Bloggers Make Plans To Attend This Summer's Get Away!

Fellow Bloggers:

Once again it's time for you to mark your calendar for the biggest blogging event in the state of Wisconsin. We know most of you borderline bloggers have spent the winter wearing the backside of you boxer shorts out in the basement, ignoring your family and attacking your neighbors. Now it's time to totally make them all happy and leave town for a few days.

This year's line up of workshops and events is even bigger that last year.

Start this big day out at the Intimidation Station. Get the last updates on proper late night anonymous phone calling and threat letter writing. Uncontrollable rage and a half-cocked ego are a terrible thing to waste.

Later join your fellow bloggers in a pity party discussing why you shouldn't have to attend court-ordered anger management classes and walk around town with a monitoring braclet.

Get beauty tips on how not to get those permanent evil wrinkles from being constantly pissed off at everybody who doesn't agree with you, i.e., everybody in the state not attending the day's event.

Our third workshop will discuss the pitfalls that most wing nuts bloggers fall into. We will learn about the "stupidity trap" that overcomes unemployed bloggers who spend too much time discussing the theory of creating wealth during the middle of the day while their significant other is out actually creating wealth. Learn neat ways to make people think you actually work for a living when you don't.


If you make it through these three sessions, you are entitled to a little fun. We will break up into teams of two and put our intimidation, anger and stupidity skills to use in practical, physical ways.
You will also get your chance to put your intimidation, anger and stupidity skills to use on our session on how to talk to the weasels your encounter in the local media. It will help you to succeed in this class if you remember that the local media make way less than those working in government positions but way more than those of you pretending you are unemployed entrepreneurs during the day.


---
And don't forget! Don't go green, get mean!!!

Patrick Henry College: Home schooled Neo-Con Training Ground

The Bible College That Leads to the White House

The campus is immaculate, everyone is clean-cut and cheerful. But just what are they teaching at Patrick Henry College? And why do so many students end up working for George Bush?

Michael Farris, a constitutional lawyer and general counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association, founded the school in 2000 as a "Christian college blending classical instruction with apprenticeship methodology." It prides itself on the high number of White House internships secured by its students, whose SAT scores average over 1300.
Recent Internships Include the Following Offices & Organizations

But when 30% of you faculty resigns over issues of academic freedom, would you guess there
may be an administrative problem? Not if you Patrick Henry College, a school that's become the "ivy league" for home schoolers.

"A contentious debate at Patrick Henry College that began over theological differences, the interpretation of Scripture, and academic freedom has prompted 5 of the school's 16 full-time faculty members to announce they will not be returning to the conservative, Christian college next year. The announcements bring the total number of departing professors to nine in the past year, not including two adjuncts, as well as four senior executives who left in the past 18 months, departing professors say."
See Christianity Today Article:

The Lifeboat
The debate reached a head when Root published an article entitled "Of St. Augustine, the Teacher, and Politics" in the campus publication The Source. The piece argued that St. Augustine "deserves to be called a Saint because he was instrumental in making political philosophy palpable to Christians and vice versa. … [He] taught Christians how to engage the culture around them."

Soon after its publication, Root learned his contract was being "temporarily withdrawn" based on the article as well as a complaint from a student's parent over his use of the "lifeboat example" in class. Root said the illustration was used to explain Thomas Hobbes's state of nature argument. "Acting academic dean [Marian Sanders] told me I couldn't use that any more," said Root. "She said that there are some questions we can't ask in class or entertain."

College President says St. Augustine is in Hell:

According to "resigning" faculty:

Farris, a Baptist minister, (and president of Patrick Henry College) has publicly expressed views that have shocked some professors and students.
"He said St. Augustine was in hell," said Root. "I heard it with my own ears." Other professors and students said Farris has repeatedly disparaged Calvinist theology.


COLLEGE RESPONSE TO MEDIA REPORTS ABOUT DEPARTING FACULTY
(complete with "Talking Points")

Talking Point #4
4. One of the departing professors was dismissed, after announcing his resignation, for subsequently involving students in his classroom in a debate over faculty departures. This professor was asked to discontinue inappropriate, unprofessional classroom conduct and apologize; he refused.

What one Patrick Henry Student thinks of the curriculum.

Dear Diary,

"I sure am learning a lot about government. Mistrusting the government, overthrowing the government, why the government is too intrusive unless it's restricting something you don't like—college is opening up my mind to a lot of new ideas! (Did you know that the Constitution requires a separation of church and state? I always thought this was something the public school kids made up.) "

Jimmy Carter Gets Lashed To The Swift Boat

Here's an interesting link from one of our readers. Let's see, Jimmy Carter left the White House in 1981 and now, 25 years later, the right-wing nuts are giving him the Swift Boat treatment. Remember the day Reagan was inaugurated? He Iranian hostages were released minutes after took his oath. Remember the "October surprise?"

The October Surprise Conspiracy was an alleged plot that claimed representatives of the 1980 Ronald Reagan presidential campaign had conspired with Islamic Republic of Iran to delay the release of 66 Americans held hostage in Tehran until after the 1980 U.S. Presidential election. In exchange for their cooperation, the United States would supply weapons to Iran as well as unfreeze Iran's monetary assets being held by the US government.

Read more: October Surprise Conspiracy.

An add is now running urging the censure of Jimmy Carter. It looks to me like a pre-2008 shot at Senator Feingold, who has called for the censure of President Bush. Put out by a group called Move America Forward, it looks like they actually want to move America backward...to the stone age. Carter's attempts to work at bringing peace to troubled spots in the world gets him on this group's "Hall of Shame." There were no pictures of Rumsfelt and Saddam Hussein. It appears that to build up the war mongers you have to put down the peace makers. I guess all those things that used to make us proud to be Americans have been replaced the ease-dropping, Abugrab-loving, pro-domestic-spying, freedom-loving patriots who firmly believe it's their way of the highway.

See the ad and check out the story at Crooks and Liars.

Letter To This Summer's HSO Intern

We received this letter from Miss Clark, 2005 summer intern for thed HSO, and she asked if we would published for this summer's intern. You'll recall that last summer Ms. Clark uncovered a vast conspiracy that has captivated at least six of the thousands of people living in the quite St. Croix river valley. The six people are all members of Internet blog group know as the On The Border Line Six. The six prefer the name 6OTBL'ers, because they have a real hard time coherently putting together a six word sentence with out inserting the names Ludiwg von Mises or Ayn Rand.

Clark's investigative reporting brought her in contact with gnostic cults, Egyptian sun worshippers, UFOs, the Rothschild banking firm, Pat Robertson, the Ku Klux Klan and two guys who left the school board meeting early. Her efforts to bring the facts of this story to light brought her ridicule and scorn from a tremendous number of members of the sleepy village of Hudson -- at least six of them anyways. What follows is Miss Clark letter to the new intern to help that person understand what awaits them and to hopefully put an end to the rumors and gossip that has permeated the valley like skunk odor.

Dear 2006 HSO Intern:

When I first arrived in Hudson to start my internship at the HSO, I felt scared and almost like an innocent lost sheep. But the valley is so beautiful and the people -- all but six of them -- were so friendly, I knew my internship would be a fun, learning experience and would be an important building block to help me in my journalism career.

After finding an apartment that would take me and my little dog too, I unpacked my things and reported to the HSO office to start my internship. Even though I had an up-to-date road atlas, I quickly realized that I wasn't in Kansas anymore...



I know people think that a glamorous job little being a summer intern at the HSO must pay billions of dollars, but that's not the case. By the end of the summer I had learned that trying to get an extra dollar from the Holy Scared Oracle management team is probably almost as hard as it is to get a tax dollar from an OTBL'er. In fact, I quickly learned that they expected me to get hopping right away and my pay would keep me a vegetarian throughout the summer.

Right off the bat, Meg, the veteran reporter, took me under her wing and filled me in on the details of life in the valley. The way she explained things was so enchanting. See told me, if I ever had problems, just go down on Second St., look the the West and go hit happy hour at Dick's. When I asked what good that would do, she smiled and said it was a hell of a lot better that closing your eyes, clicking your Nike's together and hoping to wake up in Kansas. I would soon find out that she was correct. And of course, all the staff at the HSO were so helpful: Doug, Maggie, everybody and even old Willis -- and he's so old he squeaks worse that the Tin Man!

After the school board exit, the borderline monkeys went ape poop and tore the stuffing out of many good citizens. This behavior
continued right on through the school board elections. For the most part, the borderline bloggers had a total melt down and didn't know witch end was up. After the school board meetings, when I went back to the office to type up my story on the meeting, I made up so really interesting lyrics for a Johnny Paycheck song. I retitled the song "Duct Tape This Job And Stick It." By nature I shy, so you'll have to take my word that the words get really good about three hours into Dick's Happy Hour.

The usually international intrigue surrounding the city-school-police Gordian triangle of community conspiracy continued to dominate school board politics as city workers continued to pick up signs to close to the road. After their school board candidate disappeared on the vote-count radar screen, the borderlines continued to be silent about the antics of the President they supported so vigorously. Now are positioning themselves to eat their own. They have started bashing the G-O-Pee Party and local elected state officials Kitty Litter and Shifty Shelia.

So remember dear 2006 HSO intern, the most important tip I can give you on surviving your sentence at the HSO is to remember that Happy Hour at Dick's begins at 5 PM. If you're like me, you will switch to the public relations track in your journalism school next Fall semester.

Sincerely,
Miss Clark

PS: "Love" isn't the four-letter word that comes into my mind when I'm think on the borderline.

Quote to Ponder: All Years of Schooling Are Not Equal

"Almost every economic and social policy analyst recommends improved education, especially for low-income groups, as one of the surest ways to achieve shared prosperity. There is a question, however, of whether new jobs require higher skills or whether the availability of better-educated workers enables employers to hire them for jobs requiring less education. Confusion over the relationship between education and economic outcomes results in part from using years of schooling as a measure of educational achievement (i.e., skills and knowledge). Obviously, all years of schooling are not equal. There often are very different outcomes when educational achievement is measured by objective achievement assessments and compared with economic performance or social pathologies. It also clearly makes a difference what kinds of knowledge and skills people have, not how many years they spend in school."

Ray Marshall
Former US Secretary of Labor

A Year Of Blogging...

It's interesting to see how far this blogging business has gone over the past year. There's a lot of motion but not much momentum. There's more warts than beauty marks. To my OTBL friends I will say once again, you guys make better waiters than customers; you can dish it out, but you can't take it!

Read the rest of the sory...read on.