Fascist Censorship Group Runs into Parent Buzzsaw in Chattanooga

 From Raw Story:

Watch three minutes of parent testimony at Hamilton Co. School Board Meeting:

https://www.rawstory.com/moms-for-liberty-2660238007/

Carolyn Mickey, a school librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School in the Chattanooga, Tennessee area, was shocked when a far-right group targeted her over a Mother's Day lesson that they claimed was "Leninist" indoctrination and an attack on Western civilization.

The lesson, designed to be inclusive to kids with nontraditional families, included two books: "Stella Brings the Family" about a girl with two dads, and "Mother Bruce," about a male bear who adopts a brood of goslings who call him their mother. Mickey even notified parents beforehand and allowed them to opt out, but that wasn't good enough for Moms for Liberty, who successfully pressured the school to cancel the lesson.

But according to footage obtained by the progressive group The Tennessee Holler, parents in the area were having none of it, and slammed the school board for caving to fringe anti-LGBTQ extremists.

The lesson, designed to be inclusive to kids with nontraditional families, included two books: "Stella Brings the Family" about a girl with two dads, and "Mother Bruce," about a male bear who adopts a brood of goslings who call him their mother. Mickey even notified parents beforehand and allowed them to opt out, but that wasn't good enough for Moms for Liberty, who successfully pressured the school to cancel the lesson.

But according to footage obtained by the progressive group The Tennessee Holler, parents in the area were having none of it, and slammed the school board for caving to fringe anti-LGBTQ extremists.

"My kids' librarian has been vilified," said one woman. "I knew there would be pushback from a few loud bullies, but I'm enraged that the administration sided with them. A majority of families have been denied an important lesson in our increasingly diversified world, and a platform was given to a group of fearmongering extremists ... they're the only ones that brought sex into it."

One man said of Moms for Liberty, "I've never seen them there shoveling mulch, putting up swingsets, hanging door frames. We're here in the trenches, we're with these children. I'm a Christian man married to a woman, but I think everybody should be represented fairly ... If you want to raise your kids in a closet and just shelter them from everybody, homeschool them, send them to Christian school. This is a public school for everybody."

"Instead of backing Mrs. Mickey up, you let the bullies win,” said another woman. "When you let the bullies win, they're going to keep bullying."

 

Jeb Bush and Reed Hastings' New TN Commissioner of Education

Though Gov. Bill Lee knows much more about welding and breeding cows than he does about governance, education, health care, etc., he has a coonhound's keen sense for picking up and following political money trails.  And having been seriously stung during his recent nosing around the "Christian" nationalists' hornet's nest at Hillsdale College, Lee is once again back on the main track to the money tree.  Having found that the MAGA trail ended at the edge of the cliff, it's obvious that Lee hopes to find a new big-dog enclosure to call home once this particular money hunt is concluded.

It's not surprising to see Bill Lee's that new Education Commissioner, Lizzette Gonzalez Reynolds, was most recently serving as a VP on the Board of ExcelinEd, a corporate education political sludge tank in Florida where failed corporate education reform misleaders and their retired political tools go to be rehabbed and promoted all over again for a new generation. ExcelinEd luminaries include Mr. McChoakumchild himself, Joel Klein, along with Jeb Bush, Chris Cerf, Eric Cantor, etc.

As you would expect, Ms. Reynolds (or is that Mrs. Reynolds?) is dedicated to corporate welfare charter schools, religious indoctrination schools paid for with public vouchers, testing, grade retention, and other corporate reform tools with proven records of demoralizing, humiliating, and oppressing the poor, brown, and black.

Ms. Reynolds has a bachelor's degree in PoliSci and has recently completed a four-year program at the Pahara Institute, where founder, Kim Smith (of New Schools Venture Fund Fame), and Reed Hastings (Netflix billionaire and education oppressor) prepare a new generation of misleaders schooled in the black arts of exploiting democratic institutions to perpetuate inequality, white privilege, and the unrestrained greed of American capitalism.

So be ready for the same old ed reform clown car, with more stale air pumped into its flat tires, along with new make-up and wardrobe for the same old clowns.  Will Margaret Spellings be the last one to climb out of the back seat and will she have named her own replacement??

Brooklyn Public Library Offers Teens Everywhere the Right to Read

If you are age 13-21 and would like to gain access to any or all of the books that have been pulled from your school or public library in response to censors and book burners, the Brooklyn Public Library's Books Unbanned program is offering you a free library card that allows patrons anywhere in the U.S. to check out any of its eBook holdings. Really!

Brooklyn Public should be congratulated for their actions against the fascist censors and for their support for the American Library Association's Freedom to Read Statement (download your own copy and take it to your next school board meeting). 

If you are aware of efforts in your community or school to ban books, you may access confidential consulting services (for free) on what to do from the American Library Association.

Watch here or read CBS's coverage of this unique program to preserve children's Freedom to Read.

TN House Demonstrates Desperation to Preserve White Rule

In a Tennessee institution literally constructed, block by block, upon white supremacy, treasonous behavior, and political treachery, what happens when its soulless, hateful, semi-literate guardians are faced with two democratically-chosen black and young representatives who are much more intelligent and much more articulate than the entire biscuit-gravy band of dim-witted hillbilly fascists? 

Being confronted, day in and day out, with their own well-groomed intellectual and moral inadequacies finally became too much to take, especially when it became clear that their own supporters were starting to notice--and starting to listen to the passionately-rational arguments set forth by these young black men determined to enact laws to protect Tennessee's children, rather than Tennessee's gun industry.

So what did they do? The Tennessee T---- Party did what their ancestors would have done, given the present legal constraints against barbarous acts. They chose televised political lynching.  

Given their cognitive limitations, TN's supermajority of idiots could not see beyond the ends of their pointy noses, which they had just cut off to spite their seething red faces.  

Today, Congressmen Justin Jones and Justin Pearson are viewed as heroes by both young and old people who are intent upon ending the slaughter of Americans to protect the bankrupt ideology that, nonetheless, generates billions in profits for the amoral manufacturers and merchants of death, as well as their political representatives.  

Overnight, Mr. Jones and Mr. Pearson have become inspirations for an entire generation of thoughtful progressive citizens around the entire globe.  In short, the fools of the Tennessee Taliban have done more to bring about their own political demolition than the two Justins could have ever conceived just two days ago.

Chicago Mayoral Election Shows Democrats Preferred Over Republican Posers

If anyone asks my political affiliation, I always say that I am not a Democrat, even though I have never voted for a Republican--except for the two times I voted for Bill Clinton.

If the the election of real democrat, Brandon Clarke, yesterday in Chicago showed us anything, Republican Lite candidates like Clinton or Paul Vallas (who trained Arnie Duncan, by the way) are not preferred when given the choice of a progressive Democrat.  

On a day like today, I like to remember my friend, George Schmidt, whose decades of work in Chicago against the corporate takeover of public education, is now being rewarded. 

Colonel Moe Davis on CBS Decision to Normalize "Seditious Scumbag," Margorie Taylor Greene

From Raw Story:

 . . . . Col. Davis, for those unaware, was a top Guantanamo prosecutor who resigned after his superiors refused to support his policy that no evidence obtained via waterboarding would be used in prosecutions. In 2020 he ran against, and lost to, Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina.

On Monday, Davis slammed "60 Minutes" for using its platform to normalize Greene.

"Little difference in @FoxNews knowingly promoting the Big Lie and @60Minutes knowingly promoting a seditious scumbag … it’s all about the $$$. And don’t buy any high minded journalism bullsh*t … that’s the same excuse I heard from @jaketapper when he normalized Trump in 2015," Davis tweeted.

He was not finished.

In a series of tweets, Col. Davis related a story from when he was the top Guantanamo Bay prosecutor, calling "60 Minutes" "just as mercenary and ratings motivated as Fox."

Will Paul Vallas' Trail of Education Destruction End in Chicago Tomorrow?

Educate yourself on the subject of Paul Vallas:

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/02/vallas-declares-himself-closet.html

 http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2013/11/duncans-expensive-haiti-trip-to-prop-up.html

 http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/08/disaster-capitalism-collects-from-fema.html

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/08/duncans-thank-god-for-katrina-charter.html

https://inthesetimes.com/article/paul-vallas-brandon-johnson-public-education-mayor

https://www.newsweek.com/three-controversies-hanging-over-chicago-paul-vallas-1783716

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/did-this-little-election-strike-a-big-blow-to-education-reform/279735/

 

TN's Law to Ban Drag Shows Gets Dragged by Trump Judge

To show you how fully authoritarian the Tennessee Taliban (once known as the TN General Assembly) has become, the outrageous bill that Bill Lee couldn't wait to sign has been put on hold by a federal court intervention initiated by a Donald Trump judicial appointee. 

Judge Thomas Parker had to remind TN's bible-thumping, gun-slinging legislative fascists that the First Amendment was not meant to apply to just white authoritarian males parading their toxic masculinity but also to other white males less enamored by narrow theocratic rule that bans and banishes those think and act outside puritanical constraints.  

Trump-appointed judge, Thomas Parker concluded:

“If Tennessee wishes to exercise its police power in restricting speech it considers obscene, it must do so within the constraints and framework of the United States Constitution. The Court finds that, as it stands, the record here suggests that when the legislature passed this Statute, it missed the mark. Ultimately, the Statute’s broad language clashes with the First Amendment’s tight constraints . . . "

I-DAY: One Small Step for Accountability, One Giant Leap for Democratic Governance

 TRUMP INDICTED BY NEW YORK 

GRAND JURY

Republicans Would Lock Up the Children, Rather than the AR-15s

Thom Hartmann's piece yesterday caught my eye:  "Guns Don't Kill America: Republicans Do." Indeed, Republicans are intent to keep America's mass murderers the most well-armed mass murderers in the world, of both children and adults (WE'RE # 1).  There is no close second, even though the American prison solution for offenses committed by the poor continues to maintain our world ranking for total prison population and incarceration rates (WE'RE #1).

Oh yeah, the U.S. is #1, too, in gun suicide rates for both children and adults.

So what is the Republican "pro-life" solution to the child murder problem that they created with their fraudulent Second Amendment bullshit (see retired SCOTUS Chief Justice remarks here in 1991)?  Rather than banning weapons of war or requiring gun owners be licensed or even registered, asshats like Lindsey Graham would prefer to lock up the children, rather than the guns.  These hypocritical fools would put schools on a war footing, with more armed guards, bristling weaponry, more surveillance, more mass murder drills, more fear and anxiety.

Meanwhile, here's the dope, Andy Ogles (the tall stupid-looking one on the left), who now misrepresents, in the U.S. House of Representative, the people of Nashville where three adults and three 9-year old babies were murdered this week:

 

Andy's good at owning the libs--and killing the kids.