Sarah Palin, the ex-beauty queen turned small-town mayor turned GOP VP Pick, is a goldmine. From the video of her sportscasting days, to all kinds of ridiculous photos, to various and hilarious quotes on topics like the pledge of allegiance ( “If it was good enough for the founding fathers it’s good enough for me” ) to the Vice Presidency ( “Someone needs to tell me what the vice-president does” ) to Iraq. Oh, and then there’s her seeming affiliation with the creepy/secessionist Alaska Independance Party. Oh, and the fact that she’s under investigation for improperly firing state troopers. Oh yeah, wait, she also ran a soft money group for indicted Alaska Senator Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens.

The bottom line: Beneath the bald exploitation of passing over many more qualified GOP women (Hello! Kay Bailey Hutchinson!) and choosing a completely inexperienced and seemingly unvetted yahoo from Alaska, there is something fundamentally McCain about the decision.

McCain, you see, is a gambler. Not a poker player a la Barack Obama. McCain, like many a rich white man with a flashy, impulsive streak and poor judgment, likes to shoot craps

This being said (and you can read more about how McCain is a hardcore gambling addict in this excellent TIME piece from this week), it appears his current gamble is getting dicier and dicier by the day.

Not 72 hours after he named Sarah Palin as his VP pick, the Palins are announcing that their 17 year old daughter Bristol is preggo, and will marry the father in a shotgun wedding, presumably some time before the election.

HOLY CRAP! After the jump, the many reasons why this is significant. (more…)

As students start dragging their beach-burned, hungover asses back to college in our little seven-school town, here’s an oldie (like, at least a year old!) but goodie, to remind ourselves, while our parking spaces and peace of mind disappear, why we love them — and their money — so much.

The Hipster Olympics:

The New York Times has a piece today on a RI Training School program that puts juvenile offenders to work restoring old New England diners through the New Hope Diner Project. The youths restore the diners’ decrepit buildings, work the griddles and cash registers, and will (eventually, hopefully) manage the actual businesses sometime in the future. Pam Belluck writes:

“The whole poetry behind it is that these are kids who have been pretty much cast away emotionally and criminally, getting a chance to restore beloved eateries that have been cast off from society, too,” said Daniel Zilka, the acting director of the American Diner Museum, who rescues decrepit diners and helps run the project. “If they continue on the path that they’ve been moving upon they would end up in an adult correctional facility. This is probably their last opportunity.”

The offenders at the detention center, some as young as 13, have been convicted of crimes like sexual assault, armed robbery, breaking and entering, and drug offenses, and sentenced to serve 6 to 18 months. The center, the Rhode Island Training School, also has maximum security for offenders including murderers, but offenders qualify for the project only if they behave well enough to move to the regular detention population. They must also have, or nearly have, a high school equivalency diploma.

Work release is an important reentry mechanism for many offenders, but should these youths be encouraged to spend their time studying and developing more general skills before jumping into this line of work? Or do programs like this create order, stability, and options for young people with seemingly no way out?

Calling all teachers! Are you feeling an uncontrollable impulse to text your 13-year old student/s and let them know the ways in which you are in love with them? Stop! It will backfire, as the above video illustrates.

In other sexy-texting-related news, embattled Detroit Mayor and Sexy-Texter Kwame Kilpatrick will apparantly attempt to argue in court that no one can prove that someone didn’t hack into his phone and send multiple sexy-texts to his chief-of-staff/lover. Good luck, Kwame!

You’re right, it makes no sense, but General Colin Powell—formerly Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—will deliver the keynote address for the U.S. Scholar-Athlete Games—currently taking place at the University of Rhode Island—tomorrow night at the Providence Performing Arts Center. The speech will take place at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a Question and Answer period. Tickets are on sale at the PPAC box office and cost $20 for adults and $15 for students 18 and younger.

And, the ProJo reports:

Schedule permitting, Powell may also lead the games’ first “peace walk ” by about 1,000 competitors and their coaches in downtown Providence tomorrow afternoon. The walk is scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m. from the park on South Main Street near the Licht Judicial Complex and proceed along the river walk to Burnside Park. Since the games began, in 1993, the goal has been to eventually hold a “peace summit,” said Dan Doyle, the games’ founder and executive director of the Institute for International Sport, which sponsors the games. The peace walk is the first in a series of events meant to lead up to the summit, he said.

And, no, I’m not paying $20 either.

Miller, who famously testified on behalf of the textbook he wrote after Georgia tried to slap an “Evolution is a Theory” bumper sticker on all of their biology primers, and in the landmark Dover, PA case, is a big macher on College Hill.

Alright, alright, Rhode Island State Legislature, I get it.

I used to treat my finances the same way you are treating the budget. I liken it to the way I used to use my credit card. I’d charge and spend without really recognizing that eventually, I’d have to pay it all of. And I’d have to pay it with interest.

I remember the attitude I carried around with that credit card. And I get the sneaking suspicion that our elected officials have adopted the same ideas - Why pay now when you can pay later?

See, the framing of the budget issue makes it seem like the legislature is doing us a favor, like they are being fiscally responsible, like they are “cutting back” on unnecessary programs. In truth, they are screwing over, like, everyone in Rhode Island. Farmers, college students, any student, state employees, immigrants, and children, etc., etc., etc. (more…)

Add this to the list of short-sighted money-savers being perpetrated in the name of balancing the budget. Turns out there was plenty of fat in the child-care subsidy system. A recent study by Ready to Learn Providence (a program under The Providence Plan) shows how precarious the ‘working’ status of our working poor is right now. Next stop? Welfare.

Between February and April 2008, R2LP conducted a survey of 482 licensed center-based and home-based providers throughout Rhode Island to investigate the impact of the revised eligibility requirements for the state’s Child Care Assistance Program…. The 2007-2008 state budget restricted eligibility for child-care subsidies to families falling below 180 percent of the federal poverty level – down from the previous threshold of 225 percent. At that time, a family of three at 225 percent of the federal poverty level had an income of $37,350; at 180 percent it was $29,888. The average annual cost for full-time preschool care for one child ranges from $8,140 for family child care to $8,736 for center-based care, according to R.I. Kids Count. The average cost of infant care in a center is $10,557.

The new requirements disqualified about 1,900 children statewide.

Although I’m terrified and bored by anything that has a website that lists bell hooks first under recommended reading, this event at New Urban Arts tonight sounds pretty neat:

 “ I WANT TO DO THIS ALL DAY“

Audio Documentary on Radical Education

    In March and April of 2006, Amina Althea and Amber Woods visited 23 radical learning spaces, including free schools, charter and privateschools, community centers, and after school programs. They interviewed students, parents, teachers, and administrators about creating and sustaining these non-compulsory, non-coercive environments for learning and projects.
Based on these interviews and extensive research, Althea and Woods produced an audio documentary, entitled “I Want To Do This All Day.” It illuminates a grassroots movement of people and communities taking power over their own education and creating learning environments based on freedom, cooperation and social change.
In May of 2008, the pair will launch the documentary with a national tour of 17 cities. At each stop four dancers and two visual artists will offer a performance piece, that weaves excerpts from the documentary with dance, song, and projections to bring to life the stories of young people making their own paths in learning and life.

With public schools cutting programs faster than you can say Every Child Left Behind and private education out of the reach of most people, it definitely makes sense for a movement to start happening right about now.

Sliding scale $3-6 no one turned away for lack of funds

Does it count as shameless self-promotion to promote my promotion of a friend’s event? Hopefully not. Scope my piece in this week’s Phoenix on the upcoming criminal justice reform festival, Justice or Just Us?, taking place at AS220 real soon.

Many of you know that, for the past two years, I have been facilitating arts and writing workshops at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) through Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression ( SPACE).

This Sunday, May 4, SPACE will be opening its annual exhibit of art and writing from the ACI. The exhibit will take place in the Youth Gallery at AS220, 115 Empire Street from 4 PM to 7 PM.

In addition to displaying art and writing, we will be reading selections of poetry written by the men and women who participate in our workshops. We will also be distributing our annual Zine, a collection of their work. Refreshments will be served. If you can’t make it on Sunday, the exhibit will be up in the AS220 Youth Gallery through July; please stop in and check it out!

More about SPACE and the exhibit after the jump.

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Don’t spvill yuh kawfee oa nuthin but the Juhnal sez that:

While it might be a badge of honor for some, others with a wicked strong accent might want to get rid of it.

Whether considered an impediment to clear business interaction or a source of embarrassment, many Ocean Staters have turned to an accent-reduction class offered by the community-based education network, Learning Connection.

What does Don Bousquet think about all this?

Liberal columnist and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Anthony Lewis, will be speaking Wednesday, March 19th, at the Roger Williams University School of Law. Following the lecture, Mr. Lewis will sign copies of his books, including Freedom For the Thought We Hate. (Turns out the First Amendment was designed for guys like Ralph Papitto. But shunning is still pretty effective.)

lecture March 19/starts 5PM/ RWU School of Law rm 283

RSVP by March 12 to Barbara Slover whose email addy is, I kid you not, bslover@rwu.edu. Or call (401) 254-4573.

Well, maybe he didn’t. Yet.

Carcieri cut state funding for a program that brings education to kids with cancer. KIDS WITH CANCER. How do you get behind that? Even the most whiny fiscally conservative Rhode Islander would find a way to save a program for KIDS WITH CANCER:

Since 1977, the school at Hasbro Children’s Hospital has provided academics to patients as one of the oldest hospital-based education program of its kind in the country.

For two hours a day, these children are not cancer patients and cystic fibrosis sufferers — they’re just students learning to read and write like their peers, succeeding and sometimes failing.

Thanks to the Providence Journal’s obsessive 24-hour, 7 day a week coverage of the budget crisis, the cuts to the Hasbro Children’s Hospital program were brought to light. Suddenly the governor’s office began scrambling to save the program, claiming that they didn’t know the budget cuts would effect KIDS WITH CANCER: (more…)

Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?