Via email from hate group leader Tony Perkins:
The Left’s worst nightmare is an informed parent. And in places like Florida and Missouri, legislators are doing everything they can to build an army of them.
For conservatives in the Sunshine State, it’s been a rocky road with the media and Democrats—who seem determined to misrepresent the legislation they’ve introduced.
Even President Joe Biden weighed in, calling it “hateful” to give parents a voice in their children’s education.
As usual, the proposal has nothing to do with LGBT discrimination. That’s a convenient talking point for a party who hasn’t found a way to combat parents’ newfound influence in education.
Dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill by the Left, Florida State Rep. Joe Harding’s (R) proposal is actually aimed at transparency (not that anyone would get that honest assessment from the radical media).
Florida Republicans want to give all parents the right—and means—to sue the school district if they aren’t getting the information they need.
If a mom or dad can’t afford to hire an attorney, the state board of education would hire a magistrate and pay for it.
FRC Action has been proud to be a part of that movement, encouraging parents through events like our School Board Boot Camp.
This weekend, we’re taking the training on the road to Lynchburg, Virginia for a special education summit with the Noah Webster Educational Foundation. The goal is to replicate that in more and more states.
Maybe you aren’t on the local school board. Maybe you don’t have kids in the public school. You can still use your voice: in the debate and in prayer for these state efforts and parents, fighting to bring light to a dark world.
Category: Schools / Schooling / Education / Libraries
The best- and worst-paying college majors, five years after graduation
Engineering degrees offer the biggest payday, according to the New York Federal Reserve’s latest study of salaries for recent college graduates.
The top 10 majors earning the most five years from graduation are all related to engineering — except for computer science, which ranks fifth out of all majors. Of that top 10, the average yearly salary is just over $68,000, with computer engineering paying $74,000 in median wages — the most of all majors.
The bottom 10 majors after five years are mostly liberal arts degrees, and they all pay less than $40,000 in wages right after college. In some cases, the lower-ranked majors pay almost less than half of what the best-paying majors earn.
For comparison’s sake, a minimum wage job that pays $15 per-hour works out to $31,200 in yearly wages, if you were to work 40 hours every week. That pay is nearly on par with what you’d earn for a college major in family and consumer sciences — a life-skills college degree that ranks the worst in terms of median pay within five years of graduation, with yearly wages of $32,000.
Four majors — family and consumer sciences, the performing arts, general social sciences and social services — actually pay less than the median salary of $35,805 for full-time workers in the U.S., regardless of education, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
The good news is that most college majors still offer greater earning potential compared to a high school degree. The median wage for college grads ages 22-27 is $52,000, compared to a median wage of $30,000 for workers with no college degrees.Plus, all college graduates’ salaries improve over time, regardless of major. The study tracked “mid-career” ages for graduates between 35-45, and found that the average pay for all majors goes from $46,891 to $74,123 in that time.
However, the top and bottom rankings remain consistent for both early and mid-career college graduates, with engineers at the top and liberal arts and education majors at the bottom. The gap in wages also increases over time, as top mid-career earners make about $100,000 while bottom-ranked earners make less than $60,000. This includes family and consumer sciences majors, who earn a median mid-career salary of $51,000.
There is a video at the link above.
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: It has been a long day but I think I got 75% caught up. Enjoy.
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Scottie’s world today
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I just watched a verified video of a Russian tank swerve across the road to run over and sit on a car going the other way on the road. The intent was clear to kill by crushing the people in the car. It looks like the man survived. But that is a war crime. You do not target or try to kill civilians that are no threat to you. You simply don’t try to deliberately kill civilians. The US and the nations must use everything we can to stand up to Putin.
Gods this is like me arguing with the right wing cult members. I can not count how many times I have been called evil for quoting facts.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
The pipeline wouldn’t have helped the US oil situation at all. If it was running they projected 75% of the oil was going to overseas markets, and 25% was to be charged as an import. Meaning that when oil prices went up so would the oil in the pipeline and we still have to pay more. For some reason the right acts like it is free oil given to us that Biden cancelled, it never was that.
“US Senator Elizabeth Warren put the pieces together when Fed chair Jerome Powell appeared last month before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Offering a lesson in what she referred to as “Econ 101,” the senator from Massachusetts led Powell through a series of questions related to inflation.
“If you’re a corporation that has eaten up most of the competition and cornered the market, is it easier for you to raise prices on your customers and maximize your profits because you don’t have to worry about losing your business?” asked Warren.
Powell replied, “In principle, if you don’t have competition and you’re a monopolist, yes, you can raise your prices.”
“Okay,” Warren continued. “Over the past year, we know that prices have risen because of supply chain problems, unexpected shifts in the demand for goods, and even higher labor costs. But if corporations were simply passing along these costs in highly competitive markets, would the companies’ profits margins have changed much?”
After mumbling something about varying factors that impact such calculations, Powell concluded, “But, in principle, you could be right.”
With that answer in hand, the point was made:
Senator Warren: Well, it’s very much not what we’re seeing right now. Today, nearly two out of three of the biggest publicly traded corporations in the country are reporting fatter profit margins than they reported before the pandemic which doesn’t sound like they’re just passing along costs. So let me ask you: Does that increase in profit margins, combined with greater market concentration in industry after industry, suggest to you that some corporations may be passing along increased costs and, at the same time, charging more on top of that to fatten their profit margins?
Warren made the vital connection that all Democrats should be making as debates about the causes of inflation heat up. Instead of letting Wall Street apologists create the impression that inflation is simply the result of supply chain kinks and pent-up consumer demand after two years of pandemic lockdowns, and instead of letting Republicans suggest that federal and state investments in health care and housing are the problem, Democrats should be speaking like Warren. And like former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, a congressional candidate who declared Thursday:
It’s not “inflation,” it’s price-gouging.Exxon and other Big Oil corporations are price-gouging us at the gas pump.Grocery chains are making record profits price-gouging us at the register.Corporations are bleeding working people dry. Enough.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/inflation-price-gouging/
In 2001, President George Bush issued a truly astounding appraisal of Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent who has run Russia since replacing Boris Yeltsin in 1999. “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”
Sure. Ukrainians are dying and you’re complaining about this. That’s your right, but it makes you look pretty self centered, don’t you agree? Maybe inflation would be better if your shithead POTUS Trump hadn’t screwed up the economy with a trade war with China. If you don’t see the huge problem with Russia invading Ukraine, you have a problem
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And now some for fun
FL House Bans Lessons That Cause White “Discomfort”
The Tallahassee Democrat reports:
New statewide requirements on how race is discussed in schools, colleges and workplaces were approved by the Florida House, despite withering criticism that it amounts to censorship.
The measure, which drew hours of heated debate Thursday, is aimed at meeting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ demand for a Stop WOKE Act, blunting what he has warned is liberal ideology influencing the teaching of history in schools and coursing through corporate diversity training.
The legislation — which still needs Senate approval before going to DeSantis, who is certain to sign it into law — prohibits any teaching that could make students feel they bear personal responsibility for historic wrongs because of their race, color, sex or national origin.
Read the full article.
While civil rights protections are commonly seen as protecting minorities and women, the legislation, called an “act related to individual freedom,” is seen by opponents as shielding whites and men in discussions from being blamed for historic wrongs.
The measure responds to a drumbeat from conservative media that has condemned critical race theory, which examines the role discrimination has played in shaping American history and modern society.
Although not taught in Florida schools, DeSantis has advanced the fear that critical race theory threatens to influence how history and social science is taught. He got the Florida Board of Education last year to specifically ban its use in schools.
The legislation — which still needs Senate approval before going to DeSantis, who is certain to sign it into law — prohibits any teaching that could make students feel they bear personal responsibility for historic wrongs because of their race, color, sex or national origin.
At work, employment practices or training programs that make an individual feel guilty on similar grounds could be considered an unlawful employment practice – and subject a company to a lawsuit as a civil rights violation.
Democrats, particularly Black lawmakers, said the legislation is intended to diminish the inequities faced by minorities in this country, largely because it could make white students feel uncomfortable.
“I’m tired of being knocked down and told how to feel about it,” said Rep. Fentrice Driskell, D-Tampa, adding that the bill was a “classic example of a false equivalency.”
“We keep talking about not offending the feelings of the listener,” Driskell said. “What about the feelings of the speaker? What about my rights, my story? Moving toward a more inclusive society is a good thing.”
The legislation was amended notably to allow the discussion of racial discrimination, oppression and segregation, and how many “unjust laws” were overturned. But lawmakers bar anything intended to “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view.”
At work, employment practices or training programs that make an individual feel guilty on similar grounds could be considered an unlawful employment practice – and subject a company to a lawsuit as a civil rights violation.
“This Legislature is opening up all our small businesses in this state to a whole new round of litigation,” said Rep. Ben Diamond, D-St. Petersburg. He said if someone feels “aggrieved” by what they hear in diversity training, they “can sue their employer.”
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: The top tweet is what a real threat of losing freedom looks like.
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Scottie’s world today
I worked on this all day and only got through a third of the web sites. There is such a back long I did not even get to the fun ones. I will start early in the morning and try to plow through them to get some more fun ones for everyone. Best wishes and my very best hopes for the Ukrainians.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
The right wing wants to blunt the push to lower college costs and to cancel student loan debts. Look we tell people to get ahead they need an education. Then we make getting that education very hard to get for most people, well out of their price range. Then we allow predatory lending practices especially for the fly by night schools that don’t even graduate students or have jobs programs to charge huge fees and interest. It is all to make sure only the wealthy can get ahead. That only the wealthy can send their kids to higher educations, while poor families face the fact that their kids will have labor or menial jobs. The idea is the lower incomes children will work for and serve the higher income’s children. The other thing this does is promote profit for the lenders instead of that money going to help the economy and giving the people with these loans the chance to live decent lives instead of being financially destroyed by high interest loans.
This is the right wing misinformation media cartoonist Rivers. Need I even address it? While members of the right dress up as Nazis and carry their flag / symbols he accuses the left of doing so. While the right wing defends Putin invading a free and sovereign nation he accuses the left of being Nazis. The whole thing is a projection and an attempt to deflect from the actions from the right, tRump, and Putin.
Now he makes the same claim against Canada’s leader.
Again this is Rivers a far right delusional cartoonist. Here he makes the claim that Canada is an authoritarian nation worse than the Nazis. Well he does like Nazis.
I do not put much stock in this narrative any more. As the population in rural areas shrink it would seem those able would leave, and it maybe that the remaining older people might be stronger Republicans. But the population centers and the over all population in the US remains Democratic. I think this is an attempt to discourage Democrats in the rural areas to keep them from voting and to make the right wing feel stronger than they are.
The right wing media so badly misconstrued the Durham filing that he has to make a new filing explaining that he did not assert the things Fox and other far right media was saying he had claimed. The need by / on the right for something to support tRump’s wild claims and show that he never should have been investigated for the crimes and corruption he committed is so great they have resorted to making things up. But when the rest of the media doesn’t report their fantasys and made up stories they claim the media is bias and wont show things that cast tRump in a good light.
The Durham filing never claimed Hillary or her people spied on tRump. This is another creation of Fox media hosts. The techs looking into the servers at the White House were hired by the White House during the Obama presidency. But you can not gin up outrage by talking about techs hired to look at the traffic on a server by President Obama so they made up a story that would rile up the base.
The right wing has such a warped view of science, biology, and pregnancy they think an abortion is the murder of a human. I have been arguing with a right winger that claims the second of egg and sperm meeting the result is a human baby. Not the potential for one, but is one right then. That then leads to any sex is an attempt to make a baby.
Yes the price of fuel is rising fast. There is a war happening. Stocks are tumbling. Rivers is a right wing media cartoonist who appears to support Putin in this conflict. It is going to get worse. But the US and the world has no choice, we can not let Putin get away with invading a sovereign democratic nation. It will not only embolden him but every wannbe dictator on the planet.
The sanctions that the US and the other countries being implemented will hurt Russia and the oligarchs badly. I doubt that it will cause Russia to withdraw from Ukraine but as Biden said these are sanctions that will hurt more over time. The longer Putin stays in Ukraine the weaker Russia will get and the weaker Putin’s hold on power will get. I think Putin misjudged the will of the rest of the advanced nations.
Those “sacred cows” didn’t commit treason by attempting to overthrow the government. And those “sacred cows” are fighting for civil equality and justice, not fighting to overturn a fair election under false pretenses. It’s sad when someone tries to compare Trump traitors to people who want the right not to be murdered by the police.
twclix Premium Member
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And now some for fun
A Bible Story Snagged from Older Gods
Peter Doocy tries “gotcha” question on Jen Psaki, gets schooled INSTANTLY
Let’s talk about what students can learn from Spartacus….
Sanctions 2.0
| Sanctions 2.0 |
| Eight years ago, after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the U.S. and its allies harshly condemned the invasion and imposed economic sanctions on Russia. |
| It barely seemed to matter. |
| Russia still controls Crimea. Russia’s economy, after going through a recession, soon started growing again. President Vladimir Putin remains firmly in control of his government — and has now begun another invasion, this time of eastern Ukraine. |
| In response, President Biden yesterday announced a new set of sanctions, imposed in tandem with Britain and the European Union. Putin’s aggression, Biden said, is “a flagrant violation of international law, and it demands a firm response from the international community.” Biden also signaled that more sanctions may follow. |
| The obvious question is whether these sanctions will be any more effective than the earlier ones. Today’s newsletter lays out the possibilities. |
 By The New York Times |
| Targeted and weak |
| The 2014 sanctions against Russia did have some effect — arguably more than many people have realized. They made it harder for Russian banks to obtain foreign loans and restricted Western companies from working with Russian oil companies, among other steps. |
| By the summer of 2014, Russia’s economy was shrinking, and it continued shrinking for two years. The value of the ruble plunged on global markets, increasing the price of many goods for companies and consumers. Russian businesses had a harder time raising money for new projects. |
| These economic problems seem to have softened Putin’s domestic support. His approval rating among Russians initially surged after the Crimea invasion — to around 80 percent — before falling. It has hovered between 60 percent and 65 percent for much of the past two years, according to the Levada Center. Last year, opposition groups held some of the largest protests of Putin’s nearly two decades in power. |
| The sanctions might even have been painful enough to have deterred Putin from invading eastern Ukraine in 2014, which he seemed to be planning, as Anders Aslund and Maria Snegovaya have argued in an Atlantic Council report. |
| Still, the sanctions clearly did not reorder Russian politics. Putin, after all, moved to claim eastern Ukraine this week. Experts say that the sanctions’ limited effect is not surprising, because they were less ambitious than the sanctions the U.S. has imposed on other countries that have flouted global rules, like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. |
 Russian howitzers outside Taganrog, Russia, yesterday.The New York Times |
| “In 2014, when Putin invaded Ukraine the first time and annexed Crimea, the West acted too slowly and timidly initially,” Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, told me yesterday. |
| One reason is that the 2014 sanctions were the product of negotiations with European countries that wanted to be more cautious than the U.S. The sanctions were also intentionally narrow, designed to hurt sectors of the economy with close ties to Putin’s regime while minimizing the effect on most Russians and on the global economy. |
| The reality is that for sanctions to have big political repercussions, they often need to be harsh. “‘Smart’ or ‘targeted’ sanctions won’t work,” Edward Fishman and Chris Miller, two international-relations experts, recently wrote in Politico. “To really impose pain on Russia, the U.S. and Europe will have to bear some burden, too — although, fortunately, there are ways to minimize the fallout for Western economies.” |
| Biden acknowledged as much in his remarks at the White House yesterday. “Defending freedom will have costs, for us as well and here at home,” he said. “We need to be honest about that.” He added that he would take steps intended to minimize the increase in gas prices. |
| This is the approach that the U.S. took toward Iran more than a decade ago. It imposed tough sanctions, despite their likely effect on world oil markets and the damage to Iranians’ living standards. Those sanctions helped push Iran’s regime to negotiate over its nuclear program. |
| In Russia’s case, a more aggressive set of sanctions would start with a refusal to buy its oil — by far Russia’s biggest revenue source — perhaps phased in to mitigate the price increases on global markets. It could also involve restricting exports to Russia, like automobile parts and computers, or forbidding other banks from working with Russian banks. |
| Russia would still have access to parts of the global economy, especially if China continued working with it. But the effect could nonetheless be substantial, because Russia’s economy is now quite integrated with the European and U.S. economies. |
 President Biden announcing sanctions against Russia.Al Drago for The New York Times |
| More to come? |
| Which path are Biden and the E.U. choosing? |
| For now, they have imposed sanctions that Biden said went beyond the 2014 sanctions while still falling well short of what the U.S. and Europe could impose. The measures include blocking Russia’s government from borrowing money in Western financial markets and cutting off two large Russian banks from the U.S. financial system. |
| (My colleague Edward Wong has more details here. And Peter Coy of Times Opinion has written that isolating banks can be an effective tool.) |
| In the short term, those sanctions will almost certainly not cause Putin to stop menacing Ukraine. “Russia right now is sitting on quite a pile of extra cash,” Melissa Eddy, a Times correspondent in Berlin, told my colleague Claire Moses. “They have a war chest.” |
| But there are two big uncertainties: whether the sanctions hurt Russia’s economy once that war chest is drawn down; and whether the U.S. and Europe will impose tougher sanctions if Putin continues his war. |
| “The U.S. and the E.U. have worked hard over eight weeks to pull together what would be a serious, painful, massive package of sanctions that is designed to hurt,” Steven Erlanger, The Times’s chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe, told us. They have not yet enacted all of those potential sanctions. But yesterday’s announcement, Steven added, “gives them room to hit Putin harder if he does more.” |
| Biden vowed yesterday to follow that strategy: “If Russia goes further with this invasion,” he said, “we stand prepared to go further.” |
I want to thank Nan for the information above. This is from the New York Times. I hope it displays correctly it was a beast to get into the page. I did notice something I want to emphasize in the map. The area under control of the separatists is not the same as the area that Putin declared independent. The separatists actually controlled far less territory than Putin annexed. But it is not really important as Putin is now attacking the capital city Kyiv. He is trying to scare the Ukrainian government into surrendering. If not he will do it the hard way. At this point he is not going to leave without getting what he wants. There has already been Ukrainian deaths, but there will be a lot more.
Scottie's Playtime 
The BLM riots were violent, but much of the violence was instigated by right wing agitators and fools like Kyle Rittenhouse. And why the violence? Not because of a lying psychotic politician. But because of persistent embedded police violence towards Black citizens. Had the January 6 insurrectionists been Black, they all would have been killed before they got inside the Capitol.
Your defense of them shows you are in league with men like Putin and trump. That speaks to deficiencies that make me seriously question your character and your integrity.
The attempt to form an equivalence between an attempt to overthrow a valid federal election with the race riots inspired by right wing agitators and their BLM counterparts is simply wrong. There is no equivalence.
The BLM folks don’t want to be shot and killed by police anymore. They’ve had enough. It doesn’t excuse what a few rioters did, but it is completely understandable, and a civil matter.
On the other hand your insurrectionists were supporting baseless, pernicious lies that you and your ilk have been spreading. They are an open, obvious threat to the United States of America.
I find it hard to believe you cannot discern the difference between race riots and treason.
Why do you hate American aspirational morality, and spout such lying, destructive garbage?
Clearly you’ve been propagandized and brainwashed, but that’s no excuse. If the US survives you and your type, historians will look back at you with open disdain for having supported the destruction of our democracy by a lying psychopath and his fawning media support.
(Oh, and Mike, you are clearly a prime example of the fawning media that supports lies and treason.)