Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

This really is a full service blog.

He really is that stupid.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Cole is on a roll !

An almost top 10,000 blog!

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

I also would like a pony to improve my balloon juice experience.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

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Reader Interactions

75Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    Cute. Although until they had the news media segments, I was on the fence whether it was some right wing outfit pretending we were the oppressive ones, like how Elon Musk pretends he supports free speech and we cancel it.

  6. 6.

    FastEdD

    I’m a retired math and science teacher! 34 years in public schools, retired many years ago. I love it! Teaching is essentially an impossible job, when your career depends on the approval of those who you may offend by holding them to a high standard. People have the idea that tenure means you can be a screwup and never be fired. Not true. What it does mean is that if you hold them to standards like-gasp-making them work, and-oh no-grading them based on whether they can actually do the work, you can keep your job even if someone complains. That’s all. Horrible teachers who do horrible things still get fired, but teachers who stand up for themselves keep their jobs. I remember my first two years when a parent complained about his kid’s grade. I said sure, I’ll give him whatever you want. My third year I had tenure. Same kid, same parent, demanding the kid pass. I smiled and said nope, kid needs to earn it. Parent complains to principal, who complains to me. I very nicely told them all to pound sand. That’s what tenure will do, and why we in the union fight like hell to keep it. Contracts aren’t all about money.

  7. 7.

    JPL

    Earlier I mentioned that a Melissa and doug puzzle I ordered was being held by a government authority.  The UPS number uses this symbol

    A yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in the middle. This warning sign is used to warn people of someone or something that is dangerous

    puzzle dust I presume, or a dog with a cold.   I’m not going to get that puzzle am I/

  8. 8.

    Baud

    @MattF:

    Exactly. But I guess that would have been more difficult to say out loud in the video and have the audience get it right away.

  9. 9.

    SiubhanDuinne

    It’s only 9 minutes.

    I’ve watched it twice now. That’s 99 minutes I’ll never get back.

  11. 11.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: I’m not sure if you’re going to get it, but I am pretty sure that I would no longer want to receive it.

    For all you know, the guy who worked in the shipping department deals drugs on the side, and some drug sniffing dog thought it was interesting. :-)

  13. 13.

    SpaceUnit

    I’m only halfway through the video, but so far it too closely resembles real life for my tastes.

  22. 22.

    Scout211

    @JPL: I didn’t see your previous comment.

    Does the notice say what government agency is holding it? Could it be US Customs?

    What site did you order it from?

    ETA: Amazon has many third part sellers from outside of the country and it’s not clear until the package is shipped that it is coming from another country.

  25. 25.

    FastEdD

    Another thing I like about the film. The kid is a little asshole, and the parents come in and surprise! They are assholes too! Makes you appreciate that’s where the kid got it. I taught lower income kids because the parents weren’t getting in your face all the time, and when the kids succeeded it really was something to be proud of. We had one kid called “Marvin the Martian” because he spoke made up languages and seemed to think he was in a different world. I got to know his Mom and his home life was so screwed up his different world was the only way to make sense of it. Kid ditched math class for 6 months and aced the AP Calculus test anyway. Scary.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @WaterGirl:

    When my cousin sent it, he included flat-earth brother in the email distribution. Have no idea whether or not he watched it, though (I did vaguely wonder, but not enough to ask).

    P.S. Thanks for putting it up. This seems like a good day for it.

  31. 31.

    BigJimSlade

    @MattF: Ooh, yeah! They should’ve worked with that – she could’ve offered both as possible correct answers and asked how open-minded he was.

  32. 32.

    Jay

    @JPL

    What is the yellow triangle with exclamation point on UPS tracking?

    Packages that have not had a corresponding shipping paper printed are identified by an exclamation point in a yellow triangle over the printer icon that precedes the tracking number.

    Basically, incomplete shipping documents.

  33. 33.

    rebelsdad (fka texasboyshaun)

    *kicks door open with size 10.5 cowboy boots*

    Hey y’all, I’m baaaaack!

  34. 34.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL:

    That is extremely weird. Have you talked with an actual person at Macy’s? Be interesting to know if similar problems have occurred with the same product line or manufacturer. Hope the whole thing gets sorted quickly for you.

  35. 35.

    JPL

    @Scout211: At first that’s what I thought but it originated in CA.   I ordered it from Macy’s

    6:45PM

    Your package is pending release from a Government Agency. Once they release it, your package will be on its way.
    ,

    6:30PM

    We were unable to dispatch the trailer on time. This may cause a delay.
    ,

    6:11PM

    Arrived at Facility     The UPS number doesn’t show details, just has the warning symbol

    Hodgkins, IL

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    @JPL

    If it arrives, either refuse delivery or else return it unopened in person to the closest Macy’s.

  37. 37.

    mali muso

    Greetings from the airport where widget and I are waiting to board our budget airline flight to Paris via Reykjavik!  Tablets are loaded with entertainment, bag loaded with snacks. Budget means everything costs money on board so hopefully I’m prepared. Lol. Still, the tickets for both of us were less than 1 person on a regular airline so we will roll with it.  Wishing all jackals a hoppy easter bunny weekend!

  39. 39.

    JPL

    @NotMax: It was only nine dollars so easiest is trash.  I doubt that it’s coming.   I think WaterGirl is right, that someone touched the package with something nefarious on their hands.

    That or one of the largest manufacturers of toys, Melissa and Doug, have been dealing all along.   (kidding)

  40. 40.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @NotMax: OMG, I want one!

    “In 1993, to draw attention to what they regarded as outdated gender stereotypes exemplified by the dolls, a group of East Village performance artists calling themselves the Barbie Liberation Organization orchestrated an exchange of voice boxes between 300 Teen Talk Barbies and Hasbro Talking Duke G.I. Joe action figures, which were replaced on store shelves.[1][6][7] Affected Teen Talk Barbies spoke phrases such as “Eat lead, Cobra!”, “Attack!”, and “Vengeance is mine!”[13] “

  43. 43.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL:

    one of the largest manufacturers of toys, Melissa and Doug

    Until your saga began, I had never heard of Melissa and Doug.

    [Tell me there are no children in your life without telling me there are no children in your life.] 

  44. 44.

    Jay

    @JPL:

    See above.

    it’s going to arrive, just late. The Shipper at Macy’s did not properly fill out the UPS paperwork or include all copies.

    As for the “Government Agency”, most high volume shippers, have various Government Inspection facilities located inside sorting stations, that do both random and targeted inspections of packages.

    The package is no longer “held” by the unnamed “Government Agency”, so the package may have been “held” because of the missing paperwork, or a dog keying in on the off gassing printer ink or laminated plastic overlay.

  46. 46.

    JPL

    @Jay: Thanks!   It’s still going into the trash, though.

    Definitely makes sense though.

    Macy’s has free shipping at 25.00 so if I find something cute for the grand imps, I’ll add on something because it is often less expensive than shipping.  The package had to arrive in two shipments though.

    btw I never had a problem when I added on a truck.   just saying

  47. 47.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Entirely off-topic, but does anyone know if there’s going to be a way to watch the event tonight with Presidents Biden, Obama, and Clinton? Stephen Colbert is moderating. If it doesn’t air or stream live, I hope there’s some way to see it tomorrow, at least the highlights.

  50. 50.

    dnfree

    @FastEdD: ​
      When I was on my local school board, in Illinois, we had some number of teachers who should no longer have been teaching, but they were. We had teachers in their 50s who were still gung-ho and learning and enthusiastic, but we had a few who were just putting in the time until they could collect their pensions. We even had teachers who were no longer really able to do their jobs, but they still had tenure. Some of them we had to remove from classroom contact with students and find some makeshift job for.

    In Illinois, you can’t even fire a teacher for cause locally. We had one elementary PE teacher who had struck children and been “remediated” more than once (retrained etc.) The last time, he not only struck a child, but went to that child’s house and tried to intimidate the parent into not reporting it. With the involvement of lawyers (costs a lot of money) and following an exacting process where if you miss a deadline, the process ends, we voted to fire him. It had to go to a state board and they had to agree that he could be fired because we had tried enough times to work with him to improve.

    In other words, tenure serves a function that is both positive and negative. It keeps teachers from being fired capriciously or unfairly, or to get rid of higher-paid teachers and replace them with younger inexperienced teachers, but it also protects teachers who shouldn’t be teaching.

    Don’t get me started on how people wind up teaching something they’re “certified” to teach but have little actual background in.

  52. 52.

    Another Scott

    @SiubhanDuinne: I assume not.  But I expect the campaign to put up clips soon thereafter.

    bidenhq on Twitter

    joe.link/threads

    etc.

    HTH a little.

    Corrections welcome.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  53. 53.

    schrodingers_cat

    IIRC I have seen this before it was making rounds during the early COVID years and remember being irked by it. Google says, its from 2017.

    BTW do BJers have any opinions about Jo Boaler and Mathish?

  55. 55.

    SpaceUnit

    @Tarragon:

    I thought it was pretty effective satire, actually.  Definitely reminded me of interactions I’ve had with wingnuts and libertarians.

  57. 57.

    Siubhan Duinne

    For some reason, the “reply” function isn’t working, but thanks to everyone who weighed in on my question about Colbert and the Presidents.

    ETA: Aha! And it disappeared my nym and email. FYWP (been a while since I typed that).

  58. 58.

    Jay

    @JPL:

    As it’s been released by the “Government Agency”, it’s been inspected and perfectly safe, other than maybe some missing puzzle pieces.

    When I worked at OceanWorks, I was responsible for all the HazMat packaging and shipping, had to take a two day course on it.

    UPS, FedEx and other shippers can handle some HazMat materials, some HazMat materials, (and volumes) have to ship via a specialty carrier. Every thing needs to be packed the right way, marked and labeled properly, all the right paperwork, SDS’s, etc.

    One of the things we were taught is that any package with a “chemical smell” and no HazMat labeling and paperwork would be held and inspected.

    A bunch of the parts we would buy, would come in reeking of cosmoline, ( a protective grease) or cutting oil. Part of my job was ensuring that the suppliers made notes on the shipping documents of the “smell” and included the SDS’s for what ever was making the smell, so they wouldn’t get held up in transit.

    Some of the parts, had to cross multiple borders, multiple times, as they went from raw material to finished product.

  60. 60.

    Jay

    @JPL:

    Googled UPS, waybill, yellow triangle, exclamation point,

    The first 8 hits were related to car dashboard warning lights.

  62. 62.

    FastEdD

    @dnfree: Have you been a teacher? Have you been under pressure like the lady in the film? Where I’m from every teacher is evaluated biannually and if they don’t meet teaching standards, they are out. Usually the pressure from above is what keeps teachers in subject matters they aren’t qualified for. Teachers themselves aren’t begging to teach something they aren’t comfortable with. They are jammed in there like a square peg in a round hole. I had many administrators that I admired because they worked as hard as we did, but those principals changed every other year-I went through 12 of them. They did not have the long term interests of the school at heart because they only lasted a few months. Tenure means a teacher can have the long term view. Besides, in many states there is a huge teacher shortage and kids are lucky to have any permanent teacher at all.

  63. 63.

    RSA

    Excellent.  Checking out all the awards, I saw that this appeared in 2017, well before COVID and the mainstream anti-vax movement.  The film makers had some nice predictive powers… almost prescience.

  68. 68.

    funlady75

    @mali muso: have a wonderful trip  to Paris…please visit Versailles if you can……& Sacre Bleu church also.. great food too……..

  69. 69.

    Martin

    I don’t like this video.

    The right don’t act the way they do because they oppose math or science. They act the way they do because they have an agenda. Ignoring that and just viewing them as dumb or stubborn isn’t helpful. What is helpful is acknowledging the agenda and speaking to it. Yes, danger lies that way.

    But nobody will be persuaded without acknowledging that agenda and speaking to it.

  70. 70.

    FastEdD

    I know the film is fiction, and it exists to make a good point. As an experienced teacher, the only thing I’d quibble with is that lady should have gotten to know her Principal before the (inevitable) parent complaints started rolling in. If your boss won’t have your back you need to know that first. Don’t wait until a disaster happens.

  71. 71.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @mali muso: ​You’re flying PLAY Airlines, aincha? I’ve flown with them a couple of times. Here’s two helpful budget hints:

    1. The food onboard seems awfully pricey but in fact it is slightly cheaper than what’s available at Keflavik airport. It could be even cheaper if you wait to buy it till toward the end of the flight – when they will sometimes cut the price of any leftover microwave=heated items by 20% or so.

    2. If you have time between flights at Keflavik (at least 20 minutes) and you’ve saved any empty bottles, you can get free fillups of very good Icelandic water: Turn right in the long corridor beyond passport control and continue down to the food shops and duty-free area; you’ll pass a large comic-book-style mural on the right. Follow the signs to the right to the rest rooms or smoking area (same direction). In the hallway between the restrooms and the smoking area are water fountains where you can fill those bottles with pure Icelandic water for free. Drink as much as you like and then refill – you ought to be able to take it with you on the next flight.

    Bon voyage!​​

  72. 72.

    Freemark

    @WaterGirl: Wouldn’t work. If you read the comments the nutters think it’s an anti-woke video. Completely ignoring the ‘alternative facts’ references and rainbows.

  73. 73.

    dnfree

    @FastEdD: In the cases I know of in Illinois, teachers of subjects that they don’t know much about are in those positions because “certification” here isn’t what you might think.  I’ll give you two examples.

    1)  I have a relative who was certified for both early childhood and elementary education.  (This is rare–requires more undergraduate work.)  In Illinois, if you’re certified for early childhood, apparently if you take two more courses you can also be certified for special education, which it can be difficult to get teachers to do.  This relative got multiple job offers to be a special ed teacher when she graduated, which she did not want to do and didn’t consider herself actually qualified to do, but districts were more in need of special ed than of early elementary teachers.

    I have another relative who bounced from district to district for reasons I will not speculate on, but he had trouble getting tenure.  His specialty was history, but he was hired for teaching science–which he again was “certified” for but hadn’t even taken enough courses for a minor, let alone the fact that he was a creationist and doesn’t believe in evolution or climate change.  That’s what he could get a job teaching, because it’s what districts needed.  When he did get tenure, it was for high school special education, and I have no idea if he had gotten extra training or not.

  74. 74.

    dnfree

    @FastEdD: Also, I was on the board with a retired teacher, and she considered teacher evaluation to be a joke.  She said administrators typically announce exactly when they’re coming to evaluate you, so you can be prepared to present well.  She sometimes said “No one knows what really goes on once the classroom door is closed.”  Again, I’m sure this varies from district to district and state to state.  And I consider most teachers to be dedicated and hard-working.  It’s just difficult to remove those who are “coasting” or worse.  But I also understand the positives of tenure.

  75. 75.

    Ironcity

    @mali muso: Hope it is a through flight.  If you need to make a connection in KEF and the flight in is late you are hosed.  Then the flight from KEF to CDG can be really late too,  or early.  Spin the roulette wheel of LCCs.  And have a good flight.

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