BigT’s Roundup - Illiterate Kids, Chavez, Stocks, Clinton, and MORE!

Fine, America’s fourth graders aren’t actually “illiterate” but we are falling behind other countries according to a story from AP.
The last time this test was given was in 2001 and since then our scores
have stayed flat while others have increased. Now we’re ranked twelfth
in the world behind countries like Russia and Hungary. What’s to blame
for our lack of improvement?

The story gives a hint: No Child Left Behind. Bush’s brainchild
educational reform emphasizes reading more but scores are still just
treading water. Personally I think that NCLB is a decent idea but it
doesn’t really address the problem head on. If we want to dramatically
increase scores then we’re going to have to overhaul the education
system with free market reforms. Kids get stuck in failing schools and
many teachers don’t care about improving themselves because there is no
financial incentive for doing so. A move to vouchers would increase our
scores.

Or our scores could be treading water because there has been a
massive influx of non-English speaking immigrants. That could be it.

Venezuela has made an intriguing move of their own
by all but severing ties with their neighbor, Columbia. After getting
the boot from Columbian President Alvaro Uribe from a mediation role
between the Columbian government and leftists rebels (FARC), Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez recalled his ambassador to Columbia and said many
harsh words about his conservative neighbor.

One question: Why would the Columbians call on Hugo Chavez, the
resurgent communist, to help negotiate with leftist rebels in the first
place? I understand that Chavez is close to the rebels but shouldn’t
that have been more a warning sign then anything else? Columbia is
contending that Chavez had unilateral talks with the head of Columbia’s
Army, which is a big time no no. Could he have been planning a leftist
coup in Columbia? Probably not but the end result is that there is no
doubt that he is untrustworthy.



6,000 Sunnis join the fight in Iraq. They’ve joined with the side of democracy because al Qaeda
has killed too many of their brethren to be seen as anything but
murderous thugs. The Sunnis will provide help with a couple hundred
checkpoints and will hopefully stem off the movement of insurgents and
terrorists into the oil rich regions of North Iraq. Oh, and the last
paragraph of the story mentioned how a bunch of refugees were getting
bused into Iraq from Syria. Good news.

Is there good news for our beleaguered markets?
No one can be sure and anyone who puts credence into the day-to-day
fluctuations of the Dow Jones Industrial Average is a fool. The recent
bump in the market is directly attributable to the Fed’s hinting at
future rate cuts. But think about it, has the value of Coca Cola
increased a couple of percentage points since last weak just because of
possible rate cuts? How about any of the other companies? The market is
fickle and reading too much into a good day or a bad day is folly.

Bill Clinton on Iraq in 2004:

That’s why I supported the Iraq thing. There was a lot
of stuff unaccounted for. So I thought the President had an absolute
responsibility to go to the U.N. and say, “Look, guys, after 9/11, you
have got to demand that Saddam Hussein lets us finish the inspection
process.” You couldn’t responsibly ignore [the possibility that] a
tyrant had these stocks. I never really thought he’d [use them]. What I
was far more worried about was that he’d sell this stuff or give it
away. Same thing I’ve always been worried about North Korea’s nuclear
and missile capacity. I don’t expect North Korea to bomb South Korea,
because they know it would be the end of their country. But if you
can’t feed yourself, the temptation to sell this stuff is overwhelming.
So that’s why I thought Bush did the right thing to go back. When
you’re the President, and your country has just been through what we
had, you want everything to be accounted for.

Now he says that he has been against the Iraq War “from the beginning.”
To be fair to the former president he was not explicitly for the Iraq
War. But he was not against it either. He wasn’t for or against the war
and yet here he comes saying he was always against the thing. I don’t
see how this helps Hillary at all but I do see how it helps her husband.

He’s in the news again. Everyone thinks he’s such a brilliant
speaker and he has a blanket immunity from the media to say whatever he
wants and to get away with it. This is just Bill being Bill and he’s
going to make sure that his legacy is intact no matter what.

Remember how I said you shouldn’t put too much into the daily
fluctuations of the market? You shouldn’t put too much into the yearly
fluctuations of the weather either. 2007 is going to be the seventh warmest year on record
(reliable records start around 1860) meaning that the world is slightly
cooling yet still warm. My question: What’s going to happen when there
is significant cooling one year? How about for five years in a row so
that there’s a trend?

This story talks about how Bulgarian bears are already hibernating,
which is right on track based on historical data. If you want to thank
anyone for making sure that the bears got to bed on time then you
should probably be thanking America because we were able to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5% last year. Yeah for us!

And finally, a Dutch lawmaker with a death wish
has said he’s going to make a ten-minute long movie showing how the
Quran has passages in it that are used “by bad people to do bad
things.” Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this whole thing was
this:

The interior and justice ministers said they were
concerned, but believed they had no authority to prevent the lawmaker,
Geert Wilders, from screening his film.

When I first read this passage I thought they must have been talking
about protecting Mr Wilders but I’m not so sure after reading the whole
article a couple of times. I’m now pretty sure now that they are just
talking about shutting this guy up because it might offend some people.
This is just one of many battles that are being waged, mostly in
Europe, between the West and Islam.

These battles mostly do not involve bombs and guns but legalese and
sensitivity codes. I like to believe that the vast majority of Muslims
want to live in peace in their adopted homelands but I’m not so naive
as to think they wouldn’t rather be living under Islamic law with
Islamic leaders. Using hate speech codes and bending over backwards to
not offend minorities is the surest way to lose all Western identity
and this is what is happening in the Netherlands right now.

BigT’s Linkapalooza:

British teacher charged with offending Islam in the Sudan.

Militants march against the teacher.

The
bear wasn’t even named after the prophet, but after the kid who
suggested the name (who’s doubtlessly named after the prophet himself).

40 lashes.

Was Annapolis a false start?

Musharraf has been honorably discharged.

BigT