At a recent rally in Texas, Donald Trump Jr. lashed out at teachers as “losers” because, he said, they want to indoctrinate their students into socialism.
Did Trump Jr. ever meet a teacher? If he had teachers, did they try to make him a socialist? Oh, yes, he went to the Hill School, where tuition is $50,000 a year. Probably no socialist indoctrination there.
Peter Greene tries through parody to describe a day in the life of a socialist indoctrinator, who just can’t seem to find the time to get much indoctrination into the day.
Trump Jr. must have embarrassed his teachers with his public display of ignorance and contempt for teachers.
i don’t know about you, but whenever I think of him, I think of the pictures of him as a big-game hunter, smiling alongside the corpses of the animals he slaughtered. Google his name and big-game hunter. He and his brother pose with creatures they killed. The most disgusting is the one where he holds the tail of an elephant he killed. But others might choose other photos as even more revolting. Did he Major in Animal Abuse with a Minor in Stupidity?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This isn’t the first time DJTJ has ripped teachers. I can’t remember exact details, but at the GOP National Convention, he likened teachers to workers in the Soviet Union who cared only about themselves and not at all about the customers. It’s bad enough that he has so little respect for teachers, but what’s particularly scary is that he believes that his scapegoating of teachers is politically beneficial. Very glad he’s getting more blowback from his most recent remarks.
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It’s really silly, and to me shows how out of touch they are with anywhere outside DC or NY.
This is probably news to the private school attending Trumps, but conservative areas of the country tend to have conservative school boards and conservative teachers.
They should get out more. The affluent sections of New York City aren’t the whole country.
The Trumps don’t know any better but Republican politicians certainly do. Who do they think is electing them in these Republican areas? Socialists?
More ridiculous-on-its-face nonsense from overpaid political operatives who profit from turning us against one another.
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“The affluent sections of New York City aren’t the whole country.”
And boy, isn’t the rest of the whole country happy about that!
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Actually I doubt even conservative billionaires toss this meme around in affluent NY/ DC burbs. It’s just red meat for Fox-watchers & Limbaugh-listeners out in MAGA-land. Probably got it from Dad.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Peter, you are assuming facts, not in evidence. You are assuming little donny has a brain. I would like to contest that fact.
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The radical right wing has been spreading so much anti-public education propaganda to engender mistrust of democratic public schools and teachers in their empty headed followers. Little Donny, the private school prince that never attended a public school in his life, is typical of the oblivious right wing bigots that spread harmful misinformation and resort to the lowest level of criticism, name-calling. Many thanks to Peter Greene for lampooning the misconceptions about public schools and teachers that the biased 1% and the radical right wing have.
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This is Peter’s best yet. Hilarious!!! OMG. I couldn’t stop laughing.
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The thinness of Trump Jr’s mind is so thin it defied being measured. The only person with a thinner mind is his father who has a mind that is invisible it is so thin. No one that searched inside his skull has been able to find anything but a black hole.
I don’t know how biased Education Week is when it comes to reporting about teachers but I found this interesting report:
Survey: Educators’ Political Leanings, Who They Vote4 Fork, Where They Stand on Key Issues
“while many educators guard against bringing their personal views into the classroom, they are hardly apolitical as a group, a national survey by the Education Week Research Center shows.” …
“Forty one percent of respondents described themselves as Democrats while another 30 percent said they were independents. Just 27 percent were Republicans.
“Half the respondents voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Another 29 percent voted for Trump. Thirteen percent selected a third-party candidate.
“By and large, educators aren’t fans of school choice—even if they voted for Trump, who made it a signature issue.” …
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2017/12/13/survey-paints-political-portrait-of-americas-k-12.html
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“Donald Trump Jr. lashed out at teachers as “losers” because, he said, they want to indoctrinate their students into socialism.” That’s straight out of the libertarian/Ayn Rand/rightwing nut/corporate/pro-privatizer hand book. Not to mention a few corporate Democrats like Emanuel and Duncan. That Underhill guy who comments here every once in a while thinks that teachers are evil socialists drilling the kids in Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Geesh, teachers are just trying to do their job and educate the kids in whatever subject matter or grade level they are teaching. Some of the nefarious goals of teachers include having the pupils write in clear sentences and paragraphs with proper spelling and punctuation. Real commie stuff. Sigh.
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The breakdown of Trump votes, according to one source
1 in 5 members of AFT voted for Trump.
1 in 3 members of NEA voted for Trump.
The Black community must be better at recognizing a man who hates them than teachers are. Only 8% of Black people voted for Trump.
Trump’s family never had the audacity to publicly pronounce that all Blacks are “losers” and, still about 90% of their community understood Trump was the wrong leader for them.
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Good point. Maybe some teachers need to learn to be better critical thinkers.
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The teachers that voted for Trump shouldn’t be a surprise since almost 30 percent of teachers are registered Republicans. It is another fake myth that all teachers are liberal socialists. They are NOT.
When I was teaching it seems many conservative thinking teachers taught science, PE (sports), math and history while most registered Democrats taught English and electives. I knew history teachers and coaches that were fire breathing conservatives that even hated the teachers’ union they belonged to.
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Lloyd,
Trump was right about the segment you describe being losers, not because they are teachers but, because they are GOP.
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GOP = losers
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Those are two staggering statistics in your opening. Teachers really are a forgotten political constituency in large part because they are politically inept…well-meaning, informed, passionate, but nonetheless, inept. Until that changes, we will continue to talk amongst ourselves. We’ve got to do a better job of connecting local strikes, charter greed, and its connections to fundamental issues like taxes and spending. Educators have to be a feared movement in order to be effective. I’m not hopeful, but the essentials are there. But so far, there hasn’t been an effective message or messenger outside this insulated world in which we exist.
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The statistics are from just one source. I would like to think that they are wrong. There is no doubt democracy and public education would be less vulnerable if the leaders of the teachers’ unions had been and were being bold in confronting one billionaire in particular, Gates.
I’m optimistic because of Diane Ravitch, Mercedes Schneider, Peter Gtreene, Leonie Helmsley, Jan Ressenger, Pastors for Texas Children, the awakening of the NAACP, ACLU, SPLC, and BLM to the threat of privatization, UnKochMyCampus.org, AOC, Democratic politicians who now cower in embarrassment when charter schools are mentioned, John Oliver, the people at this blog like you, Chiara, Laura Chapman, Lloyd Lofthouse, Robert Rendo, and all of the other wonderful commenters.
There is no option other than to fight the donor class’ plot to destroy the common good so that oligarchy can have a strangle hold on America..
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And, Bob Shepherd.
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The unions tried to appease the privatizers too long because they wanted to be part of the “dialogue.” All the propaganda from the privatizers caused an anti-teacher backlash. This was, of course, when charters still had their new car smell. Now more people understand that most charters just stink, and most people would rather have a quality public system over privatization. You also cannot have lots of choice and a quality public school for the same dollar.
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Retired teacher,
Hope is renewed by the frequent, insightful comments you post and those of commenter, NYC parent.
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If he gets eaten by a lion I’ll become a believer.
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Me too!
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I don’t want him eaten by a lion. I want him devoured by a pack of hyenas. Being killed by hyenas is more gruesome because they just start eating while you are still screaming.
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The trump family shows its true colors again and again.
Like father like son…sad.
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/psychiatrist-with-trump-you-see-sadism-in-everything-he-does-pjt9PGfIKEmwyQ0ecvCeGg/
“When I first started talking about Trump as a malignant narcissist, people could see the narcissism, the paranoia and the antisocial element. But the fourth component of malignant narcissism is sadism.
“You see it in everything he does, from the separating of the children at the border to how Trump tortures anyone who doesn’t give him what he wants. There’s a way in which he takes a kind of manic glee in causing harm and pain and humiliation to other people.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/14/1826065/-Trump-Is-Sadistic
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“he went to the Hill School, where tuition is $50,000 a year.”
I wonder if the Hill School teachers and staff are worried about the negative publicity they are receiving. Donny Jr’s comment makes this school look really bad. What are they teaching the elite when one of their own makes such a stupid comment?
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Why We Must Elect Scientists (or at Least Science-Friendly People) to Political Office: Our Survival Depends upon This
Before the 1990s, use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was destroying the Earth’s ozone layer. Without that protective shield, UV radiation from the Sun would quickly make the surface of the planet uninhabitable. Terrestrial life on Earth, from bacteria to us, would cease to exist. At the time, there were plenty of politicians claiming that the CFC issue simply wasn’t important, and being paid handsomely to do so, but fortunately, scientists were able to get the attention of politicians, worldwide, on this matter, including President George Bush, Sr., who, after pressure from Britain’s Maggie Thatcher, recommended a ban on CFCs that became global. We had a narrow escape there.
Here we are again. But this time, scientists HAVEN’T been able to get the attention of many key politicians, the ones now being paid handsomely to ignore global warming and climate change. Now, we have in office willfully ignorant CREEPS like Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and Rick Perry who literally SCOFF at the science, at the same time that they make up phony National Emergencies. These utterly contemptible, vile, stupid, ignorant, corrupt men ARE PUTTING OUR CHILDREN AND GRANDCHILDREN IN GRAVE DANGER. Given this, don’t even dare suggesting that I say nice things about them. (Mitch the Turtle, btw, was also one of the guys who used to argue that there was no proof that smoking caused cancer. And recently retired Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was another of these meretricious bobblehead climate change deniers.)
Donald, Mitch, Rick, Paul, et al.: Here’s the deal. I will try to make this as simple as possible. CO2 and methane are gases. They trap heat near the surface of the Earth. This really isn’t difficult to understand. EVEN YOU can do this.
I’ve often wondered which of the following is the case:
I know that Trump is really stupid and doesn’t understand much about anything, but is he THAT stupid, so cognitively challenged that he can’t understand the basics of climate-change science, something that can easily be demonstrated in A FOURTH-GRADE SCIENCE EXPERIMENT? or
Does he just not care because he won’t be around to see the devastating consequences of the warming of the Earth?
Answer: it’s probably both.
It is LONG, LONG past time for us to elect to the Presidency and to Congress people with scientific and technical knowledge. Instead, we have long-term Congressmen who hold a committee hearing in which they attack the CEO of Facebook for results gotten on a Google or Microsoft browser–grown men who don’t know the difference between a browser and a social media platform.
Yes, we have THAT level of scientific and technical ignorance among people in high office.
One of the answers sometimes given to the Fermi Paradox is that when life reaches a certain level of technology, it destroys itself. A little knowledge, Pope said, is a dangerous thing. No knowledge at all is disastrous.
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And here, but make sure to watch this on an empty stomach: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49kG7HfD-oM
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Trump doesn’t know just how stupid he is. He says this to make up for his inner lack of confidence. His narcissistic worthless personality boasts of greatness.
I never heard Stephen Hawkings rant about how intelligent he was. Nobody who is really intelligent talks like this.
How did this country degenerate into electing a moron with no morals?
I sent this video on to my friends and told them to view it on an empty stomach.
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“But this time, scientists HAVEN’T been able to get the attention of many key politicians, the ones now being paid handsomely to ignore global warming and climate change.”
The second part of your sentence is why electing scientists or the science-friendly either won’t happen, or wouldn’t change anything if it did happen. Legislation benefiting the common good can only re-surface when we change the rules of the game. Now that the nation’s $ is concentrated in the hands of so few, that will be an uphill push. But Dem House’s HR-1 is a start.
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And this is probably why China will save modern civilization and win, in business and government, against a United States ruled by an ignorant Donald Trump, Libertarians, neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, and autocratic billionaires that all worship at the altar of avarice.
To most if not all of those types, if it is unprofitable to fight global warming, then the fight to slow up and survive climate change will only happen when it is too late.
The Chinese Government Is Dominated by Scientists and Engineers
https://gineersnow.com/leadership/chinese-government-dominated-scientists-engineers
And in “How to Lobby Beijing”, we discover that to win in China it has to be a win-win situation between business and the interests of the government. In a Trumpian world, it is always an I win and you lose situation because Trump doesn’t know how to allow both sides to win.
What’s the best way to lobby the Chinese central government? “It is very important for foreign companies to make their case, make their argument to the Chinese officials in ways in which there is a win-win, where the Chinese can achieve their objective and the company can achieve their objective,” says Sandy Berger. The official-turned-lobbyist gives us the conventional wisdom–and a buzz phrase to boot.
https://www.forbes.com/2010/05/06/china-business-government-opinions-columnists-gordon-chang.html#6cebcfc3532d
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Why bother to wade in this water? (Too shallow.)
Classic case, insofar as Donny is concerned, of “ignorance is bliss.”
That’s a fair description of him, he who may make a not-so-tasty meal for some unfortunate creature who happens upon him during one of his “safaris.”
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On my way to school in a few minutes. Please help, I need a can of Pepsi, a sign that reads ‘Walgreens’, the latest iPhone, a bottle of Lysol, and a Taco Bell chalupa-Doritos thing. I have to stop teaching my students about all the socialism in history and literature, and start working to indoctrinate them into commercialism and consumerism. Lord knows there isn’t enough advertising for capitalism in America.
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Kinda like how you never hear about Christmas anymore because of the War on Christmas
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The religious right framed Christ out of Christianity at the same time that Paul Weyrich founded the Koch’s Heritage Foundation and ALEC.
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Trump is running for reelection, so he’s ramped up the God talk these days, and the prayer meetings in the White House. It’s hard to imagine a person more unlike Jesus Christ than he, and even the evangelicals are beginning to be appalled by the man. I have often thought that people like Trump and Pence and McConnell don’t seem to be reading the same gospels that I am–e.g., Matt 25:
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
But then, it is well established, from reports by ex-Trump officials (there are so many that his White House has looked like a stage farce or a clown car routine) that the man doesn’t read and can barely do so when it’s required.
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Consensus is forming that the Democratic presidential win in 2020 requires the current states that went blue, plus Wisconsin, Penn. and Mich.
Red, opiate- addled and addicted states, like Fordham’s Ohio and Jeb Bush’s Florida, can continue to vote stupidly for the GOP without achieving a national win for Republicans.
Education has been a big issue in Wis., Penn., and Mich. The NEA and AFT should be messaging effectively in those 3 states.
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Ah, I hadn’t thought of this angle. Another possible explanation for Trump’s popularity in Ohio and in Florida. LOL.
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Well, it’s beginning to look as though indictments are going to come down for most or allk of the spawn of Vlad’s Agent Orange; aka Don the Con; aka President Pinocchio; aka the Don, Cheeto Trumpbologne; aka Lacquer Man; aka The Unpresidentedly Stable Jenious President; aka the Emolument Mauler; aka Trumpty Dumpty; aka Donald “J fo’ Jerk” Trumplestealskin; aka Tweetle-de-Don; aka the Malignant Narcissistic Child-Man; aka The Revenant Dapper Don; aka The Awful Before Picture of a New American Political Age.
My aged mother, who always used to tell me to watch my language, has simply stopped typing the man’s name and uses, instead, for him, a excrement emoji, as in, “[emoji] just said that there were good people on both sides of the Nazi rally.”
A wearied nation awaits the Mueller report and the actions of the New York AG and of legions of the investigative committees in Congress looking into his multitudinous crimes. (n.b.. Illegal immigrants commit crimes at far lower rates than do Trump and his Trumpeteers.)
All of which raises an interesting practical question, where will the various investigative authorities find enough paper for all the indictments to come? Given the toll that those might take on America’s forests, it’s probably best that they only be distributed electronically. It’s the environmentally sound thing to do.
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Half way through his speech today, I was saying oh goody keep going, keep going and he did ! …and then he took questions ! Whoopee ! Yah ! He let it all hang out…at this point if one does not see exactly who this man is…what can I say ?
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LOL. Yes. It doesn’t take long off the prompter for the crazy to come out.
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BTW: On the use of Title X and other funds appropriated for other purposes to build his colossally stupid wall:
misappropriation
n. the intentional, illegal use of the property or funds of another person for one’s own use or other unauthorized purpose, particularly by a public official, a trustee of a trust, an executor or administrator of a dead person’s estate, or by any person with a responsibility to care for and protect another’s assets (a fiduciary duty). It is a felony (a crime punishable by a prison sentence).
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Bob Shepherd: The Great Orange One has spoken. All of his loyal followers can rejoice. It probably will be tied up in courts until he is no longer president. People who own property near the border don’t want this wall and won’t give up their land that easily.
…………………………
Trump says he’s declaring national emergency at border
President Trump on Friday said he would be declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress and build $8 billion in barriers on the border, a big step toward his long-desired wall along the southern border.
Trump’s move, announced in a rambling, improvised address from the Rose Garden, will launch a fierce constitutional battle in the courts with lawmakers and outside groups opposed to his decision — which did win the public backing this week of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
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How is a national emergency something that can be done over a longer period of time? I think the Orange One just sank himself.
Trump said, “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this, but I’d rather do it much faster.”
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btw, I wanted you all to know that I am marked safe in the “Trump National Emergency.” I’m sure that you were all quite worried. Be safe now! LOL.
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Bob Shepherd: I’m also safe because I live in Indiana, and I’m white. Who knows though about the NSA watching what I write. I’ve written many messages saying that I think Trump is narcissistic, misogynistic, ignorant, a bully who attacks the DOJ and who surrounds himself with other wealthy incompetents.
If the Orange Ignoramus becomes a dictator we all are in trouble, except for the wealthy who want more money, the corporate leaders who want more for themselves, private insurance companies who can dump people off if their treatments cost too much and the rural ignorants who like dirty coal in the air.
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Republicans believe the ‘lack of leadership’ shown in Obama’s executive orders don’t apply to Trump’s executive orders.
……………………………………..
Mike Pence’s Old Warning About POTUS Bypassing Congress Comes Back To Haunt Him
An old video of Vice President Mike Pence calling executive presidential action on immigration a “profound mistake” has resurfaced, as President Donald Trump plans to declare a national emergency to secure money for his U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Pence said that “issues of this magnitude should always be resolved with the consent of the government” in footage filmed at the 2014 Republican Governors Association conference that conservative commentator Bill Kristol shared to Twitter on Thursday.
Pence, who was the Republican governor of Indiana at the time, was commenting on former President Barack Obama’s executive order to reform the immigration system.
He added that “signing an executive order, giving a speech, barnstorming around the country, defending that executive order is not leadership.”
Article: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mike-pence-video-donald-trump-national-emergency_n_5c666ec9e4b01757c36a18ac
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Video: Trump’s Emergency Powers Are ‘Ripe for Abuse’
Dec 05, 2018 | 32 videos
Video by The Atlantic
Few Americans realize the extent to which the president gains power when he declares a national emergency. There is one legal scenario in which the president’s power substantially increases. This is the moment he declares a national emergency.
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/577249/emergency-powers/?utm_source=eb
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