Big fan of community colleges here. Big, big fan. They offer a reasonably priced alternative to the traditional four-year experience, and they’re useful for so many — for the first-generation higher-ed student, for the tech-certification student, for the budget-conscious student and probably a few I’m forgetting. When Bernie and his fellow travelers talk about “free college,” this is what they are talking about, or should be. Not four years at Oberlin, but two years of post-secondary at a local, public community college. It’s good for everyone, and by everyone I mean from students up through society at large.
This is another reason I find the private-sector poaching of community-college students so disgraceful. There is zero reason an 18-year-old should be taking on a better-car-size debt to get a “degree” in dental hygiene. Walking to my car after work one day, I passed a young woman in a cap and gown, making a phone call outside a downtown Detroit theater. On the marquee was a congratulatory message to the graduates of some “institute” that advertises on local TV, touting their night and online classes and flexible hours, ideal for working parents, etc. I wanted to ask her how much debt she’d taken on for her certificate. I wanted to tell her she could have saved money by getting all that stuff from her local CC. But why spoil a cap-and-gown occasion by spraying bummer juice all over it? Really.
And that’s why it was so disappointing to see that one of these public CCs, Wichita State University-Tech, invited Ivanka Trump to be their commencement speaker. The date was surely booked months ago. I’m not sure when the “virtual” speech the White House released over the weekend was recorded, but if it wasn’t “five minutes after she agreed to the date,” it’s yet another astonishing failure and misreading of the public mood by Team Trump and most especially, Team Ivanka.
From the beginning, the First Daughter’s presence in the White House has chapped my ass. Never mind that she was there in the first place; let’s just talk about her utter, utter cluelessness in how she’s…what’s the phrase we use today? “Built her brand,” yes. As the administration lurches from one disaster to the next, Ivanka soldiers on with her pretty-princess photo ops and video drops that get worse with every passing day, suggesting she is learning nothing, nothing at all, from her time in the West Wing.
It’s possible, in weak moments, to see Ivanka as yet another victim of her parents’ horrible raising, of her neglectful father and gold-digging mother. (One of the many things I learned about Ivana Sr. is that she’s been married four times, only her second lasting longer than two years.) From them, she obviously learned that a woman’s worth is always founded upon her physical attractiveness, and that attractiveness must always be sold with a smile. At a time when women so often complain about being told by men to “smile more,” it seems weird to tell Ivanka to smile less, but there you are — another norm smashed by the Trump family.
But then I think, if you start handing out those passes, when does it stop? The first daughter will be 39 on her next birthday. She’s a mother herself. What is she teaching her own daughter, whether overtly or by example? At what point do you hold people accountable for their actions?
Ivanka, we learned last week, was the one who thought up the photo op in front of the church, that the Bible her father held up like an auctioneer was carried in her Max Mara purse. And Ivanka delivered that clueless, tone-deaf, utterly ridiculous “commencement address” without an obvious gun to her head. She didn’t seem strung out on veterinary-grade Xanax like her stepmother did, moving woodenly through her own horrible photo ops last week. No, she sold that thing, with her head-swiveling and eyelash-batting and vocal inflections straight from the Madonna Institute of Trying to Sound Vaguely English or at Least Not From Michigan.
And now the graduates of WSU-Tech will have the dubious distinction of not only being deprived of their own cap-and-gown graduation, but of being forever associated with that ghastly display, although to their credit they also got it cancelled. A community college should invite someone who knows community colleges, preferably a speaker who’s attended one, but at least one who gets what’s involved in a CC education. Not a graduate of a private high school followed by a grease-slicked slide through an Ivy, who then delivers a line written by whatever GOP ladder-climbing intern came up with it: “Your journey to this day did not come without challenges, sacrifices, determination, grit, sweat, and likely even a few tears, but you persevered.”
It’s funny. Commencement addresses are generally accompanied by an honorary degree, a harmless bit of theater that suffices for a bigger honorarium. I wonder what was planned for Ivanka, pre-pandemic? An honorary tech certificate in welding or drone technology? Or maybe dental hygiene, to honor her shiny veneers. Who knows?
I think it was Rick Wilson who wrote the book “Everything Trump Touches Dies,” which has become a hashtag: #ETTD. It’s too bad this has been passed on to his children, but at some point it’s up to them to say, “Stop touching me, dad.” (And I don’t mean that in a sexual sense, and please let’s not go there in the comments.) It’s hard to break from one’s family, but sometimes it has to be done.
I have one bit of bloggage today, this Chicago Sun-Times piece on one of the young men arrested for rioting in that city. Among the million possible jokes you could make about it: Beavis & Butthead grow up, etc. But I see it as yet another version of Ivanka, just way more downmarket.
Now to clean the bathroom for the later arrival of J.C. and Sammy! A socially distanced cocktail hour is called for, for sure.
Deborah said on June 7, 2020 at 11:25 am
Wow, those Rupert brother’s are something else. What a family, imagine what it would be like to live next door to them.
There are pictures of Barron Trump that show how tall he’s gotten at 14 years old. Comparing the recent photos with what he looked like at the inauguration are amazing, 3 1/2 years can make a huge difference at that stage of a kid’s life. His mother is quite tall and then she wears those 7″ stilettos, I don’t know how she can walk in those.
I saw bits of Ivanka’s commencement speech, how embarrassing.
And Colin Powell today!!!
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LAMary said on June 7, 2020 at 12:28 pm
Back when I was hiring nurses for a living I advised so many people to go to community college. You can get your RN in two years. If you want to add a BSN later your employer might help you. Mine would have. CCs usually have good instructors too. There are also classes for coders, respiratory techs, radiology techs, lab techs and other jobs that pay a decent rate.
The downside was frequently the CCs had waiting lists for the medical programs, so I’d advise people to get an uncertificated job at a hospital in the meantime. Get a foot in the door. Transporter was a good job to get started with. You meet all the unit managers and lots of nurses. Make an impression.
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David C said on June 7, 2020 at 1:24 pm
After I stumbled out of the gate after high school and when my dad was on one of his asshole libertarian binges so he wouldn’t sign my FAFSA, community college saved my ass. I could afford it myself and I go my AAS in mechanical design. Then I got my BS (twelve years later) through tuition reimbursement. Most of the designers at work got their degrees at Tech Colleges, Wisconsin’s version of the Community Colleges. We have a few with associates degrees from for profit tech schools like DeVry and ATT Tech. They’re all ex-military. The for profits must really do a sales job on them after they muster out.
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Jim said on June 7, 2020 at 2:46 pm
Colin Powell today: amazing!
AG Barr today : seldom do you see such a malign and obvious toady who looks like Mr. Toad.
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susan said on June 7, 2020 at 2:58 pm
Colin Powell is still a Republican. And don’t forget his egregious lying for Bushwah, his complicity in the wars in Iraq. He’s a pleasant, POC face of Republican evil. I don’t trust any of these no-trumpers.
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Julie Robinson said on June 7, 2020 at 3:01 pm
And you’ve all seen the most recent Randy Rainbow video, right? The Bunker Boy: https://youtu.be/2VBevEYELQ0
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basset said on June 7, 2020 at 4:03 pm
We get an automated notice when Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites will be visible in our area, so last night we went out to see what we could spot through the mosquitoes and humidity. Saw one go by at the appointed time and direction but we were expecting a line of several… anyone else had more success with that?
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Jeff Borden said on June 7, 2020 at 4:34 pm
I’m with Susan. Colin Powell forfeited all of his integrity when he sold that bullshit war in Iraq. And he sold it with gusto. Actually, I can’t think of a soul involved in the W. administration that deserves any credibility and it continues to rankle me whenever one appears on a talk show to pontificate. (Dick Cheney has been out of the spotlight for quite awhile now, which is a blessing. When that bastard kicks, I’m opening a bottle of Oban Scotch purchased for the occasion.)
And what will become of the even ranker and grotesque menagerie assembled by tRumpy? Will even the usual wingnut welfare organizations throw their doors open to the likes of Stephen Miller or Mike Pompeo or Kellyanne Conway? I’d like to think not.
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Sherri said on June 7, 2020 at 4:52 pm
One piece of good news: James Bennet, the opinion editor at the NYTimes and once considered Dean Baquiat’s eventual replacement has resigned,and the deputy editor in charge of OpEds has been reassigned.
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David C said on June 7, 2020 at 5:07 pm
Bennet leaving is OK news. As long as another Sulzberger failson is publisher not much really changes. They’ll keep both sidesing the shit out of everything.
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Suzanne said on June 7, 2020 at 6:21 pm
This sums it up
https://thebulwark.com/what-did-they-think-would-happen/
“From the day he came down the escalator, Trump promised to burn it all down. And now Conservatism Inc. is surprised the country is on fire?
What did they think was going to happen?”
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Jim said on June 7, 2020 at 6:34 pm
susan and Jeff: I have neither forgotten nor forgiven, but could not agree less with your stance.
He spoke today as a former General, and regardless of which party he belongs to he joins the the now large list who are speaking out. What wis remarkable is their consistent speaking out to the danger posed by Trump.
FWIW, he plans to vote for Biden.
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Sherri said on June 7, 2020 at 6:44 pm
Look, I will never trust Colin Powell, or Rick Wilson, or Tom Nichols, or any of the other conservatives who contributed to this mess. I’m not interested in their policy solutions, nor in their ideas about who the VP should be. But, if they still have an audience who does listen to them, then I’m glad they are not only speaking against Trump, but affirmatively supporting Democrats.
That I’m not that audience isn’t relevant. I don’t think Dems should cater to that audience, but it’s to the good to have those guys speak up.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 7, 2020 at 7:20 pm
When I clicked to Ivanka’s video, at the cruel encouragement of Nancy, it made me smile out loud (not laugh, but a big enough smile) to see FIRST an ad from Joe Biden.
And when the speech ran (okay, the parts of it I watched, skipping through) it kept the Biden sidebar ad up in the corner. The mysteries of algorithms.
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Deborah said on June 7, 2020 at 7:34 pm
Well said Sherri.
I’m not going to be a purist. We need all the help we can get. If the Never Trumpers can help move the needle a percentage point or two in the correct direction I’m for it.
After the election, when Biden wins and Democrats win the senate and keep the house we can’t make the continual mistake of capitulating to Republicans, we’ve certainly done enough of that.
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Deborah said on June 7, 2020 at 7:56 pm
For the last few days I keep breaking down into tears when I think of what I recently heard about George Floyd, that he called out for his mother when he knew he was dying. It reminded me of something one of Uncle J’s caregivers told me. Her full time job is as an RN who goes out on Emergency helicopter rides to rescue people who are in horrific accidents etc and have to get extensive help pronto. She said she hates to hear a victim tell her that they’re dying. She says they know, they just know and they’re usually right.
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susan said on June 7, 2020 at 8:44 pm
You just know Biden would pick Colin Powell for Sec of Def position. Because there is no Democrat who could do that job.
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Sherri said on June 7, 2020 at 10:51 pm
So, the BunkerBaby is reportedly considering giving a speech on race and unity.
I agree with this tweet about what I need in the speech, otherwise, don’t bother.
https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1269782082865319939
Things I need to hear in Trump’s race speech:
1. I apologize to the Central Park 5.
2. I apologize to President Obama for bitherism.
3. I apologize to black athletes I called SOBs.
4. I apologize to black countries I called “shitholes.”
5. I resign.
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Sherri said on June 8, 2020 at 1:02 am
So Redmond has had peaceful protests, which is as I expected, because the Redmond police do not have a model of response that is likely to escalate things. I’ve been discussing issues with people on the local FB group, and there’s a lot of “We need body cams!” And “We should spend less money on police!”
I’ve been trying to gently suggest a few things. One, if you think we should spend less money on the police, then come volunteer with me on the citizen committee that works on the budget (I’ve gotten a few people to at least express interest.)
Another, along with a discussion of body cams and whether they “worked”, was to consider what they wanted policing to be. In what situation did they want to be able to summon armed force? Nobody wants to talk about that, they just want to throw body cams at the problem and declare it solved. They don’t even want to name what the problem is they want to address in Redmond, just that we don’t have body cams and we should.
Body cameras do not change the status quo. I want to change the status quo. Most people don’t even think about the status quo.
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A. Riley said on June 8, 2020 at 2:28 am
Another big fan of the CC’s here. I’ve taken several non-degree courses there, mostly work-related. Cheapest way I know of to get proficient with Office software.
They also offer a lot of continuing-ed & adult enrichment stuff — I’ve enjoyed (immensely!) a couple of guitar classes — and in-district tuition for people over 65 is $3 a class. Yes, you read that right — three dollars. And free parking, too.
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Dexter Friend said on June 8, 2020 at 2:36 am
I watched Colin Powell that day on live TV, with Cornholesslleezza in the room, telling us that from a super-grainy video of a pickup truck, he could tell with certainty it was yellow cake, used to make bombs of mass destruction. And yeah, Rice with her smoking gun bullshit later on…
But Powell likes old Volvos, and has a few of them which he works on, his hobby. I had an old Volvo too a few years too, and then we both experienced a little brushfire war too. But nah…he’s a damn repugg.
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alex said on June 8, 2020 at 7:29 am
One of the casualties of the for-profit college boom was the Fort Wayne Business College, which got bought up by one of these shady outfits which then ran it into the ground and ruined its reputation so badly that it had to close down. For many decades it was a place where people could learn basic office skills and get the jobs they needed, either as a stepping stone for further education and better jobs, or for perfectly respectable careers as office workers.
Ivy Tech, our local CC, is probably not the best-run institution of its kind. I know a woman who formerly owned a five-star restaurant and received her culinary training in France but Ivy Tech couldn’t take her as a teacher in its culinary arts program because of its stringent degree requirements for faculty. Such a shame.
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Suzanne said on June 8, 2020 at 8:58 am
“They’re all ex-military. The for profits must really do a sales job on them after they muster out.”
David C @3, yes, for profits absolutely do go after ex-military. It’s something to do with what percentage of funding a college can get from Pell Grants and other federal aid, but GI benefits do not count in that mix. For profit schools can basically get unlimited funds from military benefits, so when you see a school that advertises that it’s “veteran friendly” think veteran predatory.
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jim said on June 8, 2020 at 9:24 am
alex: I wouldn’t completely blame Ivy Tech for that one. That is more on the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), which is the accrediting body. They have bizarrely strict and inconsistent requirements; fail them, and you lose the ability for your students to receive Federal aid.
Example: I can’t hire a math teacher with an outstanding undergraduate record, years of experience and long time success in teaching AP calculus to teach precalculus as an adjunct unless she has a masters in math or a masters in something with at least 18 graduate credits in math BUT a new GTA with no teaching experience is okay. It makes me want to smash things.
Apologies for the run on sentence; that’s what happens when I think about this, which is only every day.
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Bitter Scribe said on June 8, 2020 at 9:43 am
David C @ #3: I read an account of salespersons for those for-profit schools trolling the brain-injury wards of VA hospitals looking for guys to sign up. Those “schools” are just slavering to get their hands on those veterans’ educational benefits.
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Deborah said on June 8, 2020 at 9:45 am
And I need to apologize for a misplaced apostrophe in the first comment of this thread. I hate it when I do that.
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Julie Robinson said on June 8, 2020 at 9:46 am
Teachers’ licensing rules have loosened in recent years with shortages, but a college friend who lived in Germany for five years and married a German man, but never took college classes in German, could not qualify to teach it in Illinois. A kid with a German minor who had never even been there was hired.
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Randy said on June 8, 2020 at 11:37 am
I’ve been an academic advisor at our local community college since 2001. These are interesting times for sure – how do you deliver Carpentry online this Fall, and so on. Very grateful I’ve not been laid off to date.
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Jakash said on June 8, 2020 at 12:05 pm
Apostrophe abuse! Right here in River City! And now, exclamation point abuse! Shut it all down! 🙂
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Deborah said on June 8, 2020 at 12:43 pm
My husband has designed some community college buildings. He’s always been impressed when he talks to the faculty and students about their needs. Not always the same experience when he talks to boards of directors. The state of IL was spending a lot on new buildings for CCs but then they had a Republican guv and all that dried up. Since Pritzker, a Democrat, got elected, things were starting to loosen up Then all the crisis came on and my husband hasn’t looked into what might be out there these days. He’s pretty busy with other stuff.
Our bathroom caulking project isn’t drying? We haven’t been able to shower, today makes it 4 days. We can take sponge baths in the sink and wash our hair in the kitchen sink but I’m really looking forward to taking a shower.
Tonight it’s getting down to 40° and this afternoon winds will be gusting to over 40 mph.
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Jeff Borden said on June 8, 2020 at 1:25 pm
My experiences as an adjunct at Oakton Community College were nothing but great, overall, though the very low admission fees sometimes means students don’t take attendance very seriously. I taught everybody from an 18-year-old Hasidic man who had been home-schooled (my class was his first in a schoolroom) to a 66-year-old mentally ill man who lived in Section 8 housing but had a penchant for learning and took a very long bus trip every day to our campus in Skokie. One of my students was a former Army engineer who did the kind of work in Iraq depicted in “The Hurt Locker.” Another was a 19-year-old woman who had gotten pregnant at 13, had a baby girl at 14 and lost her to cancer at 17. Her speech about her daughter was so powerful and poignant our entire class was reduced to tears and I sent everyone home.
It really opened by smartass liberal eyes to the suburbs. That particularly area of suburban Chicago has a ton of Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern families. . .not the lily-white Protestant families I imagined lived behind picket fences in ranch houses. . .and they are hungry to get ahead in life.
These students taught me as much as I taught them. I love the students at Loyola, but they are almost exclusively from well-off families and have had elite educational experiences to prepare them for college. They’re a delight to work with. The CC students were a tougher bunch –though many would certainly have been capable of handling Loyola’s curriculum– but all the more rewarding when breakthroughs were made.
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ROGirl said on June 8, 2020 at 2:15 pm
I took cc classes when I was out of work during the economic collapse. I worked my butt off, most of the instructors were great, other students were in the same boat. I had the typical suburban college experience, which didn’t prepare me for real life, unlike community colleges. Not that I’m sorry for being a liberal arts major.
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basset said on June 8, 2020 at 4:40 pm
I tutored at Nashville State CC for awhile, no graduate degree so I couldn’t actually teach despite tons of real-world experience. Students I worked with tended to be either from the hood and unprepared (still remember one of em blowing in all excited and insisting that I correct everything on her paper right NOW! it was due that day and class had already started so we only had an hour!) or laser-focused immigrants who had their paths to medical school all planned out and nothing was gonna stop em.
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Mark P said on June 8, 2020 at 4:40 pm
I have a friend who lives in New Mexico. He taught a CC course in CAD, if I’m not mistaken. He had almost finished his architecture degree, but dropped out before completing it. He was essentially self taught in CAD. He taught at a CC at Los Alamos, and got pretty good pay. I don’t remember what it was but I remember thinking I should try that. That was quite a few years ago. Things may be different there now.
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Sherri said on June 8, 2020 at 5:52 pm
Last night, someone drove a car through a barricade and into protestors in Seattle. One of the protestors reached in the driver’s window to try to stop him, and the driver shot him.
The driver then got out of the car, waved his gun around, walked through the crowd of protestors, crossed the open area to the police, and walked up to them, said, “I had to shoot someone back there”, and the police pulled him behind their line and surrounded him, riot shields facing out as if an imminent attack were coming, and then arrested him. No shouting at him, no telling him to get on the ground, no pepper spray, no treating him as a threat at all.
Meanwhile, without provocation, and in contradiction to 30 day moratorium on the use of tear gas declared by the police chief, when the SPD decided it was time for the protest last night to end, they brought out the tear gas and the flash bangs and the pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
Yet, today, there were people posting on my local Democratic LD FB group that Dems should avoid using Defund the Police as a slogan or Trump will be re-elected.
I think my head is going to explode.
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Dexter Friend said on June 8, 2020 at 6:05 pm
I had friends who attended Indiana Tech in Fort Wayne many years ago…then Ivy Tech came along…I know Ivy Tech has new buildings, but did they somehow replace Indiana Tech at some point in Fort Wayne?
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David C said on June 8, 2020 at 6:15 pm
How hard is it for anyone to understand zeroing out the police department and replacing it with a public safety department and taking away the toys they’ve been shown to not use responsibly? I’m also pretty tired of the hand wringers who worry about the Rs, Brooks, and Bretbug saying mean things about them. Their way has things pretty fucked up so why listen to them?
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Dexter Friend said on June 8, 2020 at 6:26 pm
Big Dick Daddy from Cincinnati knows what would ease his angst about police killings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYKandOJuns
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alex said on June 8, 2020 at 6:27 pm
Dex, Ivy Tech is a two-year community college while Indiana Tech is more of a four-year school and also has graduate degree programs. Indiana Tech offers two-year degrees as well. It has always been more of an engineering-type school.
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Jeff Borden said on June 8, 2020 at 7:37 pm
It was foolish and dangerous to start handing out military gear to local PDs. Cops have a tough job –covering them was my first beat at the Columbus Dispatch– but in those days most still carried .38-cali ber revolvers holding six bullets, not 9-mm automatics with a 16-shot magazine. Only sergeants and above were permitted to have shotguns in their cruisers. When you hand out extremely powerful weapons, you must expect they’ll be used.
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Deborah said on June 8, 2020 at 9:27 pm
WaPo has a good timeline video of the lead-up to the stupid Trump bible photo op. Sorry, I don’t have a link, if you haven’t seen it, check it out, it’s very comprehensive.
I thought I read earlier today that Trump was going to make a speech about race. Did that happen? I haven’t seen anything about it happening.
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susan said on June 8, 2020 at 10:17 pm
Deborah, here’s the link to the timeline.
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Deborah said on June 8, 2020 at 11:24 pm
I don’t know, is it just me or do any of you feel there is a sea change happening? as I’ve said here before I’m usually a pessimistic person, but then again I’m also naive, so I don’t know which side is winning in this contest, but it seems to me that Trump is losing ground majorly. I realize we have months to go in the election and we are teetering over disaster zones but I’m surprisingly, actually optimistic. Trump and his ilk are going to be relentless in the coming months and we need to be ready. But I saw an incredibly insipid Trump ad tonight on TV, it was extremely juvenile and phony, so obvious that everything in it was a lie. It was laughable. I hope its not just me.
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susan said on June 8, 2020 at 11:30 pm
Watch this.
She distilled it all down—the history, the continuation of that history, the ever-presence of that history. We really are in a moment.
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Sherri said on June 9, 2020 at 1:34 am
I didn’t learn about the Tulsa massacre until a few years ago, when I heard Jeff Robinson speak about it. When she says in that video “they dropped bombs”, she’s not exaggerating for effect. They literally flew planes and dropped bombs in Tulsa to destroy Greenwood.
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Jim said on June 9, 2020 at 8:39 am
Thank you susan. I’d seen two different versions of the Kimberly Jones commentary, but never the complete one. This is the one I’m sending on to others.
John Oliver featured her Sunday, but he also highlighted the Kerner Report. It is heartbreaking.
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Deborah said on June 9, 2020 at 10:07 am
By now you’ve probably heard about Trump’s despicable Tweet about the elderly Buffalo man who was shoved backwards by the police and was bleeding out of his ear as he lay on the ground unconsious, Trump said basically that the guy had it coming because he was an agent for Antifa. Trump is completely bonkers now.
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LAMary said on June 9, 2020 at 10:42 am
Deborah, Trump is saying that the guy shoved by police was there as a set up and he purposely fell harder than he was shoved. OANN is Trump’s new sweetheart news source and they are the ones who invented this story.
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Suzanne said on June 9, 2020 at 10:54 am
I read Trump’s tweet. Sounds crazy, yes, but it will play well with the base. Since the riots started, pretty much whenever it comes up in conversation with people in my area, Antifa is blamed. The idea of this old man being an Antifa plant will be taken as fact by more people than you can imagine in flyover country.
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LAMary said on June 9, 2020 at 11:16 am
The guy who fell in Buffalo was described on NBC as a “local activist.” Some people might read that as Antifa. In my neighborhood a lot of local activists are over 65. We geezers have been speaking up about environmental issues, schools, libraries and policing for years here. A lot of old hippies in this part of town but I doubt if any of us are Antifa.
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Scout said on June 9, 2020 at 12:39 pm
Martin Gugino is a peace activist. Trump has no bottom and the next 6 months are going to be excruciating.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/05/martin-gugino-pushed-ground-buffalo-police-known-peaceful-man/3160820001/
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beb said on June 9, 2020 at 12:45 pm
I think Trump was talked out of giving a speech on racism. It would not have gone well. The guy who would have written it, Steven Miller is too much of a racist to be able to produce anything anodyne. It would have been hard to keep Trump from ad libing while reading it, and frankly every time he reads from a teleprompter he sounds like a hostage reading something against his will.
It;s hard to fall faster than what gravity makes you fall. And a lot of 75 year olds have enough problems with their feet that if unbalanced they can’t recover. But in Trumpland it is always the other person’s fault.
“Defund the Police” is a bumper sticker quality meme. It sounds good but is hard to explain and plays againist a generations long fear of crime. No one ever notices that crime has been declining over the past decade (except Kevin Drum) I don;t think there has ever been a politician who has lost while shouting for Law&Order.
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Icarus said on June 9, 2020 at 12:48 pm
Antifa is a descriptor and shorthand for “anti-fascist.” My understanding is it isn’t even a real group, certainly not an organized one.
Trump, his administration, and everyone’s racist relatives are trying to use “antifa” as a general umbrella for “any left-wing group of people we don’t like for any reason.”
I’m certain the same thing happened with the Black Panthers in the 60s
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Suzanne said on June 9, 2020 at 2:42 pm
“Antifa is a descriptor and shorthand for “anti-fascist.” My understanding is it isn’t even a real group, certainly not an organized one.”
You are right, but good luck convincing a Trump supporter of that. Trust me, I have tried. And I am invariably told that Antifa is funded by Georg Soros. Every time.
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Sherri said on June 9, 2020 at 3:10 pm
Come on, admit it, we’re all antifa. When James O’Keefe took down ACORN, we rebranded as antifa.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 9, 2020 at 3:33 pm
Antifa.
https://gifer.com/en/7lY3
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Deborah said on June 9, 2020 at 3:38 pm
Suzanne, I feel for you having to live around and deal with people like that. I don’t know how you do it. I know some others here have family and “friends” who are Trumpers and conspiracy theorists to. I do as well, but they’re people I rarely have to interact with, thank goodness. I find it so exhausting to have to be exposed to that. Hats off to you for trying to show them there is a better way.
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Sherri said on June 9, 2020 at 5:14 pm
Also antifa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_machine_kills_fascists#/media/File:Woody_Guthrie_2.jpg
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Sherri said on June 9, 2020 at 9:57 pm
My county could go back to an appointed sheriff.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/king-county-could-make-sheriff-an-appointed-rather-than-elected-position-to-increase-accountability/
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susan said on June 9, 2020 at 10:59 pm
Sheriff positions should be eliminated. Their egos are bigger than the job.
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