Go Greene, go unseen

Marjorie Taylor Greene got some free PR time on “60 Minutes”. She used it to assert that Democrats are pedophiles who sexualize children.

CBS anchor Lesley Stahl was shocked to hear that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stands firmly behind her frequent claim that Democrats are “pedophiles.” On “60 Minutes,” Stahl pressed Greene on her use of the slur, and the Georgia Republican defiantly responded that it’s the truth: “They support grooming children.”

“They are not pedophiles,” Stahl rejoined incredulously. “Why would you say that?”

OK, Leslie Stahl…I would ask, “Why would you let that baboon on the air?” I would also ask of any of the higher-ups at CBS, “Why did you let that slur air? Have you no editors?”

Back to you, Leslie: “Why did you make such a pathetically feeble response? You knew going into this what kind of nastiness and lies Greene would deliver, weren’t you at all prepared?

I knew this shitshow was coming on ahead of time, and chose to not watch the show (not a difficult decision, “60 Minutes” hasn’t been relevant for a long time.) Apparently, the American TV watching public felt the same.

Maybe someday the powers-that-be that fill our homes with “news” selected only for its controversial nature will realize that they are driving the culture wars they also deplore. The Right is a hate group.

After marriage equality triumphed, the “pedophile” smear against Democrats morphed into something stranger: the deranged charges of child trafficking that drive the QAnon conspiracy theory. When those accusations proved obviously false, right-wing media figures and MAGA Republicans such as Greene seamlessly shifted to widely applying the “groomer” term to Democrats advocating for tolerance of trans people, especially adolescent trans care and classroom discussion of LGBTQ issues.

The through line here, as historian Brandy Schillace points out, is that the right has recoiled both at the prospect of happy gay families and at young trans people finding better lives with their own parents’ loving support. The connection, Schillace told me, is “resistance to seeing homosexuals or transgender people as part of families,” carried out by associating LGBTQ people with “child predators.”

Stop treating them as a respectable part of the discourse.

Jesus. Greene is doubling down in a new ad.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1643048198502772736

That is grossly dishonest.

I think I’ll avoid the news for a few days

Trump is supposed to be ‘arrested’ tomorrow (which probably means he shows up at a courthouse, is photographed mercilessly while treated with great deference, then retires to a luxurious hotel room to scribble on Truth Social about his martyrdom). Nothing much of substance will happen, but all the networks will be full of false piety and claims that this is an exceptional and significant event, which it isn’t. And of course all the morons will be raging with their battery of flimsy rationalizations.

Sadly, all our news sources will take these excuses very, very seriously and parrot them continuously. Which is why I’ll be ignoring the news for a few days. I hope no catastrophes that might affect me happen! Zombies, please stay dead until next week, maybe. We’re getting another blizzard tomorrow so you’re not going to be getting around very well anyway.

Gerrymandering as a Republican instinct

Today I learned that the far right in the upper midwest is clamoring to secede from those lefties in the Twin Cities to form a Republic of East Dakota. They’ve been doing the same thing in Washington state and Oregon, all the conservative farmers living on the relatively barren lands of the eastern part of the states begging to join Idaho. It’s not going to work.

The first thing I saw that inspired their rage here in the midwest was this map:

That’s reality. Most of the population of the Dakotas live in the cities like Fargo and Sioux Falls, that hug the eastern edge of the state bordering on Minnesota. Everything else is the Great Empty. They’ve still got 4 senators to Minnesota’s 2, though, and most rational people would look at that and say they’re over-represented in Congress. For that matter, most of Minnesota’s population is localized to the eastern part of our state — it’s like a big gradient of people, getting thinner and thinner the farther west you go.

Far right loons looked at that map and said it doesn’t go far enough, we ought to consolidate all that emptiness and low population density into one grand state, the Republic of East Dakota.

Why they think that would help, I don’t know. That would be a very Republican state, for sure, but it would be underpopulated and devoid of any significant economic power. It would be a collection of dairy farms and tiny towns where all the children dream of growing up and moving away to the big city.

Some went even further and created an imaginary state of East Dakota by carving out the cities of Minneapolis, St Paul, and Duluth and, I don’t know, throwing them away?

Don’t they realize that that is where most of the people, and money, live? My little county of Stevens, population 10,000 (optimistically) benefits immensely from the state money flowing out of the counties of Hennepin, population 1,300,000, and Ramsey, population 550,000, and we’re just going to sever ourselves from those funds and make common cause with even more destitute yokels to our east? That’s crazy talk, man.

If we really want to get serious about radical reorganization, I suggest fusing North and South Dakota, stripping them of two senators, and giving most of it back to the Lakota. That makes more sense than creating another state out of a vacuum.

Finally, we’re going to see an arrest!

Trump indicted! Now the process begins.

What do you think happens next? Voluntary surrender (seems unlikely) or arrest (but he might want to avoid the spectacle)?

Either way, it’ll be mugshot time. I look forward to that.

Eventually, a trial. I very much doubt that he’ll enter a guilty plea.

Also, the shrieking has officially begun.

This might be fun. It might be agonizing. Isn’t it great, living in eventful times?

Eradicate the guns, not the people

The Washington Post graces us with articles on what an AR-15 bullet does to a human body. It’s unsettling stuff, especially when they describe what happens to actual, named human victims. The only people who would want to own these murderous devices are psychopaths, so why haven’t we criminalized them already?

If you have to ask why the US has these devastating shootings, the answer is simple: it’s the guns.

The debate is over. Stop arguing for lethal weapons and do something about it.

This comic is appropriate.

America, land of school shootings and train derailments

There was another school shooting, this time in Tennessee: 3 dead kids and 3 dead staff, and the shooter killed on site.

Nothing will be done.

There was another train derailment in North Dakota, an hour and a half away from me. It spewed ethylene glycol and propylene into the environment, all because the railroad companies don’t like spending money on rail maintenance.

Nothing will be done.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be lots of talk and argument and indignant posturing, but nothing of substance will be done, and these terrible things will continue happening. This is a religious country, so they must be acts of God, don’t you know.

Thoughts and prayers, everyone.

Art is going to disappear when the Puritans take over

In the face of declining ad revenues*, we have decided to become a full-time porn blog. You’ll find an example of our new content to the right.

You might say that’s not porn, that’s art…but pornography is in the eye of the beholder, and that’s porn in Florida**.

On Thursday, the Tallahassee Democrat reported that the principal of a local charter school, the Tallahassee Classical School, was forced to resign after three parents complained about an art teacher showing a picture of Michelangelo’s 16th-century sculpture of David. “Parental rights are supreme, and that means protecting the interests of all parents, whether it’s one, 10, 20 or 50,” the chair of the school’s board, Barney Bishop III, told the paper. To figure out exactly how this happened, I called Bishop, who is also, according to his biography, a consultant, a lobbyist, an “outspoken advocate for the free enterprise system,” and an Eagle Scout.

I notice that “educator” isn’t on his CV, but that never stops anyone from taking control of a school board.

You should read the whole thing — Barney is totally bonkers. He’s got strongly held opinions, that’s for sure, but he seems to be using “classical” as a synonym for Desantis’ version of conservatism. He also has peculiar ideas about education.

He denies that the principal was fired over showing the statue. No, they were fired because they didn’t send a note to the parents warning them about it.

So the issue, Dan, isn’t whether children should see these pictures or not. Gosh, we’re a classical school. Why wouldn’t we show Renaissance art to children?

Right. We should expect that the students would see Renaissance art already (warning: some of it has boobies in it, too). Apparently, though, Florida parents are too stupid to be aware of this, so they have to be sent trigger warnings.

Dan, 98 percent of the parents didn’t have a problem with it. But that doesn’t matter, because we didn’t follow a practice. We have a practice. Last year, the school sent out an advance notice about it. Parents should know: In class, students are going to see or hear or talk about this. This year, we didn’t send out that notice.

He also says the statue is not a problem, but they’re going to have to do age-related censorship.

We’re not going to show the full statue of David to kindergartners. We’re not going to show him to second graders. Showing the entire statue of David is appropriate at some age. We’re going to figure out when that is.

And you don’t have to show the whole statue! Maybe to kindergartners we only show the head. You can appreciate that. You can show the hands, the arms, the muscles, the beautiful work Michelangelo did in marble, without showing the whole thing.

He also wants to disregard teachers, and give all control to parents — you know, the parents who need to be informed that a class on Renaissance art might include some nude images. Educators, pfft. They know nothing. Barney is the expert. He was an Eagle Scout!

We’re not gonna have courses from the College Board. We’re not gonna teach 1619 or CRT crap. I know they do all that up in Virginia. The rights of parents, that trumps the rights of kids. Teachers are the experts? Teachers have all the knowledge? Are you kidding me? I know lots of teachers that are very good, but to suggest they are the authorities, you’re on better drugs than me.

Barney is a confused individual who defends his regressive views with contradictions. He also mentions that they use the Hillsdale College curriculum. Hillsdale is a conservative and extremely Christian institution, and I expect the only consistency we’ll find is dishonesty and dogma.

Maybe all those repressed weirdos will start reading my blog for the porn now.

*Wait, what ad revenues? We’re ad-free!***

**Maybe they won’t find it pornographic down around Miami. I can’t forget the time I attended a conference in South Florida, took a break and sat down with my laptop on the beach, when an attractive young lady in front of me stood up, stripped naked, and started oiling herself down. I couldn’t get any work done at all. That wasn’t pornographic at all, that was art.

***Maybe when I start showing the spider porn and visits surge, we’ll be able to overcome the lack of ads with volume.****

****I know nothing about economics. Does it show?

Florida of the North!

“We prize and our rights our liberties we will maintain”? What? No wonder Iowa is screwed up.

The Washington Post noticed. Even as Minnesota has been progressing and enacting common sense legislation to improve the life of its citizens, our neighbor to the South, Iowa, has been going insane.

Republicans in the Iowa legislature, empowered by the state’s recent “red wave,” have embarked on an ambitious new agenda that includes a costly school choice bill and legislation targeting the LGBTQ community, a historic divergence from Iowa’s history as a civil rights bastion.

Even as teens draped in rainbow flags crowded into the Capitol rotunda chanting “We say gay” on March 8, Iowa lawmakers quickly passed three bills related to gay and transgender rights, culminating with a measure to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth that is awaiting Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds’s signature.

The votes were not only emphatic but were also a sharp reversal for the state: Iowa has veered so far to the right in recent years that its political landscape is virtually unrecognizable from the centrist place that chose Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 and was one of the earliest states in the country to affirm same-sex marriage. A joke among statehouse reporters is that Iowa is becoming the “Florida of the North” — without the beaches.

Once you let Republicans get a toe-hold in your state, they start screaming and fostering a climate of hatred and paranoia that takes over, and next thing you know you’re getting compared to Florida. I don’t understand this transformation myself, but somehow, working class people in Iowa have absorbed a lot of Republican propaganda and have gotten the idea that Trump was a hero.

Political analysts in the state say that Iowa’s swing has solidified over the past seven years as reliably Democratic working-class voters abandoned the party in favor of Donald Trump’s message, and the state’s large percentage of independent voters also moved toward the Republicans.

Trump’s message? What the fuck is Trump’s message? And why does it appeal to anyone? The article doesn’t say. If that “message” is represented by Governor Kim Reynolds, well yuck — it’s all hate and ignorance.

At a February appearance at a raucous town hall co-sponsored by Moms for Liberty — the Florida-based group that has campaigned for book bans across the country — Reynolds celebrated her school choice victory and portrayed herself both as a grandma of 11 and a warrior against the “radical left.”

“They think patriotism is racist and pornographic library books are education,” Reynolds said, speaking over shouting protesters and supporters chanting “U.S.A., U.S.A.” “They believe that the content of our character is less important than the color of our skin. They believe that children should be encouraged to pick their gender and the parents, well, they’re just in the way.”

Love how the one thing Republicans have stolen from Martin Luther King Jr. is that one line, and they’ve twisted it to support their assertion that white people are discriminated against. She’s got everything backwards, though: Republicans think racism is patriotism and education is pornography.

So this is what happens when you put the Democrats in charge

Minnesota has a Democratic governor and a Democratic house, and that means…children get fed.

Kids and parents in Minnesota won’t have to worry about affording school meals thanks to a new law that guarantees free school meals for all children in the state.

Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed the bill into law Friday to cheers and hugs from some of the kids who will benefit from the program.

The new law provides free breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students, regardless of their parents’ income.

In case you were wondering what the benefits of helping kids might be, here’s an explanation.

One study published in 2020 looked at the adoption of universal school meals in middle schools in New York City that occurred in different years for different schools. The researchers focused on changes in test scores for individual students followed over time. They paid special attention to the comparison of students previously eligible for free meals due to their family’s low income status versus those students who were not previously being offered free meals.

After each school started to offer free meals to all students, test scores increased in both English and math. While test scores went up for both low-income students and those who were not from low-income households, the students who were not previously eligible for free meals benefited more. The gains in test scores for the students whose families had higher incomes or were missing out on free meals due to problems with certifying eligibility was estimated to represent six to 10 weeks of learning.

Another examination of data from NYC found an improvement in attendance for kindergartners once all students were offered free meals.

More recently, a 2022 study looked at the adoption of universal free meals by school districts across the U.S. Using district-level test scores rather than test scores on individual students, the author also found that the decision to offer universal free school meals was followed by an increase in math scores. A comparison of districts with high levels of poverty to those with lower poverty levels found that the math score gains were greater in districts that had fewer students from low-income households. In other words, school districts with fewer low-income students experienced the greatest improvements in math scores.

What happens if you put Republicans in charge? They deny the problem and do nothing.

The bill drew the ire of Republican state Sen. Steve Drazkowski, who argued Tuesday that “hunger is a relative term” in his opposition to feeding kids.

“I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry,” Drazkowski said on the Senate floor in St. Paul before voting against the legislation. “I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don’t have access to enough food to eat.”

I think that says more about the elite circles he moves in than anything about the state of the citizenry. Why isn’t everyone eating cake?

By the way, Minnesota also allowed immigrants, all immigrants, to get a driver’s license, which is sensible, good news for everyone who uses our roads and highways.

A bill to allow unauthorized immigrants to obtain a driver’s license without showing proof of legal residence was passed by the Minnesota House of Representatives on Monday.

The “Driver’s Licenses for All” bill passed in the House by a vote of 69-60.

If you keep Republicans out of power, you’ll get all kinds of nice incremental improvements to your life.

Texas being Texas

Texas, not satisfied with wanting to ban critical race theory, ending colleges’ diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, and eliminating tenure, has set its sights on banning people from countries conservatives don’t like with HB 4736.

PROHIBITED ADMISSIONS. Notwithstanding any other law, an institution of higher education, as defined by Section 61.003, may not admit an applicant for admission to the institution as a student if the applicant is:
(1) a citizen of China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia;
or
(2) not authorized under federal statute to be present
in the United States.

Honestly, I’ve never had a North Korean student — the North Korean government isn’t big on exposing their citizens to strange foreign ideas, much like the Texan government. I’ve had lots of Chinese students, and a few Russian and Iranian students. They’re fine. They’re often more motivated than American students, and if they go back to their home country after a few years with a little sympathy for the US, that’s a net gain for us. Or if they decide they want to stay in the US, that’s also a net gain. We can’t lose by freely sharing education with the world (it’s also a good idea for American students to study abroad). We all win.

Unless, of course, your goal is to make sure your citizenry doesn’t understand and hates foreigners from certain countries that have been currently designated as an enemy.