Getting around school bans and educational arson

The weather forecast earlier in the week said it would snow from Wednesday morning to Thursday evening, dumping eight to twelve inches (though I forget the exact numbers). When I got up this morning snow was not falling and I think there was maybe two to three inches of new snow. Late morning I went out to shovel. That’s when I was reminded that before snow fell yesterday there was a lot of rain. The sidewalk in front of my house had flooded and, of course, froze. On the driveway was a layer of frozen slush under the snow. I got a little ways into the task when my neighbor brought over his snow blower and did the rest. Then he got his steel shovel to see what we could do about the ice on the sidewalk. He was able to brake it up and I scooped pieces out of the way. Turns out we weren’t able to clear as much as we would have liked. So we stopped and he suggested he would try again later in the day when the temperature was a bit higher. I looked at the dirty ice that had been scooped out of the sidewalk and was now alongside and looking rather dirty. I thought this needed a covering of snow to look better. Yep, shortly after I went back inside snow started falling again and continued to fall into the evening. This afternoon the neighbor on the other side ran his snow blower over that sidewalk. I don’t think that brought up any of the ice but probably made it less slippery. And my exercise for tomorrow will be another round of shoveling. No, I don’t have a snow blower of my own. I decided when I moved into this place 30 years ago that (1) I’m still capable of shoveling snow and the exercise is good for me, (2) my driveway is short, especially compared to the houses around me, and (3) shoveling isn’t powered by a gasoline engine releasing greenhouse gases. Though I won’t turn down a neighbor pushing his snow blower. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported that the Congressional Progressive Caucus hasn’t given up on Biden’s Build Back Better bill. They’ve been doing a lot of pushing since Joe Manchin declared the bill dead by saying he wouldn’t vote for it. Manchin said on Monday that he was still interested in passing something. On Tuesday he again declared the bill dead. McCarter offered one interpretation: His corporate overlords reminded him of the $300,000 they gave to his campaign when he made a big show of killing the bill the first time. April Siese of Kos reported on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s list of donors for the last quarter of 2021. It’s a list of executives and managers of the energy giant NextEra plus mega donors from other energy companies. She received $51K from just NextEra. All of this in thanks for obstructing the BBB bill. Aldous Pennyfarthing of the Kos community quoted a tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responding to Manchin saying the BBB bill is dead.

Seniors, kids, & people with disabilities in my community have been sleeping with bubble jackets on in 18 degree nights, despite paying rent, bc the NYCHA funding to fix their heating and capital needs is in BBB. Where should I direct them to wait out the cold? Manchin’s yacht?

McCarter reported that Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Democrat from New Mexico suffered a stroke last Thursday. Though he is expected to make a full recovery it may be a while before he returns to the Senate. Which puts a big delay in everything that faces a close vote, such as confirming Biden’s appointees, including the one for the Supreme Court. In the meantime Moscow Mitch said the new Supreme appointee won’t change the balance on the court so Republicans shouldn’t fight it and not make a big deal of it. But since Biden has said he will appoint a black woman a lot of Republicans are spouting off their racism. And Mitch can do little about that. Chitown Kev, in a pundit roundup for Kos quoted Thomas Zimmer of the Guardian:

A Black woman replacing Justice Breyer won’t change the court’s arithmetic. And yet, conservatives still feel threatened by Biden’s announcement because they understand it symbolizes the recognition that having white men dominate the powerful institutions of American life is a problem – and that rectifying this imbalance is an urgent task. They reject the notion that the country’s institutions should reflect the composition of the people; they know representation matters, and that a Black woman ascending to a position like this is also an acknowledgment of past injustice.

Kev also quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post who discussed ways to get around school bans and educational arson. Buy a copy of a banned book for every child in the district. Bring in pop culture icons to lead public discussions on race. Challenge lies put out by politicians and boosted by media. Social medial platforms and universities should make sure their standards are clear – not every utterance deserves a firing, but repeated bigotry should be called out. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported a recent poll by the NEA showed more than half of teachers want to retire early or leave teaching. Reasons include working through whether in-class or virtual, being assaulted by parents over masks, not being paid enough, being overworked when covering extra classes, not having enough resources to help students with mental health issues, and in general feeling burned out. Remember that Republicans want to destroy public education. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that politicians targeted by the nasty guy are doing much better in fundraising than those endorsed by the nasty guy. At the top of the fundraising success is Liz Cheney. There is an image floating around the internet that has been adapted to a wide variety of memes. It shows a shapely woman in a red dress facing the camera. Behind her is a man walking away from the camera with his head turned over his shoulder getting a good look at the back of that red dress. Beside him is another woman who is much more plain with a disgusted look that says how dare you pay attention to her and not me. I’ve seen several variations of labels (including one with math terms) put on the man and two women. The current one has the woman in the red dress labeled “Dictatorship,” the man labeled “Republicans,” and the plain woman labeled, “America.” That image is part of today’s Cheers and Jeers column by Bill in Portland, Maine on Kos. He also included all the things fascists have going for themselves in America these days (it looks like a quote but I don’t know who is being quoted).

» Widespread fascist voter suppression laws » Slaps on the wrist for fascists who stormed the Capitol last year » Fascists dominating the Republican party (and just enough fascism-loving Democrats to thwart anti-fascist legislation) » An ex-president promising to pardon convicted fascists » A fascist media empire promoting fascism 24/7 » External fascist governments committing fascist cyberwarfare on us » And price-gouging corporations, who benefit from fascism, sitting idly by watching it all happen with a grin matched in size only by the length of their stogies.