One Week Until The Iowa Caucuses (and a movie review)

We are once again going to talk about Hillary, and then I think we might take a couple of days off of politics before hitting them again as the Caucuses are upon us. Cindy and I are taking the kids up to Dublin, California near San Francisco for the weekend, and I'm going to try to have something non-Hillary to discuss tomorrow, but just in case I don't have time, I already have my next Hillary blog ready to go.

But before we discuss Hillary today, I want to give a quick movie review. Not so much a review as a reaction. Last night the missus and I went to see Charlie Wilson’s War. What I expected, considering that the film was written by Aaron Sorkin, was a liberal film, and an entertaining one, and I got both.

Sorkin is probably best known as the creator of The West Wing, and he also created what I consider to be the greatest show ever on television: Sports Night. The writing is always the real star of a Sorkin project. While Sorkin definitely has a liberal agenda in all of his projects, you can almost forgive it due to the sterling writing. As far as Charlie Wilson’s War is concerned, I just have two things to say about it. Number One, it is a highly entertaining movie – go see it. Secondly, for those of you who support an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, you MUST see this movie. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by sharing with you the quote from Charlie himself that closes out the film: "These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. Then we f@*%ed up the endgame."

And those same liberals calling for a quick withdrawal from Iraq are going to F-up that endgame as well. Some may see Charlie Wilson as the hero who defeated the Soviets. Others will see him (or more precisely, the government that refused to finish the job (sound familiar?)) as the one who gave the Taliban their start. I think this film does a fine job of showing how Liberal good intentions can lead to disastourus consequences. Which is a perfect segue into todays Hillary discussion:

Today we’re going to discuss Hillary and Education Reform. Bill Clinton was elected Governor in 1978, and during his first term Hillary began her career at The Rose Law Firm. Clinton lost his bid for reelection in 1980, but regained the Governors Mansion in 1982. During his second term, Hillary decided that she needed to move into the public policy arena, and she decided education would be the arena she moved into. Actually, it wasn’t so much that SHE decided on education, but one of the first things that greeted Gov. Clinton was a State Supreme Court decision declaring the states entire education-financing system unconstitutional. Of course Hillary fails to mention the court order as a motivation in her autobiography.

Anyhow, Bill was left with a choice: Cut aid to wealthy neighborhoods, or raise taxes to fund the poor ones. Since Bill lost reelection after his first term due to a tax increase, he was understandably gun shy. However, polling found out that the people of Arkansas would accept a full one cent increase in the state sales tax IF it truly led to improved education. At the time Arkansas ranked 49 out of 50 states, behind only Mississippi.

So Hillary led an education reform in Arkansas. Her reform was based on several ideals: Raising both test performance AND teacher pay, giving schools “report cards” based on student performance, getting additional help to the schools that did not meet standards and, if they continued to not meets standards, the school would be decertified and closed. In other words, Hillary implemented “No Child Left Behind” before Bush, almost word for word.

The benchmark of her program was to test all teachers, to offer training to those on the fence, and to get rid of the worst of the worst. After all, this is a state that had a teacher teaching her students about the horrific events of World War Eleven – That is how she read World War II.

When the teacher scores came in, Bill and Hillary were shocked. The teachers of Arkansas had failed miserably, and if the Clintons stuck to their guns – and their plan – they would have to fire greater than 50 percent of the teachers. And minority teachers took an even bigger hit. So true to form, the Clintons did what they do best – they took a poll. They polled the citizens of Arkansas to see what percentage of the teachers they would feel comfortable losing. Of course the REAL answer should have been any that didn’t meet the minimum standards. Their answer was 10%.

So true to form, the Clintons fired the bottom 10%. Hey, give them credit for at least doing that, but once again we have an example of Hillary (and Bill) “drawing a line in the sand”, and then changing the line based on a poll. The good news is thanks to Bill and Hillary’s “No Hillbilly Left Behind” strategy, Arkansas soared from 49th in the nation to 48th in only eight years.

The better news is that under eleven years of Republican Governor Mike Huckabee, Arkansas now ranks 32nd in the Nation.And this is the women that so many people want to run our country.

I just don’t get it.