Best interview EVER! Ayaan Hirsi Ali vs Clueless, rich, liberal douche!

[brendala.livejournal.com]

This interview is a few years old. But I think it's worth posting here because the host embodies every stereotype we righties associate with smug, liberal douchebags. Seriously, he's so over the top he comes across like a right wing Colbert!

A recent post here got me thinking of a brave, amazing, and all around kick-ass lady named Ayaan Hirsi Ali. If you don't know who she is, this interview is a really good introduction to her and why she is one of the coolest people who will ever exist ever.

EDIT: The video doesn't seem to want to embed here. So here's the direct link to the interview on YouTube.


( Awesomeness under the cut.... )

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[coldblossom.livejournal.com]

A bit of unintentional education (irony) from the President of the American Federation of Teachers Union. Randi Weingarten is doing a "Ask Me Anything" segment on Reddit. [link] The top-rated question so far:

I hear a lot of people slamming teachers unions because of how easy it is to get tenure and how hard it is to fire bad teachers. Are they correct or not and why?
Edit: To clarify, are the people making the accusations correct?

[link]

Randi's response?

Thanks for asking this question so we can permanently debunk this myth. Teacher unions represent teachers. And it’s management (e.g. principals, school boards, superintendents) who hire and evaluate teachers and grant tenure – not teachers unions. But underlying your question is how to ensure that every student has a good teacher.
So what we try to do as teacher unions is to make sure teachers get the support they need from day one to do their jobs. We also make sure that they are treated fairly. And that means that if they are struggling, they should get help. That also means that shouldn’t be fired for patronage, cronyism, age, political affiliation, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc.
But what it also means that if teachers can’t do their job, after some help, they shouldn’t be there.
Tenure should be about fairness and not an excuse for managers not to manage or an inadvertent cloak of incompetence. But we want to make sure that all kids have great teachers and that teachers have the support they need to do their jobs.
About four years ago, we stepped up and started working with affiliates and districts across the country to create meaningful, comprehensive evaluation systems that were about better feedback and continuous improvement.
Once you have really good evaluation systems, it’s never a concern about teachers being treated fairly (having tenure). It’s always an asset.

[link]

And Reddit proceeds to call him out on his overspun bullsh~t. Now keep in mind that Reddit is extremely liberal. Unions should be welcome there (and somehow I don't think this guy was prepared for this response), but skimming the thread I don't see very many people defending unions at all, and many more are calling the unions out for being self-serving entities that just want money and control (someone even linked to the now-infamous "rubber rooms"), and most of all not serving children as they claim. When unions have lost support on a site like Reddit coupled with what's happened in Wisconsin etc it makes me wonder if its indicative of a greater change in the attitudes towards unions. If liberals are finally seeing that unions are resource leeches with almost zero accountability then it gives me some hope for the future.

(no subject)

[coldblossom.livejournal.com]

I just thought I'd share with y'all really quick in case it develops into....something newsworthy (like the Chinese hacking our interwebs!). 

If you live in the USA, you may have noticed that Facebook is down. Apparently so are many other sites as North America is experiencing widespread internet outages right now. [link]

If you want to keep updated on the outage, you can go here [link].

I am off today and am about to head out for some winter outlet shopping, but for those of you in the office...congratulations! You can be more productive today!

Also, my paper-shredder which is 1 foot away just randomly activated and scared the shinola out of me. 

Carry on!