Well….it only took two days for the righties to start attacking Obama for his speech in K’zoo Monday. I don’t want to gloat (well…yes I do) but I called that Monday while the speech was going on. Okay, I’ll be back after lunch to finish this…yep, just a teaser…you go to lunch, too, and there will something waiting for you if you’re not too motivated on hump day. More later…

Okay…I’m back….and I’m going call this idiot out from the Detroit News…Manny Lopez, in his column in the News Tuesday, made a huge point of the fact that the Kalamazoo Promise scholarships are funded by private donors and that Obama didn’t kiss their butts enough in his speech. His premise was that there is no need for any government involvement in higher education since “see, private funding works in K’zoo” but what he fails to admit or realize is the fact that it has been the gutting of government programs that help the middle and lower class afford college by the Repubs that made private funding necessary. Yeah, I agree it would be great if some of his repub buddies, for example the trader at Goldman that made a BILLION dollars in compensation, would give some back.

But, there is an underlying flaw in that logic that we all should be aware of, and that is that if it is private money, there can be strings attached to it that could advance the repubs agenda. What if a student that accepted the scholarship would be required to attend a specified and well-recognized conservative school that would do the same thing the righties are so scared of on the left; that is “indoctinate” them in the ideas that would perpetuate another class of leaders that won’t give a damn about the middle class.

Doesn’t anyone see that private funding would be just another instance where the lower and middle class will then have to go to the rich with their hands out and beg for a college education?

I’m sure they will say that that kind of stuff doesn’t happen in the private sector, that the market will decide and support the “right” ideas…well…all I have to say about their blind allegiance to the market and to the goodwill of the rich is to look back at Enron, BP, Goldman, AIG…and the list goes on and on.

We should not bet the future of the education of our children on the fleeting goodwill of people who are so insulated from the struggles of normal folk…

Manny…this is not about Obama’s agenda or your feared socialist takeover of the US..this night was about celebrating the fact that these kids had done something special, so special that the President of the United States saw the need to recognize that fact, and for you to politicize what is a wonderful part of America is the kind of cynicism and division we do not need right now…geez…