For the lower incomes and those on a fixed income the inflation problem has gotten quite severe. The wealthy members of congress decline to pass bills that Biden proposed that would have helped lower the effects of inflation and helped out the lower incomes. But some people, those well off see poor people as useless and not deserving of anything. They really hate poor people because they are poor. Found out one state was jailing poor people just for being poor until recently. I will post that later.
Yeah, what looks DOWN RIGHT stUPid to me is the unending spew of complaints from right wing cartoonists that this is all somehow Biden’s fault. Hello? Pandemic here… We also need to remember that all the ranting about inflation has more to do with Republigoons attacking ANYTHING the Biden Administration does (or can’t do) in furtherance of the Republican project to regain power and stay there permanently. They have no plans to govern, just take power and fleece the country until it collapses. Inflation in short, is too much money chasing too few goods (and that doesn’t mean YOU have too much money, but that in aggregate there are still plenty of people who want and are able to buy things vs. the supply of things). Note that I’m not saying that inflation is not real or is good — only that it is worldwide and will take some time to slow its rate. Those who vote for Republicans thinking they’ll manage inflation are in for some bad, and probably permanent surprises. Scottie
Here’s a harrowing fact for you: If the world’s ten richest men lost 99.999% of their wealth, they would still be richer than 99% of the global population.
Why should Biden apologize? First it was his opinion, second he was not being profane, and Doocy is always trying to trip Biden up while making him look bad. This question was designed to be a sound bite on Fox, and very one knows that Fox is the media arm of the Republicans. Scottie
With what is happening world wide I think we are all doing what this cartoon shows Biden doing. How ever I think it is super talented of Biden to do the above and create away forward making the path for the rest to follow. Scottie
Btw, the filibuster is not going to save us from a fascist takeover of democracy. Abolishing it will.
A former Speaker of the House is threatening jail time for members of Congress who are investigating the violent January 6 attack on our Capitol and our Constitution.
You know that era in the first two decades of the 20th century when all those confederate statues went up? We are in an analogous era… https://t.co/h7J9YU0RVV
A school board in North Carolina was threatened with $8 million withheld from schools unless they agreed to an anti-"CRT" policy which orders teachers to treat the founding fathers as flawless saints – or be fired.
This is also the same logic the Supreme Court used to overturn the Voting Rights Act. Black progress is often used as an excuse by those with power to ensure no more progress occurs.
And will be until the anti-mask / anti-vaxxers start practicing medical sound precautions. Until the hospitals are not flooded with seriously sick Covid virus patients and the death toll comes down we are stuck trying to mitigate the problem, not solving it. Scottie
The true number of deaths from the Covid pandemic in the US are likely being undercounted, due to the long-lasting and little-understood effects of Covid infection and other deadly complications that surged during the past two years.
“We are seeing right now the highest death rates we have ever seen in the history of this business,” J Scott Davison, CEO of insurance company OneAmerica, told journalists on 30 December.
“Death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said, among working-age people between 18 and 64. Deaths among older Americans have also increased, with one in 100 Americans over the age of 65 dying.
Republicans try to hide the facts. Covid, climate, criticisms of racism.
Policies that kill kids are the true mark of a bad faith pro-lifer.
Policies that adversely target teachers and K-12 education are the true mark of a bad faith pro-lifer.
‘How can we make people’s lives worse?’ is the true mark of a bad faith pro-lifer.
Right as hospitalizations are peaking too
And yet you’re still here…
Of course…Republicans work and are owned by Putin. It’s no surprise they want to support the expansion of the Russia into NATO Ukrainian Sovereignty
The right wing loves to portray the vaccine mandates as some sort of blocking the economy or stopping people from working. It is not. It is the people refusing to get the vaccine due to their political leanings and deliberate misinformation denying science that are blocking the advancement of the economy and getting back to some kind of normal. Get the damn shots, and act like grownups. Scottie
I recently had to send some documents less than 20 miles away. I was advised and did sent it registered so it was required to be signed for and traceable. A week went by and the tracking said it was in transit. Then another week, and the same thing. So on the start of the third week as Ron was going to deal with the postal office on this we received the documents back that we had sent. Plus the signed for slip. But the tracking system on USPS web site still said it was in transit. What has Dejoy done to our constitutionally mandated service for the people? Scottie
I have explained before how austerity is the wrong approach to solving inflation. The solution is target payments to the lower incomes, something the wealthy detests with a passion. But it works, we seen that with the child tax credit that lifted 50 % of US children out of poverty until the Republicans with Manchin / Sinema killed it. As Joe Manchin said he thinks poor people are just lazy bums. So does Jeff Bezos who told his top people to use and abuse workers until they were too broken to work and then replace them with what he thought was an inexhaustible supply of new workers. He would be correct about the supply if the wealthy had their way of keeping people poor, desperate, hungry, and with out any government assistance or help. Scottie
Rivers is a shill for the far right and his stuff is posted in that media. However this is asinine even as it is well believed on the right. The right really thinks Fox, OAN, Newsmax are all telling the honest truth and all other news media is lying and in the take of the Democrats. That is complete reversal of course, but you can not shake them of that. Show then studies or even videos of the lies and they simply deny it as fake and made up. Their belief is worth more to them than reality. It really is just like a religion in that respects. Because the main stream media debunks the lies and misinformation of the right wing media arm of the Republicans they have to demonize them by projecting what they are doing themselves on to the left. As they always do. Scottie
How do you figure this is all on Biden. How is Biden responsible for Putin’s moves on Ukraine? Short of threatening war with Russia, What are Biden’s options? What is he supposed to do about Manchin and Sinema? Or the Supreme court, for that matter? Covid was here before Biden. He is following the best medical advice he can get, but the right wing is rooting for the virus to win.
The entire world is struggling with inflation. It’s an international problem with no easy solutions but to wait it out. Lester, like the rest of the rest of the conservative projectionists who continue feeding their non-critical thinking followers trite sound bites that their brains can latch on to, is ignoring what Biden has been able to accomplish in his first year in office—passing a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package; passing a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill; getting Americans from less than 1% vaccinated to more than 63% vaccinated; getting the unemployment rate down to under 3.9% with jobless claims at their lowest levels since the 1960s (it was at 4.7% when his predecessor started his term and saw it go high as 14.8%); getting a record setting and diverse group of 40 federal judges confirmed (a number that even McConnell can be proud of); seeing the S&P 500 (the metric the last guy used to measure success) hit new record highs 70 times and finishing up 29%; and finally committing to ending the pointless war in Afghanistan that took the lives of many servicemen. Scottie
What is being removed from schools is not CRT but the real history of the US and any mention of how the US continues to be a very racist country. To deny the deeply racist history of the US and how that racism not only continues in many forms but also affects the situation of the descendants of slaves is racist. Because it denies reality to white wash history erasing the harsh reality with misinformation designed to ease the guilt of those that benefited from the past. No one is teaching that white kids are evil because they are white or that they are born oppressors due to skin tone. What is being taught is that these things happened and it is a truth we must face if we wish to keep such inequalities from continuing to happen today. Changing the word slaves in text books to immigrants as was done in Texas shows more current guilt and a wish for the present system of oppression to continue. CRT is a dog whistle that some white people are using to try to keep history from being taught to children so the current system can be allowed to continue. That is a disservice to the country, to our children, and to the future. Scottie
This article adds more information to the story I posted earlier. Notice the law signed was to prevent same sex couples from being able to adopt, it was designed to let Christian agencies to discriminate against same sex couples. Scottie
A Knoxville couple is suing the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services, saying a state-sponsored Christian-based adoption agency refused to help them because they are Jewish.
It is the state’s first lawsuit to challenge a new law that allows religious adoption agencies to deny service to families whose religious or moral beliefs aren’t in sync with the provider’s, the family’s attorney told Knox News on Wednesday.
The adoption agency, the Holston United Methodist Home for Children based in Greeneville, Tennessee, denied Elizabeth and Gabriel Rutan-Ram from acquiring Tennessee-mandated foster-parent training and a home-study certification as they attempted to adopt a child from Florida last year, the Rutan-Rams say.
The organization was previously but is no longer an arm of the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church. A spokesperson for the conference directed questions to the home.
In December, the Greenville-based Holston sued the Biden administration for regulations that prohibit discrimination in programs funded by U.S. Health and Human Services grants “on the basis of religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and same-sex marriage status,” saying it violates its First Amendment rights.
In that lawsuit, the organization said it receives public money to provide foster care placement and training, among other services, for the state Department of Children’s Services.
The Home for Children’s president and CEO Bradley Williams could not be reached for comment Wednesday. Instead, a receptionist at Home for Children told Knox News to email the organization’s law firm, Alliance Defending Freedom, which bills itself as “the world’s largest legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, marriage and family, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.” Representatives of the firm did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
The lawsuit was filed Wednesday by Americans United for Separation of Church and State on behalf of the Rutan-Rams in Davidson County Chancery Court. A spokesperson for DCS declined to comment on pending litigation, as did a spokesperson from the state Attorney General’s Office.
The lawsuit comes nearly two years to the date that Gov. Bill Lee signed into law a measure that allows religious adoption agencies to deny service to same-sex couples. The law allows adoption agencies to refuse to participate in a child placement if doing so would “violate the agency’s written religious or moral convictions or policies.”
“The Tennessee Constitution, like the U.S. Constitution, promises religious freedom and equality for everyone. Tennessee is reneging on that promise by allowing a taxpayer-funded agency to discriminate against Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram because they are Jews,” Alex J. Luchenitser, associate vice president and associate legal director at Americans United, said in a news release.
“Public funds should never be used for religious discrimination,” Luchenitser told Knox News. “The law should never create obstacles that keep loving parents from taking care of children who need a home. That should certainly never occur because of religious discrimination.”
The couple is joined by six others in the suit against the state. They are:
The Rev Jeannie Alexander, an interfaith pastor from Davidson County
The Rev. Elaine Blanchard, a Disciples of Christ minister from Shelby County
The Rev. Alaina Cobb, a Christian minister from Davidson County
The Rev. Denise Gyauch, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Davidson County
Dr. Larry Blanz of Davidson County, a retired psychologist with more than 40 years of experience that includes working with foster parents and children
Mirabelle Stoedter, a Davidson County resident who serves as treasurer of the Tennessee chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Attempting to adopt
After realizing they could not have biological children of their own, in early 2021 the Rutan-Rams located a child in Florida they were excited about fostering with plans to adopt. They say they were initially told by Holston that the organization would help them with their out-of-state placement.
However, on the day they were to begin their training, the organization told them it only serves families who share their Christian belief system, the lawsuit says. The couple was not able to complete the process to become foster parents to the child.
“I felt like I’d been punched in the gut,” Elizabeth Rutan-Ram said in a news release. “It was the first time I felt discriminated against because I am Jewish. It was very shocking. And it was very hurtful that the agency seemed to think that a child would be better off in state custody than with a loving family like us.”
The Rutan-Rams are currently fostering and hope to adopt a teenage girl through a separate agency, Luchenitser told Knox News, and they also would like to adopt another child in the future.
Tom Hanks penned a guest essay for The New York Times on Friday in which he called for the truth about the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to be taught in schools.
Calling himself a “lay historian” who studied history in high school and community college in Oakland, California, Hanks notes that his education, in which he learned about the Emancipation Proclamation, the Ku Klux Klan and Rosa Parks’ heroism, did not include the Tulsa massacre.
“I never read a page of any school history book about how, in 1921, a mob of white people burned down a place called Black Wall Street, killed as many as 300 of its Black citizens and displaced thousands of Black Americans who lived in Tulsa,” Hanks writes.
The actor notes that this experience is common, due to history being “mostly written by white people about white people like me, while the history of Black people — including the horrors of Tulsa — was too often left out.”
Hanks emphasizes that the truth about Tulsa, and the violence against Black Americans by white Americans, has typically been “systematically ignored, perhaps because it was regarded as too honest, too painful a lesson” for young white students.
Hanks goes on to write, “It seems white educators and school administrators (if they even knew of the Tulsa massacre, for some surely did not) omitted the volatile subject for the sake of the status quo, placing white feelings over Black experience — literally Black lives in this case.” He asks readers to consider how different one’s perspective might be if the Tulsa massacre were taught to students as early as the fifth grade. “Today, I find the omission tragic, an opportunity missed, a teachable moment squandered.”
He adds that, in addition to predominantly white schools omitting the Tulsa race massacre in their education programs, the entertainment industry also did not take on the subject in films or television shows until recently, in projects such as Watchmen and Lovecraft Country. He notes that historically based fiction entertainment “must portray the burden of racism in our nation for the sake of the art form’s claims to verisimilitude and authenticity.”
Considering whether schools today should teach students about Tulsa, Hanks simply says yes. Though he goes further and calls for “the battle to whitewash curriculums” to end. Hanks acknowledges that America’s history is “messy,” but knowing the truth makes people “wiser and stronger.”
Toward the end of Hanks’ essay, he writes that 1921 is “the truth, a portal to our shared, paradoxical history.”
It’s an example of how the debate over critical race theory has reached public schools in Florida, with the history professor accusing Gov. Ron DeSantis of creating “a climate of fear.”
J. Michael Butler, a history professor at Flagler College in St. Augustine, was scheduled to give a presentation Saturday to Osceola County School District teachers called “The Long Civil Rights Movement,” which postulates that the civil rights movement preceded and post-dated Martin Luther King Jr. by decades.
He said that he was shocked to learn why the seminar had been canceled through an email Wednesday but that he wasn’t surprised because educators feel increasingly intimidated over teaching about race.
Less than 24 hours before Butler was informed of the cancellation, a state Senate committee advanced legislation Tuesday at the behest of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to block public schools and private businesses from making people feel “discomfort” when they’re taught about race. DeSantis also wants to empower parents to sue schools that teach critical race theory.
“There’s a climate of fear, an atmosphere created by Gov. Ron DeSantis, that has blurred the lines between scared and opportunistic,” Butler said in a phone interview.
“The victims of this censorship are history and the truth,” Butler said. “The end game is they’re going to make teaching civil rights into ‘critical race theory,’ and it’s not.”
A spokeswoman for DeSantis, Christina Pushaw, denied the allegation and pointed out that DeSantis had nothing to do with the local Osceola County controversy — one of the most tangible examples of how the debate over critical race theory has reached public schools in Florida.
“Critical Race Theory and factual history are two different things. The endless attempts to gaslight Americans by conflating the two are as ineffective as they are tiresome,” she said in an email. “So just to be clear, mixing up ‘teaching history’ with ‘teaching CRT’ is dishonest.”
Between local classrooms and the halls of the state Capitol, public school administrators have been left to navigate tricky education politics intensified by state and national forces.
DeSantis — an early opponent of what he called critical race theory, or CRT, who also fined school districts over Covid mask mandates — is running for re-election and is widely seen as a 2024 GOP presidential contender. Although there’s scant evidence that CRT is taught in Florida public schools, DeSantis pushed the state school board to bar it anyway and then called on legislators to enshrine it in state statute during the lawmaking session that began two weeks ago.
Other potential Republican White House hopefuls, like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, have also crusaded against CRT and school mask mandates, issues that helped propel Glenn Youngkin to the governor’s mansion in Virginia last year.
CRT was developed in the 1980s as a graduate-level academic framework to highlight and quantify the impacts of structural racism, including disparities among Black people and white people in policing and prosecution. It was rarely something likely to be discussed in a high school classroom.
But the term has often been misapplied as a shorthand for the notion that white guilt was being taught in K-12 schools in lessons about slavery, civil rights and discrimination, all core elements of the nation’s story long before the advent of critical race theory in law and graduate schools.
The debate over the teaching of racial history in education began to boil over in 2020 amid parental unrest over Covid lockdowns, distance learning for children and “anti-racism” trainings. And last year, organizations like the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which produces model bills for Republican causes, held webinars that warned that teaching what they called critical race theory in schools is un-American.
At the local level, school board members like Terry Castillo in Osceola County said she has gotten unprecedented attention from parents over the debate.
“School districts in Florida are in a precarious position as we navigate the anti-CRT administrative order which has little guidance yet promises to have strong consequences if not implemented,” she said in a written statement that pointed out how “school boards have been punished for going against the governor’s orders regarding mask mandates.”
Castillo said she was initially unaware that Butler’s seminar had been canceled and that she was informed by the school district’s superintendent, Debra Pace, that the administration initially wanted to postpone it because of concerns about the spread of Covid.
But as the discussion intensified in Tallahassee, Castillo said, Pace also became concerned about the particulars of Butler’s lecture about the history of civil rights.
According to an email Pace sent Wednesday to “social science educators” scheduled to attend the event, a copy of which was shared by Butler and independently verified by NBC News, the school district wanted a committee to review his presentation.
“I’m sorry we are unable to offer the planned professional development,” Pace wrote.
“We needed an opportunity to review them prior to the training in light of the current conversations across our state and in our community about critical race theory,” she continued, saying the district had received only a summary document of his presentation.
“I am mindful of the potential of negative distractions if we are not proactive in reviewing content and planning its presentation carefully,” Pace wrote, adding that the seminar couldn’t be immediately rescheduled because of other conflicts.
Pace didn’t respond to a request for comment in writing, nor did she provide an original copy of her email as requested. She didn’t dispute the copy furnished by Butler.
Butler said he hadn’t shared his full presentation with the school district. In the presentation, which he provided to NBC News, Butler doesn’t mention the theory, nor structural racism or anti-racism.
Butler said he learned why the presentation was canceled from the email, which was forwarded to him by one of the teachers who had been signed up to attend. The teacher locked his or her Twitter account out of fear of being exposed for speaking out.
Grace Leatherman, the executive director of the National Council for History Education, or NCHE, a national nonprofit group, said that her organization sponsors a seminar program in partnership with the county district and that it is funded through a grant with the Education Department.
She said in an email that the organization was informed Wednesday that the seminar couldn’t take place because the materials had to be reviewed. She added that the seminar was part of the series her organization is doing in the district and that it couldn’t be moved.
“The district clarified that the event could be held later subject to editing of materials. NCHE will not continue with this event, but does look forward to continuing our long-standing commitment to Osceola County teachers,” Leatherman said.
In a subsequent phone interview, Leatherman said that while the cancellation wasn’t due to the district’s request to edit material, “simply, obviously, we don’t want our presenters to need to feel they need to edit or self-edit their work.”
“We don’t think that’s appropriate,” she said.
Butler said a council employee also informed him that local administrators felt the topic had set off CRT “red flags” at the school district. Leatherman said the district told NCHE the seminar could not take place because Butler’s materials needed to be reviewed, but could be held at a later date subject to editing — logistically, however, it was not feasible for the NCHE to reschedule.
Butler said: This is all fact-based instruction. This is not theory-based. This is not indoctrination.”
Butler said he believes that the legislation being debated in Tallahassee is too vague and that it “makes it so that any topic that falls under the rubric can be labeled as potentially critical race theory.“
“And the end result is that any teacher training any educational program can be canceled, postponed, stonewalled so that it never happens,” he said.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., said in a text message that the law wouldn’t really prohibit teaching critical race theory; rather, he said, it would prescribe “the teaching of accurate and objective history on all the topics listed.”
“I think part of the confusion” over teaching basic civil rights history “is the confusion that has been created about what is or isn’t CRT,” Diaz said.
Florida school district cancels a professor’s civil rights history seminar for teachers, citing concerns over “critical race theory” — even though his lecture had nothing to do with the topic. https://t.co/ps6TXziHRz
South Florida authorities are investigating the origin of anti-Semitic flyers that were distributed overnight in Miami Beach and Surfside neighborhoods, police said Sunday.
Miami Beach police increased patrols in neighborhoods and religious institutions following the first report received shortly after 7 a.m., Ernesto Rodriguez, the department’s spokesperson, told Miami Herald via email.
The anti-Semitic flyers appear to have beeen distributed by the Goyim Defense League, or GDL — a loose network of anti-Semites and white supremacists with leaders in Forida, New York, California and Colorado, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Read the full article. The GDL last appeared on JMG in November 2021 when an alleged member was charged with torching a Texas synagogue. Last May, members of the group filmed themselves driving around Miami’s Coconut Grove with “Hitler Was Right” displayed on their van.
This morning hundreds of homes in our community found plastic bags outside their homes filled with a hateful anti-Semitic flyer and small pebbles. @MiamiBeachPD is actively investigating to determine their origin. As a precaution we’ve increased patrols in our neighborhoods and… pic.twitter.com/5bx0RvnRoD
Stalking the stage while brandishing a tomahawk at the rally, McKay declared that “World War IV” is underway and warned doctors and nurses that if they “have the courage to kill our people, you better have the courage to stand in a direct crosshairs of Patriot Streetfighter because this is now going to happen.”
Following his remarks at the event, McKay sat down for an interview with David Scarlett of the program “His Glory” where McKay explicitly threatened violence.
“I’m going to name names—show pictures where I can—these are the nurses, doctors involved in murdering these people, and I’m going to start pushing these people into the public eye,” McKay said. “Let’s see how they like that battlefield.”
“We can’t allow the enemy or anybody to use our virtues against us,” he continued. “I don’t allow anybody to use the semantics of language or use my virtues against me. This is war. It’s gonna get bloody, and I’m going to get ugly too; no less ugly than any 1776 preacher that dropped his Bible on the lectern, grabbed his muzzle loader or musket, and went out and put balls and bullets inside people and watched blood flow on a battlefield. That’s what they had to do. That’s the name of Christ.”
“It’s an evil enemy,” McKay declared. “Any of the minions, including the doctors and nurses who were part of it—knowingly or unknowingly, that’s not for me to sort out—but they need to know what’s coming next. And that’s the only other battle that I can see in my future now coming up after what happened to Cirsten W.”
