the mid-50s. She later created a character for her comedy routine - an oddly-dressed housewife with wild, electrified-looking hair, and a loud, throaty laugh approaching the sound of a cackle. As a professional stand-up comic, she wrote her own jokes, and edited them so tightly that she could deliver up to 12 one-liner jokes in one minute.

Phyllis Diller created a mythical husband named Fang and his mother named Moby Dick. She once said that Moby Dick was so old that her Social Security number was 2. Another joke about Moby Dick was that she wasn’t on Noah’s Ark because she was so ugly they couldn’t find another animal that looked like her. In her routine, Phyllis Diller liked to joke about her figure or lack of it, plastic surgery (she has had numerous face lifts, starting at the age of 55), her sex life or lack of it with Fang, her mother-in-law, and her next-door neighbor. She often ridiculed her own looks and joked about her domestic life as a housewife.

In the 1960s, Phyllis Diller appeared regularly as a special guest on numerous TV shows and in 1968 had her own show titled “The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show.” In 1998, she used her unique cackle in the vocals for the Queen in Disney/Pixar's animated movie “A Bug's Life.” She retired from her comedy routine in 2002. In January of this year, she appeared on “The Tonight Show” with Jay Leno and promised to return on her 90th birthday. Unfortunately, she has since injured her back and will be unable to appear as promised.

Phyllis Diller is famous for her one-liners. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your rest home.
2. Best way to get rid of kitchen odors: Eat out.
3. Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.
4. His finest hour lasted a minute and a half.
5. I admit, I have a tremendous sex drive. My boyfriend lives forty miles away.

6. My recipe for dealing with anger and frustration: set the kitchen timer for twenty minutes, cry, rant, and rave, and at the sound of the bell, simmer down and go about business as usual.
7. There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?
8. We spend the first twelve months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.
9. Whatever you may look like, marry a man your own age - as your beauty fades, so will his eyesight.

Self-deprecating to a fault, a typical Phyllis Diller joke had her running after a garbage truck pulling away from her curb. "Am I too late?" she'd yell. The driver's reply: "No, jump right in!"

Phyllis Diller, you’re a dilly, and you’re goin' like 90. You go, girl!

Chertoff Spills His Guts

Six months after the attacks of September 11, 2001 Tom Ridge, then the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, in order to provide a "comprehensive and effective means to disseminate information regarding the risk of terrorist acts to Federal, State, and local authorities and to the American people," introduced a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale. The different levels triggered specific actions by federal agencies and state and local governments affecting the level of security at some airports and other public facilities. It is called the "terror alert level" by the U.S. media.

The scale consists of five color-coded threat levels, which are intended to reflect the probability of a terrorist attack and its potential gravity.

* Severe (red): severe risk
* High (orange): high risk
* Elevated (yellow): significant risk
* Guarded (blue): general risk
* Low (green): low risk

Since then, whenever the Bush administration wishes to inject what they consider the right amount of fear in the American public, they bring out the scale. It is often used when Bush’s popularity is low or just before elections. Over time, however, the American public has grown weary of the “boy who cried wolf” warnings when nothing came of them, and the advisory scale has not been used much recently.

Now we have Michael Chertoff, the current United States Secretary of Homeland Security, who last Tuesday introduced another advisory scale, based not on credible evidence but upon Chertoff’s gut feeling. His personal hunch, without any evidence to support it, is that al-Qaeda will likely attack the United States this summer. Chertoff bases his hunch on “terrorist patterns” and intelligence reports that he cannot disclose.

A political cartoonist named Bennett lampooned Chertoff by creating a new color-coded threat advisory scale based on Chertoff’s personal gut feeling. Modeled after the original color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale of 2002, it reads as follows from the highest to the lowest risk:

Severe (red): severe risk - Chertoff has severe willies of terrorist attacks
High (orange): high risk - Chertoff has a gut feeling of terrorist attacks
Elevated (yellow): significant risk - Chertoff has bad vibes of terrorist attacks
Guarded (blue): general risk - Chertoff has a sneaking suspicion of terrorist attacks
Low (green): low risk - Chertoff has an inkling of terrorist attacks

You can expect the Bush administration to make good use of this new advisory scale between now and the 2008 election.

Can’t we do better? Can’t we put people in positions of power in our nation’s capital who think, not with their guts but with their brains? Cheney had a gut feeling that U.S. troops would be welcomed in Iraq with flowers. He was wrong. Rumsfeld had a gut feeling that the United States could defeat Saddam’s army and occupy Iraq with a small number of troops. He was wrong. The President had a gut feeling that the war in Iraq would be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues. He was wrong. So much for gut feelings.

If you really want to be frightened in regard to the threat of a terrorist attack on the United States, just remember that almost six years after 9/11, while Grandma is taking off her shoes at the airport, only five percent of cargo containers are being inspected at our nation’s ports.

Jill’s Dilemma: Dealing With Jack’s Cancer

Jack and Jill were a happily married couple who had known each other since they were teenagers, and they were still deeply in love with each other. Jack was very protective of Jill and couldn’t stand the thought of another man even looking at her. Jill was a physically attractive woman with very limited education and no job skills.

About two years into their marriage, Jack was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and was expected to die if not soon treated. A new experimental drug for this disease was available, but at a cost of $2000 a week. Jack had lost his job because of the cancer, and they had no health insurance or savings. Jill was helpless and distraught and didn’t know what to do. If she couldn’t raise the money for the drug treatments quickly, she would watch Jack die slowly and surely.

One day Jill, without going into the particulars, told Jack that she had found a night job that paid quite well, and she now would be able to pay for his treatments. Soon the money was rolling in, and Jack’s drug treatments were giving them new hope that he would survive the cancer. After several months of treatment with the new drug, the cancer finally was in remission.

The next year Jack learned from a friend that Jill had gotten the money for his treatments by engaging in prostitution with an escort service. She had been selling her body to earn money to save his life. When he confronted Jill about the job, she confessed to the prostitution of her body. She told Jack that she was faced with the choice of either waiting and watching him die or, because of her deep love for him, to sell her body to save him.

Jack, the husband who was so protective of his wife, was emotionally crushed upon learning the source of her income. Jill said that she hated herself for what she had done, and she tried to cleanse herself by taking several baths a day. But she couldn’t cleanse her soul. Weeks later, Jack informed her that he wanted a divorce.

A short time after that, Jack, unable to deal with the consequences of Jill’s decision to prostitute her body to save him, committed suicide. After his death, filled with guilt and unable to bear the thought of living without him, Jill decided to take her own life.

In this case, who was morally right? Or is it possible that both were right? Or were both possibly wrong? What other possibilities do you see that might have been available to them?

The Quotable Benjamin Franklin: A Man for All Seasons

Perhaps of all our 18th century Founding Fathers, the one who would be most comfortable in the 21st century is Benjamin Franklin. He was a man for all seasons - a leading author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic activist, environmentalist, and diplomat. He was handy with both words and the ladies. The ladies loved him, and he loved the ladies.

His most famous quote is “A penny saved is a penny earned.” That was when a penny was worth a lot more. Another well-known quote of his is “There are more old drunkards than old doctors.” So I think I’ll have another drink. To his quote of “The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise”, I would reply that while that is true, we all know that the “squeaky wheel gets the grease”.

Here are some more of his best remembered quotes:

“To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.” (On Dieting and Health)

“He that displays too often his wife and his wallet is in danger of having both of them borrowed.” (Marriage and Finance)

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.” (Psychology)

“Anyone who trades liberty for security deserves neither liberty nor security.” (Government)

“The best thing to give to your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity.” (Human Relationships)

“To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly.” (Science and Religion)

“We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.” (Education)

“Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75.” (Lifelong Learning)

“There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means - either may do - the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.” (Achieving Happiness)

“When in doubt, don't.” (Decision-making)

“The worst wheel of the cart makes the most noise.” ( Human Relationships)

Do you have any favorite Franklin quotes to add to this post?