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Saturday, August 19, 2023

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3105 - Billionaires Need You - HODGE PODGE for Saturday August 19, 2023



A Sense of Doubt blog post #3105 - Billionaires Need You - HODGE PODGE for Saturday August 19, 2023

Welcome to August.

Oh good. It's still August. I have delayed this post multiple times,.

Hodge Podges always have themes. The graphic above represents this one's theme: what billionaires want from all you non-billionaires, or even former presidents who claim to be billionaires and are not worth that much.

I have mostly abandoned the Weekly Hodge Podge because it's a lot of work.

Also, it felt like a pandemic thing. During lockdown, I spent even more time reading news and trolling the Internet, and so a weekly hodge podge was a good place to collect all the things I was reading.

Like these...


NOTE TO SELF: I need to do a collected WEEKLY HODGE PODGE post.
Since then, I have gone to dumping potential shares or topics to write about in a "FOR THE BLOG" post, where I pull URLs when needed.

And so, I thought I would curate the links rather than just copying and pasting the content, kind of like one of the newsletters I love -- SENTIERS -- does. 

I have shared some of those before:

Friday, March 31, 2023

And so, this post is truly a hodge podge with curated commentary. I put links in the commentary.

We live in sad times.

Texas is a toxic waste hole of horror and degradation.

For example, Texas A & M University suspended a professor  when during a routine lecture she had the temerity to criticize the lt. governor of Texas for his office's failures in handling of the opioid crisis in ways that allowed more people to die.

Stories like that one that threaten my own academic freedom in the college where I teach worry me very much.

For instance, similarly, Arkansas' law to criminalize and incarcerate librarians for checking out books that some people feel are inappropriate (even though these people have not read these books). Thankfully, a federal judge blocked the law as unconstitutional, not that this action will stop the culture wars. There are also many other states trying to pull of this horrid bullshit.

At least four other Republican-led states—Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee—have passed similar obscenity laws targeting schools and libraries in the last two years, according to the Washington Post. And about 14 more states have considered such laws in recent years. The wave of legislation comes amid a record number of attempts to censor library books and resources in 2022, by the American Library Association’s count. And it’s part of a larger conservative effort to keep kids from learning about LGBTQ history and the history of race in the United State

Wonkette -- which is a journalism blog that I love and adore -- also wrote about the nefarious scheme of Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders to ban all the books that would turn kids gay or queer. According to writer Robin Pennacchia: 


While Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in an email this weekend that he would be “reviewing the judge’s opinion and will continue to vigorously defend the law,” despite how obviously unconstitutional it is, people who actually like books were all very happy about the ruling.

Books are professors are not the only targets. Courses and course content are also targeted. For instance,  AP Psychology courses are too gay for Florida. The aptly-named "Don't Say Gay" law in Florida literally means DO NOT even teach it, even part of an Advanced Placement Psychology course, likely just for college-bound seniors, many of whom will turn 18 and be adults before they graduate. Nope. Can't teach them the truth about LBTGQ issues and people. The College Board flipped Florida the finger. It will not modify its course for the state, as its governor said, "where woke goes to die."




If Drag Queens are "woke," then woke is more popular than ever because Drag Queens (who seem to deserve capital letters) are more popular than ever, even for songs on the Christian charts. And when narrow-minded and hateful Christian preachers and others throw a fit about it, then it will make the song even more popular!!

Whoops!

Flamy Grant responded to the 10-month old song and album charting on Instagram with gratitude to her fans and supporters, writing, “I don’t know what else to say except: if you’re gonna come for a drag queen, you better be ready for how she comes back. She comes back with an army of love.”


And yet, if you have hateful religious views, you do not have to make "art" IE. Wedding Websites for gay people in Colorado or anywhere in the country (or wedding cakes) according to the Supreme Court.

However, the fact is that no same-sex couples asked this Lorie Smith person to make a website for them. The whole thing was a big ruse just to get a ruling in the culture wars. Making this issue about the First Amendment simply justifies hate speech and hateful actions. The implications of this ruling and how it could protect hateful bigots is deeply troubling.

Outside the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives of the Federal government is not immune from the LBGTQ culture wars.

Last week, the GOP blew up the annual defense authorization bill — which had enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support — by trying to turn it into a vehicle for blocking abortion access, banning books, honoring Confederate generals and dismantling racial diversity initiatives.

This week, Republicans took the normally sleepy markup of the humdrum Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill and turned it into a vehicle for overt bigotry against gay and lesbian Americans.

 

There's bigotry throughout the House, not just on the right, but on the left with some clearly antisemitic rhetoric. Or if you're Robert Kennedy Jr, you can say antisemitic things and then claim you did not say them, even though there's an audio recording (and anti-vax things).

Meanwhile back in Florida, because the two most offensive states in the country are Florida and Texas, slavery apparently benefitted those who were enslaved in ways we staunch anti-slavery people just never realized. After all, we must show BOTH SIDES when "teaching" American "history." There's apparently a "truth" that our nation's children deserve about the valuable skills (for future "employment") that slaves learned while being slaves. And yet, the whole thing is such a rewrite and white-wash of history, it's like we're living in Orwell's 1984 world.

It's all bullshit. How is it that we can believe that Africans brought to America to be slaves were BLANK SLATES and knew nothing before the superior white people taught them metal work and other valuable skills. 

And in the south, they couldn't use the skills once emancipated anyway.

What’s more, after emancipation, the former Confederate states crafted new constitutions—later dubbed “Black codes”—that strictly limited the ability of emancipated slaves to apply whatever skills they’d serendipitously acquired while enslaved. 

At least Tim Scott, who is running for president and is African-American, spoke out against this Florida bullshit. 




Let's not forget, these hateful fucks want us to know, that for every Tulsa Massacre, there were acts of violence perpetrated BY black people, too. Let's teach both sides now. Next, it will be the reasons WHY the Nazis were exterminating the Jews: must have had some good reasons!

Since DeSantis faces massive opposition for these hateful policies, he has claimed that the process by which the nation's (NOT JUST FLORIDA'S) colleges and universities are accredited is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Fortunately, few on a national scale will listen or act on that lunacy.

As I reported last month, DeSantis’ attempt to remake higher education in his image follows an authoritarian playbook. Would-be autocrats seek to eliminate centers of power that could challenge them, including liberal college campuses that are naturally opposed to authoritarian government. Like them, the accrediting bodies have become another obstacle he wants to destroy.



In Oklahoma, one republican school superintendent wants to keep race out of the conversation about the Tulsa Massacre at what was known as "Black Wall Street." 

 He called the teachers' union in Oklahoma a "terrorist organization."

SIGH.


Related to all that:

Affirmative Action May Be Dead—But the Battle Over Race and Admissions Is Just Getting Started

Conservative lawyers are targeting anything that could increase diversity.


Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, often ranked as the country’s top public high school, lies across the Potomac River from Washington in Alexandria, Virginia. For years, the magnet school’s student body has been majority Asian American, with paltry numbers of Black and Latino students. While the situation at TJ irked the county school board for a decade, and in 2012 drew a civil rights complaint to the US Department of Education, tweaks to the admissions process failed to increase those underrepresented demographics.

In June of 2020, as the murder of George Floyd sparked both nationwide protests and a fresh reckoning with racial injustice, the school released its most recent admissions data. The number of admitted Black students was somewhere under 11—a figure “too small for reporting” due to privacy concerns. A week later, TJ’s principal emailed students and parents: “Our school is a rich tapestry of heritages,” she wrote, but one that does “not reflect the racial composition” of Fairfax County Public Schools. “Our 32 black students and 47 Hispanic students fill three classrooms. If our demographics actually represented FCPS, we would enroll 180 black and 460 Hispanic students, filling nearly 22 classrooms,” she added. 


The Supreme Court has been pandering so much hate that Justice John Roberts is afraid that people think the Court hates everyone.

And more backlash.

Kids are cruel because humans are cruel. But young people often do not have the maturity to regulate their own cruelty (and some never develop the trait). Such was the case with a racist Instagram account in Oakland, CA.

Really hateful shit.

Hateful is the new norm.




Though some stand up for the rule of law and what is right, such as a judge who ruled that yes, Donald Trump, you did rape E. Jean Carroll. 

Surely, this is another example of what Matt Gaetz dubbed "anarcho-tyranny": 

The same day Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Daniel Penny with manslaughter for choking to death Jordan Neely—a homeless man who’d been acting in a way Penny perceived as threatening—Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) recorded a podcast. Elites, he told listeners, were making the common man fearful of defending himself while allowing criminals to roam free. The congressman had a name for this inversion of justice: “anarcho-tyranny.”
Also, let's not forget that Trump definitely has ties to the MAFIA as he has contradicted himself many times when asked about mob ties. And so, the racketeering charges in Georgia should be familiar territory.

And lots of hate gets directed toward President Joe Biden, even though he's doing a great job, especially with infrastructure and the economy.

But the Libertarians will not let us forget that the Biden White House has some tarnish, such as, apparently, with Veep Kamala Harris, who allegedly caused the suicide of someone she "persecuted" via prosecution.

Apparently, a writer at Reason Magazine was sucked into a "bizarre" panel discussion on CNN."


That's a pretty good clearing out of my archive of links for today.

Thanks for tuning in!

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2308.19 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2969 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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