Christmas Baking

No, I don't do it like this although it has me ROTFLMAO.

Reject Jore

Tacking onto Shane's post, let me reprint the letter that Jerry Reckin had published in the Daily Interlake yesterday:

Reject Jore

The conservative Republicans in the Montana House of Representatives have chosen to perform an all out assault on public education in our state.

The appointment of Constitution Party Rep Rick Jore to chair the House Education Committee will most certainly be a setback to education in Montana. I can only think of two motives for this conservative Republican appointment: 1)they are trying to court his vote on many other different issues, or 2) they agree with his ideology on education, which includes eliminating public schools. (He refers to them as government schools.)

He has been known to say that "I am ashamed to say that my oldest three went to government schools." Jore's five children are home schooled. He favors greatly decvreasing funding for "government schools" and abolishing property taxes , which fund all public schools K thru college.

In Montana, 93 percent of our students attend public schools. Perhaps he is of the opinion that an uneducated electorate is easier to influence and control. Nothing is perfect, and certainly our schools can improve and continue to advance our highly technical world. In Montana we must not drop further behind in our effort to educate all our children to the fullest extent of our ability. Our economy, our culture and our very way of life depend on it.

It is very unfortunate that the conservative Republicans have made the decision to be part of the problem rather than the solution. Let's continue to support our students with a positive attitude and provide them with a quality education by rejecting this appointment.

Well said Jerry, you are a handsome in print as you are in person!

Koopman and Jore Spell Education Horror

There have been several posts about the Montana House Republicans heavy handed bullying tactics in anticipation of the upcomming legislative session.

I am most concerned with at the moment is that our House Education Committee lacks Montana values due to Republican Party's blowhard decision to appoint Rick Jore, to the position of committee chair. Not content to settle for giving Montanan's a kick in the b***s, House Speaker Scott Sales decided to follow up by giving the Vice Chair appointment to kooked out Koopman who does not appear to be any saner than the preacher I heard screaming on the radio that "SANTA IS SATAN! WAKE UP AMERICA! SANTA IS SATAN". Really not somebody we want in charge of our children's education . Really not.

Fortunately LaNette Diaz and the great folks at Forward Montana have taken it upon themselves to put up this online petition asking Speaker Sales to appoint new education committee leadership. Moorcat takes it a few steps further, and I am going to remind everybody that our representatives are members of our own communities who need to respond to us.

Give them a call, send them a postcard, write to your local paper or call your local talk show asking them to apply pressure now when it would do the most good. Heck, have a get-together with your neighbors and invite your Rep over to hear your concerns.

Most of all, pay attention and take an appropriate action.

Thank-You, Senator Tester

Icy roads didn't stop Jon and Sharla from meeting us at the Central School Museum so he could let us all know his plans, thank us for the work we did and answer some of our questions.

It was so good to hear what he had to say about not accepting meals, travel, trips, about how his mom called him to the matt because his ethics reform did not include campaign finance reform.

Most moving was the woman who gave Jon a picture of her son who did a year in Iraq and the grandmother who gave him a photo of her grandson who will be headed there soon.

Jon made sure we knew where his office will be, informed us that it is up to us to make sure that he knows what is going on because news doesn't usually make it to D.C. and to keep our lines of communication open.

How cool is that?