Teaching history

 

CRT, History, and uh... I can't remember

 

Gadgets, Gaza, and Good Grief, Oklahoma!

Masai rebel woman fighting for women's rights.

How bad it actually is in Gaza.

Gadgets that are listening to you, a little too well.

It's snowing on the east coast.  That's that white stuff you see in the pictures.  And an explanation on why it is so cold.

Women's reproductive rights the worst it has ever been since Roe v Wade.

Robert Reich: This Very Bad Deal Will Make Wall Street Richer and Bust the Rest of America The truth about the Trans Pacific Partnership.

Oklahoma decides it doesn't like history unless it lies.

What religious fanaticism will do to women's rights if carried to the logical end.  And Men's Rights activist isn't any better.  And what 50 shades of crap does to relationships. Update:  and more.

Jeb Bush is using the same people that Georgie did for foreign policy.  Remember, Jeb was an original signer of the PNAC.  I'd like to see him explain that away.

A star hit and run with our solar system 70,000 years ago.

Our presidents.

5 Reasons The Founding Fathers Were Kind Of Dicks

History is not always what you think it should be...

Rush tries to defend St. Ronnie

And mangles it badly...

STARK: Why is Reagan a hero to conservatives?

RUSH: “Why is Reagan a hero to conservatives?” I don’t think you… Given what you’ve said, and I’m not trying to avoid the question, I don’t think you’d ever understand it.

STARK: Well, he’s a tax raiser, an amnesty giver, a cut-and-runner, and he negotiated with terrorists. Why is he a hero to conservatives? I don’t think you understand it.

RUSH: No, I do. Most assuredly I do. I just don’t think that you would understand it. Where did you get this silly notion that Reagan raised taxes on Social Security? What websites do you read? Where did you pick that up?

STARK: Look up the Greenspan Commission. It’s not too hard to find. I mean, it’s a matter of history.

Maybe conservatives love Reagan because he was the very best they could ever deliver, an Alzheimer's patient in the White House who allowed the inmates to party in the trough of taxpayers money....

and why they longingly search for another in Hollywood. They just need a handsome kindly face and avuncular voice, they'll supply the brains.

Edit* ... they'll supply the [LACK OF] brains...

Remembering St. Ronnie...

In all his glory.

Here.

And here.

I wonder if history books will list these 'accomplishments'....

Tag, you're it!

From Thom Hartmann's "Rebooting the American Dream,"

The Biggest Lesson of History

As challenging as the task may seem, we’re facing nothing compared with what the Founders took on; and Franklin Roosevelt famously told us that while great wealth may hate him, “I welcome their hatred.” Presidents can lead on behalf of the people, but only when the people demand that they do so.

That’s the biggest lesson of history. It took the excesses of the Tea Act of 1773—cutting to virtually nothing the taxes the East India Company paid on tea so that it could destroy its small colonial competitors—to provoke the colonists to commit the act of anti-corporate vandalism known as the Boston Tea Party.

It took the excesses of the robber barons to provoke Teddy Roosevelt to challenge them. It took the nationwide economic destruction of the Republican Great Depression to motivate the people enough to support and encourage Franklin D. Roosevelt to institute—over three (and a fraction) presidential terms—the New Deal.

Our economy is in tatters, the result of more than 30 years of Reaganomics and Clintonomics. Our democracy is hanging by a thread, the result of 40 years of radical Supreme Court decisions steadily advancing the powers of corporations and suppressing the rights of individuals and their government. And our environment is trembling under the combined assault of the Industrial Revolution and nearly 7 billion bundles of human flesh.

It’s the perfect time. We are clearly at a nexus, a threshold, a tipping point. If the past is any indicator, things will get worse before they get better, but in that tragedy will be both the catalyst and the seeds for a very positive future.

Now is the most important time for us all to be paying attention, to show up, and to wake up our friends, family, and neighbors. Because this nation is on the edge of a radical restart, a reboot.

Tag, you’re it.

The Teabaggers think the eighteenth century

Was a really good time to live:

Tea Party Nation President Says It ‘Makes A Lot Of Sense’ To Restrict Voting Only To Property Owners

Phillips is advocating a policy of voter disenfranchisement that has its roots in the 18th century. When the United States was first founded, ownership of property was one of the requirements to vote in most elections. Many of these restrictions were phased out by the 1820s and replaced with requirements that the voter pays taxes. By 1850, these requirements, too, were phased out. Nashville Scene blogger Betsy Phillips calls the Tea Party Nation president’s idea a “frivolous proposal designed to stoke intergenerational antagonism — as if the people who are older and can afford a home are somehow better citizens than the 18-year-olds who are going off to war to die for our country.”

If cats reported the news...

It's Saturday! Do you know where your cat is?

CHICAGO – No one knows how a tabby cat named Charles traveled the 1,300 miles from his New Mexico home to Chicago, but he's set for a complimentary flight home on American Airlines in a carrier donated by an Albuquerque business.

Charles disappeared about eight months ago while his owner was out of town and a friend was caring for him.

Report from Texas, Muffin.

Today, the Texas State Board of Education released amendments to the state's social studies curriculum that essentially rewrite history to comport with the personal ideological and religious beliefs of some members of the board. As explained below, the proposed amendments depart drastically from accepted historical accounts. Indeed, as the New York Times Magazine has reported, they are so disturbing that at least one member on the board vehemently exclaimed, "burst[ing] out in seemingly embarrassed exasperation": "Guys, you're rewriting history now!"

If the changes are implemented as proposed, it could affect the education of students from kindergarten to 12th grade across the country for the next 10 years: because Texas is one of the largest purchasers of textbooks nationwide, the changes the board makes to its standards often end up in textbooks purchased by other schools districts around the country.

Over to you, Whiskers.

Democrats don't want to deviate far from the Dodd draft, and they love the politics of putting Republicans and Wall Street on the same side of a battle line. They hope the optics there will be so bad, that Republicans will ultimately be shamed into caving. But ultimately Dems need 60 votes simply to debate the bill, and if the Republicans stick together in the face of a likely political backlash, there won't be a bill. And nobody knows dedication like the Senate GOP.

A lot of feathers will be flying, to be sure. To Spot for the weather:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Global temperatures fueled by El Nino seasonal warming last month chalked up the hottest March on record, US weather monitors reported.
"Warmer-than-normal conditions dominated the globe, especially in northern Africa, South Asia and Canada," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement on Thursday.
Combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for March 2010 was the warmest on record at 13.5 degrees Celsius (56.3 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.77 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average of 12.7 C, it said.

Stop being so theatrical, Spot. Our science report from Midnight:

LONDON – A lingering volcanic ash plume forced extended no-fly restrictions over much of Europe on Saturday, as Icelandic scientists warned that volcanic activity had increased and showed no sign of abating — a portent of more travel chaos to come.

Scientists say that because the volcano is situated below a glacial ice cap, the magma is being cooled quickly, causing explosions and plumes of grit that can be catastrophic to plane engines if prevailing winds are right.

And more from the Onion:

PASADENA, CA–A team of cold-hearted, killjoy scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory callously announced Monday that the likelihood of complex life on Mars is "extraordinarily low," dashing the hopes of the public just like that.

Cats are secretly unmoved by this announcement....

Could this be reverse psychology?

Texas history textbooks telling high schoolers they are to ignore Thomas Jefferson and pay attention to that tight-assed, thin-lipped, anti-masturbation, religious extremist Calvin? Guess who they'll be looking up on Wikipedia?

Dusty Crickets in comments found this horrifically prudish statement by our good ol' Calvin:

"I will content myself with briefly mentioning this, as far as the sense of shame allows to discuss it. It is a horrible thing to pour out seed besides the intercourse of man and woman. Deliberately avoiding the intercourse, so that the seed drops on the ground, is doubly horrible. For this means that one quenches the hope of his family, and kills the son, which could be expected, before he is born. This wickedness is now as severely as is possible condemned by the Spirit, through Moses, that Onan, as it were, through a violent and untimely birth, tore away the seed of his brother out the womb, and as cruel as shamefully was thrown on the earth. Moreover he thus has, as much as was in his power, tried to destroy a part of the human race. When a woman in some way drives away the seed out the womb, through aids, then this is rightly seen as an unforgivable crime. Onan was guilty of a similar crime, by defiling the earth with his seed, so that Tamar would not receive a future inheritor."

The only reason we'd need to pay attention to this rigid religious extremist is to remind ourselves just how far we've progressed since his time. Thanks in part to Thomas Jefferson.

Update: Have to back off a bit from my slander of John Calvin. Just a bit. He was deeply religious yet stood up against the even more rigid church structure of his time. I'm now researching Calvinism, the Enlightenment and the break-up of the Catholic political power structure.....

So now we just don't buy any textbooks from Texas?

What on earth do they think they're accomplishing? Rewriting history? ... Don't answer that.

Conservative Bloc Prevails In Latest TX Textbooks Standards Vote

Another vote, another win for the conservative majority on Texas' State Board of Education.

The 11-4 vote today on the latest draft of Texas' high school history standards comes as the story has blown up, attracting intense media coverage from national outlets including the New York Times and Fox News, which reported live from Austin all week.

"In all honesty, it was a debacle for public education," says Dan Quinn of the Texas Freedom Network, a liberal watchdog that tracks the board.

Getting rid of education

And introducing stupidity:

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction declares that students should be expected "to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority," according to the Dallas Morning News.

A six-member panel was set up by the Republican-dominated Texas Board of Education to advise teams of teachers, academics and community representatives to rewrite the standards for social studies textbooks and curricula.

Elizabeth Cotten

Mama, Your Poppa Loves You