Writing off whole schools as needing detention not education

One day after writing about a book I’m writing about another. This one is short – only 125 pages of text and another ten of photos. The book is How We Sleep at Night by Sara Cunningham. It is her story of coming to terms with her son Parker being gay – when he told her she definitely did not sleep well at night. The Cunningham family attended a Baptist church, mostly because that was the one in the neighborhood. They became deeply involved in the church because they felt cared for, not that they were strong believers in every point in the doctrine. But when Parker told her he was gay her main thought was: How do I keep my son from going to hell? It took her a while to see that he wasn’t. She saw when he fell in love with a man he became more confident. During her process she became annoyed with the way her church treated her and the kinds of prayers they said for her son. It’s been many years since I’ve read these kinds of stories. Alas, they’re still happening (though this one is almost ten years old) and some with much worse outcomes. Cunningham doesn’t work through the Bible passages used to condemn LGBTQ people, though she does list a few books that do. Each chapter of the book ends with the lyrics of one of Parker’s songs. A website is included so the reader can listen to Parker sing it. Alas, ten years later that is now an Asian site. I did find a YouTube video of Parker singing, but a song that was not related to the book. An online search of Sara shows that she offers “Free Mom Hugs” at pride events and has offered to be the mom at any gay wedding. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed that the nasty guy and Putin desperately need each other. To evade jail the nasty guy needs to get reelected and get his Department of Justice cronies to call off the cases against him. And to do that he needs Putin’s election interference that he enjoyed back in 2016. To not lose in Ukraine Putin needs the nasty guy to get elected. Once in office the nasty guy will pull out of NATO, thus weakening it, and put an end to America’s supply of military equipment to Ukraine. To make all that not happen a few other things should happen. First, the nasty guy should be convicted well before the 2024 election. Second, Ukraine should push Russia out of its territory before our election. And third, we need to be prepared for the onslaught of interference. That interference is definitely already being planned for, the onslaught not so much. And as part of that preparation we need to improve our capabilities to thwart that interference. Americans have a right to know what hostile foreign agents are trying to influence our voters. Related to the nasty guy’s criminal liability Mark Sumner of Kos wrote about more indictments against him. Media was expecting indictments related to Georgia election tampering or to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. But those haven’t dropped yet. This set of indictments are additions to the case of failing to turn over classified documents. The main part of this is an attempt (I’m not sure, did he succeed?) to destroy surveillance camera images, the destruction of evidence he was told to preserve. There are also additional charges against the nasty guy, the big one being he waived around a classified document at his Bedminster resort. The nasty guy is up to 40 indictments, a few more were added to his valet Walt Nauta and a few were given to aide Carlos De Oliviera. Hunter of Kos reported that “libraries in at least 28 Houston public schools are being repurposed into ‘disciplinary centers.’ ” Students who misbehave will be sent there. They might watch lessons virtually, work alone, or work with other detained students. The books will still be there (that’s quite a concession!), but the librarians and media specialists were laid off. All this is being done by the new state-appointed superintendent of Houston schools.

This is what a failed state looks like: lots of guns, lots of focus on discipline, and lots of contempt for anybody who looks like they might grow up to be a book-learner. ... But "most" of the 28 schools that will have their librarians relocated to other campuses "are located in low-income communities of color," notes Houston Public Media, and again: You can't get a more on-the-nose example of how Republican-led states are trying to reshape our schools than removing school librarians in communities of color so that they can repurpose the rooms into disciplinary centers. Are we supposed to pretend this is anything but what it looks like? Because it looks like writing off whole schools full of kids as needing detention rather than education.

I’m finally getting to a pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin for Kos originally posted December 17, 2022. Pundits were talking about classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, and COVID vaccines. There was also a pair of quotes from Noah Smith tweeting and writing on Substack. The tweet is from August 28, 2017 and says:

15 years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now, the real world is an escape from the internet.

And from Substack in 2022:

Five years ago I was sitting around drinking a beer with my college buddy Dayv. I was scrolling through Twitter and watching people get mad at Donald Trump’s latest outrage, and I said “You know…fifteen years ago, the internet was an escape from the real world. Now the real world is an escape from the internet.” “Tweet that!”, Dayv said, so I did. That banal observation became my most popular tweet of all time, and the quote has now been posted ad infinitum on content mills all over the web.

There was a hearing in Congress about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (formerly known as UFOs). I’m not going to get into that. Though one frame of a comic by Brian McFadden of Kos comics is worth sharing. It shows Mr. Spock of Star Trek saying:

Earth is experiencing multiple crises that require immediate action and you’re investigating imaginary phenomena? Highly illogical.