New Yorker humorist Andy Borowitz says there is reason not to worry about Trump and the nuclear codes. His tweets demonstrate that he can’t spell even the simplest words. He even invents words like Covfefe.
This suggests that he will not be able to enter the nuclear codes correctly. And given his short attention span, he has probably forgotten them.
As Phyllis Bush continues to confront cancer treatments, she thinks back to her childhood chemistry set.
Now the challenge is not to mix a potion, but to live with the side effects of the chemo treatments.
She is watching herself, an experiment every day, as she confronts her fears and beats them back.
The Secret Service has run out of funding because of providing protection for every member of Trump’s large family and many residences.
Remember when Trump the candidate used to complain about President Obsma’s vacations?
Trump travels every weekend to one of his resorts and has run through the cost of eight years of Obama vacations in less than a year.
Arizona is the poster state for the ALEC plan to replace public schools with vouchers and charter schools.
The Republican dominated Legislature first passed a plan to offer vouchers for students with disabilities (the camel’s nose in the tent); then expanded it for a variety of other groups: foster children, children living on reservations, children in schools rated D or F. At its last session, the Legislature passed a bill to remove any limits on vouchers, other than an artificial cap of 30,000, which can be removed at any time.
Parents and educators united to initiate a referendum on this vast expansion of vouchers. They needed to collect 75,000 signatures to call for a referendum in 2018. They collected 110,000. Lawyers for voucher supporters challenged many of the signatures, but the public school supporters ended up with 108,000 valid signatures. There will still be challenges and legal battles, but for now Arizona is heading for a referendum.
The next job for public school advocates is to demonstrate to the taxpayers in Arizona that the voucher program is a huge waste of their money and that students in voucher schools do not benefit. They must also remind them of the importance of public education as a public responsibility, since even the retirees are overwhelmingly graduates of public schools. They still have their work cut out for them, but they have cleared the first step.
And it should hearten them to know that the public has been asked in 19 different state referenda to approve vouchers for religious schools, and has rejected them every single time. (Three of the 19 referenda were in Betsy DeVos’s home state of Michigan, rejected overwhelmingly.)
One year ago, John Oliver roasted charter schools. Since then, that show has had 8 million views.
On August 15, the conservative magazine Education Next released its annual poll, reporting that public approval of charters has plummeted.
Question: was the drop in the polls the result of:
1. John Oliver’s takedown
2. The Network for Public Education’s advocacy against privatization
3. The experience of communities with charters, school closures, and budget cuts to fund charters
4. All of the above
Write an essay on this question:
Why are there so few Democrats who endorse charter schools, which are part of the Trump-DeVos agenda?
Or you may answer this question instead:
Why does the Democratic National Committee and other fundraising activities of the Democratic party send emails asking you to pick the issue that matters most to you and list 12 issues, none of which includes K-12 schooling?
I am really tired of hearing politicians say we must “unite” the country. They claim to know how to bridge the divisions. No, they don’t and they can’t.
When I see white men (and a few white women) marching with torches and chanting hateful slogans; when I see them threatening blacks and Jews and others they hate; when I see the president saying that these marchers and charters include “many very fine people,” I know that unity is impossible.
This is the most talked-about video on Charlottesville.
There are no grounds for unity with self-proclaimed Nazis and KKK.
Nope.
They have free speech rights. But their hateful views must be exposed, condemned, and vilified.
We can turn the other cheek, but we must not let their views multiply, because they are inherently divisive and destructive. When they rally, surround them with reminders and symbols of what we believe, what American soldiers have fought and died for: freedom, equality, democracy, justice for all, the equal worth and dignity of all people.
Do not meet their violence with violence, as that is the confrontation they hope for.
Meet their vehemence with decency and courtesy, as this young woman in Boston did.
Meet their violence with swift justice.
We can never unify with those who hate our ideals.
Mercedes Schneider takes us on a tour of the latest claims, exaggerations, and braggadocio on the Teach for America website. She is bothered to the extreme by TFA who are assigned to special education classes, despite their poor preparation.
What bothers me most is this:
“Even with its fly-by-summer training and its turnstile, two-year recruit commitment, TFA unabashedly proclaims itself a provider of “world class education.”
TFA has been in business since 1989. That’s almost thirty years. It cannot name a single district where its young college graduates have provided a “world class education.” Kopp wrote in her last ghost-written book that New York City, D.C., and New Orleans were proof of TFA success. But where are the miracles in those three cities? D.C. still has the largest achievement gaps of any urban district in the nation, and it has been under TFA control (Rhee And Henderson) for a decade. No one calls either NYC. Or NOLA a miracle district except for PR flacks.
Lies really bother me. It shows character to hide ones TFA background. Or shame.
The Trump administration disbanded a federal advisory panel on climate change.
One way to deal with climate change is to pretend it isn’t happening, and to refuse to listen to any scientists.
The Trump administration has decided to disband the federal advisory panel for the National Climate Assessment, a group aimed at helping policymakers and private-sector officials incorporate the government’s climate analysis into long-term planning.
The charter for the 15-person Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment — which includes academics as well as local officials and corporate representatives — expires Sunday. On Friday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s acting administrator, Ben Friedman, informed the committee’s chair that the agency would not renew the panel.
This is in keeping with the administration’s hostility to science. Remember this when you hear Secretary DeVos urging students to study STEM courses. She doesn’t mean it. She wants them to study religion and learn science from the Bible.
Wednesday was the four-year anniversary of Peter Greene’s blog.
https://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2017/08/happy-curmudgabirthday.html?m=1
Just as many people get kicked off the receiving end of this blog, I have been kicked off the receiving end of Peter’s blog, whose name I can’t spell. Curmudgacation?
Peter has a razor-sharp wit, and a battery of invented words that he deploys with grace.
He makes laugh. He informs us. He skewers pretension. He is indispensable. He reads the dreary reports and nonsensical studies that roll forth from the reformer industry and demolishes them with grace, style, and a finely honed verbal rapier.
Thank you, Peter!
Dana Milbank, a regular writer for the Washington Post, writes that the Jews who serve Trump have covered themselves in shame. While rabbis and Jewish organizations have unequivocally condemned the Nazi-KKK rally in Charlottesville, Trump says that there were “many fine people” marching with the Nazis.
This was a time when his Jewish relatives and cabinet members should have disagreed. Even James Murdoch, heir to the FOX News empire, called Trump out. His wife Kathryn regularly tweets anti-Trump messages.
But not Kushner, Cohn, or Mnuchin.
Most Jews have learned from history that when any minority is singled out for oppression, Jews are next. Except when they are first.
Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for you.
Milbank writes:
“What Gary Cohn, Steven Mnuchin and Jared Kushner did this week — or, rather, what they didn’t do — is a shanda.
“They’ll know what that means, but, for the uninitiated, shanda is Yiddish for shame, disgrace. The three men, the most prominent Jews in President Trump’s administration, could have spoken out to say that those who march with neo-Nazis are not “very fine people,” as their boss claims. Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, and Cohn, the chief economic adviser, were actually standing with Trump when he said it. They said nothing.
“All three let it be known through anonymous friends and colleagues that they are disturbed and distressed by what Trump said — Kushner even got out word that he and his wife, Ivanka Trump, had counseled Trump otherwise — but none is speaking publicly about an outrage that makes millions of Americans feel as though they are living a nightmare.
“We have seen such a character before in Jewish history: the shtadlan. The shtadlan , or “court Jew,” existed to please the king, to placate the king, to loan money to the king. He would dress like other members of the court, and he would beg the king for leniency toward the Jews, but, ultimately, his loyalty was to the king….
“Certainly, Cohn, Mnuchin and Kushner have a particular obligation as Jews, because the violent white supremacists in Charlottesville were targeting Jews with their swastikas and chants of “Jews will not replace us” and “Sieg Heil.” One of their leaders told “Vice News Tonight” it was objectionable that Trump would “give his daughter to a Jew.” A few stood outside a synagogue brandishing rifles, forcing Sabbath worshipers to slip out a back door.
“But Jews, because of our recent history, know what results from silence in the face of any type of bigotry. Before Trump dabbled in anti-Semitism, he made scapegoats of immigrants, African Americans, Latinos and, especially, Muslims. Two years ago, when I described the many actions that made candidate Trump a bigot and a racist, I noted that he hadn’t yet gone after Jews. That followed soon: the tweeted image of a Star of David atop paper money, and the speech and ads linking Jews to a secret “global power structure.”
“This racist demagoguery now comes from the president of the United States. In tweets Thursday, Trump proclaimed his sadness at the removal of “our beautiful” Confederate statues, and he revived the bogus claim that, a century ago, Gen. John J. Pershing dipped bullets in pig blood before shooting Muslim prisoners.
“Why is it so hard to condemn such filth? David Shulkin did. Trump’s Veterans Affairs secretary, who is Jewish (and an Obama administration holdover), said what needed to be said: “I do feel like as an American and as a member of the Cabinet, that I can speak for my own personal opinions on this, and I am outraged by the behavior that I have seen with the Nazis and the white supremacists.”
“Shulkin said he will continue to speak. “Staying silent on these issues is not acceptable,” he said.
“Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Aug. 16 said “it is a dishonor to our country’s veterans to allow the Nazis and the white supremacists to go unchallenged.” (The Washington Post)
“Amen.
“Even the rabbi who oversaw Ivanka Trump’s conversion, Haskel Lookstein, joined in a statement saying he was “deeply troubled by the moral equivalency and equivocation President Trump has offered.”
“Amen.
“Even Sheldon Adelson’s Republican Jewish Coalition called for “greater moral clarity” from Trump, saying “there are no good Nazis.”
“Amen.
“As I write this, my 13-year-old has come into my office and said the neo-Nazis at the Charlottesville synagogue make her reluctant to return to Hebrew school. She also asks if our family will be a target because people know I’m Jewish.
“This is what Trump has done to America. And this is what Cohn, Mnuchin and Kushner allow with their shameful silence.
“Do they prize their appointments so much? Well then, don’t quit. Speak out. Let him fire you. But don’t play the court Jew.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 