Don serves Teabonics to the moronics

     The Orange Juice blog’s musical progressive, Vern Nelson, posted today about San Juan Capistrano’s Fourth of July “Tea Party.” [CORRECTION: Vern posted about a "Tea Party" event that occurred in SJC a day earlier--on Saturday.]
     Vern reports that what he experienced today was “darkly fascinating.” Check out his piece.
     One of the Tea People (or, anyway, one of the purveyors of tea) is our own trustee Don Wagner, who is running for State Assembly. Reports Vern:

     For the first time I was able to hear [him] speak. His heavily Glenn Beck-influenced history lesson, centered on tough-guy Jefferson quotes and standard calls-to-arms-against-tyranny, was most notable for his innovative use of the word “encrosion” – apparently a Jabberwocky-style conflation of “encroachment” and “erosion” – as in “their encrosion of our borders.”
     Or was it just “Teabonics,” as Gus Ayer calls it?
     One theme sounded in nearly every speech was the eerie similarity between the circumstances which drove our Founding Fathers to rebellion against the British, to what we patriots are facing now under President Obama and Speaker Pelosi.
     As I observed to my traveling companion, “That is so true! Remember all that access to healthcare King George tried to foist on the poor colonists?”
     Snarked he in response, “Yeah, they must have felt like right fools, having elected him after he campaigned on that issue!”

     Well, OK, if you wanted to know what Don squawked about at this Tea thing, that doesn’t tell you much, but you should read the rest of Vern’s piece anyway. It provides a pretty good picture of who these local Tea People are. They ain't much.
     Evidently, at its peak, the crowd today comprised one hundred “patriots,” including (by Vern's count) about a dozen rednecks. (Not included: 40 vendors.)
     That’s just pathetic. Maybe Lindsey Graham is right: this Tea Party thing is just gonna peter out for lack of coherence--or too much Sleepytime.
     But they’re not over yet, and our Don has decided to serenade ‘em while they're still hopped up.
     That’s too bad. Don’s a smart guy. It’s sad to see him wooing a bunch of illiterate, racist morons.

Baja California, late 1970

The beach of San Felipe, on the western shore of the Sea of Cortez,

nearly forty years ago.

(Click on the photos to enlarge them.)

This (U.S. military) amphibious vehicle was used for shrimp fishing.

Don't know what the sub was for

Fabulous beaches, warm water, gorgeous sand dunes

I was fifteen at the time. Ray, at right, would have been nine.

Downtown San Felipe

Church in the background

Yes, we really did drive through the sand in a '65 Lincoln Continental—the kind with the clever suicide doors.

One time, on the freeway, Ray reached over and opened the door (in back). It flew open with great force—cuz it was a suicide door! I caught Ray (he wasn't in a seat belt--maybe we didn't have them; don't remember). The kid never stopped squirming around. Sheesh.

I've simplified the map to match my fifteen-year-old concept of Baja

"Modern" San Felipe: a different kettle of fish entirely

The quiet transformation of American higher ed

Tenure, RIP: What the Vanishing Status Means for the Future of Education (Chronicle of Higher Education)

     Some time this fall, the U.S. Education Department will publish a report that documents the death of tenure. ¶ Innocuously titled "Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2009," the report won't say it's about the demise of tenure. But that's what it will show. ¶ Over just three decades, the proportion of college instructors who are tenured or on the tenure track plummeted: from 57 percent in 1975 to 31 percent in 2007….

     Yep, in many sectors of higher ed, essentially, tenured professors will grow older and retire, and as they leave, by degrees, tenure will leave with them. As we all know, for many years, instruction has trended toward reliance on adjunct (part-timer) instructors, who have few rights and little authority.
     So it's a movement toward de facto top-down-itude, and that will continue, only at a faster pace.
     Meanwhile, the for-profit institutions are donning ever-brighter clown pants and ever-snidelier grifter smiles; they'll sell more and more miracle online snake oil. They're luring more of the "customer base"—those millions of marks with their expensive loan money, made possible by Uncle Sam, a clueless shill, and the ultimate mark.
     It doesn't look good for American higher ed.