Wait just a doggone minute.
I read this earlier today:
Now, wasn’t it just 2-3 months ago that Ken Martin, Governor Klink and Co-Governor Flanigan, the brodudes in the MNDFL Communications office and the chattering hamsters of the DFL Legislative caucuses telling us they’d “fully funded” education?
Why yes.. It was:
And yet they never actually defining what “full funding” meant…
…oh. Yeah. Now it makes sense.
“First, they ignore you. Then they. mock you. Then they attack you. Then you win”
– Gandhi
I remember during the heyday of the Tea Party, in 2009-10, living through Gandhi’s aphorism – and, in the end, seeing how very overrated Gandhi was as a keeper of profound wisdom.
But I digress.
The Democrats, MSM (ptr) and the Mitt Romney wing of the GOP did their best to pretend it didn’t matter.
Then it turned to mockery and its idiot cousin, uninformed defamation.
Then came the attacks.
And then we won – at least, in 2010. Big Left and Big GOP still don’t want to talk about it, but the Tea Party beat both establishments like Keith Moon beating a rack tom.
Of course, in 2012 and onward, the Empire struck back. Big Left and Big GOP teamed up, in effect, to smother the insurgents. It didn’t help that, by dint of being elected to actual office, the Tea Party became “the establishment” that the Ron Paul crowd railed against in the next presidential cycle. The momentum ebbed – as it often does when grassroots movements have to get back to their day jobs.
The cycle has cycled.
“The Strib paid notice in its op-ed page that the “Mama Bears” – who’ve been sitting it out, apparently, since Sarah Palin left the stage – are back (emphasis added):
These conservative mothers and grandmothers, who in recent years have organized for ”parental rights,” including banning discussion of gender identity in schools, have been classified as extremists by the Southern Poverty Law Center. They have also been among the most coveted voters so far in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
Donald Trump praised their work, saying organizations such as Moms for Liberty had taught the liberal left a lesson: ”Don’t mess with America’s moms.” Ron DeSantis said ”woke” policies had “awakened the most powerful political force in the country: mama bears.” His wife, Casey DeSantis, who launched ”Mamas for DeSantis” in leadoff-voting Iowa, said moms and grandmas were the ”game changer” in DeSantis’ blowout win for a second term as Florida governor. She predicted they will be again as he runs for president.
Who wants to tell columnist Sara Burnett know that nobody outside the mainstream media thinks the SPLC has any more objective down the middle credibility than ISAIAH or Moms Want Action?
Ye shall know them by their opposition:
”Republicans have decided that this is, I think, their golden ticket for the primaries to rile up their base,” said Katie Paris, who runs Red, Wine and Blue, a network of women pushing back on GOP-backed policies such as the anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans efforts of Moms for Liberty.
Leave it to Big Left to try to rally women around box wine. What next – an activist group called “Valium Girls?”
”Call it ‘parents’ rights,’ call it ‘mama bears,’ and try to make it sound like something that would be common sense. … The reality about ‘parents’ rights’ is that it’s just about the rights of a vocal minority that is trying to carry out an extreme political agenda.”
I can’t wait for the next Minnesota DFLer to try to comment on that last sentence.
Representative Walter Hudson put it best:
Much more to come
A friend of the blog emails:
Saw this on Facebook last night. My sense is that there is more to this story, but then again, it is Saint Paul Public Schools, so maybe there isn’t….
There may very well be more to the story. If I were a gambling man, I would say that that “more“ is a St., Paul Schools bureaucrat list ir misfiled the title.
As I’ve noted in this space, assuming the SPPS operates for anyone’s benefit but it’s own is always your first mistake.
Read:
I’m watching this one.
…about the way high school was when I was a kid that makes me sit up and say “damn, they had the right idea.”
But I do know that if some students had started a petition saying “we don’t want to have graduation at the Civic Center [the only building in town big enough to hold the graduation], so move it or we won’t attend”, the principal – Virgil Buchholtz, who’d been a Marine fighter pilot during World War II – would have settled that quickly and sharply.
Perhaps it’s not being a teenager. Perhaps it’s having raised teenagers. Perhaps it’s reading some history, and realizing how deeply stupid movements on the macro scale led by “youth” tend to be.
But I wish someone in the Chaska/Chanhassen school district had the same common sense that Mr. Buchholtz had when I read stories like this:
Next week, Eastern Carver County Schools plan to host graduation ceremonies for Chaska and Chanhassen high schools at Eden Prairie’s Grace Church. But this year families are pushing for a change in venue after Chaska High Schooler Eli Frost created a petition.
On the petition that now has 364 signatures, Frost wrote: “Grace Church has a long history of making derogatory, public statements against the LGBTQ+ community. Further, they do not support divorce even in situations of domestic violence. As a community of students and parents who represent a wide variety of marginalized identities, we must change this venue.”
Young Mr. Frost has gotten a lot of facts wrong – go ahead and follow the link to Grace Church’s response.
And I hope the Chaskahassen schools have a sudden attack of common sense in the next week.
University of Saint Thomas, as a matter of policy, apparently doesn’t tell young women if their assigned dorm roommate is is a bio-male who identifies as female:
This, according to [UST Housing Director Zoe] Chang, is done as discreetly as possible in order to avoid upsetting parents. The video, OMG said in an email, documents the “mountain of rule changes and preferential treatment provided to trans students when it comes to their housing accommodations.”
The video:
If progressive policies are so unambiguously good, why do they have to lie about all of them?
I enjoy every broadcast I do. I joke – about 65% tongue in cheek – that the worst day on the air is better than the best day off the air.
But some are better than others.
Hour two, last Saturday, was fun even by that standard.
My guest for the first half-hour, Cassie Fredregill, told the infuriating story of her go-round about having her ten year old daughter in a class on reacting to sexting.
It’s the sort of thing you’d expect to hear about the Minneapolis or Edina schools.
But this was Little Falls
Listen to the first half hour for. yourself. .
Gary Gross has been covering the story here, here, here, here, here and here,
If you’re not outraged, you are part of the problem.
Much more coming later this week, and on next Saturday’s show.
(The third quarter-hour includes an epic takedown of Cori Bush and “woke” attacks on Western Civilization in general).
It was probably 15 years ago that I wound up running into a young Assistant US Attorney at a social event.
We got to talking – as I am wont to do with, well, people.
What quickly became evident in talking with him – early 30s, graduate of an Ivy League law school after having been a legacy Ivy League undergrad – was the sheer contempt he had for the people outside the federal “criminal justice” system he met.
Example: we got to talking about gun control. He was a Hillary guy. And he went to a demo the ATF put on for federal “criminal justice” employees, where they learned some basic firearm safety, and got to test-fire some of the guns the Feds used. And with that, he did in fact consider himself to be one of the class that should have the right to keep and bear arms (not that he would). The rest of the plebs, naturally,, should be disarmed forthwith.
Now bear in mind this AUSA wasn’t working on organized crime. Or even “crime” as most of us would understand it. His bailiwick was various abstruse import regulations. Not cocaine or fentanyl, mind you; things like wood, food and alcohol, livestock, furniture.
So that’s right – he oozed with sneering contempt for otherwise honest people who ran afoul of abstruse import regulations.
And he didn’t seem to be all that unusual among federal “criminal justice” employees.
Of course, I ran head-on into the contempt another tranche of government employees – the public school system – feels for the peasantry, first-hand, around that same time.
My own struggles with the Saint Paul school system were at a time when the big dumb consultant idea was “zero tolerance” for even the faintest most ethereal hint of “violence”.
Dumb as that could be – and outmoded as it has apparently become, given the evaporation of safety in Saint Paul schools – it was a fart in the breeze compared to the contempt shoveled at parents since the dawn of “woke” education.
I figured – correctly – that Saint Paul and Minneapolis would be pretty hopeless.
But – Little Falls (via Gary at LIberty & Proosperity Blog)
“My name is Cassie Fredregill, a local resident of Little Falls. As my 10-year-old daughter came home from school one day, she told me that there was going to be a class on sexting. As any concerned parent, I reached out to her teacher to confirm what my daughter told me and asked what this class was going to be about.” The thought of a 10-year-old getting taught about sexting is utterly repulsive…
…Cassie wondered why she hadn’t received paperwork that permitted her to opt her daughter out of the class.
In response?
The school district barred her from parent teacher conferences.
She was not happy (jump to 5:25):
Point being, a distressing number of schools are starting to see parents as the enemy – and themselves as a class of aristocrats who shouldn’t have to be troubled by them.
I’ll have Ms. Fredregill on my show on Saturday.
I was reliably informed that stories of teachers subverting parents will to “transition” or otherwise influence (but don’t you dare say “groom”) children were “paranoisa”, misinformation and right wing hate speech:
A family in New York has filed a lawsuit against the Brookhaven-Comsewogue School District, Terryville Road Elementary School, and 5th-grade teacher Debra Rosenquist because they allege that Rosenquist attempted to secretly transition the gender of their 10-year-old daughter without notifying the parents.
The student – who is identified as A.V. in the complaint – became confused as to her gender during the 2021-2022 school year because Rosenquist insisted on using a male name and male pronouns to refer to the student.
Weird. I’m reliably – and very angriliy – informed this can not be:
In October 2021, the teacher began to call A.V. by the name “Leo” and use he/him pronouns for the child. No one in the district informed the parents (referred to as L.N. and E.V. in the complaint) of these changes.
Several months later, in January 2022, the school’s principal informed the parents that the child had met with the school psychologist (without the parents’ knowledge) and had drawn a girl with the words “I wanna kill myself” and “I feel sad a lot.” The psychologist determined this was because A.V. was confused about her gender identity.
This was the first time A.V.’s parents had heard anything about the confusion regarding A.V.’s gender identity or new name and pronouns forced on the child by the teacher.
Here’s the entire complaint against the Suffolk County schools, over the episode…
…that can not possibly have happened.
Remember learning to read?
I do.
We’ll come back to that.
Years ago, when I was looking for alternative ways of schooling my kids, I ran across the Sudbury Schools . The Sudbury model makes kids responsible for their own education. Radically so – nobody tells them what to learn and when. Literally – there is nothing saying “Kids have to be able to read or do math at a specified level by the time they’re X years old”. Teachers are there to help the kids learn what they ask to learn.
Nobody tells kids “Today it’s reading time”. The kids learn to read when they learn to read. Some learn by asking teachers to show them how; some, by asking other kids; others just translate the alphabet.
But while nobody tells Sudbury kids when or how to learn to read, they all do – by the time they’re eight, all of them read at or well beyond “grade level”.
One Sudbury advocate pointed out – i’m paraphrasing, here – that by age five, children learn a whole language, often more than one, along with a world of other material, all by absorbing it from people and the world around them, in their own ways.
Indeed, you have to work hard to prevent children from learning.
And at age six (or earlier, now), that’s exactly what the system does for most kids; forces them to abandon their own style of learning, and learn by sitting in straight lines and listening to someone tell them what and how to learn.
They point out that if kids learned how to speak their native language/s the way they are taught to read or do math or science, we’d have a generation of kids with “Speaking Disabilities”, complete with a class of clinicians earnestly treating it.
Anyway – learning to read.
Dad was an English teacher, and Mom read to me a lot as a kid. I learned my alphabet, and learned how letters and sounds corresponded, and one day when I was four, I clearly remember driving down I94 to pick up Dad at grad school at North Dakota state in Fargo, and seeing the word “FAR-go” on the sign on the freeway, and saying it out loud to the amazement of my mom and grandparents (but not, I suspect, my infant sister).
Come to learn there are three schools of thought for teaching kids how to read.
I’m being a little flippant with that last, but we’ll come back to that in a moment.
We’ve known for decades that people have different learning styles. Some learn by doing, some by watching others do, some by doing while being supervised, some by reading and analyzing, and so forth. It’s utterly uncontroversial.
But somehow, when it comes to children, educational theorists throw that out the window. I’ve written before about the dismal failiure of the “Park your ass in a seat for six hours a day and move when you’re told to” model of education in teaching boys.
Now, it turns out we have an epidemic of children who can’t read – and it appears to be linked to an educational fad related to the third bullet point, “Whole Language Reading” – and the wholesale logrolling of teachers by “experts” and a thriving, well-oiled consultant class.
I listen to NPR so you don’t have do – but there are some pearls among the swine. And one of them is this piece, from one of NPR’s “investigative reporting” podcasts. about the history, effects, and star power of “Whole Language” learning, and the way a whole lot of NPR-listening, laptop-class parents discovered the whole scam when they were stuck at home watching their teachers flail away on Zoom.
It’s – trust me on this – worth a listen:
To sum up: For decades, teachers essentially ignored the fact that kids learn reading the same way humans learn everything – via combination of methods unique to most every individual – and imposed a one-size-fits-all approach to teaching reading based on one scholar and “expert’s” very striated study of child cognition. The consultants latched onto the experts, and sold the schools on their, for lack of a better word, product.
And today, a staggering percentage of kids can’t read – far, far worse than when “Why Can’t Johnny Read” first came out and started the furor over failed education…
…68 years ago.
Remember this, by the way, as the DFL moves to destroy home schooling.
A friend of the blog emails regarding the “Muhammad” flap at Hamline that I wrote about last week:
It is entirely possible that Aram Wedatalla read the syllabus for the course last summer, saw that there was a warning about the image of the Prophet and signed up for the course with an eye toward kickstarting her political career by manufacturing this incident. Aram Wedatalla is after all President of the Muslim Student Association at Hamline. This is a great resume builder for someone who sees their future in the NGO/Nonprofit universe and eventually following in the footsteps of Ilhan Omar into public office. The mind positively boggles at the thought that she was “blindsided” by the picture of the prophet, Aram Wedatalla is not an Innocent.
It’s very entirely plausible.
In fact, it’s entirely possible this entire situation has resulted in no victims whatsoever.
Wedatalla may have launched her career – no mean feat for a “-studies” major at an also-ran university.
Professor Lopez Prater? She became a national cause celebre, perhaps the most famous adjunct professor in the country, and got herself a gig at a more viable school.
The U of M Art Department profs that spoke out on her behalf? They got to thread that needle between being keeping their “woke academic” card and still defending free speech (by one of their own, natch).
There were no losers!
Other than Hamline.
Hamline University – my neighbor here in the MIdway, a university with almost as much hamfisted woke cred as Saint Thomas and Macalester, recently fired an art professor for showing an artistic representation of Mohammed.
Here’s a quick rundown:
López Prater, an adjunct professor, showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class-causing an uproar back in October. Since, many Muslims viewing visual representations of the prophet are prohibited, some thought the professor’s actions as highly “Islamaphobic”. Take a look:
Despite a “trigger warning”, it appears the student was triggered when Dr. López Prater, showed the classroom a medieval depiction of Muhammad, an “incident of hate and discrimination“, apparently. Hell, even the university’s associate vice president of inclusive excellence (AVPIE) found it to be “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic“.
It sent the message for all to hear: “triggered students are more important than academic, or really all, freedom.”
The story got some national play – which couldn’t have helped the struggling little university.
Of course, Hamline’s concern for diversity of academic opinion, or for that matter the less fashionable consitutional rights, is just as dismal.
But let’s stick with today’s controversy. Hamline is trying to back-track. Ellen Watters, chair of Hamline’s board of trustees, wrote:
In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed…It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two coexist.
But it may be too late. Lopez Prater has filed suit:
The lawsuit filed on behalf of López Prate states the professor suffered loss of income from her adjunct position, emotional distress and damage to her professional reputation and job prospects.
David Redden, a lawyer for Dr. López Prater, says the university’s change of heart on the “islamaphobia” accusations does not change the lawsuit and that he, and his client, will pursue legal action against the university.
And other academics have risen to the defense…
…of their fellow academic.
So the good news is, even some academics have reached a point where they won’t spontaneously erupt into a Maoist struggle session on command. Provided it’s their freedom at stake.
It’s a tiny, tiny start.
I don’t know who this guy is.
I don’t know where he teaches.
I’m sure he’s in a boatload of legal and professional trouble for beating the stuffing out of that gabbling little prick.
But I’d love to find out. And if theres a legal defense fund, he should have his people call my people.
https://twitter.com/FightHaven/status/1614985827314028545
The U of M paid Nikole Hannah-Jones $50K to speak at the U – and complied with a demand to conceal the evidence (emphasis added by me):
Hannah-Jones participated in a Dec. 6 “moderated discussion” as part of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs Distinguished Carlson Lecture Series.
According to a contract obtained by Alpha News, the university paid Hannah-Jones’ agents $50,000 for her appearance on campus. The contract prohibited the university from recording the live event, which some school officials took issue with.
“Is the no recording item firm? I would like to remove that if possible. I am looking at one of our local news reporters for the moderator, and we’ve had great success with replaying the conversation via Minnesota Public Radio when we use their hosts. This, along with providing the recording to classrooms for instruction and discussion is important to us,” wrote Gail Fridlund, an events manager with the Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
But of course, the U acquiesced.
Tom Gagnon, executive vice president of the Lavin Agency, said “that provision is firm” but offered to explain the “good” reasons for the recording prohibition.
“I don’t want folks to think she’s being a diva!” he said in a later email.
The university ultimately agreed to prohibit recording and covered the costs of Hannah-Jones’ travel and lodging expenses.
Those “good reasons” are none other than you and me – taxpayers with the capacity for critical thinking. They’ve seen what happens when the plebs see how the grift works.
If someone knows someone with a samizdat recording, let me know.
The number of assaults on teachers in classrooms.
The superintendent’s salary.
The achievement gap.
Two of those numbers are getting worse. One of them is getting better.
Any guesses?
Here you go:
There is, of course, a highly competitive market for Big city schools superintendents. The market for “top” candidates is incredibly competitive, and the salaries show it.
I’ve been trying to figure out why for a couple decades now. All of them talk about metrics that improve, but year over year things always get worse.
I’m trying to figure out any other field were actual accomplishment plays no factor in skyrocketing salaries.
This is what every family in the Minnesota public school system faces todaym. This person is running for the Centennial school board:
This is the educational/industrial compex’s priority.
This is on the ballot in two weeks. Never forget it.
UPDATE: And the consequence of school board members like her aren’t remotely, uh, academic:
“Fridays and breaks can never come soon enough for me this year. I’ve always been able to make it to MEA without needing time off to recover, but not this year. This year I feel like I’ve been run over by a train every day I leave. This week I politely asked a student, that wasn’t supposed to be in my room, to go to her class. This was four minutes after the bell had rung. Her response, ‘Quit talking to me. Get out of my space.’ I was 3-4 feet away. I then calmly repeated that she needed to leave, and she responded with, ‘Shut the fuck up you bitch ass ho.’”
This is an inevitable result, not only of people like the woman in the first tweet, but of the concrete policy prescriptions of “Pacific Educational Group” – the San Francisco consulting firm employed by the Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Edina and many other metro school districts.
Parents shut down a Dearborn, Michigan school board meeting over the distribution of “woke” books:
A school-board meeting in Dearborn, Mich. was shut down earlier this week by hundreds of protesters opposing the circulation of LGBTQ books across the city’s public-school system.
Viral videos recorded by a Detroit Free Press reporter circulated on Twitter showing pandemonium breaking out at the meeting Monday night. Many of the protesters carried signs in English and Arabic: “Keep Your Dirty Books in the Closet,” “Stop Grooming Our Kids,” and “Homosexuality Big Sin,” some read.
Darn those redneck fascists with their signs in English and…
…uh, what now?
Ooof. A protected class going after a couple of protected classes. That’s gotta be awkward.
Wonder what Rashida Tlaib has to say about it?
The U of M is offering a class on the basics and economic, cultural and social benefits of Naziism.
Just kidding. It’s Communism.
Distinction without any real difference.
Its time to defund the U of M. Or at least vast swathes of it.
You knew it was coming. And here it is — student loan “forgiveness,” baby:
President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he will forgive $10,00 in federal student debt for most borrowers, fulfilling a campaign pledge and delivering financial relief to millions of Americans.
Biden will cancel up to $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants.
“Both of these targeted actions are for families who need it the most,” the president said in remarks from the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
I love the smell of moral hazard in the morning. But if there’s a cohort of our society that really loves this sort of thing, it’s the folks who assumed their “Studies” degree was their ticket to the carriage class. The donks long ago realized they have neither reason nor incentive to bestow other people’s resources on the working class or the small business dudes, because they aren’t picking up the check at Le Diplomate. The “S” in an S corporation now stands for suck it.
At this point, the game is evident even to those who’d rather not think about politics — helping the commonweal is right out. Higher education is the best thing the donks have going and subsidizing their efforts is the highest and best use of other people’s money. And if you look at the price tag, you’re probably a denier. And if you paid your own way to go to trade school, you’re a chump. The rewards go to Derrida, not derring-do.
The timing is crucial here — there’s no question this move will piss off millions of potential voters, but there’s also no question that we’ll all be getting a steady supply of ether from the Alliance for a Better Minnesota and the constellation of like-minded political action groups flattering the Studies majors from Olaf and Kenyon and Swarthmore (and Eau Claire and Bemidji, too) that despite everything, they are actually part of the in-crowd. The checks will clear in plenty of time for the clientele, but the unwilling benefactors will be too busy trying to make payroll to get out and door knock.
But hey, have a nice day!
I listen to NPR, on occasion. I do it so you don’t have to. Freedom isn’t free.
And in and among the hours and hours of bald-faced Democrat public relations and PR, you find the occasional nugget of brilliance.
On occasion, that brilliance is utterly in spite of any original intentions.
Such is this hour-long documentary by one DJ Cashmere – which I thought was a hip-hop stage name for a moment, but is in fact the name of a nebbishy-sounding former high school teacher at “Nobles Street School”, a “chain” of Chicago-area “no-nonsense” charter schools. Cashmere went on to become a journnalist…
…under which guise he came back to report on, as “APM Reports” says:
In this hour, DJ, who is white, revisits his old school as it tries to reinvent itself as an anti-racist institution. And he seeks out his former students to ask them how they felt about being on the receiving end of all that education reform, and what they think now about the time they spent in his classroom.
While I eschew the term “dog whistle” as a way of slighting other points of view, the story is full of terms that both sides have staked out, for and against. The blurb notes “At the time, Noble followed a popular model called “no excuses.” Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college.”
That discipline included uniforms, plus some pretty rigid behavioral expectations; being late, disruptive, or tardy with homework was not tolerated; detentions flew like spitballs for infractions, not only of disciplinary rules, but for being in class late or having uniforms out of spec.
No education model is a panacaea, but Noble Street had good results – good enough that close to 10% of Chicago families, overwhelmingly “of color” and low income (just like Twin Cities charter schools) put their kids in Noble Street schools. There were exceptions. When dealing with human beings, nothing is ever foolproof. But pretty much every objective measure – graduation rates, test scores, college acceptance rates, crime rates – showed the concept worked well for most kids.
And then…
…well, the blurb mentions the dramatic peak; management at Noble Street changed. Noble Street’s “no excuses” values were patriarchal, colonial and, despite the overwhelming approval of the overwhelmingly of-color clientele who’d voted with their and their kids’s feet to get into Noble, “white supremacist”.
And so they changed.
As to the results?
You can listen to the story here (I can’t embed it, unfortunately).
Like all human behavior, there are as many sides to the story as there are people. But it’s a lede that one might suspect public radio would bury, and you’d be at least partly right. The results that parents were looking for – the sort of accomplishment based measures that modern Big Left has called “patriarchal” and “white supremacist” – didn’t fare well.
It’s worth an (occasionally infuriating) listen.
…one might be well-placed to shuffle past the Minneapolis Public Schools’ latest collective bargaining agreement:
To be, uh, fair, it doesn’t mean all white teachers get laid off before all minority ones. The union would never go for that.
No, just that honkeys are first people at any given level of seniority to get whacked.
One of the proposals dealt with “educators of color protections.” The agreement states that if a non-white teacher is subject to excess, MPS must excess a white teacher with the “next least” seniority.
“Starting with the Spring 2023 Budget Tie-Out Cycle, if excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the District shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population,” the agreement reads.
That’ll fix that achievement gap…
… for another year of school, their teachers are getting ready as well:
“Interrupting whiteness“
Now, here’s a little dirty little secret of mine; I can and do ignore people who create new adjectives by adding “–ness” to the ends of nouns, willy-nilly.
When I first started hearing “progressive“ activists jabbering about “whiteness“ a few years back, I got to confess, I ignored it. The idea that there is some essential, internal racial trait that unifies a term that covers Armenians and Norwegians, or Italians and Irish, is the kind of laughable absurdity you get from… Well, racists who are trying to pound facts into shape to fit is theory.
It’s always hard to pick which leftist pathology to ignore, and which to take seriously.
Of course, looking at the “crowd“ in this photo, I’m not sure I would take them “seriously“ if they weren’t all intimately involved in teaching the children of whatever parents weren’t smart enough to get them out of the Minneapolis Public schools…
SCENE: Mitch BERG is at REI, getting a handlebar cell phone carrier for hjs bike. He rounds the corner from the coffee cups, and runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is shopping for…something? BERG tries to backpedal quietly away, but it’s too late.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, shhhhhhhhure as I stand here today, it’s Avery…
LIBRELLE: Shut up. The Supreme Court just violated the separation of church and state, by allowing an educator to pray at school functions.
BERG: Well, you got a few of the facts right.
LIBRELLE: What would you think if a Muslim were to throw down a prayer mat on the fifty yard line and delay the kickoff while he prayed to Mecca?
BERG: Coach Kennedy didn’t interrupt the game with an ostentatious prayer in the middle of the field. It was a personal observance, after the game, involving him and only him. Other than the fact that it took place on the field around people, it couldn’t have been less public.
LIBRELLE: It caused an uproar.
BERG: It caused a small group of progressives to go to the school board and, after years of such observances, change the district policy to ban “demonstrative religious activity, readily observable to (if not intended to be observed by) students and the attending public.”
LIBRELLE: So what would you think if a Muslim did something like that?
BERG: Have you actually been in the Midway Target? The Roseville Walmart? Seeing Muslims throwing down their mats at prayer time in an out of the way part of the store is nothing new at all. I care about it no more than a Christian praying whereever they want.
LIBRELLE: Yeah, but what if a non-Christian kid sees the demonstration, by one of their school’s authority figures? That’s going to put pressure on them. (Nods smugly)
BERG: So let me get this straight: a Christian school staffer, praying, privately but in public view, is…
LIBRELLE: Oppressive, fascist and probably white supremacist and racist.
BERG: Mkay. In the meantime, a non-binary or LGBTQ teacher telling kids the details of their personal and identity’s sexual orientation, including how their various orientations practice intimacy, to kids of all beliefs, including Christian and even Muslim kids, telling them there are infinite genders and no real notion of masculine and feminine, when they’re still at an age where the parents haven’t had “the talk” with them themselves yet?
LIBRELLE: Essential social education, to make up for the sloth and incompetence of parents.
BERG: Aaaah…
(They are interrupted by an employee)
EMPLOYEE: (to BERG): Can I help yo, sir?
BERG: (waves box with holder). Good to go.
EMPLOYEE: (to LIBRELLE) And you, si…uh, maa… (looks at BERG, startingi to panic a big. BERG shrugs)
LIBRELLE: I need a new seat for my electric recumbent bike.
BERG: So you, the big environmentalist, have switched to a coal-powered bike?
LIBRELLE looks up, alarmed, stammering, giving BERG time to make his break.
And SCENE.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
I need to go back to school so I can take out$10,000 in student loans and never pay them back.
I’m thinking Gunsmith School sounds good. Saw it on a matchbook cover. Probably be lots of demand for my services and get paid in cash, after Democrats ban legally-owned guns.
Joe Doakes
I’m going to guess that the base value of a academic program Will increase by $10,000 in the next few years.
Above and beyond inflation, I mean.
The 1st Biden Air Cav will soon start spraying Agent Green, exfoliating with borrowed dollars whatever canopy of fiscal sanity still remains below.
President Biden told reporters on Thursday that he is considering taking executive action to broadly cancel student loan debt, and a decision may be imminent.
“I am considering dealing with some [student] debt reduction,” Biden said today. However, he appeared to conclusively rule out $50,000 or more in student loan forgiveness. “I am not considering $50,000 [student] debt reduction,” he said. His comment confirms his earlier statements rejecting larger amounts of student loan forgiveness, and would seem to contradict suggestions made earlier this week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that Biden was seriously considering cancelling $50,000 or more in student loan debt.
Biden did not specify an exact amount of student loan forgiveness that he is considering, although clearly it would be under $50,000. He also did not address rumors that he is considering imposing income restrictions on student debt cancellation.
The proposed debt cancellation would “only” be for the federal student loan program. Even the Socialist Squadrons at Camp Joe don’t yet dare force private lenders to forgive debt.
Schumer wants the $50,000 per snowflake. Biden may opt for $10,000 per, another number mentioned as a possibility.
Whatever the final number, there will be a cost to the taxpayer. Whatever Treasury bonds were used to lend the money still exist, and would need to paid back and are still charging interest. A freebie amount of $50,000 would cost around a trillion.
Then there’s the moral hazard. If the debt can be forgiven once, it can just as easily be forgiven again. Students will start to borrow with the expectation they won’t have to pay back the loans.
So, this is a step out the back door towards “free” education.
Another aspect that Biden needs to tap dance around is a means test, or some kind of income limit. Student loans are held by more higher income people than lower income. Biden can’t be seen to be handing stacks of cash to “rich” kids. (A lot of student debt goes for graduate schools.) So, he might just make it a welfare program and forgive debt only for lower income people.
Perhaps with their free money, the kiddies can take an economics class or two and discuss the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Yesterday Mr. D posted on what any conservative more than five minutes old has learned, which is conservatives are not allowed to have certain thoughts. And, a couple days ago I posted on an irony I’ve longed noticed on the Left, that they view themselves as tolerant and open and decry attempts to enforce, as they see it, conformity, yet they themselves are wholly intolerant when faced with opposing viewpoints.
All this reminded me of a friend of mine from my school daze. He’s a genuinely gentle and nice fellow, but he’s of the Leftist persuasion.
He posted this on facebook awhile back, before the election, and the resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.
I believe that the most valuable ideal is kindness.
I believe that all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religious belief
or non-belief, political alignment, sexual orientation and status in life
are deserving of respect.I’m not perfect in embracing this next ideal but I do my best. It’s all
about having an open mind. I may not agree with the political positions,
religious beliefs, or phobias of others but I do my best to listen to and
respect others.
Then, pulling a 12-G turn, he posted this awhile later…
I am tired of listening to you all! And now I ask that if you truly believe
that we are better off under the current President, if you believe that we
don’t need stricter laws and bans of certain guns, and/or if you have or
intend to disparage the young people of March for Our Lives…then please
unfriend me now and save me the trouble of having to do so myself, which I already have done for some others.I no longer have the patience to listen to you.
The resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.
(more…)
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