Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

In my day, never was longer.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Not all heroes wear capes.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Bark louder, little dog.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

This blog will pay for itself.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

You are here: Home / Politics / Education / Don’t Know Much About History

Don’t Know Much About History

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Hoo boy, Betsy DeVos is a real winner. If you are a c-list blogger with a potty mouth or a writer for a comedian/comedy show, her hearing yesterday was fucking amazing. If you care about education policy or have children, well, you know, sorry about that.

There were so much fail it’s hard to just limit it to one blog post, but here goes. First, she has no idea the difference between proficiency and growth or the existence of the debate, which is to education what evolution/creationism is to hard sciences:

I’m pretty sure any undergraduate at ANY college in America with at least ONE education course could answer that better.

Next up, she seems completely unaware that IDEA exists:

Again, she is so ignorant of everything around here, I sort of hoped that Franken and Hassan would start making up federal laws that don’t exist and asking her position on them, just to see what she would say.

And then finally, there was this:

Just so we are clear, there is no no grizzly infestation menacing Wyoming public schools:

Audra Morrow, a teacher at Wyoming’s Valley Elementary School in Cody from 2004 to 2006, explained to Mic that no guns were necessary to ward off ursids, and that the fence and bear spray were “absolutely” sufficient measures on their own.

“No firearms in our schools!” Morrow wrote. “We do have bear spray but have never had a problem that would require using it.”

And I’m not joking that I am just scratching the surface here- she also stated she did not support standards for every school that receives federal money and on and on and on.

Welcome to the United States of Dumbfuckistan.

Reader Interactions

148Comments

  1. 1.

    oldster

    I gotta say, though, I was pleasantly surprised–very surprised, and very pleasantly–by how aggressive and effective our Democratic Senators were.

    Of course they cannot stop the stampede to confirmation. But they made her look as bad, shallow, and dysfunctional as she is. Every time that they show the country what morons Trump has selected, they work to protect us from the worst that he might do.

  2. 2.

    aangus

    My goodness. Didn’t he work her over good.
    Sometimes I wonder if being a comedy writer should be a prerequisite to being a Senator.
    Watched this live and the good Senator sure knows how to play the Mark. IYNWIM

  3. 3.

    chopper

    yeah, having kids in public school, i watched the hearing and immediately felt like running into traffic. we are all so deeply fucked.

  4. 4.

    BGinCHI

    I liked the moment when she waved the receipt around and said: “But I paid for this office!”

  5. 5.

    trollhattan

    Yup, if you want the epitome of Trump’s desire to simply break government, you can’t top Betsy. It’s like bringing a kitchen appliance to fly an airplane As the kid of school teachers this must be extra sweet. Charlie Pierce brought the wood to the proceedings, also, too.

  6. 6.

    bbleh

    Hey look, she’s a girl, education is girl stuff, so waddaya waddaya? Besides, her family is STINKING rich, and the Bible-bangers LOVE her, so she checks THREE boxes! She’s gonna be great, terrific, and our kids are gonna have the best schools in the WORLD, unlike the TOTAL disaster we’ve got now, just terrible, just awful. Really, those schools where those people’s kids go are gonna be just great.
    /s

  11. 11.

    Yarrow

    They don’t care if she knows anything about Education, nor if any of the other appointees know anything about their departments and future jobs. The goal is to loot the Treasury, enrich themselves, family and friends, and push their reactionary version of Christianity on everyone. Oh, and punish sluts.

    When those are your goals, who cares about things like “proficiency and growth”? Those things are not relevant. It doesn’t matter if kids are proficient in anything or improve year to year if they kneel down and worship Jesus. Critical thinking is dangerous anyway, remember?

  13. 13.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    Great post. One of my biggest personal fears in all of this is the fate of public education. Will my kids even get to go to school like we did or are they just going to hand me a fucking coupon and tell me “good luck”? I fear the latter.

  16. 16.

    Cacti

    Was reading yesterday that since “education reformer” Devos started buying elections in Michigan, statewide reading scores and graduation rates have both declined.

  20. 20.

    laura

    I’d walk on broken glass to the polls to cast a presidental vote for Senator AL Franken.
    Without public schools, we can kiss goodbye any pretence of having a shared American experience and civic commonality. But that’s the point, isn’t it. Many truths, and one fool to rule them all.

  21. 21.

    Brachiator

    In the second video, the look on the face of the woman sitting behind Devos is amazing.

    The tv coverage of Trump nominees should have a little graphic that notes their net worth and how much they contributed to Trump’s campaign.

    ETA: DeVos family net worth, $5.1 billion

  24. 24.

    Anne Laurie

    Mr. Charles P. Pierce, nut graf:

    Simply put, Betsy DeVos has been nominated to be Secretary of Education because she married into the Amway money and spread it around to enough Republican politicians to get them elected so that they would carry out DeVos family enterprise of turning public education over to private profiteers and turning the political commons into a theocratic yard sale open to the highest bidder. She and her family contributed substantial sums to 10 of the 12 Republicans who were sitting on the committee that was vetting her Tuesday night.

  26. 26.

    ? Martin

    @Cacti: Yeah, but on the upside she didn’t kill people like her brother. It’s interesting that in all of this Erik Prince’s name hasn’t come up at all from what I’ve seen.

  27. 27.

    Aleta

    When there’s a proposal for a very big project that would change a big piece of ecosystem, some developers open with a plan that has some outrageous pieces. Then they drop those and claim they are compromising, giving up part of what they want. Negotiating!

    Tr’s candidates are like that to me. Some are perhaps put up there but expected to fail, so they can say it’s all balanced. The D side won some, and meanwhile they get Tillerman, Sessions etc through.

  28. 28.

    Mike in NC

    We have no children or grandchildren, and feel sorry for anybody who wants theirs to have any shot at a decent future in a country presided over by this lunatic and his minions.

  31. 31.

    ? Martin

    Bit of a followup on the payday loan dustup that happened during the election.

    With payday loans, for instance, Servon notes that many people who rely on this pricey, short-term option actually have credit cards with lower interest rates that they haven’t yet maxed out. They choose payday loans over credit cards not because they don’t understand how interest works, she says, but because they’re smart enough to know that payday delinquency won’t be reported to a credit bureau in the same way late credit card payments are, thus preserving their credit score which can help them obtain a variety of other necessities including more credit.

    The problem with the payday loan debate was that it distracted from the much broader problem of how to provide cost-effective banking options for either low-income workers or workers without steady pay. Like most people I get free banking because my pay is steady enough to rely on direct deposit. A whole host of benefits flow from that. I never pay credit card fees or banking fees or ATM fees. Those things are available to me because I have enough money for banks to chase after me, but for so many other people they have nothing but bad options to choose between. As she sums up:

    “The question that remains is whether expensive credit is better than no credit at all,”

  32. 32.

    James Powell

    @oldster:

    Every time that they show the country what morons Trump has selected, they work to protect us from the worst that he might do.

    I wish this were true. I don’t think it is. I see no evidence that being stupid, evil, or just wrong about everything is any barrier to taking complete control of the government and doing stupid, evil, and wrong things.

  33. 33.

    Aleta

    @Yoda Dog Democrat: In honesty, I believe that plans have been in the works for years to take taxpayer money out of public schools and give it to private companies. They’ve worked toward this and their moment is here. They’ve also been collecting data to manipulate to defund state universities.

  34. 34.

    randy khan

    So this is one more time we need to put pressure on the Senate. She’s obviously entirely unqualified for the job, so remind them of that. It might not work, but it can’t hurt.

  35. 35.

    Lizzy L

    A friend told me today that the hearing for Andrew Puzder (SecLabor nominee) has been postponed, and that his nomination may be withdrawn.

  36. 36.

    Chris

    First, she has no idea the difference between proficiency and growth or the existence of the debate, which is to education what evolution/creationism is to hard sciences

    A debate that was completely settled a century ago, in which one side argues for the more or less incontrovertible truth and the other is arguing for fairy tales and pixie dust, which isn’t in fact a “debate” at all within the relevant field but rather a debate in the political arena between those who think they’re entitled to their own facts and those who don’t?

    (I actually know as little about the debates in education – wasn’t even raised in American schools – which is why unlike this nincompoop I’m not trying out for Secretary of Education, but I couldn’t let that one pass without comment).

  38. 38.

    West of the Cascades

    @laura:

    I’d walk on broken glass to the polls to cast a presidental vote for Senator AL Franken.

    This. 1000 times this. I would knock on doors in deepest red Pennsylvania or Wisconsin to ask people to vote for Senator Franken as President.

  39. 39.

    cmorenc

    In the bottom-most photo in Jon’s post, captioned: “Guns in school protect against grizzly bears” – Devos’ face and hand posture makes it appear she’s trying to blow soap bubbles at her inquisitors. And figuratively, that IS exactly what she’s trying to do. This is like a SNL sketch come to real life.

  40. 40.

    SRW1

    @Anne Laurie:

    She and her family contributed substantial sums to 10 of the 12 Republicans who were sitting on the committee that was vetting her Tuesday night.

    Madame DeVos bought that job fair and square.

  42. 42.

    Chris

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    This incoming administration can’t end soon enough for me.

    The best case scenario is that this administration ends up being such a complete and utter shit show that it collapses in disgrace and leaves its party and its side of the aisle with the kind of stink that Hoover did for Republicans circa 1930 and Carter for Democrats circa 1980, and that whoever shows up in 2020 or 2024 is able to exploit that as completely as Roosevelt and Reagan did.

    Not holding my breath, especially since in any sane world, the draft-dodging war criminal Obama replaced should’ve had all that effect and then some. But one can hope.

  43. 43.

    gene108

    @laura:

    Without public schools, we can kiss goodbye any pretence of having a shared American experience and civic commonality.

    95% or so of Americans attended public schools. People may have had varying levels of fun there, but we all went to one.

    People put a lot of value in public schools. They buy houses based on the schools in the neighborhood.

    I do not get, why there is not more pushback on people like Betsy. So many of us are products of public schools.

  45. 45.

    schrodingers_cat

    First, she has no idea the difference between proficiency and growth or the existence of the debate, which is to education what evolution/creationism is to hard sciences:

    That’s bullshit, evolution/creationism debate is not a scientific debate at all but a political one. The science on that issue is settled. I know you used to be RWNJ, but still.

  46. 46.

    randy khan

    @Lizzy L:

    Fingers crossed. Puzder is a bad man.

    (By the way, I get that the next choice probably won’t be much better, or even could be worse. But one element of the going-forward strategy has to be to make the Trump Administration and the Republicans look incompetent. Knocking down awful nominees who can’t bother to prepare or who don’t know anything in the first place whenever possible is part of that. Also, it keeps the career people in charge for as long as possible, which might limit the damage. And it’s fun.)

  48. 48.

    FlyingToaster

    I think the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is going to spend the next four years suing the U.S. Department of Education.

  50. 50.

    schrodingers_cat

    @? Martin: So many problems in this country are manufactured and are unsolvable because of the lack of political will. Like idiot descendants of once powerful and successful families, a significant minority continues to fritter away the advantages that earlier generations worked so hard to build.

  52. 52.

    cmorenc

    @oldster:

    Every time that they show the country what morons Trump has selected, they work to protect us from the worst that he might do.

    Unfortunately, it’s not going to be until the softer Trump voters – e.g. the ones who voted for the candidate they disliked the least, rather than being on-board as a roaring true believer – start feeling personally distressed and alienated from the actions of Trump, his cabinet, and the GOP congress that the realization will truly sink in of what knaves and morons Trump has inflicted on the country, including himself. Given his falling approval numbers since immediately post-election – this buyer’s remorse may already beginning to set in, but it won’t get sufficient traction until enough people feel real pain from these assholes.

  53. 53.

    aangus

    @cmorenc:

    ” makes it appear she’s trying to blow soap bubbles at her inquisitors.”

    Well, it appears like she was trying to blow something, soap bubbles wasn’t at the top of my list, but, I guess that it will have to do.
    *evil grin*

  54. 54.

    Calouste

    @randy khan: Specially if the nominees withdraw rather than are rejected. It would be nice if articles are appearing stating that more nominees have withdrawn than under any president in history.

  55. 55.

    Mart

    @Yoda Dog Democrat: One of my biggest personal fears in all of this is the fate of public education. Will my kids even get to go to school like we did or are they just going to hand me a fucking coupon and tell me “good luck”? I fear the latter.

    I fear for my wife and daughter who are teachers. As the Betsy’s of the world know; you can easily maximize your profit margin off the public’s money by mostly replacing my wife and daughter with aides with two weeks training making minimum wage and no benefits. Screw those democrat teachers and their evil unions, they are taking all our profits.

  56. 56.

    Chris

    @schrodingers_cat:

    So many problems in this country are manufactured and are unsolvable because of the lack of political will.

    So much this.

    America is a family dying of eminently treatable diseases and controlled by Christian Scientists who keep the doctors and the ambulances away at gunpoint because Medicine Is Satan.

    (Or Anti-Vaxxers, whatever your preferred analogy. If there’s one thing the world isn’t short on, it’s morons).

  57. 57.

    ThresherK

    Never been near a university,
    Never took a paper or a learned degree,
    And some of your friends think that’s stupid of me,
    But it’s nothing that I care about.

  60. 60.

    ? Martin

    @gene108: NYTimes has a piece today on universities that provide upward mobility.

    8 of the 10 are publics, and 5 of the 10 are California publics. The two privates have a combined enrollment of 15,000 students, while the publics each run 30K plus except for one. I went to a private university and it was the right choice for me, but private universities are wholly inadequate to the scale of the educational challenge, nor do they want to be. The largest private in the US is BYU at 30K and it goes down quickly from there. 30K is a smallish public. SUNY has 400K students. UC + CSU has 750K. California community college system has 2.4 million.

  61. 61.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Yoda Dog Democrat: I do feel very sorry for parents/guardians with school-aged children. Funny how these forced birthers could care less about the quality of children’s education unless their parents/guardians can afford private schools. I thought they loved children.

  62. 62.

    randy khan

    @cmorenc:

    If we can believe the polls about Trump’s approval ratings, it would appear that, in fact, some of the soft Trump voters already are figuring this out. It’s really stunning that his ratings have been dropping since the election, particularly given how low they were in the first place.

  64. 64.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Chris:

    Not holding my breath, especially since in any sane world, the draft-dodging war criminal Obama replaced should’ve had all that effect and then some. But one can hope.

    It took California two useless GOP governors to get over Republicans, so just got to wait it out.

  65. 65.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Speaking of education, I’m off to teach my first class of the semester at the local community college. Wish me – and my students – luck!

  66. 66.

    Anne Laurie

    Ancillary grievance:

    “Rich lady wants her bought-and-paid-for position, so she can gut public education and turn the profits over to her cronies. Whew! Business as usual, thank Repub Jeebus!’

  68. 68.

    ? Martin

    @schrodingers_cat: Right, which is why creative destruction is effective. California rejected single payer because the political will evaporated once ACA came along. Take ACA away, and that will may return.

    Many, many political problems require circumstances to get much worse before the will arrives to make them better. That’s cold comfort to everyone who suffers while things get worse, but that’s a possible upside to a president Trump. Public polling support nationally for single payer is very likely to grow now that ACA is under threat. We may see that in other areas as well.

  69. 69.

    Pogonip

    Cole, when you move, don’t let the cat out for a couple of days or he’ll probably head back to the old place and meow indignantly for food all night.

    Our neighbors forgot to feed their cat the other day and he let the whole street know. He is much louder than yours. It was trash day so we had no scraps for him. I was just considering whether to fry him an egg when they came home and fed him and blissful silence descended.

  70. 70.

    The Moar You Know

    I do not get, why there is not more pushback on people like Betsy. So many of us are products of public schools.

    @gene108: Remember that Pink Floyd song “Another Brick in the Wall”? Even those hippies bought into the notion that “schools are mind control and teachers are there to ruin your lives for fun”. Something which the overwhelming majority of people believe. People hate schools and teachers.

    Talking out my ass? Nope. My wife is a teacher and I’d say the number of students who appreciate what she does runs around 5%. The number of parents who appreciate their kid’s teachers is far, far less. Not even 1%. It would be to her benefit, financially, to stay in until age 62 but she will retire the first day that the CA teacher’s pension system lets her, seven years sooner. If we could afford it I’d say “fuck the pension, just get out today”…but teachers do not get Social Security, so we can’t afford that option at all.

    It’s an awful job and people like DeVos have made it that way. And they’ve ruined the profession; I don’t know a single teacher who would recommend it as a career, and that is going to be a real problem in about five years. Nobody wants to do it at any price, and the price that’s being offered is insulting. You can literally make more managing a McDonalds. In some states (GA springs to mind) you can make more just working the counter at a McDonalds.

  71. 71.

    sigaba

    @Anne Laurie: “Never talk about right and wrong, just talk about how liberals are mad, therefore everything’s business as usual and going to be okay.”

  72. 72.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @Mart: Teachers: who knowingly sign up for minimal compensation in order to have the oppurtunity to help better the lives of other people’s children. They are some of the most beautiful, caring and selfless people, by and large, I’ve ever been around. I’m scared for them too and I will not stand for this travesty without a fight.

  74. 74.

    Pogonip

    @Elizabelle: Ha! I’d like to see that!

    I went through 12 years of schooling and never saw a bear once. On the other hand, if she gets her way, every school in the U.S. could change its school song to “The Homecoming Queen’s Got A Gun.”

  76. 76.

    ThresherK

    @The Moar You Know: And your wife gets to hear people squawk out their cloacas about how she “only works 180 days a year”.

    Seriously, if teaching is so easy and financially rewarding, and right-wingers so superior, why haven’t they just en masse infiltrated, dominated the profession in the 40+ years they’ve been bitching about “reforming” public education, and taken it all over?

  77. 77.

    Yarrow

    @The Moar You Know: Yep. People who teach often warn younger people not to go into teaching. And those who do it for a few years see what the deal is and leave. The attrition rate is high. There are selfless teachers and those who love it but you do need to be able to support yourself and maybe your family. It shouldn’t be something that only someone with a rich spouse can do.

    From a September, 2016 article:

    The good news: There’s an uptick in the hiring of new teachers since the pink-slip frenzy in the wake of the Great Recession.

    The bad news: The new hiring hasn’t made up for the teacher shortfall. Attrition is high, and enrollment in teacher preparation programs has fallen some 35 percent over the past five years — a decrease of nearly 240,000 teachers in all.

    Parts of most every state in America face troubling teacher shortages: the most frequent shortage areas are math, science, bilingual education and special education.

  78. 78.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @Patricia Kayden: My kids are 20 and 2 months old and the incoming administration is presenting a clear and present danger to their futures. This drives my rage. I can’t just watch this happen. I’m just thankful they’re so young so A) I don’t have to explain what just fucking happened and B) We have some time to fix this mess, FSM willing..

  79. 79.

    Timurid

    @Pogonip:

    The Villagers (and their elite patrons) do not like Trump, but they need him… because he is the only national politician with the balls to be King. He won’t be very good at it, but they think he can flattered and manipulated. If all else fails, he’ll last long enough to break down institutions and norms sufficiently to pave the way for a more able successor.

    The Village and the elites believe that the end of the white majority, growing inequality and automation/surplus labor will make democracy unsustainable (for them at least). Thus there needs to be a shift to a more authoritarian mode of government, the sooner the better. As flawed as Trump is, he is the one guy who has stood up and volunteered for the job.

  80. 80.

    Pogonip

    @Major Major Major Major: Got no Bitcoins and don’t even know what Venmo is, but if he’s still there in 6 months + 1 day, you get bragging rights.

    I have not seen any Bitcoin news in quite a while. Maybe it was a fad that’s now ending.

  81. 81.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Anybody ever get a backstory in the founding of the Co-Dominium or its collapse in “The Mote in Gods Eye”? We may need to know this…

  82. 82.

    raven

    @Yarrow: Not my favorite on the album but it’s good.

    “Memphis Midnight/Memphis Morning”
    “West Texas Highway”
    “Rollin’ By”
    are my favs.

  83. 83.

    J R in WV

    @schrodingers_cat:

    You are missing John’s point completely. He knows that there is no debate between Evolution and creation, and is using that fact to make the point that there is no debate between proficiency and growth – which Ms DeVos is ignorant of.

  87. 87.

    Peale

    @Anne Laurie: I bet she on video peeing somewhere, too. You know her soldier of great fortune brother would have security cameras installed every six inches in the compound. Time for a hack to see what turns up.

  88. 88.

    Chris

    @ThresherK:

    Seriously, if teaching is so easy and financially rewarding, and right-wingers so superior, why haven’t they just en masse infiltrated, dominated the profession in the 40+ years they’ve been bitching about “reforming” public education, and taken it all over?

    This has been my question to these people since basically forever, though with a slightly broadened emphasis.

    If CEOs and wealthy heirs and “the rich” in this country really do have it so horrifically bad with being taxed and regulated out of business and in fear for their life because of the mobs of union thugs, and people on welfare really do have it so easy because everything’s provided for them and it’s the cushiest thing ever, why have you never heard of even one of these people selling everything and going on welfare?

    I mean, it can’t be their rigorous ethic of hard work and self-sufficiency. After all, some rich people are liberals. George Soros. Warren Buffet. All of Hollywood and all of the media, according to what Fox News tells me. All lazy good for nothing liberals with no work ethic, but with huge and taxable fortunes. Why hasn’t Meryl Streep ever given away the hardship of 1%er-hood for a lucrative career as a food stamp recipient?

    Anyone? Bueller?

  89. 89.

    Brachiator

    @Pogonip:

    Calm down, he’ll be impeached in 6 months.

    i will take some of this bet.

    I do not understand why anyone would say with such certainty that Trump will be impeached. It wasn’t that long ago that people were insisting that he was not seriously running for office. Then, he would never win the GOP primaries. Then, he would drop out before the general election because he wanted to start his own Fox News channel.

    So, now the Congressional Republicans are bending over backwards to accommodate Trump, even turning their eyes away from clear conflicts of interest. The Village may not like Trump, but they believe that he will be tremendously useful.

  91. 91.

    Chris

    @Timurid:

    I don’t think they’ve thought it through nearly to that extent. I think their religious creed of “both sides do it, but liberals are worse” is all it takes.

    I do believe that’ll be the practical result, though. And that they’ll entirely swallow every antidemocratic reform with the drumbeat of “we’re a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY” and “the founding fathers gave us the electoral college for a reason!”

  93. 93.

    debbie

    Trump tweeted a photo of himself working on his inauguration speech. He’s holding a pen above a pad of paper and looking off thoughtfully into mid-space. Five bucks says the pad is blank.

  95. 95.

    Chris

    @Brachiator:

    Calm down, he’ll be impeached in 6 months.
    …
    i will take some of this bet.

    So will I.

    Trump controls the votes. Impeaching Trump is a “fuck you” to the diehard racist core of the GOP voter base which all of these politicians desperately need to get reelected, and Trump would absolutely react by tweeting up a storm about the need to primary those bad liberal RINO traitors before they stop him from making America great again.

    And nothing Trump is likely to do is worth them impeaching him. If he turned out to be some sort of W. J. Bryan or Teddy Roosevelt esque figure who actually is economically populist despite his reactionary views elsewhere? Then, yes. It would be on. But everything we’ve seen so far seems to indicate that Trump is simply going to do a steroids-enhanced version of the standard “loot the Treasury and put the hurting on every liberal constituency.” Sure, he’s an unstable lunatic, but they don’t give a shit.

  96. 96.

    Yarrow

    @schrodingers_cat: What will lead to him being impeached is if the pressure on members of Congress is so great they have to choose. And by “pressure” I mean proof from the IC that shows that they and possibly their family members and associates have committed crimes. At some point they may have to choose between their own crimes being made public and taking out Trump. If that happens, my money is on them taking out Trump.

  98. 98.

    trollhattan

    If you go down to your school today
    You’re sure of a big surprise.
    If you go down to your school today
    You’d better go weaponized!
    For every griz that ever there was
    Will gather there for certain,
    Because today’s the day the
    Grizzly bears eat the students.

  100. 100.

    Yarrow

    @debbie: I linked it above at #67. Go have a look at the side by side photos. It’s totally staged and he likely kicked some poor receptionist off her desk for the photo.

  101. 101.

    Aleta

    @Yarrow:
    “My fellow people who voted for me,
    No one could have predicted that Donald Trump, I, the winner, was determined to attack America. And I won. Are we having a good time? Does anyone want a hat? The world will long remember what I say here, and it will never forget what I’m going to do, which is win some more. It is for us to do what I want. So help me God because I’m being very nice to you.”

  103. 103.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @Brachiator: I agree, he’s got their balls in a vice, I don’t get all this talk of impeachment. Unless we get hard evidence of criminal activity. Then we might have something. Make it happen IC.

  104. 104.

    p.a.

    OT good news- not important really but we need all we can get: Curt Schilling’s HOF vote goes down from last year; probably the kiss of death for his bid. He can blame the historically ultraliberal BBWAA ? I guess.

    fyi: Bagwell, Raines, Rodriguez in.

  105. 105.

    debbie

    @Yarrow:

    I love this response tweet. They’re talking about his holding a Sharpie with the cap still on, then this:

    @hughbalsam @Other_Marsupial @drmistercody @drskyskull its actually a golf pencil and pad. They used it so his hands would look bigger.

  106. 106.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @Aleta:

    In honesty, I believe that plans have been in the works for years to take taxpayer money out of public schools and give it to private companies.

    That may be true for a lot of them but for the DeVoses in particular, I don’t believe that’s so. It’s a bit harder to understand this if you’re outside of West Michigan, but the vast majority of Dutch Calvinists here have always believed that they have a right to tax dollars in order to give their kids a religious education. This was barely an issue with the Catholics around here until Reagan and white flight from the core cities’ public school systems, but it’s always been an issue with the likes of the Princes, and Betsy’s mom is a notably zealous Dutch Calvinist.

  108. 108.

    NotMax

    “Ms DeVos, what are known as the ‘Three Rs?'”

    “Republicans, religion, and ‘rite-offs.”

  110. 110.

    ? Martin

    California Strikes a Bold Pose as Vanguard of the Resistance

    “The impact of anything coming out of Washington is going to be so difficult for California that we are almost thrown into survival mode,” said Ms. Kuehl, who has been in public office since 1994. She said she had urged people — “everyone: local and state governments, staff of federal agencies, nonprofits, neighborhood groups” — to aggressively try to impede any policies pushed by Mr. Trump that undercut California laws or policies.

    “I said ‘If you have to lie, cheat and steal, do it,’” Ms. Kuehl said. “Take federal money and just tell them you are going to do whatever they want.”

  112. 112.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @p.a.: Nice. It will be fun to watch Warren use him for a pinata as well.

    ETA: She cracked me up when some reporter told her Schilling was thinking of running against her. She just shrugged and went “Who?”… It was pretty funny.

  113. 113.

    Aleta

    People who hate government voted for Trump. So now those ones are ready to hate him. I’m hoping they stay encouraged. It might torture the allegiance of a small piece of Congress.

  116. 116.

    debbie

    @Yoda Dog Democrat:

    Speaking of Elizabeth Warren, Putin recently confused her with Betsy De Vos. I can’t find a link for the quote, but I came across this recent Putin gem. Colbert mentioned it, but I was sure he was joking. Wrong:

    President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday an unsubstantiated report that alleged Russia had gathered compromising material on U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was a hoax, and slammed those who are propagating the allegations as “worse than prostitutes.”

    …

    “I find it difficult to believe that he ran to a hotel to meet with our girls of reduced social responsibility,” Putin said at a news conference in Moscow with Moldova’s President Igor Dodon.

    “Although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world,” he also said, according to Bloomberg News.

    It’s like listening to Trump, but in Russian.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/putin-defends-trump_us_587e1d6ee4b03549ebc067d4

  117. 117.

    EBT

    @Major Major Major Major: But the right has been doing that for decades. Look at the constant law suits over equal protection and voter access. They get money and are told to redo a district then steal the money and do nothing. Fuck them, we need to take their tricks, do them better and screw them over back.

  118. 118.

    Aleta

    @Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!): Good point. I’ve been assuming that the families that run Protestant Christian charter schools around here (which are drawing the former homeschool types) have formed small companies in order to apply for charter school funds, but I don’t know that for sure.

  123. 123.

    EBT

    @Major Major Major Major: Making so they can’t rob us for their god, or beat us for being queer is absolutely right even if we have to disenfranchise the sort of folk who have been trying to disenfranchise people.

  125. 125.

    Sab

    @gene108: Michigan is weird. When I lived there in the 1980s (western Michigan) they didn’t even provide books in the public schools. The kids families had to buy them. I grew up in the Jim Crow south and even the black kids got free (but old)books. But not in Grand Rapids.

  127. 127.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @Sab:

    Where in the hell did you go to school? I’ve lived in West Michigan for my entire life, almost entirely in Grand Rapids, and I’ve never heard of a public school system that was set up that way.

  128. 128.

    Sab

    @Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!): I didn’t go to school in Michigan but I did live there from 1980- 1984 and they did not provide books in the schools and my boyfriend who had lived his whole life in Grand Rapids thought it was very weird that schools did provide books.

  129. 129.

    gene108

    @Anne Laurie:

    She and her family contributed substantial sums to 10 of the 12 Republicans who were sitting on the committee that was vetting her Tuesday night.

    But according to Trump supporters, since all these Cabinet picks are billionaires, they are above the petty corruption that would tempt the likes of us and are doing this public service out of the goodness of their hearts.

    married into the Amway money

    When I moved to NJ from NC after college, I got suckered into an Amway meeting. The guy, who suckered me started of by asking me, if I was someone else that he mistook me for. Then we had some small talk. He told me a bit about himself. I told him I just moved here after college in NC. He said he had friends having a get together or something like that and they were from the same place I was from in NC and I was free to drop by.

    I went expecting a friendly get together, but it was an Amway indoctrination meeting.

    They came off like a cult. They had rules on your appearance – such as no facial hair for men – and a dress code and other stuff.

    It was creepy.

  130. 130.

    ? Martin

    @Major Major Major Major: Yeah, I’m not crazy about that attitude, TBH. But, we’ll see where things go.

    There’s talk that California may sign onto the Paris Agreement if Trump pulls the US out of it. We’re not legally allowed to do that, but we might do it anyway just for the Supreme Court exposure and to demonstrate to the nation that CA will exceed the accords goals even without losing economic power. There’s a decent shot that California’s economy will pass the UK given Brexit, putting us 5th behind Germany. We’re also the 5th largest food producer on earth. To say that these environmental goals will hurt the economy is utter fucking bullshit. The Paris agreement says the US will reduce emissions 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. CA has already met the states 20% below 2009 goal by 2020 and has set a new goal of 40% below 2009 levels by 2030. We should have no problem meeting 28% of 2005 levels by 2025.

    What’s more, we’ve attracted ⅔ of the nation’s venture capital going into clean energy and we are considering banning the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2030. That means that there’s not only a huge market for EVs in California, but a lot of jobs going into EV development and related technologies and services. This can be a jobs positive transition if states fully buy into it. We’re planning on proving that.

  131. 131.

    Yoda Dog Democrat

    @debbie: Yea, I saw that here on BJ I believe, that is too funny. I can’t even be mad at Putin, it’s like being mad at a scorpion or a great white shark…

  133. 133.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @Sab:

    Which school systems did you and the boyfriend attend? I find it hard to believe that, in the ’80s, there was a public school system around here with- maybe, but probably not- a couple of exceptions.

  134. 134.

    Sab

    How old (or young) are you? -Your comment suggests that you do not believe me or that you think I am lying. I am not lying. I cannot believe that you have lived in Grand Rapids and do not know this. Either you are very young and things have changed substantially, or you are a liar.

  135. 135.

    gene108

    @Chris:

    As long as most white people have serious “economic anxiety” issues caused by Latino and Asian immigration and Black Lives Matter, there is not a point in holding your breath.

  136. 136.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @Sab:

    51. Graduated from Grand Rapids Ottawa Hills in 1983. My sister is three years younger. I’ve got friends and family from all over West Michigan. I’ve devoured news since I was in elementary school.

    I’m thinking that you’re mistaken, and that you were in a private school whether you knew it or not. Or you were in Muskegon Heights or Benton Harbor- but their systems didn’t start crashing and burning until later in the ’90s.

  138. 138.

    TriassicSands

    Donald J. Trump nominate an unqualified person to fill a cabinet position?

    Unpossible [sic].

    DeVos is exactly what I’d expect from someone who knows nothing about education, nothing about government, and nothing about the government’s role in education.

  143. 143.

    hellslittlestangel

    Say what you want about DeVos, but some of her early stuff, like “Mongoloid” and “Jocko Homo,” was brilliant.

  145. 145.

    gene108

    @Yarrow:

    There’s an uptick in the hiring of new teachers since the pink-slip frenzy in the wake of the Great Recession.

    The financial upside to teaching, if there is one, was job security and a pension. The Great Recession killed job security for teachers. And many of the people, who lost their jobs were younger teachers, and the kids leaving high schools 5-6 years ago saw their older brothers or sisters getting canned.

    Whatever incentive there was too teaching basically evaporated for a generation.

  146. 146.

    glory b

    Late to this, but I’ll also note that teaching (and government employment in general) has had a huuuuge role in lifting African Americans into the middle class.

    So, I guess it’s a two-fer for them.

  147. 147.

    laura

    @Aleta: well when my Senator Diane Feinsteins husband was on both sides of the fire sales to essentially give away post offices all over America -including the Washington one that’s now Trump’s newest hotel, it makes sense from a business perspective. But for us who paid for them and consider them part of our commons, well, we don’t count.

  148. 148.

    PIGL

    @gene108: The GOP/Red State/WWC problem with public schools? Black kids go to them. Look no further.

    Well, some hate women and unions too.

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