One for the Money, Two for the Show...

1. Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast on the plight of the unemployed, and what our politician/representatives are doing about it.

   This tactic of pointing people's attention down the economic ladder to the boogeyman of choice while the people up the ladder take the last few bucks out of our back pockets has worked for thirty years, convincing Americans that THEY are somehow different, that poverty will NEVER affect THEM, because THEY aren't LIKE those OTHER PEOPLE.
   
   Except that in the Great Recession of the Oughts, yes, they are. The only question is how many of them know it, and how long it will be before they join them.

   Note first comment, which points up the overall attitude Jill is decrying exactly.
2. The Daily Howler on education, test scores, liberals, poor children, and Gingrich:

   Which of those people has ever told the public about those rising NAEP scores? Has Professor Dyson, for all his greatness, ever stooped to such a task? For all his thunder, do you think he knows? How about well-scripted Joan? Indeed, has any one of those fiery figures cared enough about “really poor children” to examine those gold standard data—the data our educational experts swear by, as long as the data can be used to tell us a gloomy tale?

   Warning: He quotes a succession of people who use Dickens or Dickensian as an example. Nice that the pundits have caught up with me.