Mountebank Blog

I’m at the keynote address by Jeb Bush at the League for Innovation in the Community College‘s Conference on Information Technology in Tampa (against my better judgment). Since I’m here, I thought I’d try some liveblogging.

So I’m here with my laptop, just reporting it. First some performances. There’s some fun, light, Broadway-esque singing and dancing from a new musical produced by Santa Fe Community College. It’s about a presidential election pitting Walt Disney against Timothy Leary’s cryogenically preserved head. The first number is “the best things in life are French.” A quick reference to this as “different from the recent election.” Does the dissonance strike only me? Clearly not. 😎

Then we have the introduction of the special guest, with some jokes about hurricanes. There’s some talk about how Community Colleges are now important, as we can see because the presidential candidates visited them, and the president mentioned them in the state of the union address to a standing ovation.

Then the president of Santa Fe Community College, Jackson Sasser, (“one of the Texas gang”), comes out to introduce the governor as someone who arrived from Texas “literally with a laptop on his shoulder” (a funny place to keep a laptop). Sasser praises Bush for answering emails, staying in the state during the hurricanes, vetoing bills during the campaign, and meeting with Community College presidents. He says J Bush has given a 14% budget increase for Community Colleges in Florida. I wonder if the people on the ground, who are not introducing keynotes, feel that’s enough. I also wonder if it’s “tied to performance” as the elementary school budgets are here.

There are white cards on chairs for people to submit questions for the governor.

Jeb Bush comes out to a standing ovation from about 2-thirds of the audience! But not the whole audience. Some (including me) are significantly sitting.

Bush brags about his Texan tendency to stretch the truth and exaggerate. In general, his language is almost as ungrammatical, uninspired and pseduo-folksy as his brother. Talks about “I was watchin’ TV…” This seems to be where most of his information comes from.

What’s this Texas business, I wonder–all of a sudden (or maybe not so suddenly) everybody loves frigging Texas. It’s no coincidence, I think, that last night I noticed that Tampa TV plays Dallas reruns every night.

Bush goes on to brag about the practice of holding back third graders. Uses GW Bush’s remarkably disingenuous statement about “some folks want to say that some kids can’t learn because of race or ethnicity. We reject that.”

More about elementary schools, and not much to say about Community Colleges at all. Gives his email address, for those who want to share ideas, as jeb@jeb.org. (“Unless,” he says, “you have a trademark and want to get paid for that idea.” He goes on with the trademark theme “we want to be the Nike, and eat the Ovaltine, of higher education.” Does that mean anything?)

Then stops (after about 15 minutes) to take questions.

Some softball questions–“how did you get to be so great?”

Then one about the digital divide. Bush’s solution? Keep flunking those third-graders!

Next question totally surprises me. Apparently some people want Jeb Bush to run for president in 2008. The question gets asked, and there’s applause! 😯 He says that he “hates the national press.” (even more applause! :shock::shock:) and then says that no, he won’t be running. That’s a relief, at least.

A good question “what do you think about the process of assessing the assessments?” He doesn’t seem to quite know how to answer it. Asks his assistant “Patricia, what’s that thing I’m on? That assessment thing?” Then reiterates that he’s into standards, would like to keep flunking third-graders, and believes that Community Colleges should be “paid for performance.”

In response to some question I didn’t catch, he says that he just went to La Jolla, California, to visit Scripps. He’s impressed by their results in research, because they “don’t function like a university [they’re not one!]. They don’t have to deal with a faculty senate, or the priorities of a faculty. If their administration wants to get something done, they just do it. They’re like a Community College in that way. I like that.” There’s some laughter.

He ends (15 minutes early) after another question or two.

People seem to find anti-intellectualism and arrogant ignorance endearing and admirable. It doesn’t matter which Bush it comes from, a lot of people just eat it up with a spoon.
😥

You heard it here first (well, not really first, I guess).

Mountebank officially endorses John Kerry and John Edwards, thus ensuring a landslide victory.

Well, maybe not landslide, but I do think it’s going to be a solid win. Not a near tie. That’s my prediction, and I’m standing by it!

Vote tomorrow! Vote early, vote proudly, and vote Kerry (on the Working Families line, if you’re in NY, rather than the Democrat–it doesn’t waste the vote, but it gives the message that we really do wish he were more progressive than he is).

Thanks to Alex King‘s site and his very handy WP Grins plugin, I now have a choice of smilies to use in my posts, just by clicking on them, and if I did it right, commenters should have them available, too.
😎

Spent the day today in an elementary school gymnasium, from 930 AM-330 PM. My daughter was playing in a chess tournament, and rather than giving the parents and coach a classroom for waiting and coaching between rounds, as most schools do, this school decided that everyone could just wait in the gym.

No chairs (well, they rounded up a few plastic ones), and literally a hundred or so (but it seemed like 6,565) screaming, running, elementary school chess players.

They sit quietly and concentrate during the games (in another room), but between games, they have to run, scream, wrestle, squeal, chatter, whine, fall, jump, and create agony in any adult in the region.

Upgraded to WP 1.2. That seems to have gone very smoothly indeed. My response was “that’s it? How simple!”

But I also noticed my first comment spam today 🙁 .

So to deal with that, I’ve required an entry for name and email address, and installed a neat little hack from Gudlyf called AuthImage. It means that now, when people try to leave comments, they’ll have another step to go through…but it’s an easy one. Just enter the text that appears in an image (not machine readable!), and the comment should be accepted.

A sad anniversary today.

R.I.P. Scott Daniel Ugoretz.

February 24, 1964-October 28, 1988.

Eminem’s new anti-Bush, pro-voting, rap Mosh has been getting a lot of attention, very well-deserved. Eminem’s been a high-ranker on my Muvo for a long time. Now that I’ve seen the video of Mosh, I’m even more impressed. It’s powerful, innovative in its look, and extremely effective.

The perfect description of work by committee in a bureaucracy–(From Neal Stephenson’s The System of the World):

But more than one apparatus of His Majesty’s Government had become interested, and so it had waxed cumbersome, and been both over-and under-planned. There had been meetings; that much was obvious. Bright young things had attended them, shaped the agendas, had their say, been noted down in the minutes. Someone had anticipated a need to remove the doors of the Vault by main force. Petards, winches, ox-teams had been concatenated to the Bill of Necessaries. Delays and misunderstandings had propagated. No one had showed up at exactly the right time. Important men had missed opportunities to see the humorous side. Obstinacy and indignation were the order of the day.

Sounds like the story of my life, sometimes!

….to get better health care.

I knew there was something I liked about Indiana, although I imagine the percentage might be even higher in some other states!

You are a straight man. You like your job but your cheesy company has a terrible health benefit package with poor coverage. A single male friend of yours works a job with excellent benefits. You could be on your friend’s health plan for the same price you are currently paying, if only you go down to the local courthouse and get legally married. Would you do it?

In a recent Gallup poll, over 76% of single Hoosiers polled said yes, they would participate in a civil union with a person of the same sex if it meant they would have a better health plan.

I wonder if there’s a way Kerry can use this to his advantage? 😉

I wonder how many of that 76% may be (in fact) thinking of some added advantages, like Indianapolis steamfitter Bryan Overton, “I don’t see anything wrong with it…Just because you have a marriage certificate doesn’t mean you have to be in love or bone each other.”

No, Bryan, it doesn’t mean you have to….but if you want to…