Arizona: Virginia

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

How do you take the textbook definition of a "safe" Republican district (a Democrat has not represented the region since 1854), a no-brainer that the Republican will win by default against token Democratic opposition, and lose the seat for the first time in 155 years? By caving in to pressure from the far-right extremist fringe Teabagger Taliban and the Mighty Wurlitzer of right-wing conservative "entertainment" personalities.

Blue Dog Democrat Bill Owens, the token opposition, won a stunning victory in the special congressional election in New York's 23rd congressional district only because the GOP Taliban and the conservative "entertainment" personalities declared civil war against GOP moderates and the GOP establishment, demanding ideological purity to conservativism - as they have defined it.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Off-year elections are typically the subject of wild speculation and over interpretation by political observers. The conventional wisdom (CW) of the media villagers and Beltway bloviators is that the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia are "bellwether elections" that are a "referendum" on newly elected presidents and are predictive of the outcome of mid-term elections.

Sorry to burst your Beltway bubble boys, but as Larry J. Sabato, Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, has noted What are the national implications of the "mini mid-terms" in Virginia and NJ?

We go through this exercise every four years, just like clockwork.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Arizona may be the only state in the nation where mothers can no longer tell their children that some day they can grow up and be President of the United States.

 — John McCain paraphrasing a joke by Morris K. Udall in May 2003

What is Paul Beddard, the Washington Whispers blogger at the conservative U.S. News & World Report smoking? 5 Conservatives to Watch for 2012 Presidential Race:

Key conservatives tell Whispers that there are five lawmakers poised to lead the conservative populists, perhaps all the way to the 2012 or 2016 presidential campaigns. One is in the Senate: Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, the GOP whip.

by David Safier
This is one of a series of posts, Peeking into Charter Schools. If you have information you wish to contribute, you can post comments or email me: safier@schooltales.net.

This is a first post in my attempts to try and make sense of the Imagine Schools in Arizona. I'm plowing new territory, since I've seen no reporting on the 15 Imagine charter schools in the state. And since the data the state collects from charter schools is overly broad and very sketchy, it's difficult to find solid data to work with.

So I'm doing my best here. Since we have literally hundreds of people in the state who know this subject better than I -- current and former employees of the Imagine Charter schools, not to mention the thousands of students and children -- I hope people will correct me when I'm wrong and add more information to the discussion.