GOP School Board Flak's Brave Stand Against Children Of Color 'Feeling They Belong'
Because America is a zero sum game.
On September 14, a slate of rightwing candidates who stirred up fears of "critical race theory" won all five Republican primary spots in the school board elections for Guilford, Connecticut (population a bit over 22,000). For Mary Beeman, who managed the candidates' campaigns, it was quite the feather in her cap. Truly, she must know how to appeal to voters who care about excellence in education! Or maybe she just knew that not very subtle race-baiting can win Republican primaries these days, who can tell?
Unfortunately, in a big black eye for her reputation, Beeman's own racist comments in a University of Connecticut online forum on "critical race theory" were noticed by Hartford TV station WFSB, which reported on the comments yesterday. The station didn't specify when the forum took place, but it had a screenshot, and Beeman was quick to insist that heavens no, she didn't mean anything bad when she'd typed "Helping kids of color to feel they belong has a negative effect on white, Christian, or conservative kids." Of course she didn't! Here's the video, cued up to the story so you don't have to be confused by several minutes of silence at the start, yeesh, guys, you work in teevee.
That's pretty much the chief doctrine of white supremacy and "replacement theory" going back forever: If those people have rights, then we white people are losing our beautiful America. They've tried, with varying success, to hide such zero-sum thinking behind a lot of dog whistles and bad-faith appeals to "equality," but that's the simple brutal form of it. "Helping children of color feel like they belong" harms white kids, it just does, because if they have to share, they'll have less America all to themselves.
Jesus, you might as well freak out over a children's TV show that teaches about inclusion and getting along with people who are different.
Beeman explained that her comment in the forum was "poorly worded" and that it had been "shown out of context," because surely there's a context that would make "Helping kids of color to feel they belong has a negative effect on white, Christian, or conservative kids" a perfectly acceptable statement. Hey, let's see how she does when given the chance to polish that turd! Beeman told the TV station that what she really meant was more words with the same meaning and an attack on political bad guys.
Guilford students who may have staunch Judeo-Christian values — or simply are conservative thinkers — have been bullied into submission by their teachers and fellow students with left-leaning ideologies.
That's so much better! No mention of race at all, so now it's not controversial, you see!
For some reason, Bill Bloss, a former member of the town's school board who served 20 years, 14 years of them as chair, didn't buy a bit of it, asking reasonably enough, "exactly what context would that comment be positive in?" Bloss is advising several independent candidates for the board this year, and says Republicans are full of it when they claim public schools are teaching critical race theory to kids. He's probably right, since we've seen no evidence that Guilford schools have a law program or other graduate level offerings for the tots.
The report went on to interview a guy who has no children in Guilford schools, but who wants to stop critical race theory anyway, whatever he thinks it is. He explained that America is a "great country" whose "founding documents say all men are equal," which pretty much proves there's no such thing as systemic racism, now doesn't it? How can anyone know anything about anything, really?
Also too, we should note that before Beeman's comments came to light, the worthies at the National Review weighed in on the school board election in Guilford, presenting it as a case study of how the "specter of critical race theory in the classroom has galvanized grassroots moms and dads without prior political credentials" to "recapture their progressive-dominated school boards and expel even Republican members deemed too complaisant." The piece notes that the one thing that pisses such parents off is when school officials insist they're not actually teaching critical race theory, because by god they are, at least as Fox News defines it.
The National Review piece is especially noteworthy for this mood setting paragraph that tells us Guilford is for only white people, without actually saying it's only for white people.
With its rural, colonial roots, Guilford is a quintessential New England community. It is home to Connecticut's second-largest agricultural fair, complete with goats, a circus, and a harvest celebration fit for E. B. White's Charlotte's Web. Its postcard-esque town center features a village green, a church steeple, and a cozy cluster of mom-and-pop shops. Twenty years ago, Guilford was a red town. But once Yale graduates and Manhattan commuters started occupying and gentrifying it, a liberal consensus hardened within it, making political commotion rare.
Clearly, not the sort of place any kids of color need to feel like they belong, if there even are any. The Census Bureau reports the town is 92 percent white, but should there be any kids of color at all, they maybe need to just shut up and not make a fuss.
We also learn that the furor over CRT in Guilford kicked off last year when a student reading The Catcher in the Rye was given the option of discussing that very whitest of books "using a racial justice score card," and also when there was a move to get rid of the school mascot, which OF COURSE was "The Indians," in honor of the people genocided so that New England could be such a white place. So suddenly, after the murder of George Floyd, the schools were full of Marxists in Kente cloth we guess, and that's why white people are suffering so much.
So, if Guilford is "the story, in microcosm, of what's been happening around the country," we should assume that pretty much every campaign against "critical race theory" is being pushed by people who assume that if kids of color feel like they belong, then white kids will suffer. That certainly makes intuitive sense to us. Thanks for the clarification, guys.
Ms. Beeman says she will not resign from managing the campaigns, and lord only knows what'll happen next. Probably Tucker Carlson will be elected mayor.
[WFSB-TV / Daily Beast / National Review / DC Comics blog]
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Oh Look, It's The Tucker Carlson/Andrew Yang Bonerfest Literally Everyone Saw Coming
Hope you had a nice day off, Glenn.
We know it's probably too soon, but y'all should know that immediately after Andrew Yang broke up with you — it's not your fault, it's just that he needs his independence — he rebounded with Tucker Carlson. Because when you're looking to get rid of all this partisanship and make some third party unity happen, where you gonna go? Tucker, obviously.
Or as our pals at Lawyers, Guns & Money put it:
[T]here are two things a third party not of the right can accomplish in the current system: 1) electing Republicans or 2) nothing. That's it. When America's most prominent white supremacist and anti-vaxx bingo caller invites him on, he know what he's doing.
Oh pshaw, we bet all Tucker's viewers signed up for Yang's "Forward" Party last night. And if they didn't, well, it's probably Democrats' fault, somehow. Maybe Yang and Tucker's other BFF groupie Glenn Greenwald can make a video explaining everything the Democrats did wrong while they feed Tucker grapes.
Anyway, want to see how their date went? Here's Tucker telling Yang that the Unabomber had some pretty good ideas.
TUCKER CARLSON: Ted Kaczynski I have to say has written very convincingly on this, the Unabomber, bad person, but a smart analysis I think of the way systems work.
We want you to understand how Tucker got to flicking his tongue in the Unabomber's general direction.
Yang was explaining that his new political party — you know, the one he immediately went on Tucker to "promote" after breaking up with the Democrats — is actually a PAC right now, and not a political party. Because, he said, you can't just be a political party "on day one, you have to do a bunch of stuff." And Tucker Carlson, without missing a beat, said YES, TED KACZYNSKI THE AUTHOR AND UNABOMBER WROTE SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR CURRENT STRUGGLE.
Sorry, that was the whole context. Didn't mean to give the impression there was anything more than Yang saying words and Tucker saying SPEAKING OF THE UNABOMBER HAVING GOOD IDEAS ...
So that was a weird part of the date.
Another weird part was when Tucker said he's not racist but he has some "cultural objections" to immigration. Haha just kidding, he didn't say he wasn't racist.
TUCKER CARLSON: The objections that people have to immigration are mostly cultural. We can argue whether those are legitimate or not, I have those reservations, I'll be honest.
Tucker said his "main reservations are economic," though. That's right, Tucker Carlson, he is the epitome of an Economic Reservation Haver.
Yang, instead of saying "OMG wow, how did I end up here" and immediately leaving, continued the conversation by telling his own story about how he is the child of successful immigrants, saying there's a "class of immigrants that are awesome for the country." Tucker agreed that yes, there is a "class" of immigrants that are OK! And they just kept talking, like Tucker wasn't America's most famous white supremacist and promoter of the Great Replacement theory.
Then again, Yang's very stupid website for his very stupid new party does say it's welcoming to people "of every political alignment." Very fine people on both sides, eh, Yang?
Finally, here's a clip of Tucker on his night-time show promoting his day-time interview with Yang, which definitely shows you how much Tucker supports Yang's real goal of siphoning votes away from Democrats and ultimately just helping more white supremacist fascist Republicans get elected third party forward unity snowflake blowjob unicorn candy cane universal Bitcoin income puppy snuggle butterfly kisses.
No transcript, because it's not about a quote, it's about the overall FEELING, of unity, and togetherness, and moving forward, that pervades the air when Andrew Yang and Tucker Carlson meld their minds.
Just kidding, fuck Tucker and fuck Andrew Yang, the end.
[Media Matters / ibid.]
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Senate's Dumbest Republican Went To See A Man (Tucker) About Some Horse Paste
It just gets stupider and stupider.
Tucker Carlson and Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson sat together on TV last night, squinting their dirty little beady eyes at each other and spreading conspiracy theories about COVID-19, which is still hospitalizing and killing Americans every day, primarily unvaccinated people. Of course, there are breakthrough cases, and there are exceptions, but overwhelmingly it's the unvaxxed, and overwhelmingly, it's in the South.
So it's morally fine for Tucker Carlson and Ron Johnson to lie to whichever Fox News viewers aren't sick or dead yet, right? Sure, it's probably fine.
This asinine lie from the Senate's Dumbest Republican is what a lot of people are talking about today:
JOHNSON: These mandates are driven by the bait and switch of the FDA that we now have an approved vaccine. We do not have an approved vaccine in America.
They did it for the Comirnaty — it's available, I guess, in Europe, but the Pfizer vaccine available in the US is not FDA approved — it's got an emergency use authorization.
I wrote a letter to the FDA on August 26th — they have still not given me an answer of why didn't they approve it? Why are they basically lying to the American public? That's a serious question to be asked — is we are destroying our health care system with these mandates.
What, you hadn't heard that AKSHULLY, according to people who get their news from scrolling through Facebook in their underpants, the FDA didn't approve the Pfizer vaccine, even though yes they did?
Apparently this is a new-ish conspiracy theory for the horse paste crowd, because you can never have too many of those. Aaron Blake explains at the Washington Post that the purveyors of this conspiracy theory, which came from the stupidest bowels of the internet, are seizing on the fact that Pfizer rebranded the vaccine as "Comirnaty" when it won full FDA approval, and saying that because there is also existent Pfizer vaccine that is under the earlier Emergency Use Authorization that is not called Comirnaty, then therefore ...
Uh, it's confusing what these morons are even trying to claim, let Blake try to explain it:
[T]hey boil down to the idea that the FDA has engaged in a bait-and-switch. While it fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine that will be marketed under the name Comirnaty, the FDA also extended the emergency-use authorization for the same vaccine under the existing name.
Yes, we see, "bait-and-switch," just like Senator Fuckup said. They think that because "Comirnaty" exists as the same time as the original Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, then there must be a TRICK! and a 'SPIRACY! Blake quotes other notable brain wizards like Steve Bannon and Robert F. Kennedy, who agree there is a TRICK! and a 'SPIRACY! Blake also quotes experts, who explain how dumb this shit really is:
Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School Public Health, noted that the existing Pfizer vaccines that have been produced and purchased can't legally be overlabeled with the Comirnaty branding, even as they are the same thing.
"That's why there may be, for some time, EUA Pfizer doses in use before [fully authorized] Comirnaty becomes more widely available," Beyrer said. "This is standard, nothing unusual, and [it] does not void an EUA."
OHHHHHHHH! So they can't just slap the name "Comirnaty" on the boxes of vaccine that's already been produced, which means literally the same vaccine that's fully authorized under the name "Comirnaty" IS ALSO available in its previous packaging. That's the big conspiracy theory.
In August, when Blake debunked that one, he wrote, "This is something largely relegated to the extremes of the vaccine-skeptic community," but noted that it was starting to catch on. Fast forward to October, and here is the dumbest man in the Senate saying it out loud with a straight face to Tucker Carlson.
This is some desperate shit.
At the beginning of the clip above, Johnson barfed out another one. You see, Pfizer has been testing an antiviral for treating corona. Wingnuts have decided, based on literally nothing besides liars lying to them dO yOuR oWn rEsE#ArCrfHH, that the drug Pfizer is testing is JUST LIKE THE HORSE PASTE THEY HAVE ALL BEEN TAKING IN A SPOON WITH SOME PEANUT BUTTER. Meanwhile Merck has a new drug, molnupiravir, that's somewhat helpful in treating COVID-19 infection. But Merck ALSO MAKES HORSE PASTE SO WHY NOT JUST EAT HORSE PASTE IT IS A CONSPIRACY!
It was the Merck part of that particular conspiracy theory that Johnson blarped out:
In making his case, Johnson even adopted the derisive name that has been ascribed to molnupiravir: "moneypiravir."
"The doctors' groups that I'm dealing with — they call it 'moneypiravir,' " Johnson said. "Now Merck, by the way, invented or they patented ivermectin. They've been trash-talking ivermectin in favor now of this drug that'll be like $700 a dose, vs. ivermectin [which] costs about six or seven cents a pill."
Far be it from Wonkette to say pharma companies are angels who would never do such a thing, but fuck off. As Blake notes, it is indeed true that Merck's corona drug is way more expensive than horse paste. He also notes that studies show horse paste doesn't fix COVID and that no, Pfizer's antiviral isn't like horse paste, so comparing any of these things is like comparing apples to, you know, horse paste.
Johnson told Tucker that "there's something very sinister going on here, Tucker, and it has cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people their lives." Wait, what has cost hundreds of thousands of people their lives? Unclear, Ron Johnson is just saying words.
TUCKER ASKED: You've had over 700,000 people die. Is there any evidence that any of these measures, which really have reshaped the country completely, have saved a huge number of lives? I mean, if we had just ignored it, would many more than 700,000 have died? Sincere question.
Tucker golden retriever curiosity face dot gif.
RON JOHNSON ANSWERED: I doubt it! But I'm sure they'll come up with the science to prove they've saved all kinds of lives! Science has been corrupted, our medical system has been corrupted. I put a chart on the Senate floor last week that showed the pandemic was winding down before the vaccines ever had a chance to take off. Now you'd expect on that chart that the pandemic would have continued to wind down. It didn't, we've had this huge Delta surge!
It's almost like when they said there was a new strain of the virus, what they really meant was that there was ... a new strain of the ... fuck it.
Tucker said he doesn't know why Ron Johnson is "the only one saying this," but said he's "grateful" that he is. And then Tucker tried to say goodbye, at which point Ron Johnson AND ANOTHER THING-ed and said the conspiracy theory about the fake FDA approval, and oh God we are so, so tired of writing this post multiple times per week, the end.
[Media Matters / Washington Post / ibid.]
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Fox News So Mad Tammy Duckworth Gets Veterans Tax Break, Like Some Kind Of Veteran!
This is a new low.
Fox News published an exposé Sunday on Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth from Illinois that revealed she's paid no property taxes on her Chicago home since 2015.
Of course, Fox News made it seem as if Duckworth uses one of Donald Trump's tax accountants or something.
Twitter
We should never expect great journalism from Fox News, and technically, the story just links to a Chicago Sun-Times article from Friday with the headline, "You Pay More In Property Taxes Because 27,288 Cook County Homeowners Pay Nothing."
The Sun-Times piece opens with the line “No one likes to pay property taxes," which is a little cynical. Surely, someone somewhere looks at their tax bill, smiles, and says, “Man, I love funding public schools."
It's true that Duckworth doesn't pay property taxes, but it's not because she claims her own home as a business expense. No, she qualifies for this exemption because she's a veteran with a disability rating of 70 percent or higher, as determined by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
You see, Tammy Duckworth has no legs. She lost them in the Iraq War, where she served as a US Army helicopter pilot. Iraqi insurgents shot down her helicopter in 2004 with a rocket-propelled grenade. She lost both limbs in the attack, as well as some mobility in her right arm. She requested a medical waiver so she could continue to serve in the Illinois National Guard for another decade. Her injuries apparently weren't as severe as bone spurs.
We are trying to figure out, do the Sun-Times and Fox News want us to consider Duckworth a deadbeat or something?
Among the homeowners whose property taxes are entirely wiped off the books because they are disabled veterans are U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, former Ald. James Balcer and some veterans who are now Chicago police officers, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis has found.
James Balcer is a Vietnam veteran who earned three purple hearts and a bronze star for "carrying dead and wounded Marines up a 900-foot mountain for 18 hours under enemy fire." He still has shrapnel in his back and arm.
That they're paying nothing means the rest of the county's 1.8 million property taxpayers — the remaining homeowners and business owners — have to pick up the slack, a total of just under $102.8 million.
Oh no, those of us without shrapnel in our bodies and with full use of our legs have to “pick up the slack" for these freeloaders. We thought America loved its vets. That's apparently why Colin Kaepernick isn't allowed to play football.
Is that the best you got? You mean our war hero Senator Duckworth should pay taxes when she is not required to do s… https://t.co/vcKhjgtY9s— Martina Navratilova (@Martina Navratilova) 1633280546.0
Laurence Msall is president of the Civic Federation, a Chicago-area "tax watchdog group," and he's had all he can stand with these veterans living large off the largesse of those who never served.
"What we have done is to create all special sorts of categories — veterans, disabled people, senior citizens," says [Msall.] "And all of those exemptions administered by the county basically undermine the integrity of the property tax system.
"We grant people relief regardless of their income situation, and the rest of the community has to pay more," Msall says. "It's unfair. It's very hard to monitor. And it's hard to authenticate who's getting the value. Is it the needy people? Or is it a large giveaway?"
According to Msall's logic here, it would be OK if disabled veterans such as Duckworth weren't paying property taxes if they lived under a bridge and solicited donations with a tin cup.
Duckworth and her husband Bryan Bowlsbey own a three-bedroom home in Hoffman Estates, Cook County, valued at about $250,000, which is roughly the going price of a tent in downtown Seattle. The couple paid $16,000 in taxes for their six-bedroom, 4,100 square foot house in McLean, Virgnia, which they bought for $1.3 million in 2017. They don't qualify for the state's veteran exemption because unlike Josh Hawley, Virginia's not their primary residence.
Neither Duckworth nor Balcer are destitute, but that shouldn't matter. They each sacrificed a great deal in service to their country. Duckworth's property tax exemption saves her $6,920 in taxes a year. Did we mention she lost both her legs fighting in America's wars? You know, in case we forgot that part. The end.
[Fox News / Chicago Sun-Times]
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