Very funny rendition of the Inauguration.
Call it an “alternative version” of the event!
Archives for the month of: January, 2017
Alexandra Petri now admits that she did not write the totally accurate description of Donald Trump’s inauguration. She did not admit that the crowd was the largest ever in the history of the world. She failed to acknowledge that A-List singers were competing to see which would be allowed to sing.
That was a day for the history books, also for science fiction and the fantasy section of the book store.
She begins:
Nothing that has ever happened or will ever happen was as great as Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The crowd was magnificent and huge, bigger than any crowd had ever been before! It stretched all the way to the moon. The Pope, who was there, confirmed it.
“Thanks for being here, Pope,” Donald Trump told him.
“Are you kidding? You’re my best friend,” the Pope said. “I wouldn’t miss your big day for anything!” He gave Donald Trump a big high-five.
Everyone in the world had come there at great expense. They sold all their possessions — their homes, their “Hamilton” tickets, which were worthless to them — to raise money to come and see this great sight. They could not believe that a perfect being such as Donald Trump even existed. They thought that he was a myth or a legend or a decades-long series of fabrications.
But then they saw him, and their doubts fell away.
The media was there, too, and they were very sorry. “Donald,” the newscasters said, “we were mean to you. We used to laugh and call you names. We were no better than all of the other reindeer. How can you ever forgive us?”
“Forgive you?” Donald Trump asked. “I’ve already forgotten.” He smiled a big, beautiful smile. That was just who Donald Trump was: forgiving, like Jesus, but blond.
It was a wonderful start to the day.
Jeff Bryant writes here that Betsy Dezvos lied (or used “alternative facts”) when explaining her supposed views about accountability to the Senate HELP committee.
http://educationopportunitynetwork.org/new-reports-reveal-the-big-charter-school-accountability-lie/
Not only did she offer alternative “facts” (lies) about her own views on school accountability, but the actual fact is that charter school “accountability ” is an illusion, a falsehood, a lie.
Michigan and Florida–Jeb Bush’s protectorate–are leading exemplars of no-accountability charters.
Kellyanne Conway has engaged in many appearances on television to explain the words of Donald Trump. Now she gets to explain even his press secretary. Conway has proved herself to be nimble at dancing around questions that are too awkward. A few days ago, when asked directly about what most people would call a “lie,” although others might call it a “falsehood” or a “prevarication,” Conway said that there are “alternative facts.”
Mercedes Schneider tries to explain it here.
“Alternative facts” means something, but I am not sure. Maybe it means that if you tell a lie, you can twist the words to sound almost true. Well, maybe not true, but something that fervent believers will assume to be true even if it is completely false.
Maybe it means that if you don’t want something to be true, then it is not true.
Maybe Trump is in an alternative universe, and I will wake up tomorrow and discover that the 2016 election was a nightmare and he doesn’t exist. In my alternative universe, Hillary Clinton won. She appointed Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court and selected experienced, well-qualified people to every Cabinet post.
Badlands National Park in South Dakota defied the Trump administration and continued to send out tweets about the environment and climate change. Its twitter account has been deleted.
“Just days after The National Park Service (NPS) was forced to shut down its Twitter activity over two retweets the Department of the Interior deemed inconsistent with the agency’s mission, the Twitter account for Badlands National Park in South Dakota seems to have gone rogue, tweeting numerous scientific facts about climate change that have since been deleted.
“The first tweet about climate science came at 11:40 a.m. local time Tuesday. It said: “The pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 280 parts per million (ppm). As of December 2016, 404.93 ppm.”
Several tweets about climate change followed, then the Twitter account was silenced.
#Orwellian
Bill Boyle notices a fact that has been obvious to everyone except corporate reformers for the past 15 years: almost every school that is labeled “failing” enrolls mostly children of color. In Michigan, the home state of Betsy DeVos, every community that is targeted for state takeover and for an emergency manager is majority people of color. Corporate reformers look at schools with low test scores, and they see dollar signs, not children with unmet needs. At present, 38 schools in Michigan have been declared “failing schools.” They are slated for closure. This was surprising to hear, because when I participated in a four-way debate last week with Matt Frendewey of DeVos’s American Federation for Children on NPR, he insisted that public schools are never closed in Detroit or Michigan, only charter schools. Twenty-four of the 38 schools slated for closure are in Detroit.
Bill Boyle writes:
“Let’s be clear and name this- Betsy DeVos is a huge proponent of institutional racism.
“How do you spot institutional racism? It’s pretty easy.
“First, here is what you don’t do. You don’t go looking for individual racists. I honestly don’t know DeVos’s personal ideas on race. I am certainly not naming her as a racist. Her intentions are beyond by my ability to determine. More so I don’t see her personal intentions as particularly relevant. (The same goes for Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions. Who cares if those who know him claim he’s a nice guy? See below.)
“What is relevant are the effects and outcomes of the policies that she supports. These are very, very easy to determine. And they clearly support institutionalized racism.
“It goes without question that DeVos has supported the narrative of “failing schools” and that she has funded it. In the state of Michigan this has led to a number of weird policies (the ability of the SRO to close schools being only one) that have become institutionalized through the financial backing and political influence of DeVos. (As an excellent example of how DeVos exerts pressure, see here.)
“So let’s dig a little deeper.
“What do these 38 schools on the SRO closing list have in common? They are in areas of high concentrations of poverty, and high populations of African American students. This is called a “disproportional outcome,” one that has a disproportionate effect on a particular group of people. In this case, we are talking about poor Black communities. Poor Black communities are having their schools taken from them. Poor Black communities are having their schools being named as failures, which allows us to avoid considering the racialized economic conditions that actually led to these communities having high concentrations of Black students who also tend to be struggling with poverty. Schools are being named as failures while hiding the fact that those in power have failed those communities.
“It is shameful.
“And it is, by definition, institutionalized racism.
“Maybe we should ask, does closing schools work?
“The answer is yes if your goal is to continue to steal resources from those most in need of them.
“The answer is no if you are hoping to support these communities.
“Hell no.
“Not even close.
“As an example, Muskegon Heights public school district was completely charterized as a result of the having been overtaken by emergency management in 2012. The whole district was given to a private company to run as a charter district. In 2014, that company left in the middle of the school year because the profit wasn’t what projections hoped for. It remains charterized.
“And it is now is on the closure list.
“Oh well.
“Muskegon Heights district is 95.6% Black with a poverty rate of 61.7%. Hmm…”
Betsy DeVos is a graduate of Calvin College, a small Christian college in Michigan. Hundreds of students and alumni signed a letter opposing her nomination for Secretary of Education.
It is a thoughtful letter. I hope she reads it. I hope the U.S. Senate reads it. I visited Calvin College and lectured there about 10 years ago. I was very impressed by the kindness and goodness of those I met. Now I remember why.
The letter expressed these concerns, which I share:
1) While many of us were inspired by our time at Calvin College to make education a professional commitment, Mrs. DeVos was not. She has never worked in any educational institution as an administrator, nor as an educator. If the position of the Secretary of Education requires the individual to have an intimate knowledge of the tools used by educators, which we believe it does, Mrs. DeVos does not qualify.
2) Many of us entered Calvin College directly from Christian high schools and spent our entire elementary and secondary school years in these institutions, as did Mrs. DeVos. While we appreciate the opportunity to thrive and learn that is provided by these educational systems, we recognize that the vast majority of K–12 students are educated in the public school system. Because of this, we believe that any individual who is nominated to be Secretary of Education should have a strong commitment to public education, which Mrs. DeVos does not.
3) We believe that Mrs. DeVos’s commitment to education is limited to her advocacy of and financial contributions to religious and charter schools. Having the financial resources to promote one’s ideological point of view and endorse elected officials who share that ideology is not equivalent to the preparation that comes from being an educator or educational administrator.
4) Finally, in the first day of her confirmation hearing, Mrs. DeVos indicated a lack of support for federal policies regarding educational systems that receive public funding. This is especially concerning given that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Title IX, which ensure that all students’ educational experiences are free of discrimination that impedes learning, are not of value to Mrs. DeVos.
Our undergraduate education prepared us to be engaged and informed citizens who support public servants who seek to serve effectively and competently. This is precisely why we oppose the nomination of our fellow alumna, Betsy DeVos, for the position of United States Secretary of Education.
Wayne Gersen was a school superintendent in New Hampshire for 11 years. He was appalled to learn that the new Republican governor, Chris Sununu, appointed a completely inexperienced businessman, who home-schooled his own seven children, as the state’s next education commissioner.
The only way to block this appointment is by vote of the state’s five-person Executive Council, three of whom are Republicans. If even one of them is a public school parent or graduate, there is a chance of stopping this unqualified nominee.
This is a portion of the letter that Gersen wrote to the Executive Council members.
“I am writing to express by unequivocal opposition to the appointment of Frank Edelblut as Commissioner of Education. As a former NH Public School Superintendent of 11 years (SAU 16 from 1983-87; SAU 70 from 2004-2011), a Superintendent with 18 additional years of experience in other States, and one who has worked as a consultant for the past six years in Vermont and New Hampshire, I have a great understanding of and great appreciation for the work performed by a chief school officer in a state. I also know that overseeing a state department of education requires an in depth knowledge of how public schools are governed, how they are managed, and the challenges employees in public schools face. It is evident from what I have read about Mr. Edelblut that he possesses no knowledge of the workings of public schools. Mr. Edelblut asserts that his skills as a private businessman are transferable to overseeing a complex public agency. The experience of other businessmen with no public sector experience who take over schools shows otherwise. Mr. Edelblut also asserts that his experience as a CEO provides him with an understanding of “what kids need to be successful”. While he may know what a HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE needs to be successful IN HIS BUSINESS, I do not believe that gives him any sense of what a Kindergartner needs to be successful in Colebrook, Concord, or Contoocook.
“Most troubling to me is his lack of experience in dealing with public schools as a parent. If Mr. Edelblut was a successful businessman who ALSO served on his local school board, or who attended his child’s PTA meetings or back to school nights, or who had any children who attended public school I might be open to an assertion that he has some sense of the challenges of public schools. The fact that he chose to homeschool his children instead of working with his local school board or local principal or his child’s teacher experience speaks volumes about his commitment to the cause of improving schools. Parents who are engaged in public education soon gain an appreciation for the hard work required to educate all children and find ways to improve their local schools through teamwork.”
If any readers live in New Hampshire, please express your opposition to this absurd nomination. If you don’t live in New Hampshire, contact the governor’s office to let him know that this appointment makes New Hampshire a laughing stock and undermines the hard work of the state’s educators and its students.
With appointments like Betsy DeVos and this unqualified nominee in New Hampshire, our nation is not only showing disrespect for public education, but hurtling back to the early nineteenth century, when children went to religious schools, charity schools, charter schools, were homeschooled, or were without any education. Rushing backward two centuries will not prepare our children to live in the 21st century.
Since his inauguration, Donald Trump has been obsessed with two issues of fact. He asserted repeatedly that the crowd at his swearing-in was larger than the crowd for Obama in 2009, despite the fact that aerial photographs showed this was not true. At one point, he ordered the National Park Service to stop issuing estimates of the crowd. Photographs take along the parade route, as his car passed, showed empty spaces, barely a single row of spectators.
The second fact that obseeses him is him is that Hillary Clinton received nearly 3 million votes more than he did. He keeps repeating his claim that 3-5 million “illegals” voted, presumably for her. This is his attempt to claim the popular vote.
The Washington Post says that his failure to tell the truth threatens the credibility of his presidency.
Republicans are puzzled. Why is he questioning the legitimacy of his own election?
The New York Times did something it has never done before: it had a headline on the front page saying that Trump lied about the vote totals.
what does all this mean? Trump’s a spoiled child who needs to be told that whatever he does is the biggest and the best. Trump can’t tell the difference between fact and his own opinions. Trump is a narcissist. Trump is delusional. Trump can’t be believed.
This article in the Washington Post contains a link to Betsy DeVos’s government ethics filing.
It makes for interesting reading.
Diane Ravitch's blog 