US politics: Manchin to the beat of a different drum

[Mindwalker]

11 hours ago, DMC said:

Joe Manchin never needs to explain himself.  He's simply a force of nature.

That's President Joe Manchin, Sir!

Pod Save America discuss the latest studies/ polling (by House Dems and others) about the 2020 election, rural voters etc (begins at 23:40):

 

[Ormond]

17 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I have been wondering if textbooks will be democratized by ebooks. Not needing to buy physical books should lower costs and make switching the curriculum easier, and provide wider choice of materials. That hasn’t seemed to come to pass yet, but the infrastructure for distance learning could be useful for this application. It would certainly be helpful to break the Texas textbook monopoly

The problem with the above is that there are multiple research studies showing that people remember material better when they read it in paper than when they read it in ebook form. And at least before Covid, most students themselves preferred to have textbooks in paper. We'll have to see if the last year has changed those preferences, but I really don't see ebooks myself as necessarily being a positive force for learning. 

[Martell Spy]

Ted Cruz’s Tweet About Russia Army Makes ‘EmasculaTED’ Trend
The Texas senator angered people on Twitter by suggesting the Russian army was better prepared than America’s “woke, emasculated military.”

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ted-cruz-russian-army-emasculated_n_60a6d07de4b09604b5202cb5

Quote

 

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made a lot of Twitter users fighting mad when he suggested that the Russian army was better prepared than America’s “woke emasculated military.”

The smarmy Texas senator made the comments while retweeting a video that contrasted a Russian recruiting video of men working out with a U.S. recruiting video from a female soldier who credited her desire to serve her country to her two moms.

However, many Twitter users felt Cruz was the wrong person to be talking about emasculation, considering the way he supported former President Donald Trump even after Trump attacked the looks of Cruz’s wife, Heidi Cruz, and falsely suggested the senator’s father helped assassinate John F. Kennedy.

 

 

[Zorral]

We'll see a lot more of this.

https://www.npr.org/2021/05/20/998660102/oregone-7-oregon-counties-vote-to-back-seceding-so-citizens-can-vote-gop-in-idah

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In rural Oregon, voters in several counties want their state to go from Democratic blue to Republican red — and to do that, they hope to leave Oregon altogether and join neighboring Idaho. Five counties approved ballot measures this week, joining two others that had already voted in favor of the idea....

And ... textbooks and Texas ....

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/20/us/texas-history-1836-project.html?

Quote

 

Every morning, schoolchildren in Texas recite an oath to their state that includes the words, “I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God.”

Now, a flurry of proposed measures that could soon become law would promote even greater loyalty to Texas in the state’s classrooms and public spaces, as Republican lawmakers try to reframe Texas history lessons and play down references to slavery and anti-Mexican discrimination that are part of the state’s founding.

The proposals in Texas, a state that influences school curriculums around the country through its huge textbook market, amount to some of the most aggressive efforts to control the teaching of American history. And they come as nearly a dozen other Republican-led states seek to ban or limit how the role of slavery and pervasive effects of racism can be taught....

 

 

[JGP]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha [gasp] hahahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

 

 

[Mindwalker]

New Iowa law banning mask mandates by schools and cities hailed as 'about freedom'; decried as tying officials' hands

Leaders of Iowa school districts cannot require students or staff to wear masks, and Iowa cities and counties cannot impose mask mandates under a law Gov. Kim Reynolds signed early Thursday.

https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/19/covid-19-mask-mandates-iowa-house-votes-ban-schools-local-governments-coronavirus-public-health-cdc/5167025001/

The governor has signed it.

That's going to be fun when the next pandemic comes knocking.

 

 

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

22 hours ago, Fury Resurrected said:

I have been wondering if textbooks will be democratized by ebooks. Not needing to buy physical books should lower costs and make switching the curriculum easier, and provide wider choice of materials. That hasn’t seemed to come to pass yet, but the infrastructure for distance learning could be useful for this application. It would certainly be helpful to break the Texas textbook monopoly

The problem is you need electronic devices to read the ebooks, and while schools are buying devices, those devices last only a handful of years and are expensive to replace. It's a whole new problem. Apple got into schools and sold iPads at a discounted cost, and a few years later, those iPads were no longer supported by Apple, and basically, when it comes to learning, just became paper weights. 

ETA: We should be investing in these technologies. Think if we revalued what is important to us in the U.S. and we actually committed to education (instead of paying lip-service), and we allotted a budget even half of what the defense budget is. Our schools would be so much better off in terms of what is available to students, what teachers were paid, etc. 

Of course, Republicans and Dems already have found way to get standardized testing to become a for-profit movement, I suppose schools would keep getting the same cheap shit while the government through huge amounts of money to the contractors. 

[Mindwalker]

https://www.instagram.com/washingtonpost/

Former president Donald Trump charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 this spring for rooms that Trump’s own protective detail used while guarding him at his Mar-a-Lago Club, according to federal spending records.⁠ (...)
⁠
Those charges, ultimately paid by taxpayers, continued until at least April 30, the spending records show, for a total of $40,011.15. The charges were for a single room used as a workspace by Secret Service agents, according to one person familiar with the payments.⁠

 

[argonak]

2 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

New Iowa law banning mask mandates by schools and cities hailed as 'about freedom'; decried as tying officials' hands

Leaders of Iowa school districts cannot require students or staff to wear masks, and Iowa cities and counties cannot impose mask mandates under a law Gov. Kim Reynolds signed early Thursday.

https://eu.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/19/covid-19-mask-mandates-iowa-house-votes-ban-schools-local-governments-coronavirus-public-health-cdc/5167025001/

The governor has signed it.

That's going to be fun when the next pandemic comes knocking.

 

 

 

The Netherlands ran into a similar problem.  They had a law on the books that prevented people from being forced to wear anything, as a direct result of nazi's forcing jews to wear identifying arm bands. The anti-maskers successfully used the law to cancel their mask mandate.  

As far as I can tell at this point, Conservatives are just insane.  I don't even know where to start with them anymore.

[Martell Spy]

Matt Gaetz's ex-girlfriend to cooperate with federal authorities in sex trafficking investigation

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/21/politics/gaetz-investigators-cooperation-ex-girlfriend/index.html

Quote

 

Washington (CNN)Federal authorities investigating alleged sex trafficking by GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz have secured the cooperation of the congressman's ex-girlfriend, according to people familiar with the matter.

The woman, a former Capitol Hill staffer, is seen as a critical witness, as she has been linked to Gaetz as far back as the summer of 2017, a period of time that has emerged as a key window of scrutiny for investigators. She can also help investigators understand the relevance of hundreds of transactions they have obtained records of, including those involving alleged payments for sex, the sources said.

News of the woman's willingness to talk, which has not been previously reported, comes just days after the Justice Department formally entered into a plea agreement with Joel Greenberg, a one-time close friend of Gaetz whose entanglement with young women first drew the congressman onto investigators' radar.

 

 

[kairparavel]

On 5/20/2021 at 8:18 PM, Tywin et al. said:

Pretty much. Conservatives were the biggest fans of cancel culture for years until it got turned on its head and directed at them.

I really don't get the outrage over the 1619 project if one is trying to be objective. It's just laying out a more accurate and expansive look at U.S. history. I've only read summaries of it, but it seems a far cry from the idea of courses that teach white people to hate themselves, and I say that having taken a cultural psychology course in college that did pretty much begin with the a statement that (paraphrasing) "in America, only white people can be truly racist." That didn't go over well with a rather diverse class, but I gave her a pass because I thought see was a pretty young PhD candidate ant not a full on professor who may have phrased that better.

Anything that recenters away from whiteness - the subject matter, the creators, the experts - is always outrageously wrong/biased/agenda'd and isn't to be trusted. Period. The added bonus of flipping back on cancel culture and suppression of expression is just *chef's kiss*

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

40 minutes ago, kairparavel said:

Anything that recenters away from whiteness - the subject matter, the creators, the experts - is always outrageously wrong/biased/agenda'd and isn't to be trusted. Period. The added bonus of flipping back on cancel culture and suppression of expression is just *chef's kiss*

The point was you couldn't defend the criticism even if you really tried to. It's beyond dumb.

[Larry of the Lawn]

 

Nothing to see here.  

[Mindwalker]

Gee, reminds me of the $15 minimum wage. Shocked, I am not.

[Zorral]

6 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

Gee, reminds me of the $15 minimum wage. Shocked, I am not.

Which means like so much debt relief, the money goes almost entirely to big corporations and real estate.  Not to we the people.  Particularly we the people who are in education and the arts and health care -- except of course, like covid relief, the already enormous corporate hospital congloms, who with this money have been taking over the smaller, poorer, local hospitals, selling them off for parts.

The amounts the real estate-restaurants have gotten of NYC and NY states covid relief funding beggars the mind's comprehension.  Yet our locally owned, locally situated hardware store had to close and isn't coming back.

The real estate-restaurants also got a huge chunk of the city's public property, the streets and sidewalks, literally for free, free of mortgage, free of taxes, free of regulation, free of oversight, free of cleaning streets and sidewalks, don't bother with garbage pick-up.  Restaurants that named themselves 12 Tables because they had 12 tables and were mostly coffee take-out, now have taken over full half blocks of sidewalk and street with 100 tables . . . .

 

 

[DMC]

7 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

 

Nothing to see here.  

"President doesn't fulfill all his campaign promises."  Stop the presses!  Also, when did he promise to do all of this in a single budget request?  I agree it's weird he's not including anything on prescription drugs, but as the article notes, that doesn't preclude it from happening.

[Wilbur]

I predict that the Arizona audit is going to eventually end in the termination of some careers, because here come the lawsuits.

The Maricopa County Attorney has sent a "hold letter" to the Senate, Cyber Ninjas, and all of the third parties involved in the audit.  This is basically Maricopa County stepping into the batter's box prior to the lawsuits to come, as the County requires everyone to hang on to all the communications and CYA boxes as evidence.

I suspect that the owner of the audit's Twitter account is likely to blame for this move, since the Twitter account has made all kinds of defamatory claims about the election process.  "This includes whoever operates the 'audit’s' Twitter account. All those persons are likewise subject to this litigation hold letter."  Maybe next time Cyber Ninjas won't slander and libel a bunch of lawyers operating a long-established election process.

In addition, the group American Oversight has actually filed a lawsuit again Karen and her cronies in the State Senate.  It aims to obtain full answers to questions such as who is funding the audit, how Cyber Ninjas were hired, and specifically who is running that audit Twitter account.  The local newspaper (the Arizona Republic) and Maricopa County have made freedom of information act requests for that information and financial data for the audit previously and been rebuffed, so now a judge gets to take action to disclose this information.

So far the State Senate has tried to hide behind the "Cyber Ninjas are a private company, and they don't have to disclose this information" defense, but since Cyber Ninjas are acting on a State Senate subpoena, my guess is that the courts will note that Cyber Ninjas are just a government agent, and will require them to disclose.

Generally, however, who is running that Twitter account for the audit is going to get the shaft eventually for the interim disclosures of false information and wild accusations.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/arizona/2021/05/21/american-oversight-files-lawsuit-seeking-records-arizona-election-audit/5205992001/

[DMC]

Seeing headlines Rand Paul won't get vaccinated.  I'm just hoping they can make a Rand Paul vaccination available soon.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Flake sharing some insights.

 

Not sure if anybody shared this, nothing that I'd consider breaking news by any stretch, but still kinda fun to listen to, and it makes you kinda curious, what Flake would sound like if all of his filters were removed.

[HoodedCrow]

I’ll bet Rand Paul was already vaccinated, because that is the kind of guy he is.