"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Monday, April 24, 2023

Brooklyn Public Library Offers Teens Everywhere the Right to Read

If you are age 13-21 and would like to gain access to any or all of the books that have been pulled from your school or public library in response to censors and book burners, the Brooklyn Public Library's Books Unbanned program is offering you a free library card that allows patrons anywhere in the U.S. to check out any of its eBook holdings. Really!

Brooklyn Public should be congratulated for their actions against the fascist censors and for their support for the American Library Association's Freedom to Read Statement (download your own copy and take it to your next school board meeting). 

If you are aware of efforts in your community or school to ban books, you may access confidential consulting services (for free) on what to do from the American Library Association.

Watch here or read CBS's coverage of this unique program to preserve children's Freedom to Read.

Friday, April 07, 2023

TN House Demonstrates Desperation to Preserve White Rule

In a Tennessee institution literally constructed, block by block, upon white supremacy, treasonous behavior, and political treachery, what happens when its soulless, hateful, semi-literate guardians are faced with two democratically-chosen black and young representatives who are much more intelligent and much more articulate than the entire biscuit-gravy band of dim-witted hillbilly fascists? 

Being confronted, day in and day out, with their own well-groomed intellectual and moral inadequacies finally became too much to take, especially when it became clear that their own supporters were starting to notice--and starting to listen to the passionately-rational arguments set forth by these young black men determined to enact laws to protect Tennessee's children, rather than Tennessee's gun industry.

So what did they do? The Tennessee T---- Party did what their ancestors would have done, given the present legal constraints against barbarous acts. They chose televised political lynching.  

Given their cognitive limitations, TN's supermajority of idiots could not see beyond the ends of their pointy noses, which they had just cut off to spite their seething red faces.  

Today, Congressmen Justin Jones and Justin Pearson are viewed as heroes by both young and old people who are intent upon ending the slaughter of Americans to protect the bankrupt ideology that, nonetheless, generates billions in profits for the amoral manufacturers and merchants of death, as well as their political representatives.  

Overnight, Mr. Jones and Mr. Pearson have become inspirations for an entire generation of thoughtful progressive citizens around the entire globe.  In short, the fools of the Tennessee Taliban have done more to bring about their own political demolition than the two Justins could have ever conceived just two days ago.

Wednesday, April 05, 2023

Chicago Mayoral Election Shows Democrats Preferred Over Republican Posers

If anyone asks my political affiliation, I always say that I am not a Democrat, even though I have never voted for a Republican--except for the two times I voted for Bill Clinton.

If the the election of real democrat, Brandon Clarke, yesterday in Chicago showed us anything, Republican Lite candidates like Clinton or Paul Vallas (who trained Arnie Duncan, by the way) are not preferred when given the choice of a progressive Democrat.  

On a day like today, I like to remember my friend, George Schmidt, whose decades of work in Chicago against the corporate takeover of public education, is now being rewarded. 

Colonel Moe Davis on CBS Decision to Normalize "Seditious Scumbag," Margorie Taylor Greene

From Raw Story:

 . . . . Col. Davis, for those unaware, was a top Guantanamo prosecutor who resigned after his superiors refused to support his policy that no evidence obtained via waterboarding would be used in prosecutions. In 2020 he ran against, and lost to, Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina.

On Monday, Davis slammed "60 Minutes" for using its platform to normalize Greene.

"Little difference in @FoxNews knowingly promoting the Big Lie and @60Minutes knowingly promoting a seditious scumbag … it’s all about the $$$. And don’t buy any high minded journalism bullsh*t … that’s the same excuse I heard from @jaketapper when he normalized Trump in 2015," Davis tweeted.

He was not finished.

In a series of tweets, Col. Davis related a story from when he was the top Guantanamo Bay prosecutor, calling "60 Minutes" "just as mercenary and ratings motivated as Fox."


Saturday, April 01, 2023

TN's Law to Ban Drag Shows Gets Dragged by Trump Judge

To show you how fully authoritarian the Tennessee Taliban (once known as the TN General Assembly) has become, the outrageous bill that Bill Lee couldn't wait to sign has been put on hold by a federal court intervention initiated by a Donald Trump judicial appointee. 

Judge Thomas Parker had to remind TN's bible-thumping, gun-slinging legislative fascists that the First Amendment was not meant to apply to just white authoritarian males parading their toxic masculinity but also to other white males less enamored by narrow theocratic rule that bans and banishes those think and act outside puritanical constraints.  

Trump-appointed judge, Thomas Parker concluded:

“If Tennessee wishes to exercise its police power in restricting speech it considers obscene, it must do so within the constraints and framework of the United States Constitution. The Court finds that, as it stands, the record here suggests that when the legislature passed this Statute, it missed the mark. Ultimately, the Statute’s broad language clashes with the First Amendment’s tight constraints . . . "