Jackson Jambalaya

I think he is right, that it is one of the small pieces of the answer... a very small piece.

i am not sure why Mississippi has failed to keep pace in education but my instincts tell me that it is a function of a welfare system that takes motivation away form individuals.

not articulated very well, clumsy as hell in fact, but the idea he fumbled to convey is that parental involvement is crucial to academic success. who disagrees with that?

He's an easy target...

Sadly, he's like the rest of our statewide Republican leadership in that when he's in a forum where he has to engage in a dialogue, he will appear as what he is; just not very smart. And in Phil's case, he's come off worse because he's able to combine dumbassery with a condescending tone. I can't believer his handlers let him even participate in that. They could take notes from Palazzo's handlers.

Like them or not, at least Lott, Cochran, and Barbour could get behind a microphone and automatically be an embarrassment. Usually.

He's such a moron. As a working mother, this is infuriating.

I guess Satan just keeps on winning when the little lady isn't barefoot and pregnant and being seen and not heard. It all started going downhill when they let us drive, vote and start owning property, huh Phil?

Absolutely ridiculous.

Disclosure: I am a republican. I found myself frustrated that Jackson elected Chokwe. I thought that they voted with emotion and not foresight. They elected someone they thought would protect them from oppressorship and hold their values safe. I now realize that Mississippi did the exact same thing when we elected Phil to be governor. He has no plan. He has no vision. He has extreme ideals that don't involve wisdom. He was elected with the same fervor that elected Chokwe. We Mississippians are the same as the Jacksonians.

In this day in age, officials cannot afford to say ANYTHING off the cuff or think something out loud. I'm not sure we are better off in an environment of polished prepared speeches and no ability to explore answers to touchy subjects. There is no telling what kind of wrong opinions our founding fathers had about certain topics, but at least they didn't have the internet and twitter to worry about every time they breathed. And they were all better leaders than the empty suits we have today (in both parties)

Who is being ridiculous @1:08? Hello Kettle? This is the Pot... You're Black.

While he certainly butchered what he was trying to get across, and still isn't really addressing the root problem, he isn't entirely wrong.

In the past, women were either homemakers or teachers. This meant that a large majority of the most intelligent women were in the education field and it showed. Now that women are able to get high-paying jobs in virtually any industry, those women are no longer sitting in a classroom making jack-shit. With the few exceptions of the fabulous ladies that do the job because they truly love the field, you end up with a bunch of people that could not do anything else... and then you can't get rid of them.

The problem is that teaching is no longer valued as a true profession because we can't pay teachers what they deserve. We can't pay teachers what they deserve because nobody can figure out how to fairly tie it to a standard while taking things like a student's home-life into account. The whole while unions protect the garbage that needs to be removed.

"Like them or not, at least Lott, Cochran, and Barbour could get behind a microphone and automatically be an embarrassment. Usually. "

So, being an embarrassment to the state is a good thing, is it? How, exactly, did those three "automatically be an embarrassment. Usually."

1:58

There was a typo.

Should have read:

"Like them or not, at least Lott, Cochran, and Barbour could get behind a microphone and NOT automatically be an embarrassment. Usually. "

yep, no way to slice it, that wasnt a very bright comment.

Most of mississippi populace has always been poor and uneducated.

The one area where the leadership could have made a difference is in bringing prosperity and building an education system that gives the uneducated a chance.

I am all in as for recognizing self reliance and individuals taking personal responsibility but you cant blame a poor kid for being born poor.

I still think that the welfare system that we have created to help people has forever hurt those it was intended to help.

Bryant is correct. Sadly too many will get their panties wadded and be unable separate their personal emotion from fact. In our all or nothing society, far too many individuals will jump to the conclusion that Bryant must mean the progress women have made is wrong and all women should stay at home.

Quite frankly, the divorce rate has skyrocketed and both father and mother have to work to make modern ends meet. Panty wadders will blame the education system when it's them who is to blame. Motivation to learn, goals, accountability, encouragement, etc are all things from home. Both parents stressed and stretched from jobs obviously equates to less attention to those areas on a consistent basis.

For every action there is an equal an opposite action

"Sadly too many will get their panties wadded and be unable separate their personal emotion from fact."

Yeah, those stupid women, biologically incapable of being smart.

Unlike Phil Bryant.

I'm pretty sure that @2:29 is referring to you and your ilk, @3:44.

Actually, I have always thought that public education began to suffer in direct relationship to the advancement of women's rights issues in this country. Now, before you scream at me, here's why. In the "olden days" women in general were denied access to the higher level jobs in the workplace. Woman, in large part, were relegated to positions as secretaries, nurses and teachers. Because of that, our school systems across the country were allowed to exploit brilliant and talented women and pay them peanuts, simply because the doors were closed for other meaningful employment, in so many instances. With liberation of woman's rights, public education started losing the "best and the brightest" female teachers, because they were becoming doctors, lawyers, scientists, and executives! Public education, with an 1890 management model and pay structure, could no longer compete and starting getting a much, much lower caliber of young teachers. That's history. So, I know it sounds odd, but there is a factual, causal inverse relationship between the women's movement and the quality of public education. I think the changes brought about by woman's movement were great and way overdue. However, I'm not so crazy about how public education leadership failed to respond. While the Governor was not very articulate about his reason, he seems to be pretty close to the mark. It appears that its time for one of his smarter aides to give him some fresher talking points.

@1:08-WHY does it infuriate you??? I'm a working mother, too but facing FACT doesn't infuriate me so, why you? My children are grown now but I remember all too well how little TIME there was between getting home from work and their bedtime to fix supper, clean up the dishes, do homework and get them bathed. I didn't have a choice about working. Most working mothers don't. But there is no getting around the fact that the time I spent WORKING was time NOT spent with my kids. And YES, it absolutely IS the mother's job to teach her kids to read...to think...to become self sufficient. That's true in every species. God created woman specifically to take care of the babies, teach them to walk, talk, hunt...whatever is needed to be self-sustaining adults to repeat the cycle and perpetuate the species. Might not sound as glamorous as "CEO". Nevertheless, that's our reason for being.

Good Lord, I thought Feel's comment was the stupidest thing I heard today, and then I see the comments here. . . .

Phil's next big initiative can be to make home economics mandatory for all female students in high school. And then let it end there. Leave the university schoolin' to the men folk. Let the little ladies tend to the home. Why waste the resources giving them higher education if it's just going to keep contributing the the mediocrity of American school children?

"The mom got in the workplace." And everyone became stupid.

Not really hard to understand how Phil would say this. he is not a very intelligent person. He is more concerned with Satan than how government works.

Of course, this also strikes very close to home for Phil. Deborah is a very hard worker and was in the workplace when Phil and Deb's children, Katie and Patrick, were growing up.

Phil and Deb's kids are not dumb. But Phil is.

No doubt Phildo's wife working outside the home instead of raising them kids in the kitchen contributed to the problem.

I can make a long list of outstanding young adults who had two working parents and even more than a few whose parents also got divorced. I can include someone very involved in GOP politics who comments on this site in that list.

I can make an equally long list of parents where the mother stayed at home ,the father was successful, the parents were Republican, and church goers and their children have gotten into serious trouble as adults ( some of whom have also been mentioned on this site).

I also remember my grandmother who had eight children, cooked three large meals on a wood stove, churned her own butter, had a wringer washer, got water from a well, slopped hogs, gathered eggs, ironed with an iron heated on the stove,and sewed clothes and made quilts. There wasn't much " nurturing " time for her yet all eight children were very successful.

I wish raising children were as simple as Phil seems to believe.

I do agree that the school system lost outstanding women to the private sector and suffered as a result. I can also come up with a long list of former female teachers who left to become successful in business. They loved teaching and would have stayed had they not been underpaid and had to deal with so much nonsense from parents and students.

Phil is a reactor and not a thinker and observer of the life around him. And, he is the poster child for the problems in society...someone who doesn't know what he doesn't know but who thinks he knows it all.

@6:41- you are correct about grandma working long hard hours everyday. But she worked AT HOME... with kids in tow. And through her work, with her kids at her side, she TAUGHT them...constantly...exactly as a mother lion might teach her cubs to hunt. As she worked, her kids would ask questions like "what are you doing?". Or "why"? She taught not only the basic what's the why's but also moral values: honesty, integrity, compassion, valor. THESE are the interactions that were lost when we went to work outside the home. Instead of kids being taught "the natural way" they get sent to a day care. SOME day care facilities employ good mother substitutes. Most employ unskilled, minimum wage babysitters who have poor command of language skills, can barely read and write themselves, who's strong suit is screaming at the kids to sit down and shut up....THIS is how many kids spend their formative years...then we send them to public schools where, thanks to government interference, teaching takes a back seat to paperwork, accountability (pass or fail) is removed out of misguided attempt at fairness...and so it goes...and we wonder why. And it all began because mama went to work outside the home. Fact. Like it or not.

I can list Tiger Woods as a rule for golfers. Wouldn't matter. He'd always be an exception.

Identifying exceptions to systemic issues does little to address the issues.

Phil didn't dream this idea up on his own. It's common sense that reasonable (even 2-parent working family associated) understand.

It's not a call for women to don the aprons and get back into the kitchen. It's recognition of change in order to improve things.

- Successful republican woman whose 2 parents worked

Republicans that are defending Phil on this are a prime example of how out of touch the party is with the current generation.

We will not be successful on a national political level ever again if this is the mindset of our republican leaders.

Why doesnt Phil bring jobs to the state that pay enough to support a single earner?

Why doesnt he pay his state employees enough to at least get off welfare?

Too busy at the womens clinic?

For those of you who agree that a decline in educational achievement began when women began to enter the workforce in significant numbers, please remember that a temporal association does not imply a causal relationship. The decline in educational achievement is also related in time to space exploration, integration of public schools in the South,election of Republican governors in the South, the continued failure of the Chicago Cubs to win the World Series, the elimination of lead from gasoline and many other things. But, as I said, a temporal relationship never implies a causal relationship. I am so embarrassed by Phil Bryant. What an ignoramus!

Just when you think he cannot become an even bigger embarrassment to the State of Mississippi - HE DOES!!!

Every voter who cast their vote for Bryant should hand their heads in shame for having put him in the position as governor for out state. Did you not realize everytime you heard him speak that these were the types of things he would say when you put him in front of a microphone??? Did you not hear him while he was slaughtering the English language and using a preposition at the end of every sentence he uttered (ie - where it's at)??

Yes, Bryant supporters it's your fault and you brought it on yourselves and the State of Mississippi; but, you also brought it on those of us who did not suppoort him!!

And, yes, I vote Republican!!!

@7:55, I couldn't have said it better. It's almost as if the GOP is trying to accelerate its demise as a national party. For all of you people defending him, just know that there are single, working women in swing states who were given yet another reason to vote Democratic when they watched the news last night.

Women entering the workplace as a cultural occurrence did not just happen in Mississippi, but was happening all across the country.
(maybe even more prevalent in other parts of the country than the south)

There is no evidence that suggests that women entering the workplace
should have caused a decline in education, it is possible to imagine that this could have even helped education.

But, despite women moving into the workplace all over the country... Mississippi usually brings up the rear.

The real question is ... has Mississippi education system kept up with other states?

Educational woes started in this country when the Federal Government started paying people to have babies for a check. All their children are to them is more money and as soon as they are big enough they tell them to get out of the house and do whatever. They could care less about their childrens education. Also too many colleges are turning idiots loose on our children as teachers.

How about when fathers started leaving their families and family responsibilities ?

7:29 am, did you meet my grandmother?

She lived to be in her late 80s after I was a mother and was still alive in the " burn your bra" days.

Her kids weren't " in tow". They had JOBS on the farm and the eldest looked after the youngest.

She, like every GOOD mother that ever was, wished she could have done many things better. She wished she could have enjoyed her children more.

She said, women would " rue the day" they accepted an adulterous woman into their home and made divorce easy".

She said, " every marriage ebbs and flows and every marriage is vulnerable to a woman without scruples".

She said, " A child's self-esteem comes from accomplishment, not from a parent's protection and flattery".

She said, " Children need to learn to cope with failure and to be alone with themselves".

She said, " Some of you women will be able to work and raise children well just as some of you will stay home and raise brats".

" Blood and the young'uns choice of friends and how bad others treat him will matter no matter what YOU do".

Todd Akin. Richard Murdock. Phil Bryant.

Killing the Republican Party. Enough Said.

You forgot Will Longwitz! That's the good news for you old peckerwoods; you've got a young, newly elected version of the ones you've been electing for years.

Ad nauseum; ad infinitum.

I think 1:27 offers the most level, logical assessment. " I am a republican. I found myself frustrated that Jackson elected Chokwe. I thought that they voted with emotion and not foresight. They elected someone they thought would protect them from oppressorship and hold their values safe. I now realize that Mississippi did the exact same thing when we elected Phil to be governor. He has no plan. He has no vision. He has extreme ideals that don't involve wisdom."
Just look at Medicaid. Phil has offered nothing. Zero. Why? Because he lacks any original (& non-neanderthal) thought. He has hunkered down, waiting for a passing ship. Just like always. His aides are terrified to offer smart alternatives, bc Phil can't tell which ideas are good, and he certainly has no compass to guide him.
But Phil is so much better at this than you are! Look how far this drooling yokel has come. He will emerge hunky dory, and live to gaffe another day.
Political survival is not leadership, so please don't disappoint yourself expecting it from Gov. Phil. Like it or not, Jxn Dems have a better leader in The Chok.

Mississippi's new emblem, Orthus.

It'd be Phil and Chokwe, preventing the mass from crossing over into progress.

I have to admit 7:28 pm that Chowke is more presentable than Phil.
The GOP should pay Phil to keep away from cameras and microphones.

It occurs to me that quite a few politicians have this " humble roots" thing wrong. Abe Lincoln didn't remain in poorly spoken and poorly dressed and take pride in being a rube, he took pride in rising above his humble beginnings, he didn't laud humble beginnings.

What is this, " I can guzzle beer and scratch my butt and chew with my mouth open just like you" thing?

To the anonymous Longwitz hater who reliably shows up on most of the anti-Republican threads, just what comment of his are you referring to? What is the common thread that runs from Akin to Mourdock to Bryant to Longwitz? Political party? If so, you're simply exposing your own ignorance. Does what Hank Johnson said about Guam or what Sheila Jackson-Lee said about men on Mars mean that all Democrats are as stupid as they are? Politicians are people, and some say dumb things. That doesn't necessarily mean that they're dumb - do I need to list all the Joe Biden gaffes? Nor does it mean that the millions of other members who share their political affiliation are as dumb as they seemed when they made their comments. The people who the Democrats are trying to recruit, with some success, are the ones who are dumb enough to stereotype and entire political party because of a few remarks from individuals within that party. Sounds like they already had you...

I suppose Bryant should have blamed men, since when women started working it was their duty to pick up some slack. But you cannot argue that when Mom goes to work the kids need more supervision.

I taught my children to read, not my wife. It took a half-hour or more per night for six months or so for each child, using the Dick & Jane readers I bought at Wal-Mart (these readers were designed for whole language instruction, but are absolutely GREAT when combined with phonics). As a result, both children entered kindergarten reading fairly well. I would guess that my son entered kindergarten reading about about grade level 2.5.

When the moderator asked if it was the mother's duty to teach the children to read, Bryant said absolutely not, it was both parent's job. He said he was taught to read by his father.

I'm not a Bryant fan, but the news story was a character assassination.

Additional note: The Dick and Jane readers are great to use to teach children to read. The books feature an average, middle-class family from an era when society wasn't trying to use basal readers to indoctrinate the young.

I, too, am calmly *hors du combat* about the whole kerfuffle---both the working-mom issue that has set so many on fire with ire, and our unfortunate governor's awkward phraseology.

Yes, a smart, caring mom/dad waiting at home is a boon, no question about it. No pricy daycare on earth can replace a quiet room of one's own, a place to read, an afternoon snack, a parent who is ready to listen to the child's tales of the day's woes and triumphs.

But has the disappearance of this wonderful idyllic scenario been the true cause of our shitty education system here in Mississippi? Nope, of course not. You all know what the problem is, and the braver ones have said it bluntly, if not elegantly.

And THAT problem isn't going away any time soon.

I'm not a Bryant fan, but the news story was a character assassination.

Of course it was character assassination....

I am a Phil fan and believe he learned a painful lesson here.

I am a Phil fan and believe he learned a painful lesson here.

What is the lesson?

Just have him sit on a bulldozer, put a lunchbox in his hand and there you have it, ladies and gentlemen - - - Cliff Finch!!!

And, no, he has not learned from this - - he never learns!! He just keeps opening his mouth and inserting both feet. This is what happens when you do not put your brain in gear before you put your mouth in motion!

This is the top official representing our state, Mississippi! This is the face and voice of our state presented to the nation!!

To all of you who cast your votes for him, I hope it was worth the cost!! We all know now how very little you care for the State of Mississippi!!!

Our governor certainly has put the "goober" in "gubernatorial." He is not, alas, a smart man at all; certainly educated Mississippi Republicans have much, much to blush for when he "shines his a**" in a national forum. And Mississippi Democrats, both educated and un-, have much for which to rightfully guffaw.