Liberal Blogs and Education

When I first got interested in blogging, I had been reading a variety of liberal blogs - from the Great Orange Satan (otherwise known as the Daily Kos) to Talking Points Memo to Talk Left to AmericaBlog to MyDD to Firedoglake to Atrios.

As I have grown more and more concerned about the consequences of "education reform," I have noticed that most of these blogs either ignore the Obama policies on education (that's most of 'em) or quietly support them (that's some of the posters over at the Daily Kos.)

I understand - as a teacher, government policy for education directly affects me, so I am interested in the issue very much while many of the other blogs I mentioned above aren't so much.

Also, a few of them - like the Daily Kos and Talking Points Memo - have become shill sites for Obama.

Were Bush pursuing the policies Obama is pursuing on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the financial bailouts, the renomination of Bernanke at the Fed, the kid glove treatment of BP over the oil spill, they would be HAMMERING the president over them.

Instead, many Kossacks and Josh Marshall and Company at Talking Points provide excuses for why Obama's centrist-right political agenda is great.

That's fine - there were plenty of shills on the right during the Bush years who twisted themselves into pretzels to support his Medicare drug law or other Big Government spending policies who would have been screaming if Dems tried the same thing.

So now we have a bunch of water carriers on the left too.

I've pretty much stopped reading all of those liberal sites except for a few - like Firedoglake and Atrios.

While Atrios has commented here and there about charters (especially about the corruption involving charters in Philly), he has mostly steered clear of the issue of education reform.

But I want to note that both Firedoglake and another lefty blog - Open Left - have been very good on the issue.

So if you're looking for some lefty blogs that don't carry water for the corporate whore in the White House who wants to kick somebody's ass for the oil spill but doesn't know whose to kick (HINT: It's green and yellow and looks like the sun), try Firedoglake and Open Left.

As for the rest, I've moved on from them.

If I want to see somebody carry water, I read how Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water...

As for the charter shills at Gotham Schools, well, I'll have more on them in a bit. I want to work off something NYC Educator said about them in this post.