U.S. Politics January 2023: Kevin McCarthy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life

I will concede that he's yet one more politician who looks like a deep sea creature.

one of those cases where trump's insults ('pencil neck') was sadly OTM

not that that is a reason not to vote for him

He would habitually overpromise on Trump-Russia evidence on MSNBC

but this is a reason not to support him. he's forever twinned with Mueller now in my mind.

Conservatives also rank three cases involving privacy and LGBT rights as among the Court’s worst decisions: Griswold v. Connecticut (1965, our number 6), Lawrence v. Texas (2003, number 10), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015, number 5). The first two rulings invalidated statutes prohibiting the use of contraceptives and homosexual sodomy, and the third required legal recognition of same-sex marriages. Some of our respondents are surely opponents of same-sex marriage; few would wish to criminalize anyone’s sexual activity; fewer still (perhaps none) would seek to restore the prohibition of contraceptives. We surmise that our respondents’ criticism of these decisions probably has less to do with the outcomes and far more to do with the fanciful legal reasoning used by the justices who reached them.

Funny how the only cases where innovative legal theory bothers these creeps are ones where said theory works to enshrine the rights of people they despise.

They made a video together.

Look, the opponents suing to stop my plan are the only thing standing between millions of Americans’ crushing student debt and relief. It’s frustrating, and I won’t stop fighting to get it done in the courts.

Allow me and my friend to explain. pic.twitter.com/h1mvaZPCwU

— President Biden (@POTUS) January 27, 2023

Sleepy Joe feat. the Bern

Gov. Ron DeSantis expanded his drive to steer Florida’s public colleges and universities to the political right Tuesday, outlining plans to dismantle campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs and making it easier for his mostly hand-picked boards of trustees to hire and fire tenured professors.

DeSantis rolled out his higher-education proposals just miles from New College of Florida, a liberal-leaning public honors college that he has targeted for change after appointing a roster of conservative trustees.

The new board is set to meet Tuesday for the first time. But it was evident that DeSantis’ appearance at the nearby State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota was intended to reaffirm his drive to overhaul the state’s higher education system.

“There are some people that think you have a right to have some taxpayer institutions with no accountability. That they should just be able to do whatever they want,” DeSantis said. “That is not happening in the state of Florida.”

Without offering specifics, DeSantis accused colleges and universities of advancing programs based on liberal politics and requiring that staff, students and initiatives meet an “ideological litmus test.”

The Republican governor, a Yale and Harvard graduate widely expected to seek his party’s presidential nomination next year, vowed to change the atmosphere which he said exists.

“The more we’re centering higher education on the integrity of the academics, excellence, pursuit of truth, teaching kids to think for themselves and not try to impose an orthodoxy, you are going to see people flooding into these institutions,” DeSantis said. “Academia, writ large, across the country has really lost its way.”

https://www.naplesnews.com/story/news/politics/2023/01/31/desantis-targets-florida-college-university-diversity-programs-tenure/69858501007/

Amazing that these fuckers want to change everything about college but the cost

what, if any, steps can even be taken to fight this?

major Florida colleges won't see any hit to enrollment, and people fleeing New College probably would only be a short-lived phenomenon, plus allow him to proceed further.

so fucking disheartening living here.

First Amendment grounds, federal courts.

Is this is part of his plan to run nationwide? Most Americans don't like this kind of shit

It won't work, no. But it's hell on us in the state with the prettiest name.

they've also flipped the reasoning on reading in public schools in FL: everything is fine as long as it's a book that the fascists pre-approve. there's nearly 800 of them!

Students arrived in some Florida public school classrooms this month to find their teachers’ bookshelves wrapped in paper — or entirely barren of books — after district officials launched a review of the texts’ appropriateness under a new state law.

School officials in at least two counties, Manatee and Duval, have directed teachers this month to remove or wrap up their classroom libraries, according to records obtained by The Washington Post. The removals come in response to fresh guidance issued by the Florida Department of Education in mid-January, after the State Board of Education ruled that a law restricting the books a district may possess applies not only to schoolwide libraries but to teachers’ classroom collections, too.

House Bill 1467, which took effect as law in July, mandates that schools’ books be age-appropriate, free from pornography and “suited to student needs.” Books must be approved by a qualified school media specialist, who must undergo a state retraining on book collection. The Education Department did not publish that training until January, leaving school librarians across Florida unable to order books for more than a year.

Breaking the law is a third-degree felony, meaning that a teacher could face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine for displaying or giving students a disallowed book.

...A spokeswoman for Duval County Public Schools wrote in a statement Monday that “we are taking the steps required to comply with Florida law,” adding that “there are almost 800 titles currently approved, and the list grows each day as books are reviewed.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/01/31/florida-hide-books-stop-woke-manatee-county-duval-county-desantis/

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/01/florida-desantis-universities/672898/
he seems nice

alfred, you're teaching college in FL now, no? I'm sorry.

Most Americans don't like this kind of shit

but do a plurality of conservative voters like this?

will fahrenheit 451 be allowed or banned in FL? i'm leaning banned

I guess the Stop WOKE act is still largely blocked by an injunction for most parts of it.

but he fairly clearly violated it recently and a judge didn't agree.

plus what he's doing at New College of Florida has nothing to do w/ said act

Florida’s Soviet Commissars

https://media.tenor.com/ufd9dOqNr4UAAAAM/peepshow-jerking.gif

don't turn around

really expecting that unless we miraculously finally get a Democratic governor in office (for the first time since I was a fucking teenager) in this state, no matter what laws are struck down by a court, we'll basically see the predictable flight of quality professors leaving for other universities, as well as diversity shrinking significantly at all Florida colleges.

at this point would see the only chance of that happening is a George Santos-esque left wing character who runs as a Republican and then reveals he was kidding after he gets elected.

i just remembered that ben sasse resigned so that he could have the honor of being a figurehead in this movement. fucking horrible person

Who knows. None of these guys wear masks and the woke mind virus is spreading fast.

the term "woke", like "fake news", has been so thoroughly subverted by conservatives that i don't even know what "the woke mind virus is spreading fast" means anymore, tbh

but the stuff in FL is spreading

NEW: Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves urged lawmakers to pass a "Parents Bill of Rights," allowing parents to inspect and opt their children out of education materials in school.

The @ParentsCampaign calls it "anti-teacher." From @KayodeCrown: https://t.co/7vTfi4AeOQ

— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) January 31, 2023

If you don't know what the WMV is then you probably already have it.

Mississippi also banned teaching one of the bedrocks of higher-tier Algebra, invisible numbers, quite a few decades ago. They’ve always been dead last in nationwide educational outcomes for a reason, but the state next to them which is shaped like a urinal is plummeting, too

I have no fucking doubt that DeSantis will become POTUS in 2024, especially if Biden dies/steps down and Harris won’t move aside

I have a lot of doubts he'll become president – and I live in Florida.

yeah, his appeal is, uh, 'limited'

I really think this book-banning stuff doesn't go over well. It doesn't make people feel good, appeals to a fairly small group. All of the anti-woke stuff I think they're just way overplaying. Lots of people do not give much of a shit about it.

yeah this culture war shit won't get him very far on the national stage. really his anti-education agenda is just an admission that Republicans want their constituents to be stupid and hateful

will enough people see it that way?

Yeah a lot of people are normal

The Democrats, as I've learned, no longer need the state with the prettiest name.

If DeSantis really understands the prototype established by Trump, once he enters the primaries he'll expand his crazy shit to include more than just pandering to dominionists and neo-fascists, and start promising a return to some pre-civil rights era White Person Eden, including fabulous health care for Good People Like You, high-paying jobs, and show trials for the Democrat Commies held at NASCAR rallies.

Mississippi also banned teaching one of the bedrocks of higher-tier Algebra, invisible numbers, quite a few decades ago.

wait what?

do you mean imaginary numbers? numbers that are not easily understood, like infinitesimals, zero, and imaginary numbers have a long history of being banned by various authorities, like the catholic church. zeno's paradox is ungodly!

Believe they are based on square roots, as in rootless cosmopolitans, so yeah.

i just remembered that ben sasse resigned so that he could have the honor of being a figurehead in this movement. fucking horrible person

I live in Iowa and have had to deal with associated bullshit forever but the idea of a Nebraskan ideologue is a thought beyond. Good luck with that, Sasse

I thought he was just in for the money (better salary than a senator, although you’d think fewer opportunities for $ via corruption (?)) but he must have been drawn to the more direct opportinity for ignorant cruelty? Or maybe it’s some sort of stepping stone? If desantis succeeds in national
office he’ll be rewarded? Again, just a horrible person

Nikki Haley is running for president.

Lucky us. Maybe when the February thread starts tomorrow we can not follow up on that and let it sit here like a lump in a demolished outhouse.

Nikki Haley has always and never been running for president

Maxine Waters taking no malarkey from this weirdo

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) just formally testified to the Republican-led House Rules Committee that the real threat to democracy is House Republicans.

😂

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) February 1, 2023

Time for a new month of political nattering. Who who's brave enough to bell the cat?

US Politics, February 2023: No classified documents found in Justice Department search of ILX

farewell, kevin, you miserable bastard