My little narcissistic suburb is going through some agonies at the moment — falling enrollment in the schools, which leads to less state aid for education, which means schools operating well under capacity, which means schools closing. This is a community that Values Education, which means these decisions are Fraught With Drama, with lots of Impassioned Speeches at the Podium, etc.
Last night they voted to close two elementary schools and reconfigure middle school into a 5-8 arrangement. OMG THE DRAMA TODAY. But it made me think about my own schoolin’, way back when, and how it compares to the educational trends of today.
My high school class was around…750. Whew. Peak of the baby boom, 1957 was. We only had three grades in the building, so we’re talking over 2,000 kids under one roof. Nowadays that would be considered a warehouse, an abuse factory, a place where kids can’t get Personalized Attention and a Supportive Environment, but man, I loved it.
Two thousand kids in one building means you can find 20 or 30 who want to take Russian, and hire a teacher to take them through four years of it. Two thousand kids means one-English-class-fits-all ends in ninth grade and for the rest of your time there, you take one-semester classes that can pick up everyone from the dummies (Reading for Pleasure and Profit) to the smarties (20th Century Novel/Poetry/Drama, plus about a dozen more high-level electives). There was World History, European History, U.S. History, Ancient History. Math and science were similarly diversified.
The other great thing about a big school is, you can get lost in it. With every classroom in use every period, there was no study hall — we had “free periods” in which you could go to the library, the open cafeteria in a non-lunch period or to the smoking area. If you were Nancy, you might also slip away to the trouper deck in the auditorium, various janitorial supply rooms or my favorite — the room under the pool, where the pumps and barrels of chlorine powder were kept. There was a window there that let you observe the swimmers underwater, digging their suits out of their crotches after a feet-first landing off the high board. The janitor was very cool and let us sit with him. My friend Jeff, a gay misfit, was a genius at finding these secret spaces. We spent a lot of time in them.
When I went to college, I found it no harder than senior year, and a lot more interesting.
I guess my point is, if your parents are on the job and your teachers aren’t total idiots, things tend to work out, no matter what your brick-and-mortar setup is. Also, schools in that period had not yet been defunded and charter-ized and otherwise manipulated by yokel legislators. Although they certainly were during Kate’s public-school years, and somehow she got through OK.
Might have been one of the lucky ones, I fully acknowledge. Probably was.
So, Wednesday dead ahead. I’d post links, but I’m tired and as we all know by now, anything I post today will be outdated in four hours. So enjoy your Wednesday, and let’s see each other going on Friday.
Deborah said on June 25, 2019 at 9:59 pm
My high school was definitely too big, 3500 students. I hated it as I’ve said here before. The last 2 years (high school was grades 10-12) it was a construction zone, there was no accountability for attendance whatsoever, I skipped school all the time and never got caught. I recently found out through Facebook that my high school was closed down, good riddance.
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Deborah said on June 25, 2019 at 10:15 pm
This is a disturbing image of a drowned father and his toddler daughter at the US border but it seems to be important to see how desperate these asylum seekers are to get to the US https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/25/americas/mexico-photo-of-father-and-daughter-dead-in-rio-grande/index.html similar to the sad sad photo of the Syrian toddler’s https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/25/americas/mexico-photo-of-father-and-daughter-dead-in-rio-grande/index.html that surfaced on the shore of the Mediterranean.
Trump supporters who can see this and also hear about the conditions children are subjected to at the border definitely need help with mental stability.
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Bitter Scribe said on June 25, 2019 at 10:50 pm
I went to the same prep school as the Bush clan. In fact, I did the math, and Jeb! (remember the exclamation point? seems so long ago) must have been a senior when I was a first-year student. I say “must have” because I have no memory of him. Not that I would have any reason to — seniors and first-year students (called “juniors” there, not “freshmen”) didn’t interact much.
It wasn’t a very positive experience, but that was mostly on me — I was pretty much a jerk as a teenager. I’d have been just as unhappy at my local high school, and at least at the prep school, I got a very good education.
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LAMary said on June 25, 2019 at 11:18 pm
Bitter, I think Molly Ivins went to that same school. She said she went to high school with Bush.
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Dexter Friend said on June 26, 2019 at 2:34 am
I started school in 1954 in a system from the 1800s, 2 rooms, 4 grades in each room. Im my class of about 9 kids, I was smug as the smartest kid…when we moved to the modern model of school in grade 5, I wasn’t the smartest kid anymore, meaning I was alternate for the county spelling bees and not the entered contestant. Too many smart girls. With a frosh class of 64 kids, and my strong will of practicing diligently, I was able to play varsity sports, which was sort of a detriment, as all I could think about was waiting for these fucking classes to end so basketball practice could commence. Some classes I loved; recently on Facebook I reminisced with a lady who was my classmate about how we loved Dickens’ “Great Expectations”. Algebra and Geometry were easy enough, advanced algebra was tough as hell and after two weeks in senior Physics I had had enough and made the wisest choice ever: I switched to Typing. Since college seemed impossible through my 17 year old eyes, and Dad urging me to join the US Navy like he did in “The War”, I quit studying, slacked off on assignments, and still graduated in the top quarter. College came after Vietnam, just three days after I flew back home I was in class at IUPUFW, the infamous “Stench”—the extension. Spartan existence, GI bill and a part time job in an office, I was taking it all in stride when mononucleosis knocked me on my ass, credits lost, broke, when I recovered 6 weeks later I had to hire in as a lab technician in a foundry, and leave Homer and Kesey and everything I was digging and begin analyzing metal content makeup.
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bbinDE said on June 26, 2019 at 5:57 am
In the previous thread Deborah mentioned the heat wave currently smothering western Europe. True dat. We came home from a weekend with my Latvian cousins, celebrating Jani–a tradition in which city folk head out to the country and stay up all night singing, dancing and drinking to help ring in the summer solstice. (Score one for the pagans!) It was 93 when we landed yesterday, and is expected to hit 96 today, both records. I’d bet there isn’t a building over 20 years old here–and probably several younger still–that was built with central AC included in the blueprints. Whole lotta sweatin’ going on over here this week.
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David C. said on June 26, 2019 at 6:07 am
My high school bypassed the yokel legislature and was run directly by the yokels. My senior year my physics class was nearly cancelled because there were only eight students signed up. Physical sciences were the only thing that kept my interest in school. Now it’s the new “it” school in the Grand Rapids area. In my day it was “Oh Caledonia, how many cows do you milk”. Now it’s “Oh Caledonia, how much is your house worth”.
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basset said on June 26, 2019 at 6:41 am
High school in rural southwestern Indiana was so horrible that I still tense up thinking about it nearly fifty years after graduation. Just over 600 in school then and I believe around 200 now, the gym held 4600… no theater or pool or school newspaper or any of those frills and waste, might have taken resources away from basketball.
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alex said on June 26, 2019 at 7:32 am
We had ginormous schools with graduating classes of 750, only there were no electives like Russian. These were the consolidated schools formed by closing all the schools like Dexter’s. I was fortunate to have had a world history class in a private school, which was a life-changing experience, while most in the public schools were failed by their mandatory American history classes (as evidenced by the Boomers in Indiana who swallow revisionist history fed to them by Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, e.g., black people are so stupid they vote for the Democrats, who enslaved them, and not the Republicans, who liberated them).
My world history class brought a lot of things into perspective. I learned that Manifest Destiny and the whole narrative around American Exceptionalism was naive and self-centered like a child who thinks he is being followed by the moon. This realization came just from understanding that this nation’s existence is but a tiny blip in the whole scheme of things, and as a nation it was and is rough and imperfect. Likewise with Christianity, the “new kid in town” in terms of religion, and it was imposed upon the world by means of inhumane war and conquest. War, in fact, was much more the norm in human affairs than peace. That class destroyed a lot of mystique surrounding America’ s sacred cows.
It was heady, shocking stuff for a 14-year-old to digest. What’s more it was taught in a military school, which was otherwise about as right-wing as it gets. But even there, quality education wasn’t about indoctrination but expanding one’s mind and grasping the larger picture.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 26, 2019 at 8:13 am
Molly Ivins went to the place W. applied to and wasn’t accepted at; I think they attended middle school together. Bitter Scribe, I’ve got Phillips Andover on my bucket list to visit just because of the Peabody Museum; the first director is a guy I’ve written about a number of times, Warren K. Moorehead, who was the first state archaeologist here in Ohio in the 1890s but got tuberculosis, almost died up at Saranac where Peabody paid for his care, and then created the Museum as a sinecure for his buddy after two years up at the sanitarium. Moorehead named his second son Singleton Peabody Moorehead in appreciation and Sing went on to become a historic architect at Colonial Williamsburg, and is buried in the back of the Bruton Parish churchyard with members of the Tucker family he married into.
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Connie said on June 26, 2019 at 8:17 am
Someone recommended Kate Atkinson’s book Transcription. I just got my hands on her new release Big Sky, which brings back Jackson Brodie, the featured character in her earlier books. I’m glad to see him back.
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Connie said on June 26, 2019 at 8:21 am
My high school graduating class had 176 students. That district has expanded to two high schools, each of which just graduated a comparably sized class. So twice the size now.
I went to an old style township school, and while new kids came and went occasionally, I went to grade school with the same 29 or so kids from K to 7. And then consolidated into eighth grade at a shiny new middle school. My eighth grade class, half of the students had been the first sixth grade class there. The other half came from five consolidated country schools. Very odd year.
So Nancy, I read somewhere that last year Gross Point schools had half as many kindergarteners as it had seniors. Does not bode well for the future.
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ROGirl said on June 26, 2019 at 8:36 am
Connie, I happen to be reading Transcription now, and am enjoying it.
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Suzanne said on June 26, 2019 at 9:06 am
Kate Atkinson is such a good author! I am kind of afraid to delve into the new Jackson Brodie book because with all the others, once I start one, I could’t stop and I ended up doing nothing for hours except reading. Which is fine but I do have things to do.
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Jeff Borden said on June 26, 2019 at 9:57 am
My senior class was 248. My disastrous academic performance, especially in mathematics, sciences and French, gave me a class rank of 189. Our 50th reunion is in a couple of weeks. The death toll among our class has been staggering and, apparently, we had an inordinately high number of suicides.
I pondered whether to go, since the town I remembered so fondly has morphed into tRump Country and many of my classmates have drunk deeply from his poison cup if their Facebook posts are any indication. I’ll probably hang with the same guys I did 50 years ago.
High school was no fun for me, academically, athletically or socially. When I entered college, it was a wonderful new world. Good thing land grant colleges in Ohio were required to accept any in-state student with a high school diploma. I got my act together and never looked back.
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basset said on June 26, 2019 at 11:00 am
And history class is all too often where schools park coaches who have to teach something besides PE. I remember our basketball coach’s world history class… he just told us to read on our own and come to him when we were ready for chapter tests, then sat up front reading the paper. He won more games than anyone, though, so that was OK.
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Bitter Scribe said on June 26, 2019 at 11:38 am
I’ve always thought that “class rank” is a sadistic concept. It’s OK for, say, West Point, but applying it to high-school students is just cruel.
Basset: Coaches got parked even at Andover. I remember our physics teacher was brought in to coach the swim team because he’d been some big-deal swimmer—went to the Olympics or something. But you had to teach something there, not just coach, and there were only so many gym classes. He’d been some kind of engineer, so they had him teaching physics.
It was a disaster. He was a sweet, friendly guy, we all liked him, but he knew shit from nothing about physics. I remember one day, he refused to believe that there are 10,000 square centimeters in a square meter until the problem he was working on came out off by two decimal places.
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JodiP said on June 26, 2019 at 11:59 am
I went to a surprisingly good rural school. There were two track of classes: college bound and not. I didn’t do well in chemistry or physics, but the valedictorian told me years later he was a crap teacher. The rest was quite solid, though.
Last night I had dinner with the close friend who is adopting at age 54. Two boys, age 7 and 9. They come home a week from today. I have a lot of worries, because it’s a transracial adoption, which can be fraught for the kids, and they have some trauma history. But, my friend has a lot of family support and friends as well. I see myself being pretty involved, as much as my friend wants me. It was so interesting hearing about what they’ve been up to when he’s had them. He does such fun stuff. I can’t wait to meet them!
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LAMary said on June 26, 2019 at 12:06 pm
Jeff Borden, my high school class had 250 people. Other than that and my not going to a land grant school we had very similar experiences. I got into an art school on based on my portfolio and essay. I had to change schools the next year because my father died midway through my freshman year and I was sort of homeless. I moved to Denver to crash on the couch of my brother who had been transferred there by his company and got into a nearly defunct Catholic girls college that needed enrollment. I got financial aid and worked sitting desk at the dorm. I took a year off from there to work and then talked my way into University of Denver. No financial aid but I worked multiple jobs and got through with pretty good grades.
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Deborah said on June 26, 2019 at 12:24 pm
So apparently Erik Trump was spit on by an employee while at a club in Chicago. I would suspect that when those guys go out to eat their food gets spit on (or worse) a lot.
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beb said on June 26, 2019 at 1:25 pm
I’m just learning today that yesterday (June 25th) was Anthony Bourdain Day — at least for his friends, chefs and fans. I wish I’d known about before hand. Part of it was just a remembrance of the man and part of it was mental health awareness. The article I read quoted an artist who would blow off work and binge-watch Destination Unknown” which would center his emotions and make him feel better about the world.
The family cruised Belle Isle on Sunday. I had read the night before that parts of the island-park had been closed off due to flooding. The island has a series of internal lakes where you could and again can canoe or paddleboat. The lakes used to be a little stagnant so the Michigan Parks service (which currently manages the Isle, opened the lakes to the river but haven’t finished opening a drain. So winds out of the east has pushed water into the lakes and in some low-lying areas over the banks. We weren’t able to see any of the flooding but it was a lovely day for a cruise and the park was packed with cars. Didn’t see as many picnicers as I expected from all the cars but it was nice to see so many people there.
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Julie Robinson said on June 26, 2019 at 1:45 pm
It’s amazing how different our high school experiences were, but I don’t have to look any farther than my own family. Me: small rural school where I got to try anything I wanted, and so was in music, theatre, speech and sports. Hubby: large urban school with race riots and no opportunities for extracurriculars due to working so many hours. Yet, we both found our way to Indiana University and have been okay.
Our kids’ school stopped giving class ranks except for the top two. Pretty much everyone goes to college and a low ranking could be high at a less academically oriented school.
I loved Transcription, but have never read a Jackson Brodie book. Do I go back and start at the beginning, or delve in anywhere?
If ever there was a spit-upon-able face, it is Erik Trump’s.
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Deborah said on June 26, 2019 at 2:18 pm
Lavender is obviously a perennial not a perinatal from the previous thread, damn autocorrect.
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Suzanne said on June 26, 2019 at 2:54 pm
Julie, you can read the Jackson Brodie series in any order, really. I couldn’t get the first one first (Case Histories) so I think I started with the 3rd (When Will Their Be Good News?) and they were still great. There are a few little tidbits that make more sense if you read them in order but it isn’t a big deal. I still need to read 3 & 4 but maybe better wait until a vacation because once started, I won’t stop.
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Scout said on June 26, 2019 at 3:08 pm
I went to high school in a small town in south central PA. There were about 180 in my graduating class, so it’s kind of surprising how we got away with leaving campus in the middle of the day and smoking in the bathroom. Of course, we knew which teachers were just phoning it in and which ones would report us missing. I remember study halls were in the cafeteria but you could be wherever. My best friend and I hung out with the art teacher, Miss Jeffries. We loved her because she let us create whatever we wanted in her space, although sometimes we would just organize supplies for her.
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Julie Robinson said on June 26, 2019 at 3:36 pm
Thanks, Suzanne.
We had a closed campus, with teachers on duty at the exits during lunch hour, though I’m sure a few people found a way out. And I never had a study hall since I was in both band and choir. Somehow I didn’t feel constricted. Our folks always encouraged us to speak our minds, and I did. I never got into any trouble for it, even when I sat on the floor during the Pledge of Allegiance. (Wasn’t I a snot?)
Just saw a NYT story that the NYC library is dropping the Kanopy film streaming service, citing a cost of $2 per viewing. Not clear if it’s that pricey for all libraries. Now I feel badly for using it a couple of times with my Orlando card.
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basset said on June 26, 2019 at 4:23 pm
I don’t remember my school having a choir, and the band was there to play at the basketball games. Teachers were on duty at the exits during the mandatory last-period “pep rallies” on Friday afternoons, so I used to go sit on the other side of the gym and read until one day I decided that was stupid and I needed to go home.
Didn’t let a teacher stop me on the way out, got in some trouble for it but skipped the rallies from that day on.
Probably my biggest mistake from that time was not realizing that I could have gone to the junior college down the road and avoided senior year.
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Connie said on June 26, 2019 at 5:21 pm
Julie, Kanopy is one of several products we now pay for based on usage, rather than buying an annual product. Hoopla is another. We control our costs by setting limits. At my library you may download three Kanopy items and five Hoopla items per month. Have No fear about using your library’s Kanopy, it is in the budget plan. I spend about $1500 a month on Hoopla, and the majority is e-audio downloads.
We have all been talking about that NYPL Announcement, and we generally think that was poor budget planning.
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Deborah said on June 26, 2019 at 8:08 pm
I’m queuing up to watch the debates, I’m really looking forward to it, hopefully it will help people zero in on a smaller group in consideration. Also it will help get some progressive thoughts out there in the country.
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Little Bird said on June 26, 2019 at 8:13 pm
My graduating class had 27 students. 26 of us graduated. Everyone was expected to walk for the ceremony regardless of our grades. The guy who didn’t get the grades showed up in a trashed t-shirt and jeans shorts, forgot his cap and gown, and wanted to wear a Hefty bag in lieu of said gown. I spent at least 20 minutes freaking out about whether I would be graduating that day (I KNEW I was short a gym credit).
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Heather said on June 27, 2019 at 8:31 am
I don’t really agree with spitting on Eric Trump, but I’m having a hard time getting really upset about it. Shunning him and his ilk, confronting them, denying them service–those things are more effective in my opinion.
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Suzanne said on June 27, 2019 at 8:58 am
“On a psychological level, Trump’s dominance of conservative America raises questions about how the politically committed delude themselves. The Trump movement includes the majority of white Protestant evangelicals, who once dismissed left-wing attempts to blame the ills of society on broad social and economic causes. They emphasised the importance of having the strength of character to stick to the Bible’s teaching. Now they support a character who is a liar, lecher, groper and what their ancestors would called a whoremonger, given his record of buying sex from porn stars. Conservatives once believed in fiscal as well as personal responsibility. Now they support a president whose tax cuts for the people who need them least is increasing the budget deficit. They once believed in free trade. Now they support a president who uses tariffs as a foreign policy weapon. They once believed in the rule of law and the US constitution. Now they cheer a demagogue who gets his mobs to cry “lock her up” and rejects congressional scrutiny.”
https://standpointmag.co.uk/issues/july-august-2019/the-enduring-value-of-the-political-heretic/
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ROGirl said on June 27, 2019 at 10:23 am
My library has kanopy and hoopla, with the limits on downloads. I’m disappointed with hoopla because I want to listen to music by certain musicians (Paul Simon, for example), and it doesn’t have them. Maybe it’s a rights thing, but I was surprised at the gaps.
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Julie Robinson said on June 27, 2019 at 10:37 am
The debate was on too late for us so I’m trying to read about it today and so far it doesn’t seem as though anything earthshaking happened. Feel free to correct me.
And speaking of shaking, what’s going on with Andrea Merkel? I’m a medical idiot, so all I can think of is seizures.
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LAMary said on June 27, 2019 at 10:59 am
The debate didn’t have any exciting moments, Julie. Beto did sorta suck and Julian Castro showed he was worth listening to. Chuck Todd, one of the NBC people, was really bad. I kept hoping he would shut up.
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Julie Robinson said on June 27, 2019 at 11:20 am
Beto strikes me as a dilettante. Pretty rich boy without much direction in life who prefers distractions to hard work. I’m especially unimpressed by his offhand attitude to his wife and children. Meh.
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Sherri said on June 27, 2019 at 11:44 am
My time was spent much more productively in a Planning Commission meeting discussing code cleanup than watching a debate. The only debate I’ll be watching tonight is for the local city council candidates.
Look at what people do, not what they say. All of the people running for President have a record that you can look up easily. As much as I like Warren’s ideas, ideas are easy. Getting stuff done is harder. What have they done? That tells you what really matters to them.
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Sherri said on June 27, 2019 at 12:02 pm
SCOTUS says, partisan gerrymandering, not our business, too political for us mere balls and strikes refs.
At least they didn’t go full on white supremacist and screw up the census, too, I guess.
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ROGirl said on June 27, 2019 at 12:49 pm
I just experienced another server error, it was around an hour.
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Sherri said on June 27, 2019 at 12:56 pm
I know I’ve shocked and dismayed many of you when I’ve said I won’t vote for just anyone against trump. The gerrymander decision is a big part of why.
We’re broken. It’s not just a matter of getting trump out of the White House and then we’ll be able to go back to normal. There is no normal to go back to. We can argue whether it was intentional or not, but the result of the Republican project that began with Reagan and has culminated with trump is that our system is broken.
SCOTUS has 4 justices who were appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Joe Biden was more interested in maintaining good relationships with Republicans than in vetting Clarence Thomas. Republicans have now populated the Federal bench with lifetime appointments for unqualified right wing nuts.
Even with a Dem majority, the House abdicates it’s role, wishing the voters to take this mess off their hands rather than have to show the moral courage of Highlights magazine.
Maybe the census has been saved, but gerrymandered state legislatures will be drawing the lines.
Change is not going to happen top down. Yes, I live in a blue area of a blue state, but I still work to push it further. I’m working to elect the progressive woman mayor, to elect new city council members to make our city council look more like the community. I’m talking to my legislators and Congress members. I was just talking the other day with the political director of our ACLU chapter about non-citizen voting in local elections; we have a significant non-citizen population, why shouldn’t they have a say in local matters? I want to push things here to change what’s being discussed as possible elsewhere.
trump is awful, but he’s not my focus. I don’t have to react to him; I know what he is. Knock him off the top, and if you leave everything else, it will still be awful, just without the tweets.
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LAMary said on June 27, 2019 at 1:22 pm
Sherri, agreed about things going downhill in the Reagan era. I blame Gingrich as well. He turned partisan politics into a zero sum game. When I talk to people I know who voted for Reagan I ask them what exactly he did. He said shit like, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall,” but does anyone really believe that’s why it was torn down? Europeans don’t. I get replies from Reagan fans like, “He was so positive.” What the hell does that mean? He was a former half assed movie star with early stage dementia.
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beb said on June 27, 2019 at 5:13 pm
I go to bed early in the morning get up in mid afternoon and discover the world as gone to hell in a hang basket while I slept. Justice Roberts has decided to split the difference between the census question and partisan gerrymandering. Since both are based on the same principle that one party is trying to rig the election and faced with the information that one person was basically behind both actions it’s hard to imagine how gerrymandering came be legal when a census question designed to advance gerrymandering is illegal. And why are these decisions both 5-4. Isn’t there someone on the right who will agree that Republican actions might be a shade illegal?
Meanwhile a grand jury in Alabama has decided that the mother of a 5 month old baby is guilty of killing it because she got into a fight with another woman. And the other woman pulled out a gun and shot the mother. How does this make any sense?
On the debate, which I didn’t watch, Chuck Todd being an A-hole is par for the course. The man is an embarrassment to campaign journalism. You almost want to network label him as “R-NBC”
Suzanne wants to know what white protestant evangelicals are thinking supporting Trump. First off, they are not Christians by any meaning of the word. They are theocrates who want the world to return to a patriarchy society with a strong leader (Trump isn’t strong but he’s good at kneecapping competitors. Secondly, these theocrates believe women exist only for satisfying men. So raping woman is man’s prerogative. Taxing the rich defies God’s order since the rich are only rich because God wants them to be so. And of course there is no tolerance for anyone who is not of their theocratic brotherhood. Oh, yes, the poor are poor because God made them poor so caring for the poor is, again, defying God’s will.
If I don’t post here again it’s because I’m be hustled away to a re-education camp.
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Sherri said on June 27, 2019 at 6:03 pm
I said in 2016 that white evangelical support of trump was not really about SCOTUS and abortion, however much they might say it was. Because you left out a big key factor, beb, in describing them: their racism.
They’ve got their SCOTUS majority, but they’ll still vote for trump in 2020.
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Deborah said on June 27, 2019 at 7:11 pm
I remember when Gingrich started amassing power, I was stunned how an assshole like that could do it. When I was working on a project in Des Moines, IA, before I retired I used to see him a lot at the hotel where I stayed when I was there. This was before the 2012 election, I think he was trying to run for President then. His moral compass is depraved, always has been, so is McConnell’s.
I tried to get the book Nancy recommended at local bookstores in Santa Fe but none had it, so I ordered it from Amazon, it will arrive Sunday (?) so hopefully I’ll have it when I fly back to Chicago Tuesday.
LB and I drove out to Abiquiu at 6 this morning so I could water my plants, Russian sage and silver lace. I will go out again on Saturday but then after that one of my neighbors out there will water for me while I’m in Chicago and France.
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Sherri said on June 27, 2019 at 7:22 pm
Adam Serwer sums it up: https://mobile.twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1144263109407891459
John Roberts voted to save the census simply because Wilbur Ross was such a bad liar there wasn’t a big enough fig leaf for Roberts to hide behind.
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Suzanne said on June 27, 2019 at 7:48 pm
I know why the evangelicals support Trump although I didn’t get it a couple of years ago. The article I posted is more about the Never Trump and anti-Brexit crowds and how they are increasingly howling at the darkness as they are considered heretics among their own people.
It’s quite interesting.
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Deborah said on June 27, 2019 at 8:07 pm
I hear you Sherri, that it’s really about local politics, I get that. But Trump is such a hideous symbol for so many things that are horrible for women and people of color. He has to be stopped, period. I don’t really care about anything else, I’m not concerned so much about which Democratic candidate is going to do what policy. Seriously I just want Trump out, he is so damaging in so many ways by his very existence, as long as he is in power he drags us all down. Let’s just get rid of him in 2020.
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