But what's he done, you wonder. Well, first off, he actually implemented the whole school vouchers thing. What's that, you wonder? Well, it's essentially something that says parents in incredibly sucky schools (of which we, like most states in the union, are blessed with a plethora of) can choose to have their children moved to private schools instead, with the state using the funds that normally would have been allocated for that child to pick up the tab. This sounds either bad or good, depending on how you look at it, but it does tend to mean that sucky schools tend to get less money. They'd also tend to get fewer children, but most people don't tend to process things that far. God forbid we should actually try to fix the public education system, but since it's more likely for Clinton to become a monk than for any real progress to ever be made in that area, you have to admit that it's tempting to just abandon the sinking ship while you still can. If I had a child, I'd have to admit that I'd be less than enthusiastic about the whole idea of having said spawn used as a pawn for the political flavor of the week in their attempts to steer the ship of education onto the rocks of their choice, but hey.
I went to public school in a simpler, easier time, when it was perfectly all right to fester with hatred for other people (or, in the case of the trenchcoat-wearing geeks, of whom there were a plethora, to relieve our frustrations by playing 'Assassin' with squirt-guns. Were this a modern school, we'd all be on permanent suspension, or, more likely, rotting away in a cell somewhere for carring large, garishly colored squirt guns - that's progress for you. Really, every swaggering, wanna-be bad-ass should, every now and again, play this game. After the first few times getting ambushed and 'shot' in the back of the head, you realize that, hey, it's not really that cool after all. Fun, yes, but in a disturbing sort of way). A time when it was possible to set fire to a portion of the classroom and not only have nobody care, but have very few people even notice. A time when you could find entertainment in watching the simple joys of a pitched brawl in front of the school at the end of every school year. Nowadays the same tensions are there, but instead of being politely ignored, they're dealt with using the same caring, understanding compassion and search for fairness that you'd find in your average Gestapo agent. And those are the good schools. And let's not even get into the curriculum (and now, more math for the terminally bored. let's begin.)
Then, my last few years of high school, I ended up going to a private school, where there was a notable lack of brawling, as well as facilities that tended not to catch fire at inopportune times. This all came too late to stop me from being a cynical, surly individual, but still. I shudder to think just how surly and cynical I might have been otherwise.
Clearly public education can't hold a candle to private education. But thankfully, the little children of Florida have been saved from private schools by the quick action of the Florida court system, which has decided that 'school vouchers' are unconstitutional. So, it's back to public schools for all of them, where they can learn valuable life lessons like how to put that perfect bored intonation into "do you want fries with that?"
Of course, all the Democrats are horrified by the mere concept of school vouchers, but they don't have much better options (their ideas are more along the lines of 'throw computers at the schools'. oh, yeah, dropping random Windows boxes on them will help a ton. thanks, morons). Truth be told, I like the Republican answer mildly better than the Democrat one. Hey, instead of forcing people who can't afford to move to keep their children in crappy schools, let's let them choose a different one. This is a notable improvement from "Oh no you don't. We'll all go down together. Now sit down, watch all these brand new Windows(tm, r) computers blue-screen, and shut up." If we can't (and we really can't) fix the public education system, at least we can save a few kids. But no.
Yeah, guys. Think of the children. Except when they're, y'know, inconvenient. Go, Florida Democrats. Whoo.
The other Republican education initiative (now there's an oxy-moron for ya) is the "One Florida" plan, which struggles to abolish large chunks of the Affirmative Action program. The bit that people are frothing about lately is the idea of abolishing racial admission criteria (some might call them 'quotas', but we're more sensitive than that) in state colleges, replacing it with guaranteed admission for the top testing students, regardless of race, sex, etc. Already the nit-pickers are going to work on this one, conveniently forgetting that this whole issue was brought to the fore because several surly types were planning on making flat-out elimination of all Affirmative Action a ballot initiative, like in California, and this was an attempt to stomp on it before people started running around shouting the equivalent of "$30 tabs!". Heaven forbid we should encourage college admission for the smartest students or something.
The thing that gets me is that there are all these shortages of 'smart' employees for stuff like computer programming and (locally) medical personnel, et cetera. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with how wretched the public education system is, or our dogged determination to base college admissions on something other than how smart the student in question is. Oh, heck no. Couldn't be. Nope, nope, nope.
Yes, that's right, they can't find enough staff for the local hospital. And, even if they could, they don't have enough space. They're having to fob off patients on other hospitals because they're routinely stuffed. They're so full, and their personnel so busy, that they just scoff at the idea of adding a local medical school, too. They don't have the time to deal with training new people. That's if there was the money to set up a better medical program locally anyway...
Eventually things will get so bad that people won't have a choice but to fix it, education wise. But not yet. Of course, given all this, it's entirely possible that everyone will stay on the sinking ship, riding it to the bottom of the ocean, and bickering the whole damn way.
Blah.
...go great with a bewildered audience!
Heero wakes up, all bandaged, in Trowa's place with the travelling circus. He's being watched over by Catherine (so that's her name), Trowa's admirer. Heero is baffled for a while until Trowa explains what happened. Catherine goes off to make some soup (she seems to really like making soup) and the two talk. Heero is rather snippy that he was saved, since he was keen on dying along with his Gundam. Trowa explains that a great deal of time has passed since that day, and that he's not entirely sure what to do from here - since OZ threatened the colonies, the whole operation has essentially come apart at the seams, and he's had no contact with his handlers in orbit since then. Whups.
Meanwhile, Wu Fei angsts some more. Rah.
Major Sally (remember her? no? she's the Alliance officer who examined Heero, and who helped with the whole New Edwards base thing), meanwhile, is leading a commando raid on a base. She and her cronies flee from their opposition, having laid demolition charges that shortly cause things to go boom. We're all baffled for a bit until the narrator helpfully exposits that in China (where we are now, apparently) the local Alliance forces have essentially set themselves up as dictators, seeking independance from both the Alliance proper and OZ. Nothing like a good civil war...
Troops set out after the commandoes and quickly corner them, killing off a few of them. Sally and her cronies flee on foot, but are finally pinned, at which point they're saved by... Wu Fei! Wu Fei lays waste to most of the pursuing troops, but a few escape, as he's not really in the mood to fight much. He gets out of his Gundam and chats with the surviving rebels, getting snippy with them with his whole "you guys are weak, and shouldn't be fighting" bit, which Sally essentially ignores, and invites Wu Fei to come along with the group.
Oh, joy. A Wu Fei heavy episode. Whee.
Wu Fei and Sally later end up heading to a nearby town for supplies, where they interrupt some of the local troops generally causing a ruckus. Sally intervenes and gets in a scuffle with them, but is finally overwhelmed (three to one odds tend to do that to you, when you're not a main character), so Wu Fei steps in and lays the smack down on them. The troops flee as the villagers are inspired by this example to start taking exception to being bossed around. Wu Fei again goes off on his whole rant, to which Sally essentially responds "So what?" This causes Wu Fei to shift into angst mode, remarking that he's weak because the one time he fought someone better than him, he lost, so he's only able to beat people who're much weaker than him. Well, yes. Sally tries not to roll her eyes as Wu Fei wanders off to go have a bit of a sulk.
The local dictator, General Boont (snicker) gets a briefing on how his minions have finally figured out the location of the rebel base. Since he knows ther's a Gundam there, he suggests calling in OZ to help, but his minions protest - they have, after all, sworn themselves to independance, and don't think it's wise to bring in OZ. It'd just give them an excuse, after all. Fine, says Boont, we'll handle it ourselves.
Sally arrives back at the rebel base without Wu Fei, just in time for the government's troops to attack - helicopters first, which stirs up the surly rebels to tote all of their heavy weapons out from assorted hiding places and start shooting. Whereupon the bad guys (who seem to actually have working brains) lay waste the place with artillery and send in the mobile suits to mop up the survivors. They've figured out that the Gundam is unmanned at the moment, by the fact that they weren't instantly destroyed, and head to take it over. Wu Fei, nearby, is shaken out of his funk and runs to help.
Now things start getting wacky. Boont has apparently called in OZ anyway and OZ's troops blow up the local troops artillery and mobile suits. Boont has a brief banter with the commander of his mobile suit unit about how he figures they'd lose to OZ anyway, and this way, OZ will probably let him stay on as head of state. The OZ troops take over the mopping up operation of the handful of remaining rebels (the artillery strike apparently having wiped out most of them), which is harder than it looks, since giant robots are whopping huge targets and rebels running around with missile launchers aren't (a couple of the highly bad-ass OZ flying suits are actually crippled, but not destroyed, by missile-toting rebels). But still. Wu Fei shows up as the mobile suits are offing the last few rebels, to find Sally and a few cronies about. They almost beg him to get off his ass and get in the Gundam, but he just starts to angst. This provokes one of the rebels to actually grab Wu Fei and try to smack some sense into him, an act that's forestalled by an OZ missile. Everyone but Wu Fei and Sally is, by this point, sent to the Next Dimension... er, I mean, killed, and since he's still angsting she decides to hell with it, and just walks towards the OZ suit, figuring this'll snap him out of it. Finally Wu Fei stops angsting. Woo. He covers for Sally's retreat, then runs for the Gundam.
Gundam powers up, lays waste to OZ forces. Boont goes 'oh, poopie' and lives only long enough to order a retreat before he and the survivors are all obliterated.
Sally chats with Wu Fei a bit, trying to cure his angst for the sake of all our sanities. But he heads off into the sunset anyway, still angsting.
Back at the circus, the ringmaster is informing everyone that they've been invited to perform at an OZ base, so he'd like to come up with something cool for them. Trowa manages not to look smug as he says "leave it to me".
Later, Trowa gives Heero keys to a car and tells him to shoo. It seems that he's given up on his colony - only a small minority wanted to fight OZ, and with the threat of being blown up now around, they'll never order him to fight again. So he'll do as Heero did. Ooo. Boom.
Next episode: Something confusing!
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