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Clearing the Browser Tabs - Mark Steyn and a Bottle of Wine Tuesday Edition

Jimmie | July 12, 2011 | Comments (0)

Two of the biggest stories in the United States right now are getting almost no coverage at all from the major media outlets. I don’t usually quote pieces in a CtBT post, but I need to bring Mark Steyn into the discussion.

In the week of the News of the World revelations, it was reported that the Atlanta Public Schools system has spent the last decade systemically cheating on its tests. Not the students, but the superintendent, and the union, and 38 principals, and at least 178 teachers — whoops, pardon me, “educators” — and some 44 of the 56 school districts. Teachers held “changing parties” at their homes at which they sat around with extra supplies of erasers correcting their students’ test answers in order to improve overall scores and qualify for “No Child Left Behind” federal funding that could be sluiced into maintaining their lavish remuneration.

The people who ran the school system, from the award-winning superintendent all the way to the teachers’ union representatives, simply lied. They lied to steal more money from you and me and to avoid doing anything that resembled hard work. They stole at least a full year of education from the students who were entrusted to them.

Did you see anything about this on CNN? MS-NBC? NBC? ABC? CBS? Heck, not even Fox News dug into the story. I haven’t seen anything on the front page from the Washington Post or the New York Times. No one has sent a team of journalists to dig through the Atlanta Public School system as if were a book published by a certain former Alaska Governor.

The same can be said for the still-growing Operation Fast and Furious scandal. I’m still waiting for the clamor from the White House Press corps asking what the President knew and when he knew it? I suspect I’ll be waiting until the Judgement Trump for that to happen. Save for Jake Tapper, no one else seems particularly interested in the pile of corpses Fast and Furious left in its wake.

On the other hand, the left is taking quite an inordinate interest in what wine Rep. Paul Ryan drank the other night. Alas, the “economist” who blew Vinogate wide open has suddenly gone shy. Gosh, I wonder if it had anything to do with that $80 bottle of wine that sat on her table while she was winding up her tirade.

And now, links!

Herman Cain continues to surprise. Who knew he had pipes like this?
Apparently, the Obama administration forgot it’s against the law for it to give ACORN our money. If the President and his people keep violating laws like this, we’re going to need to get some more Congressional committees to investigate them.
It’s a pretty good day on the Internet when Stacy McCain makes a Cthulhu reference.
Remember those 18,000 jobs our government said we created in June? They’re a fabrication. We actually lost jobs — a lot of jobs.
The tyrannical Burmese government has thrown actress Michelle Yeoh out of the country because of her portrayal of Aung Suu Kyi, who has been a thorn in the side of the dictators for years.
Democratic member of Congress Sheila Jackson-Lee is that most dangerous combination of reality-warping stupidity and the petty meanness you only usually find in people who have serious self-esteem problems.
This is pretty cool. Archaeologists are unearthing the ancient city of Gath, home of the Biblical Goliath, and learning a great deal about the Philistines in the process (via Neatorama).
This is also pretty cool. Thomas Dolby’s first album in 20 years will have a “dieselpunk” feel to it.
How not to choke. No, not that kind of choke.
Thursday marks the 222nd anniversary of the French Revolution. David Boaz has some interesting thoughts on it and the ideas it moved forward at the Brittanica blog.