About the Secretary of Ed

@susanoha

If retired neurosurgeon Carson becomes Sec of Ed, as teacher & author of 25 ed books, I'll insist on right to perform brain surgery on Trump

Trump Defends on Fraud Charges Before Inauguration

Source here:

In less than three weeks, the class-action lawsuit against Donald Trump and his defunct Trump University is set to go to trial in a downtown San Diego courtroom.

That likely won’t change, even with Trump’s presidential win on election night, legal experts say. However, it could alter how personally involved Trump will be in the federal trial, in which he must defend accusations he misled and defrauded students who enrolled in his real estate academy.

Attorneys for both sides are scheduled to be in court Thursday afternoon to make final preparations for jury selection on Nov. 28. But the election results and their potential effect on the case will likely dominate the courtroom discussion and draw a large media presence.

Trump’s attorneys did not return phone calls and emails seeking comment Wednesday, and lawyers for the students declined to discuss the case. . . .

Remember Michelle's Arms? A Study in Hypocrisy?

You may recall back in 2009 when Michelle Obama was attacked by evangelicals and the Christian Right for shamelessly exposing her arms in a sleeveless dress.  Scandalous:

We must now ask what the reaction will be at the 700 Club and the Church of Trump to our new First Lady's photos from her former working days (story from the New York Post:

After Helping Trump Win, Will Weingarten and Eskelsen-Garcia Now Step Down?

From a solid article from In These Times:

. . . .What makes union leaders' actions so astounding is that they rejected a stalwart champion [Bernie Sanders] of their agenda who raged against the billionaire class, walked picket lines with workers and spoke obsessively about widening inequality. Instead, they opted for a millionaire former Walmart board member with a checkered past on labor issues whose campaign refused to endorse a $15 minimum wage and couldn’t even muster a tweet in favor of low-wage workers.

Some union leaders’ sins are greater than others’. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), has long been engaged in what education scholar Lois Weiner has called a "public love fest" for the Clintons. As I noted recently, the AFT has given the Clinton Foundation somewhere between $1 million and $5 million under Weingarten for reasons that remain unclear. Her name was floated in some labor circles as a potential Clinton cabinet member.

In July 2015, AFT was the first national union to endorse Clinton—much earlier than the AFT had endorsed candidates in the past and likely over the objections of large numbers of its members who backed Sanders. From emails released by WikiLeaks, we know that Weingarten promised to act as an attack dog for Clinton against another union that had endorsed Sanders in the primary. . . .

The National Popular Vote Compact (NPVC)

Five times in American history the presidential candidate who received the most citizen votes for President did not become President.  Two of those five undemocratic and incomprehensible incidents occurred in 2000 and in 2016 (Bush II and Trump).

The winner-take-all Electoral College system was not the original intent of the Founders, and it wasn't until 1880 that 48 states passed similar legislation in their state legislatures to make it so.  That same state-by-state process can be used to alter the Electoral College to make the popular vote the deciding factor in presidential elections.

Take a couple of minutes to watch this video, and find out if your state is one of the 12 states that has changed its electoral systems to make the popular vote paramount when a majority of states join in the process.  If your state is not on the list, get busy lobbying your state legislature to re-establish Constitutional intent.

Get Ready for a Trump Policy Blitzkrieg

Because Trump knows that he lost the citizen vote and that he will likely lose the Senate and maybe the House in 2018, every non-fascist should be ready for a policy blitzkrieg during the first two years of Trump's term to consolidate authoritarian rule, quash diversity, and destroy any plans for planetary sustainability. Trump will seek to placate his bases of support with crumbs and to further enrage and isolate them against the majority.

The coming onslaught will require unblinking courage, massive resistance, and civil disobedience within and outside every democratic institution and association here and around the world.  What Trump can't control, he will try to eradicate.  Be ready.  Organize.  Know that confrontation is inevitable. Courage.

The FB post below is by Ira David Socol, educator, former NYC cop, and all-round good guy:

For those who want me (us) to "get over it," allow me to explain. 
I could not call myself an educator if I accepted this man as President without protest. We, who work in schools, have a sacred trust to support, to love, every child in our care. And it is our job to promote the values by which society operates. If I do not protest how could I ever say I'm against bullying, or humiliation, or physical violence?  

I could not call myselt a husband if I accepted this man as President without protest. Or a brother. Or a son. Or a colleague. Or a friend. I would never tolerate anyone treating a woman the way he has. And listen, I've spent my share of time in locker rooms, I've heard lots of s***, but I've never heard anything like admissions of sexual assault. If I had, I would have called the police.  

I could not call myself a parent if I accepted this man as President without protest. Our son is a grown man who, I'm proud to say, has stood up to bullies all his life and who has tried to protect the vulnerable. I hope that is what I modelled for him, that is, after all, essentially the oath I took with the NYPD long ago. And this is no time to disappoint him by not standing up now.  

I could not call myself a person of faith if I accepted this man as President without protest. The religions that I understand demand that we reject the kind of leadership Trump has shown. Whether you say you are a Jewish, a Catholic, a Christian, a Muslim, a Hindu, whatever, your articles of faith explicitly tell you to reject this man.   

And lastly, I could not call myself an American if I accepted this man as President without protest. I have watched him demean people for a year, the poor, the African American, the Latino, the disabled, the Jewish, the Muslim, and all women. And over the last two days I have seen the fruits, and it is already a nightmare. That is not American. That is not the nation that liberated the world in WWII.   

That is not the nation that freed the South and Midwest from poverty in FDR's time, and that saved Appalachia in LBJ's time. That's not the nation where New York and California paid for the New Deal and the Great Society. That's not the nation that rushes aid around the globe, or around the nation wherever disaster strikes. That's not the nation of the Roosevelts, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, or even Ronald Reagan. That's not my nation.  

So we will protest, and block, and disrupt, and of course filibuster - blocking this President as Republicans have blocked Obama. And we will sue and argue and boycott. Because people with no thought for others, with no charity, and no Christianity have unleashed an evil into the world, and we owe it to the future not to let America today look like Germany Italy and Spain in the mid 1930s.  

So if you tell me to get over it, I'll unfriend you for now because it's clear we live in different moral universes. And I'm sorry about that, but this is essential to me, and my energy must be used to protect people from those who voted for Donald Trump. I can't waste it arguing with people who have abandoned decency.

Glenn Greenwald's Takedown of "Data Journalism" Fakery

Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

Trump’s Victory: What American Federation of Teachers President Weingarten should say

Professor Lois Weiner dismantles Randi Weingarten’s calamitous and undemocratic decisions to back a severely flawed candidate. Decisions that, in turn, led to Trump’s victory. This brilliant essay is a must read.

Trump’s Victory: What American Federation of Teachers President Weingarten should say

Donald's First Bad Day