Nov 102021
 

Glenn Kirschner – Garland’s “Enviable” Position as Attorney General; The Decision to Prosecute Bannon is an Easy One

Meidas Touch – Josh Hawley HUMILIATES himself with bizarre rant on porn and masculinity

MSNBC – Prosecutor In Trump Camp’s Effort To Reverse Georgia Result Considering Special Grand Jury

Ring of Fire – California History Teacher Removed For Telling Students Trump Is Still President

Really American – Gosar Posts Bizarre Video Threatening Biden and AOC

John di Domenico- Trump’s Foul-Mouthed Netflix Comedy Special Trailer

Beau – Let’s talk about Texas, schoolbooks, and the Attorney General’s race….

Share
Oct 282021
 

Yesterday, I figured I couldn’t wait any longer, and started looking for cartoons to re-use for November. To be pellucidly clear, I started, randomly, in 2013, and have just stayed with that year, and my plan is to move up thrugh time, re-using when possible, and coming up with something new if the one for a particular day is hopelessly dated (for example, there’s one about Harry Reid’s balls.) It looks like I’ll need to come up with 6 new ones in November, and three of them are in the first teo weeks. So I stated looking at history. I found events for all 6 of them. I made the first one and found pictures for the next two before I ran short on time. But that’s a good start.

Cartoon –

Short Takes –

The New Yorker (Borowitz Report) – Trump Tells January 6th Panel He Has Diplomatic Immunity as Russian Official
Quote – While Trump waits to see if his claim of diplomatic immunity succeeds, he is also prepared to argue that, having once hired Rudolph Giuliani as his attorney, he would be justified in pleading insanity.
Click through. Good luck with that. (BTW, unlike many of Andy’s reports, this one is clearly satire. For it to be straight news, Trump** would have to have told the truth, and that’s imposssible.)

Oh Sh*t, Dallas Teacher Did A Critical Race Theory To The Texas Wingnuts!
Quote – There’s not the slightest hint of CRT in having students read and analyze a text; if the lesson was supposed to “indoctrinate” the students, it didn’t work, since if anything I think the kid goes a little too easy on Cato’s methods, and doesn’t seem especially bothered that the email urges district employees to report on each other — then again, that’s a common enough method of enforcing discipline among students, so perhaps the kid doesn’t know just how creepy the tactic is.
Click through for details. It would be great if this teacher could be cloned and placed in every high school in t America. Teaching critical thinking skills “has not been tried and found wanting, but has been found difficult and left untried” (G. K. Chesterton) for a long time. This shows it can be done. I particularly like SPACECATS.

How commercialization over the centuries transformed the Day of the Dead
Quote – In 2019, I talked to a grandmother building a Day of the Dead ofrenda, an altar with offerings for her family’s dearly departed that included candles, food, flowers, and festive decorations. For years she’d tried to get her grandchildren to help her erect the altar for their ancestors, to no avail. It wasn’t until they watched Disney’s “Coco” and saw sugar skulls at Target that they took interest in the holiday. Now they eagerly help their grandmother build the altar. Commercialization is and has been transforming Day of the Dead. But, from what I’ve seen, it’s also giving a new generation a chance to be proud of their culture.
Click through for story. It’s a good point. Also, a pet peeve pf mine is that people criticizing advertising for a holiday too early don’t cut purveyors of craft materials and supplies any slack. If I am going to make a hiliday gift, a week before is not enough time. If I am making several, so much more so. There are 99 (at least) things to criticize Hobby Lobby about, but advertising Christmas too early is not one of them.

Signature-worthy IMO:
Bill Pascrell and Elizabeth Warren are looking for co-sponsors to nail Trump** et al.
https://action.billpascrell.com/crimes/?source=211026_bp_crimes_b1&link_id=1&can_id=dd94559fa9486ce8a4824766af6a024f&email_referrer=email_1336070&email_subject=will-you-sign-on-as-an-official-citizen-cosponsor-of-my-political-crimes-act-with-sen-warren-to-hold-donald-trump-accountable
I can’t shorten it or it won’t get you there, sorry. After you sign you’ll be asked for a contribution but it isn’t necessary.

Food for Thought –

Share
Oct 062021
 

Yesterday, JL and Pam and I exchanged some emails with Mitch about his internet issues. His correspondence included “[I} believe that the situation is just that I did NOT do Mac updates for years, and my system is unable to adapt to changes elsewhere.” I can’t really argue with that …

Cartoon – 6 6Cartoon.jpg

Short Takes –

The 19th – Elizabeth Warren isn’t in the White House. But she knows how to use the tools she’s got.
Quote – It wasn’t big news outside of higher education and financial circles, but their departures could result in roughly 15 million borrowers having their loans transferred to other institutions. The thought is that at better-regulated lenders, borrowers will have a greater chance at paying down debt loads that disproportionately weigh down people of color. But, Warren said, the best solution would still be to cancel $50,000 in federal student debt per borrower.
Click through for more. One doesn’t have to be President to accomplish stuff. Thank God.

The New Yorker – Why Republicans Are Still Recounting Votes
Quote – A more subtle mind than Trump’s would see the futility of having a questionable firm undertake an unnecessary recount only to offer findings that are counter to his immediate interests. But the point of the exercise, and of others like it taking place across the country, is not so much to delegitimize the past election as it is to normalize specious reviews of future ones—including, perhaps, a 2024 race in which Trump’s name is on the ballot. We have seen too much of this form of mainstreaming of the absurd in recent years to note every example, but its origins likely lie in Trump’s fixation on Barack Obama’s birth certificate. In that case, once the birther myths were finally dispelled, Trump pivoted to congratulating himself for forcing people to get to the bottom of the issue. In effect, he recast a conspiracy theory as a legitimate inquiry resolved by legitimate means. The danger is the probability that some illegitimate future inquiry will be used to achieve illegitimate ends. The groundwork for this is more advanced than we care to contemplate.
Click through for more about why this is so important.

Los Angeles Times – Jan. 6 rioters exploited little-known Capitol weak spots: A handful of unreinforced windows
Quote – Those upgrades were part of a well-publicized, large-scale renovation to the exterior stone and ironwork of the Capitol and surrounding office buildings. But the security improvements were not widely disclosed at the time. Most of the Capitol was covered in scaffolding during the multiyear project, and much of the work took place at night. Funding to reinforce the windows came from a mix of classified and unclassified appropriations, which helped mask the scale and cost of the project.
Click through for story. It is possible to argue against it, but I personally feel, given all the other information we have, that this reinforces the idea that they had help from inside and that many inside had prior knowledge. The Times has a paywall, so if you want to be able to access it any time, “printing” it to a PDF or other file might be a good idea.

Food for Thought

This is from the Wonkette newsletter from yesterday. The newsletter is put together by the CEO’s (Rebecca) husband who goes by “Shypixel”:
My best friend for many years was a quadriplegic man named Shane. One of the reasons we got along so well, according to Shane, was that I would call him on his shit, when nobody else would. Everyone was always so tender to him, even when he was being a raging asshole, because he was in a wheelchair. He hated it, hated the pity behind it. So let’s all honor Shane’s memory by calling Madison Cawthorn a raging asshole, loudly, to his stupid face.
– The Shypixel loves you all and wants you to be happy.

Share
Sep 202021
 

Glenn Kirschner – 60-Second Clip: It’s the Department of “Justice” not the Department of “Just Move On.”

Don Winslow Films – #McCarthysPlanToAttackBiden

The Lincoln Project – Abbott’s Wall

Franklin Project – Teachers are Civic Superheroes

Colorado Turnout Project – Crickets From Rep. Doug Lamborn (no CC)

Really American – Tuckers Newly Obsessed With Testicles (It is also possible the dude’s testicles are swollen, from some other cause, which he is too embarrassed to admit to [or doesn’t know why.])

Beau – Let’s talk about AOC’s dress…. (As a fabric artist [OK, technically a fiber artist, but still], I love it that he managed to get in the word “fabricate.”)

Share
Jul 252021
 

Glenn Kirschner – Congress MUST Now Investigate FBI/Kavanaugh Tips to See What The White House May Have Covered Up

The Lincoln Project – Brady (I’ve been wanting to post something on this, but I wasn’t happy with the clips I was seeing. This one – Voila!)

Thom Hartmann – Texas Says “You can’t teach the Ku Klux Klan is Morally Wrong”

Rebel HQ – Gladiator Guy Arrested After Filming Capitol Hill Riot For His Mom

Now This News – 4-Year-Old Girl Clears Plastic Waste From Ocean in Rio

Red Parrot Brings Girlfriend Over To Meet The Woman He Visits Every Day

Beau – Let’s talk about what we can learn from security failures…. I have to call this analogy superb.

Share

Everyday Erinyes #275

 Posted by at 12:10 am  Politics
Jul 182021
 

Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”

I had bookmarked an article on critical race theory as a possible source for the Furies, but on looking at it more closely, I found it too vague and generalized to be very effective – and, really, that’s as it should be. Critical race theory was designed to be studied in law school, after having completed a regular bachelor’s degree and pre-law, and while in pursuit of a Doctorate of Jurisprudence. It shouldn’t be possible to boil it down or make it crystal clear in a single short article. So I turned instead to the following article, which does address how children, including young children, can learn the darker sides of our actual history.
================================================================

Here’s what I tell teachers about how to teach young students about slavery

U.S. teachers often struggle to depict the realities of slavery in America.
Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Raphael E. Rogers, Clark University

Nervous. Concerned. Worried. Wary. Unprepared.

This is how middle and high school teachers have told me they have felt over the past few years when it comes to teaching the troublesome topic of slavery.

Although I work with teachers in Massachusetts, their reaction to teaching about slavery is common among teachers throughout the U.S.

Fortunately, in recent years there have been a growing number of individuals who have weighed in with useful advice.

Some, such as history professors Hasan Kwame Jeffries and Kenneth Greenberg, have advocated for helping students see the ways in which enslaved people fought back against the brutality of slavery. Whether through a focus on the fight to maintain family and culture, resistance at work, running away, physical confrontation or revolt, students get a deeper understanding of slavery when the lessons include the various ways that enslaved people courageously fought against their bondage.

Others, like James W. Loewen, the author of the popular book “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” have argued for a focus on how slavery has deeply influenced our popular culture through movies, television series, historical fiction and music.

There are also those who recommend the use of specific resources and curriculum materials, like the Harriet Jacobs Papers Project, the four-part documentary series “Africans in America” and the Freedom on the Move database, which features thousands of runaway slave advertisements.

Heeding some of these recommendations, in my work with teachers we have sought to come up with lessons that students like Ailany Rivas, a junior at Claremont Academy in Worcester, Massachusetts, say have helped them to become “more informed and educated about the brutal history of slavery and its legacy.” These lessons that I have developed take a variety of approaches but are all rooted in taking a look at the realities of slavery using historical evidence.

Many students have echoed Ailany in feedback that I have collected from nine different classes where I have helped design lessons about slavery.

And the teachers whom I have worked with have all shared informally that they are now confident in taking on the challenge of teaching the complex history of slavery.

Much of this confidence, in my opinion, is due to four things that I believe are mandatory for any teacher who plans to deal with slavery.

1. Explore actual records

Few things shine the light on the harsh realities of slavery like historical documents. I’m talking about things such as plantation records, slave diaries and letters penned by plantation owners and their mistresses.

Pages of a diary written in black ink.
A former enslaved Black person, W. B. Gould, escaped the South during the Civil War and began writing in a diary.
Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

It also pays to examine wanted advertisements for runaway slaves. These ads provided details about those who managed to escape slavery. In some cases, the ads contain drawings of slaves.

These materials can help teachers guide students to better understand the historical context in which slavery existed. Educators may also wish to look at how people such as historian Cynthia Lynn Lyerly, who wrote a chapter in “Understanding and Teaching American Slavery,” have used historical documents to teach about slavery.

2. Examine historical arguments

In order to better understand different perspectives on slavery, it pays to examine historical arguments about how slavery developed, expanded and ended.

Students can read texts that were written by abolitionists like Frederick Douglass and pro-slavery advocates like George Fitzhugh.

They should wade through the newspaper advertisements that provided details about those who managed to escape slavery.

Looking at these different arguments will show students that history is filled with disagreement, debate and interpretations based on different goals.

For instance, in examining arguments about slavery, teachers can show students how early 20th-century historians like Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
sought to put forth ideas about kind masters and contented slaves, while others from the 1990s, such as John Hope Franklin, co-author of “Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation,” focused on how Black people resisted slavery.

Seeing these starkly different portrayals of slavery gives students a chance to examine how things such as choice, context, racism and bias might affect the way slavery is seen or viewed.

3. Highlight lived experiences

In my 11 years of teaching history, many students entered my classes with a great deal of misinformation about what life was like for those who lived under slavery. In pre-unit surveys, some stated that the enslaved worked only in the cotton fields and were not treated that badly. We know the historical records tell a different story. While many worked as field hands, there were others who were put into service as blacksmiths, carpenters, gunsmiths, maids and tailors.

To combat misconceptions like this, I advise teachers to use historical sources that feature details about the lived experiences of enslaved people.

For instance, teachers should have students read Harriet Jacobs’ memoir – “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” – alongside diaries written by white plantation owners.

Scrutinize photographs of slave quarters and excerpts from the Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, which contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery.

Ask students to examine various historical sources to gain a better understanding of how people lived through their bondage over time.

4. Consider the relevance

It is also crucial for teachers to consider the various ways in which slavery is relevant to the present with their students. I advise them to ask questions like: How has the history of slavery influenced the status of Black people in the United States today? Why are there so many movies about slavery?

In Ailany’s class, we ended our unit by providing students with a chance to read and think about the relevance of recent picture books about slavery like Patricia Polacco’s “January’s Sparrow,” Ann Turner and James Ransome’s “My Name Is Truth: The Life of Sojourner Truth” and Frye Gallard, Marti Rosner and Jordana Haggard’s “The Slave Who Went to Congress.”

We asked students to draw on what they had learned about slavery to consider and then share their perspectives about the historical accuracy, classroom appropriateness and relevance of a selected picture book. Students always have much to say about all three.

[Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today.]

Teaching slavery has been and will continue to be challenging. To teachers who are asked or required to take on this challenge, the four things discussed above can serve as strong guideposts for creating lessons that should make the challenge easier to navigate.The Conversation

Raphael E. Rogers, Associate Professor of Practice, Clark University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

================================================================
Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, “there were others who were put into service as blacksmiths, carpenters, gunsmiths, maids and tailors.” Yeah. And artists and musicians and other fine craftspeople. If a slave could do something, an owner could find a way to exploit it. Regular viewers of Antiques Roadshow will recall episodes featuring slave-produced arts and crafts. Regular listeners of Performance Today (produced by American Public Media and often carried by NPR but can also be streamed free) will remember having heard about a piano-playing slave who toured and gave concerts, from which his master received every penny. Viewers of Finding Your Roots will have seen many a slave schedule, slave auction announcement, runaway slave advertisement, census record or inventory or probate list with no names.

The historical documents and other resources exist. Getting them into the hands of teachers and assisting them to use them effectively is another matter. May everything possible be done to make it happen.

The Furies and I will be back.

Share
Jul 122021
 

Glenn Kirschner – AG Garland Said This Country Protected HIS Family. It’s now Time For Him To Protect OUR Families

Meidas Touch – Former SDNY Asst. US Attorney: The Trumps Will Turn on Weisselberg—and EACH OTHER

The Lincoln Project

Don Winslow – Don Winslow Films – #LaurenBoebertIsAMonster

CNN – [John Dean] says he’d pay to handle Trump’s deposition. I have a very sift spot forpeople who have made mistakes, including extremely stupid ones, and LEARNED from than and turned around. John is one. Another is Monica Lewinsky.

Liberal Redneck – I’m from TN and LAWD I CAN’T STAND MARSHA BLACKBURN. (Taylor Swift is acually a liberal.)

Beau – Boebert is no Einstein, but I have administered GED testing and read the tests and getting it is NOT easy. And, yes, apparently it took her several tries to get it. However, it still is not that easy (and it certainly is not the same questions every time one tries) and Istill assert that GEDs are respectable and arw to be respected by Democrats, among others. And certaily by the military. I don’t know whether the military is accepting GED students now, but at the time I was working with it they weren’t. I have advised GED grads nterested in the military to go to the nearest and cheapest community college and take and pass one course – any course. Then, their educational level becomes “some college” and bypasses the GED question altogether. And I still consider that good advice. (But I hope Boebert doesn’t take it.)

Share
Jun 222021
 

Yesterday a friend’s young adult son came by to mow the weeds in my front yard. I guess I should say “use a weedwhacker) rather than “mow” because they are were just that tall. At any rate, that should keep the county off my back for a while. I also received news of the death of someone who was a close friend in high school. There were four of us … now there are only three. I need to realize that this will continue to happen from time to time. I am hanging in.

Cartoon

Short Takes

The Hill – Supreme Court rules against NCAA in dispute over student-athlete compensation
Quote – Justice Brett Kavanaugh agreed with the judgment but wrote a separate concurring opinion that contained a blistering critique of the NCAA’s business model, which generates considerable revenue, particularly from Division I football and basketball. “Nowhere else in America can businesses get away with agreeing not to pay their workers a fair market rate on the theory that their product is defined by not paying their workers a fair market rate,” Kavanaugh wrote. “And under ordinary principles of antitrust law, it is not evident why college sports should be any different. The NCAA is not above the law.”
Click through for story. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. On the principle of “never trust a Republican,” there;s probably some ulterior motive, possibly a setup to do future harm to colleges and universities(?). But it’s still amazing.

So, Al Franken is going on tour. It’s called “The Only Former U.S. Senator Currently on Tour Tour”.
Quote from email: Tickets for The Only Former U.S. Senator Currently on Tour Tour go on presale Wednesday at 10am in every time zone with the code word SENATOR. Just click HERE to find out when I’ll be in a city near you. I hope to see you there. My promise is that you’ll laugh, you’ll think, and you’ll leave hopeful about our future. Unless I’m in a bad mood that night.
Click through for full dates and venues, and don’t forget to use the code word if interested.

The NM Political Report – The Great disconnect
Quote – On May 18, a judge overseeing the historic Yazzie-Martinez case ordered the New Mexico Public Education Department to take stock of the massive digital divide in the state and finally identify the roughly 76,000 students who lacked Internet connections they desperately needed for school. One of PED’s responses was to create a Google survey for students and staff to fill out online, an action that left advocates and school leaders mystified.
Click through for the details. I really thought people in New Mexico were smarter than that … after they fired Susanna Martinez and elected Deb Haaland …

Food for Thought

Share