Me (to the JJ’s cashier wearing beads): Happy Mardi Gras.
JJ’s cashier: Oh, is that what they say today?
Me: No, they mostly say, “Show me your tits,” but I thought that would be awkward coming from a stranger.
The Professor (to me): Especially because you don’t have any beads to give him.
I feel a bit bad for Governor Haslam, as I’m sure that he didn’t intend for his “Running the state more like a business” strategy to mean that the state would be run more like Enron an hour before the Feds moved in. But here we are, learning that, when the going gets tough, the tough get deleting.
First DCS just left out whole swaths of information that was supposed to be public. And now Tennessee’s Virtual Academy, which was supposed to save us from the horrors of public school-dom, just deleted low grades so that it wasn’t immediately obvious how much they’re not doing what they’ve promised to do.
I have a theory that part of what’s going on in this state right now is that we’re living with an unfortunate error in judgement by Republicans. Rather than assume that most Democrats had been operating in good faith, most union leaders, most public workers–you know, most everyone who’s been on their boogeyman list over the years–they really did come to believe that those people were bad and that therefore the things they were doing were bad. And, as a result, whatever their buddies wanted to do that had been thwarted under the decades of Democratic rule must be good ideas unjustly denied.
Now, we’re getting their buddies put into positions of power–say at DCS–and their buddies’ “good” ideas enacted–like the Tennessee Virtual Academy. And their ways of doing things suck, much to the unpleasant surprise of Republicans. After all, they’re the good guys. How can good guys have bad ideas?
I think we’re going to continue to see this kind of shit until Republicans come to realize that even people ostensibly on their side can be doing the wrong thing.
The question then becomes whether Haslam is willing to concede that point and start coming down hard on this crap.
Tiny Cat Pants 