Florida’s Department of Education is in the news again, and that’s never good. In June, the DOE tried to get the College Board to change its AP psychology coursework to eliminate lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. Having learned its lesson from the AP African American studies fiasco early in the year, the College Board said nope:
(Tampa Bay Times) “Please know that we will not modify our courses to accommodate restrictions on teaching essential, college-level topics,” the group wrote at the time. “Doing so would break the fundamental promise of AP: Colleges wouldn’t broadly accept that course for credit and that course wouldn’t prepare students for success in the discipline.”
But the state board released a list of approved social studies courses in July, and AP psych was on it, as if the College Board had agreed to censor coursework. The College Board only learned that this week when someone who was in a private conference between school superintendents and state DOE officials clued them in. So they issued an even more definitive nope:
“Our policy remains unchanged,” the group said in a statement released Thursday. “Any course that censors required course content cannot be labeled ‘AP’ or ‘Advanced Placement,’ and the ‘AP Psychology’ designation cannot be utilized on student transcripts.”
Hooray for the College Board, which learned you can’t knuckle under to authoritarian bullies and keep your academic integrity. But it sucks for the 30K students who planned to take AP psych this school year. AP psych is one of the most popular advanced courses, and it can save students thousands in college tuition if they earn credits in high school.
Districts are looking at offering courses from Cambridge International and International Baccalaureate, which reportedly told state officials they could comply with Florida’s censorship requirements. I say “reportedly” because state officials either lied about or where clueless regarding the AP psych class a month ago. It’s an absolute clown show, and I’ve got to think parents who get wind of it will be pissed off.
When the College Board originally told Florida it wouldn’t alter coursework in June, the American Psychological Association released a statement commending that decision. This week, APA CEO Arthur Evans encouraged IB and Cambridge to sack up and refuse to cave to the censors too:
“Offering what amounts to an incomplete psychology course will reduce the number of people who can obtain college credits for psychology in high school and negatively impact pathways for psychological scientists as well as mental health professionals in Florida, where students and the broader population desperately need more mental health resources.”
Emphasis mine. It’s factually correct, but that sentence also contains enough shade to frost Miami Beach in July. Well done, APA!
Open thread.
BR
My new go to analogy for the indictment:
https://mastodon.social/@davew/110829219504113442
Trivia Man
If you let standards slide… then they aren’t “standards” any more
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Clearly, the APA is loaded with a pack of woke communists.
What I’m eagerly awaiting is for the complete crash that Chris Rufo inevitably has coming, a crash which will directly impact his “anti-woke” crusade and wheelhouse. Dunno if it’ll be child porn, sex trafficking, some drug scandal, some scandal involving him having a secret gay or drag life, but that day is coming.
Omnes Omnibus
I can’t imagine that the IB program would agree to censor its courses for FL. The program is based on giving the same exact exams to all students internationally. Also, righties have always hated it because of the international in its name. Obviously, it must be some commie thing.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@BR:
I asked all the crime guys in my shop for approval to raid my escrow account and to rob a bank. None of them said yes.
I’m hoping to find someone to give me approval.
Brachiator
Love it! What a burn.
Hoodie
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I hear that Sam Alito is working on a new Minor Violations doctrine to go with the Major Questions doctrine, might be of some help.
Anoniminous
As true now as when he said it.
Cameron
Doubtless PraegerU will step up to meet the challenge. If Caucasian Christian Psychology doesn’t fill the bill at snooty elitist places like Yarvard or Oxbridge, who needs those cancel-culture transmarxist groomers anyway?
And in the continuing saga of New College’s rebirth, bids are apparently being taken for reconstructing student dormitories to focus on “recreation, entertainment, and athletics.” Priorities, people.
Almost Retired
I can’t think of much of anyone who is benefiting from this fucking clown’s woke policies. At best, maybe this sort of stuff gives some old codger in The Villages a boner he can’t get through pharmaceuticals. But all these DeSantis crusades harm virtually everyone – business, students, public health, BIPOC, LGBTQ+ people, rational thinking beings who aren’t consumed with hate, tourism, etc.
How can that state have gone from “Florida Man” to “Florida Ubermensch” so quickly?
MattF
Hah. As if… expertise in ‘psychology’ has ever had anything to do with knowledge about sex or gender. Also, there’s a Dr. Freud here who would like a word with the Florida officials. Possibly several words.
Alison Rose
In the post yesterday about the possible Newsom–DeSantis debate, some commenters wondered why on Earth Newsom would want to do this and what the point was. Well, very soon after, I got an email from his PAC with the subject line “I am writing today to explain why I am debating Ron DeSantis and to ask you to rush a $25 contribution to Joe Biden’s campaign for president today”. He must have heard us! Here is the explanation portion of the email:
So. My take on this is: He’s doing this because Biden can’t. Even though it’s screamingly unlikely, it is technically possible that DeSantis would end up as Biden’s opponent, at which time debating him would be expected. But right now, it’s only the primaries, and it would be weird and inappropriate for Biden (or Harris, and I’m glad she slapped the notion down) to debate him on his bullshit. But Newsom isn’t running, and his political career has nothing to do with DeSantis’, at least not right now. (Maybe in 2028.) Also, Newsom can afford to be much more blunt and salty and there wouldn’t be a chance of him paying an immediate political price for it. California has twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans, and I’d bet the vast majority of them would love to see him give DeSantis what for on a debate stage. He’s in a position to counter GOP lies and bullshit with facts, to call out DeSantis’ repugnant policies and statements as forthrightly as he wants to, and he doesn’t have to worry about decorum or niceness. So I see this as Newsom, as part of the reelection team, taking on a task that Biden and Harris can’t, and I appreciate the gumption.
I know some people will still think it’s a dumb idea, and you don’t have to watch it. I also know some people think Newsom won’t come off well, though I personally think that take is incorrect. On a shallow, superficial level, it would be very much a Kennedy vs Nixon thing, in that Newsom is a heck of a lot better looking and that would probably be more evident via TV cameras. But also, he is far more intelligent than people have ever given him credit for throughout his political career. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of facts and names and numbers. Part of this is due to his dyslexia, which means that he has some trouble reading notes and teleprompters, so he does his best to memorize what he wants to say. Yes, he can indeed get long-winded, and he teases himself for that all the time. But he’s a seasoned politician and I have no doubt he would know how to prepare for a scenario like this. He would also come across as infinitely more sane and normal than ol’ Ronnie “groomers-and-throat-slitting” Puddin’ Boots.
It’s not that this would necessarily give some massive boost to Newsom. But if it makes more people see what a mendacious, hateful, ignorant little man DeSantis is, that’s well worth it, IMO.
M31
“zometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but in this case Florida is a sad little droopy flaccid wang”
clay
My daughter was supposed to take AP Psychology this year; it’s already on her schedule! I feel bad for all the administrators who have to scramble to rearrange hundreds of schedules at the literal last minute. (As well as the students who get shorted in their education and teachers who may have their jobs in jeopardy.)
jonas
@Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know much about the Cambridge program, but I agree that there’s virtually no way the IB program will kowtow to Florida’s ridiculous whims, particularly if it means censoring or watering down the content.
patrick II
My fear is that states like Texas, Mississippi, et al will join in and form a big enough economic community to have an educational institution without such high standards write their own version of AP which will be accepted at all conservative states on board.
Woke! seems to be rolling downhill in the Republican party.
Cameron
@patrick II: Fear the Woking Dead.
patrick II
@Alison Rose:
Someone somewhere should add the Republicans on the Supreme Court who struck the biggest blow against freedom when Alito struck down the right to privacy which previously would have disallowed much of what is going on in Florida and other conservative states.
Jay C
@Alison Rose:
Interesting take: and yes, calling out Little Lord Whiteboots’ culture-war rabble-rousing for the half-assed neo-fascism it is can only help. Newsom can probably score a big W (though the “MSM” will probably grossly downplay it) by simply asking DeSantis to define what he means by the term “woke”, which is such a major part of his inane campaign.
MC
I’m going to vote no on Issue 1 in Ohio today. I’m not happy about it, as it feels like we’re just desperately trying to put up what few firewalls we have against all this fascism.
suzanne
@Almost Retired:
My uncle and aunt live there, as does one of my cousins and his wife. They are sick of me asking them about DeSantis and they just want to enjoy life….. but they’re all, like, WTF. I have an invitation to the beach house on the “redneck riviera”, But…. eh. I am specifically looking to vacation away from assholes.
trollhattan
@Alison Rose: Thanks for that.
My sense is over the last couple years, Newsom has tasked himself (likely with urging from Nancy SMASH and others) to be a prominent foot soldier for the DNC and take the fight to the leading fascist governors in their home states, and evidently on national platforms too.
Is there a longer view set of goals? Likely, but he is acting laser-focused on 2024 because for now, it’s not the most important thing, it’s the only thing.
Betty Cracker
@Alison Rose: Thanks for sharing that! Newsom is 100% correct about DeSantis being a fraud and a repressive bully. I’m not familiar enough with Newsom to know how he’ll come across, but DeSantis is deficient in every sense, so I assume a capable Dem will run circles around him.
Your theory about Newsom debating DeSantis because Biden and Harris can’t makes sense, and if he pulls it off well, it won’t hurt his prospects in 2028 either. Also, as a Dem in an authoritarian hellstate, I do find it encouraging when Dems from anywhere stick up for us.
That said, my biggest problem with the debate is that it will be on the fascist propaganda channel and moderated by the cretinous blockhead Hannity — at Newsom’s request, apparently. I don’t see the value of elevating the network or the man as if they’re good-faith actors. But I realize lots of Dems disagree with my view on that point.
Omnes Omnibus
@jonas: There are over 5000 high schools offering the IB diploma. FL has 91 of them.
Anoniminous
@MattF:
It has been thoroughly and firmly proven Freud was a fraud.
Oh, and also – too – ain’t no such thing as an alpha male.
Science. Ruining Everything Since 1543
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: Yup. They’ve been screeching about UNESCO and anything remotely resembling a Multi-Cultural approach to education, since the 50’s.
Billcoop4
I’d be ok for the entire state school system to lose accreditation until the state level policies are changed.
BC
Betty Cracker
@clay: I’m sorry your family is affected. I don’t know what district admins will do if IB and Cambridge also refuse to censor their psych lessons. From reading the TBT article, it sounds like districts are proceeding as if those programs have acquiesced to the censorship, but the same was true of College Board until this week. And school starts soon! What a shit-show.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: We looked into IB programs when our kiddo was in high school, and I agree it would be surprising if they’d knuckle under to this homophobic nonsense.
Amalthea1
@Omnes Omnibus: I went to one of those schools, and proudly graduated with my IB diploma. I agree with both of you, there is no way the IB program (or should I say, programme) will be watered down for a wannabe dictator, for less than 2% of the schools involved. The thought of them acquiescing makes me ill, as does the thought of ultimately losing the curriculum. One more reason to get out of this hellhole.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: At least Hannity’s not that clever a guy, and won’t be as effective at shaping the debate as would be someone like Hew Hewitt.
I’ll probably listen to Hewitt the next morning. He’ll be like, “Now this is how I would have done it.”
hells littlest angel
Florida high school students will be well-prepared for college, provided it’s the new New College.
smith
OT: A little pick-me-up for today. Fani Willis has asked that roads around the courthouse be closed, starting Monday,
Lyrebird
@Alison Rose: From your lips to the Sky Fairy’s ears, esteemed fellow commenter!
Thanks for providing some backstory.
gvg
Papers in my county have parents demanding that the school board do “more” to find ways to evade and defeat Desantis anti LBQT agenda, to find loopholes etc. I am not sure that is realistic, but I guess it’s best we get out and yell to tell them we really don’t want this…I am thinking some creative foot dragging about reporting some things may be possible. In the long run we have to find the votes to get rid of the republican inquisition.
Omnes Omnibus
@Amalthea1: I went to an IB school in WI back in the ’80s. FWIW, I was one of four diploma candidates my years. We were only the second class to be able to get the diploma. Being a part of that made high school interesting and fun.* The school didn’t recommend me for it and, when I indicated that I wanted to be a diploma candidate, they wanted to talk to my parents about whither I should do it. My parents told the school I would work harder and do better if challenged and would lose interest in classes if I was bored. Turns out they knew a bit about me.
*Okay, Cross Country was fun too.
HumboldtBlue
@Cameron:
Greetings fellow travelers.
Jackie
@Alison Rose: He’s doing it to support Biden’s agenda; I’m all for it!
I think Newsom will clean Pudd’n Boots’ clock. And maybe he’ll offer up a chocolate pudding cup sans spoon 😁
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: I doubt Newsom thinks that Hannity is a good faith actor, just someone who can be used for certain purposes. I believe Hannity is back in the Trump camp now, so he may go along with using Newsom to further torpedo DeSantis, e.g., cast DeSantis as a cuck who gets dominated by the liberal king of California. Hannity will simultaneously cast himself as a third party who can hold his own with Newsom and thus improve his standing among the howler monkeys like Jesse Watters in the primetime Fox lineup. It might be interesting how the optics are set up for such a debate, e.g., will Fox pick camera angles that accentuate the height difference between the lanky 6’3″ Newsom and the pudgy munchkin from Florida.
Lyrebird
@clay: I feel rotten for all the kids and familys caught up in this mess. Seems that I have more concern for them than the state’s guv, but more to the point:
If your daughter’s class ends up getting de-listed as an AP course, I know that lots of colleges will also let you place out of Intro Psych with an exam.
Also, there are free college-level intro psych textbooks out there, uncensored. Can google Lumen Learning, OpenStax, NobaProject. If the censors start going after parents, blame me, I am out of state!
ETA: in case it wasn’t obvious, those kids and families at the center of the big target are ABSOLUTELY some of who I feel rotten for!
gvg
@Billcoop4: I wouldn’t. the kids didn’t do this and it would hurt them not the Vicious creeps who enacted the policy and who would probably LIKE to keep these kids from leaving home and being happy and successful. Ever heard of crab bucket?
No, what we should be looking at is lawsuits for damages and charges against the people who caused these laws. I would look for graft and personal gain. They are all crooked. Find out how they got money out of it. Find out what scandals they are covering up. Put them in jail (for actual provable crimes) Teach them not to mess with our kids education.
Scout211
@Alison Rose: Seconded. To everything you wrote. 😊
RedDirtGirl
@Hoodie: From the folks at Electoral Vote:
“Even though Newsom has to go into the enemy’s lair, as it were, we think this is a pretty brilliant move by him. If he botches things, he’ll have 3-4 years to put that in the rearview mirror. And if he hits a home run, or even a solid double, he’ll be able to introduce himself to a national audience, and to cause some of them to make a mental note that he’s someone to watch.
As to DeSantis, he’s making the right call, too, because desperate times call for desperate measures. However, the tête-à-tête is much more fraught for him. To start, you normally only want to debate if you’re more telegenic than your opponent. At this point, we’ve seen many hours of DeSantis footage and many hours of Newsom footage, and the Californian leaves Mr. Squeaky Voice in the dust. Even a bunch of softball questions from Hannity may not be able to overcome that. Meanwhile, even if DeSantis manages to “own” Newsom, it’s hard to see how that will convince Republican voters that he is superior to Trump. And if DeSantis gets smoked, then that could be a fatal blow to his presidential chances.”
Geminid
@Hoodie: Newsom probably will look at tape from the debate DeSantis had with Charlie Crist. I read that Crist was able to score, especially when he tried to pin DeSantis down about a presidential run. Newsome might find a good line of attack there. He has several others, but that one might be worth a jab or two, and ties in nicely with all the Florida problems he’ll try to pin on El Caudildo.
HumboldtBlue
@Alison Rose:
As it was stated in that thread, no one will give a damn next July. And I wonder just how many people will actually tune in. You’re not gonna have liberals wasting an hour watching Fox obfuscate, lie and dissemble to help DeSantis, and you ain’t convincing the people who watch Fox that Newsom is anything other than a commie-liberal-transmarxist-fascist in a state that barely exists because all the cities are on fire and the gays just sing and dance around the flames (gay folks live such active and interesting lives in Cali, it seems) while residents flee to Texas in their thousands.
laura
@Betty Cracker: I had to sit and ponder why Governor Newsom agreed to “debate” your Governor on fox news- and came to a similar conclusion as Alison Rose and Trollhattan- he’s doing it in service of the party in the 2024 election. So if he wants to take his future electoral ambitions to the fox audience; along with his giant set of brass balls and level a beat down on this horrifying and ridiculous bully I’m down with that. Vice President Harris already roughed him up in his home state, so pile on until he’s a laughingstock/skidmark.
Roger Moore
@hells littlest angel:
I think this is, if not the end game, then at least an important stepping stone. They’ll come up with their own educational standards and then force the state controlled universities in their states to accept them. The goal is to have a whole parallel educational system under their control. The problem they’re going to run into is that employers are going to discount degrees from their system relative to ones in the standard system.
Amalthea1
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s awesome! I’ll admit, I did not go into the program willingly. My 8th-grade English teacher sent the application directly to my parents because she thought I was a strong candidate. At the time there was only one high school IB program in the county (this was the early 1990s), with 125 students accepted. I went along with it because I was a moody 13-year-old and I was tired of being a smart kid and an outcast, and I hoped I’d be rejected so that would somehow prove to everyone that I wasn’t as smart as they insisted I was. Imagine my chagrin when I got accepted! I went in determined to flunk out but then eventually admitted that I relished the challenge. Now I can’t picture my life without having gone through the program; it was so hard and even brutal at times but I truly feel it set me up with so many critical-thinking skills and educational experiences that I otherwise would have missed out on.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@HumboldtBlue: Maybe the Newsom people can use the clips in ads, though? I don’t know.
H.E.Wolf
Thank you for helping to put up a firewall against fascism!
My dad used to live in a country where the walls fell, so I grew up keenly aware of the value of individual citizens doing their part to keep those walls in place.
That onetime 7-year-old who had to say goodbye to his home and his favorite toys (no room in their luggage) would thank you too….
Subsole
@Geminid:
Upfist for el Caudildo.
Tony G
The inevitable cancellation of AP courses that will result from this ham-handed nonsense will cost extra money for parents once Billy and Betsy get to college. I’m pretty sure that even the most apolitical parents will notice this and will be a little bit peeved at Meatball Ron as a result.
Scout211
That may be true but the media will be watching and there is a very high potential for sound bites, tweets (Xs?) and embarrassing memes that could potentially be damaging to DeSantis in his election campaign. The public might not be watching, but the sound bites and memes could have staying power. Like Dark Brandon.
It won’t be same for Newsom because he isn’t running for national office right now.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I REALLY wish it was not gonna be Hannity. Maybe whatshisface…Bret Baier? He’s semi-normal, right?
Subsole
@Roger Moore:
Also a bonus. Got to get a nice stock of serfs built up fast, somehow.
Alison Rose
@Jackie: LOLOL!!!
mrmoshpotato
🎶Slap the Floriduh DOE! Slap ’em good!🎶
Betty Cracker
@gvg: Amen to your comments — parents and citizens have to get involved, and maybe now that more are seeing the effect on their children’s education, those who’ve been on the sidelines will wake the hell up. My sense is most Floridians aren’t in favor of this rancid right-wing garbage, but they have to show up.
I also agree it’s important to pursue all legal avenues. Many lawsuits are ongoing, and since we know these sleazebags always set it up so they personally benefit, looking at the corruption angle is also important. But like you said, voting is the ultimate remedy.
JWR
Listened to this morning’s news and they played TFG’s latest statement. What stood out for me was when he said, “this was never supposed to happen in America”, and I thought hey, that’s it! He thinks it’s a law or something! In fact, I can hear Seth Meyers “Rudy” voice saying “no, don’t worry, Boss, it’s never happened before, so we’re good.”
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I read somewhere that Fox is probably salivating over the clips they think they’ll be able turn into anti-Biden/Newsom attack ads. Who knows? But I trust my Governor. He’ll do well.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
This could snowball in a bad way. Florida politicians might pressure employers into accepting employees with the crappy state credentials.
Betty Cracker
@Alison Rose: I assume Newsom specified Hannity because Hannity is dumber than a sack of drill bits. I still don’t think Dems should appear on Fox News, but if you’re going to do it, maybe having a drooling idiot for a “moderator” is a plus, I dunno.
Kay
@MC:
Great! I feel good about this. Do I sound desperate? I am desperate. I got a handwritten voter postcard today- maybe from a BJ person. Good omen.
Ruckus
@Omnes Omnibus:
How can they be better if everyone actually learns anything?
Or
How can the world revolve backwards if everyone refuses to stick their heads where the sun don’t shine?
FastEdD
Gov Gav already was interviewed by Hannity on Faux and made mincemeat out of him. My favorite comeback was when Hannity spewed a gusher of falsehoods about California in a Gish Gallop, Newsom replied, “Stop. If you would like a list, let’s go through them one at a time.” Then he took the host’s “logic” about bashing Biden for supply chain problems (due to COVID) and pointed out that he can’t ignore tRump’s miserable COVID economic performance. He is so good at understanding framing, rejecting lame logic, and coming up with facts and statistics instantly it should be no contest.
Getting out way over my skis, I’m not sure he’s as hell bent on running for President as others. He has always had a “non-compete” agreement with VP Harris, and he has been a team player all those years as a Gov Lite.
MattF
@Alison Rose: You’re not going to get anyone ‘normal’ from Fox News. Choices are very constrained. Hannity is a long-term Trump fan, so he probably won’t slobber excessively over DeSantis.
Anonymous At Work
@Omnes Omnibus: I took IB throughout High School (Being an IB Scholar used to let you skip freshman year at certain universities!) and almost all my exams were graded internationally. I cannot believe that the lower-level, much less higher-level IB exams would remove gender and sexuality content on behalf of 1/50th of a single member.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: LOL true! Also, he knows Hannity’s game and how he’ll frame the questions, so he’ll be prepared to shoot back.
Ruckus
@Almost Retired:
It is a group of creatures who think that if the world believes the same crap as them – that they are the golden children and every one else is shit then the world makes sense. It is the only way they have any control or power because they do not believe in reality, because that reality says they are shit, and that can’t possibly be correct.
JWR
Speaking of television appearances, (from NBC)
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
That’s a sack of DULL drill bits….. IOW useless
Betty Cracker
One thing I probably should have noted in the original post: the TBT article says the material in the AP course that right-wing Florida whackos are screeching about is 30 years old! DeSantis might have taken an AP psych course in his Florida high school and learned about the existence of LGBTQ people. Didn’t turn him all wokey! The whole thing is in equal measures depressing and stupid.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anonymous At Work:
I am a bit of an evangelist for the program.
cope
@Betty Cracker: I taught at an IB high school in Florida and I can pretty much back you up on how IB curricula are created, presented and evaluated with a degree of rigor that would never allow them to censor their course materials to accommodate a specific political worldview.
Matt McIrvin
The classroom health unit in my high-school PE class used a textbook that, I was surprised to discover, included a completely non-judgmental discussion of homosexuality, though it didn’t actually come up in the class. That was in northern Virginia in the 1980s.
Matt McIrvin
@JWR: Republicans are really outraged that it’s even legal to convict a former Republican President of a crime–regardless of whether he did them or not, they clearly believe he should be able to commit crimes and get away with it, and treat it as if it were some kind of bedrock constitutional principle. Of course they wouldn’t do that for any Democrat.
sdhays
@Geminid: Didn’t Newsome go on Hannity a month or two ago and effortlessly hold his own? I fully expect the Ron Nastybot 2000 to blow a circuit 10 minutes into the “debate”. He’ll probably do a Mitch McConnell impression and need to cut to commercial for the maintenance staff to reattach his “woke wires”.
Brachiator
@JWR:
What he means is “This was never supposed to happen to me.”
Jay
@Brachiator:
It would only work on Floriduh! Employers,
So the Red Dead States would have to coordinate on both Post Secondary education substandards, and some kind of “legal” pressure on Employers.
Which of course would result in Red State employers, staffed by the stupid and the ignorant, having to compete against Blue State employers with competent staff.
They you have to create subsidies, trade compacts, price fixing, etc, to prevent Red State Employers with their substandard products and services from going bankrupt, or punitive measures to keep them from relocating.
The natural end result is that in California you get an IPhone 69X and in Floriduh! you get a My Pillow branded can and a bit of string.
MattF
@Brachiator: I think TFG has gone off the deep end. His comments about being surrounded by ‘filth’ in DC that has taken over since he left office are just weird.
JWR
@Brachiator: It’s always about him Him HIM, ain’t it? Such a sad old man.
Dan B
@Geminid: El Cauldildo, indeed!
Dan B
@Betty Cracker: All Hannity has going for him is macho bully. It’s grotesque. El Cauldildo (DeSantis) tries to be but can’t pull it off so he resorts to cruelty. The end result is he comes across as overcompensating.
NotMax
@MattF
(With apologies to Sondheim and Bernstein.)
What a day, what a day, for an auto-da-bray.
Citizen Alan
@Amalthea1: On of the things I’ve always been slightly bitter about is that my old high school finally started offering AP classes literally the year after I graduated.
noncarborundum
@Ruckus: When I was in college I worked on the campus radio station, which had to apply to the Student Activity Committee every year for funding. One year a member of the committee drew attention to a line item for replacement of broken drill bits, and asked if we couldn’t save money by soldering the old ones back together. So maybe “dumber than a sack of soldered-together drill bits.”
H.E.Wolf
I wrote 150. If you have 2 colors of ink on your postcard, we can pretend it’s from me!
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator: Ignorant morons trying to turn everyone else into ignorant morons so they’ll feel better about themselves. It’s like the entire nation is ruled by the same dumb fucker who would slam me into a locker in 6th grade because “reading is for fags.”
Ruckus
@Almost Retired:
But all these DeSantis crusades harm virtually everyone
That is exactly the point of all of them. SFB jr wants to be the top of his class and to do that he has to lower everyone else on the planet below him, because he sure isn’t going to rise to the occasion. People like him are unwilling, unable, uneverything. They are incapable of living in a 21st century existence because their heads are located where it’s dark, smelly and which makes it impossible to see anything ahead of them which isn’t upside down. UTA, which makes it impossible to lead anything approaching a normal life. If they were smarter they’d pull their heads out of the exit chute, take a week long hot shower using a lot of bars of lye soap, actually think of why they stuffed their heads where the sun don’t shine in the first place, apologize to the world for being such a dumbshit, and never utter another word publicly. I wouldn’t attempt to hold my breath waiting for them to realize any of this.
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
I agree with this take.
There really are few who could take on deathsanta and be the person that Newsom can be when necessary. He’s the head of the most populous state, is reasonably respected as governor, which this opposition is not even close to and he really doesn’t pull punches. He’s a politician, not someone ascending to a throne that doesn’t exist and he knows how to land a punch with his mouth.
Anonymous At Work
@Omnes Omnibus: It was tough, especially since I had previously driven the French teacher to the brink. My accent made her take up booze and smoking and she was a Mormon.
Kent
@Omnes Omnibus: The IB program is administered out of Geneva and its boards are full of people from places like Oxford and Cambridge.
The chances that they are going to cower and try to appease a petty tyrant like DeSantis are less than zero.
They will gleefully make him look the fool.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: I am aware. Hence my comment.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
But I realize lots of Dems disagree with my view on that point.
The only way to neutralize loudmouths who shout nothings is to take them on, on their own field. Anything else is ineffective to the point and to the actual audience, which in this case isn’t us. This is political warfare and you don’t invite the enemy to your town, you go to their’s and tear it down, make them start over, for which you give them the plans.
Kent
Teacher here. More importantly, it will make Florida students less competitive when applying to competitive universities in other states. The way that the Common App works is that they don’t take your transcript and GPA that your school gave you. They record every class you took in HS separately allowing with designations like AP or Honors. That way every college can come up with its own proprietary formula for weighting transcripts from different high schools and different states. If a CA student has an application that lists 10 AP classes and a Florida student has one that only lists 8 AP classes the Florida student could very well lose out at highly competitive schools on some internal rating formula that the college uses to sort applicants.
Ruckus
@JWR:
It’s OK that he’s a sad old man, he was the same sad young man. He knows what he knew as a 12 yr old, which is why he acts like a 12 yr old in an oversized parody of a human being.
Ruckus
@noncarborundum:
That was one absolutely dumb human, IQ below 80.
An example of why autonomic breathing is required of animals, many/possibly most of them wouldn’t last one entire day otherwise.
Brachiator
@Citizen Alan:
Coming back late to the thread. Good point. These people claiming to be against woke or wanting to defend some phoney sense of tradition really want to enshrine ignorance and brutish authority.
Also, really sympathize with what you dealt with as a kid. I have always detested bullies. I was lucky that I was never picked on. And the teachers didn’t tolerate this stuff and generally tried to be helpful and supportive.
Ruckus
@Jay:
The natural end result is that in California you get an IPhone 69X and in Floriduh! you get a My Pillow branded can and a bit of string.
I’d bet you have to purchase the can and string for the same $ as the iPhone 69X…..
Kay
@H.E.Wolf:
I also got a call from a volunteer for the Ohio Democrats today. Mary. Youngstown accent (like Pittsburgh). She was very nervous and I was trying to save her time so I blurted out that I already voted NO and threw her completely off script so we both had to apologize and talk over one another :)
Betty Cracker
@Ruckus: Sounds like a great Conan reboot, but the people watching Fox News aren’t gettable voters nor are they capable of admitting or even recognizing that they’ve been owned by a lib. Fox News will edit clips of DeSantis braying about protecting preschools from drag queens or some such nonsense and triumphantly play it on every program. They’re a Repub propaganda network. That’s what they do.
Gretchen
@Kay: I wrote postcards to Ohio so maybe you got one of mine!
SteveinPHX
@Alison Rose: I like your argument. Newsome does not gamble a huge amount and he has a chance to eviscerate that “throat slitter” on live television.
Ruckus
@MattF:
The filth ShitForBrains complains about has 2 legs, bodies and brains.
MattF
@Ruckus: Fair point.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Oh don’t get me wrong, I agree with you 100%.
But the point was what does it take to make things reasonable again, in places that have gone bug fuck insane.
The work is exactly the same, but the result is that you get to rescue a small percentage of the lost, not the entirety. You will never get everyone, and fortunately you don’t have to get everyone. Just enough to have a reasonable, rational, actual political system. Think of it as making the perfect boat. Where you live it’s an airboat because of the reality of the waterways. In Holland living on the waterways is entirely different. And a canal boat is not an airboat. Believe me I’ve seen both, completely different experiences, both with only the water as the common part.
Marigold
@Gretchen: Ooh, I got one from Postcards to Voters a couple weeks ago! I don’t think it was you, but wouldn’t it be fun if it was from a jackal?
Shout out to Christine, who wrote in 4– no, 5 if you count the address!–ink colors and postmarked in early July! It’s still on my fridge!
Geminid
@Ruckus: I keep hoping that electric airboats will displace those loud gas powered ones, but it hasn’t happened yet. Plenty of model-sized electric airboats, but the full-sized ones have yet to get traction.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I’d consider one if they were available. I’ve seen prototypes and hobbyists builds on YouTube but none for sale.
Yutsano
Here is where this will really suck for the students from Florida. If they try to apply to an out of state school like say in California, the college will take one look at their transcripts and say nope. And when that starts happening a lot including transfers, we’ll see how much the War on Woke lasts.
louc
The news about AP Psychology only gets better. It sounds as though the Fla ED blinked, judging from the letter than just came out. Also, some Fla school districts announced they’re offering AP Psych with no changes.
Misterpuff
Like some sort of confederacy or something?
Misterpuff
@Betty Cracker: Because Newsom wants the eyeballs of the Fox viewers, who would active watching on any other channel. Its going into the lion’s den, and DeSantis is going to get bearded and pantsed!
RaflW
@Roger Moore: “The goal is to have a whole parallel educational system under their control. The problem they’re going to run into is that employers are going to discount degrees from their system relative to ones in the standard system.”
One issue is that alums of some of the upper tier FL schools are already sending this. They’re worried that their own degrees, conferred before the current right wing pruning out of facts and history, will be diminished.
Will they try to throw their donor weight around proactively to try to stop it? Or, as at New College, pull promised funds as a ‘see how it is without us’ dare?