I’ll lead with the happy news: I survived another grueling Thursday coupled to my continuing Achilles tendon agony. But I did get through the whole day without puking (the pain is intense enough that when I have to hobble for any length of time, I get nauseous) and actually, the throbbing stabbing pain is starting to ease up, thanks to a heavy drug dose from my doctor yesterday. Hooray for not losing my stomach contents! Hooray for some easing of the pain!! Hooray for lots of good drugs!!! Gosh, I sure hope my lecture this morning was comprehensible.
But now I’m home, and I find spam from some crappy conservative liars, and my gorge begins to rise again.
Dear Friend,
You are not, and never will be, my friend.
Are you ready to become even more effective in the fight against radical curriculum in your schools?
Yes. Always have been. You know that the “radical curriculum” is the conservative/capitalist propaganda promoted by billionaires, right? I am so totally against that.
Since we started Breakthrough Ideas, this fight has been one of our main areas of focus.
No, I don’t think so. The founder of this organization is a failed Republican candidate for the US House from Illinois, whose campaign in 2020 was built around the idea of put[ting] in place the infrastructure to begin the pushback operation against the socialism that invaded the US House in 2018
. She also ran, and failed, for governor of Illinois. I think her only idea is to build up Wingnuttia.
She seems to have founded this half-assed think-tank in 2020/2021, after she flopped everything else, in order to continue her grift. I have no idea who is funding it.
Now we are teaming up with nationally-renowned education and critical race theory expert Christopher Rufo to give you the information you need to influence your local school boards and push back on toxic ideologies.
Wait wait wait. nationally-renowned education and critical race theory expert
? Hold your horses, lady. Rufo has zero qualifications in education. He doesn’t understand or is lying about CRT; he has none of the training or experience in law, philosophy, race relations, or history to have earned the title of “expert”. He’s a fraud through and through. Here’s his background from Wikipedia.
Rufo was previously a visiting fellow for domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute.[12][11] Later, he was a research fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Christian think tank known for its opposition to the theory of evolution and advocacy for intelligent design to be taught in public schools.[11][13][14] In 2017, Rufo was a plaintiff in a lawsuit to prevent Seattle from imposing a 2.25% income tax on sums above $250,000 a year for individuals and over $500,000 for couples.[15] In 2018, he unsuccessfully ran for the Seattle City Council.[16] Rufo voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 United States presidential election.[5]
Yeah, he’s just another right-wing grifter oozing out of the woodwork of a series of think-tanks. Not an expert in anything but profitable parasitism.
Oh, the best part: the bill.
Check out Christopher Rufo’s video invitation here!
You can listen to Rufo on Zoom for an hour for the low, low price of $25, which is a bit over-priced. Or you can listen to him in person if you’re willing to fork over $50 and travel to some random wedding venue in Illinois (there is a McDonald’s next door), and for a lousy $250 you can attend the VIP Q&A session for a half hour.
Jesus. Unqualified hack gets those kinds of ticket prices for just lying out of his ass. I’m such a failure, I should have made up more shit to get on the right-wing rubber chicken circuit and the no doubt substantial speaking fees. On the plus side, I won’t get publicly disemboweled for my ignorance on national TV.
I once saw a meme that defined the Tea Party as ‘ taking an unpaid day off work to protest your boss’ 2% tax increase’. I never realised how true that was.
Did someone say “unqualified hack”?
Sad news: We have lost the King of Stupid; Pat Robertson retires.
He has been the source of much amusement.
PS glad you can suppress the pain.
Sounds like he should be working for Pregar “University”.
It never fails to amaze me what these right wing US dudes consider ‘socialism’. I mean, if I understand correctly, the US doesn’t even have basic protections such as guaranteed paid leave, the health care system (despite Obamacare) is still far more expensive (orders of magnitude) than most western democracies (not that there’s anything particularly special about western democracies – merely that comparing the US to, say, the UK or Australia has fewer confounders than a comparison with Japan or Russia), and most welfare seems to be provided by private charities (or increasingly, by GoFundMe) rather than government programs.
By any practical standards the US is about as capitalist as it is likely to be practical to be – and it’s still not enough?!
The Democrats are dominated by what Europeans would consider conservatives, and yet they are described as – what else- commies in the GOP propaganda.
Fuck the alt-right creeps. At least David Duke is upright about what he stands for.
I suppose it’s an almost pointless exercise given that we all know how Rufo and his fellow travellers love to mischaracterise their ideological opponents, but I thought I’d go hunting for these socialist invaders.
GovTrack’s Ideology Analysis suggests that the most left-wing member of the House is currently Barbara Lee, representing California’s 13th (formerly 9th) district. Wikipedia helpfully lists the major positions she’s taken during her time in Congress. She’s been there since 1998 so she’s hardly a 2018 invader, but then she’s hardly a socialist either. Social Democrat, maybe; there’s not enough detail to tell. I could certainly vote for her a damn sight more readily than I could for Biden.
Surprised the commentariat hasn’t pointed out the anti-intellectualism again rampant here. For conservatives, it really is the case that an “expert” on something is just someone who has an opinion that they like who shares it loudly. I guarantee you Rufo hasn’t even read Delgado properly for comprehension, let alone a cross-section of CRT literature and critical examinations of it (yes, even the left has plenty of criticism of CRT!)
I really think we need to start using this against them. Make sure we call anyone who talks about economics, no matter their formal qualification, an “economics expert”. Thought Slime and Hbomberguy? Econ experts.
(Of course, we’ll never be able to match their venality. Most folks who are trusted as thought leaders among liberals and leftists have done some thought).
“You can listen to Rufo on Zoom for an hour for the low, low price of $25, which is a bit over-priced.”
Any number that is not a large negative number is overpriced.