“DC Mayor Exempts John Lewis Funeral Attendees From City’s Quarantine Restrictions
“Government activity is essential, and the Capitol of the United States is exempt from the Mayor’s Order.”
“Lawmakers who attended the funeral of late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) in Atlanta earlier this week are exempt from Washington, D.C.’s, self-quarantine restrictions, according to District Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office.
According to the mayor’s July 24 order, titled “Requirement to Self-Quarantine After Non-Essential Travel During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency,” any residents who travel to “high-risk” areas for “non-essential” reasons must self-quarantine for 14 days and monitor themselves for symptoms of the virus.
The order mandates in part:
1. All residents and persons traveling to or from “high-risk areas” within the prior fourteen (14) days for non-essential travel must self-quarantine for fourteen (14) days following their return or arrival to the District.
2. Persons who are self-quarantining after non-essential travel must:
a. Stay at their residence or in a hotel room, leaving only for essential medical appointments or treatment or to obtain food and other essential goods when the delivery of food or other essential goods to their residence or hotel is not feasible;
b. Not invite or allow guests, other than caregivers, into their quarantined residence or hotel room; and
c. Self-monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 and seek appropriate medical advice or testing if COVID-19 symptoms arise.
3. Persons who are traveling through a “high-risk area,” such as through an airport or by vehicle, shall not be subject to this quarantine requirement.”
——–
Rules for thee but not for us ruling elite is what I’m hearing.
“No one would argue that Rep. John Lewis doesn’t deserve a proper memorial. He was a civil rights icon and a long-serving member of Congress who was beloved by his colleagues. In the middle of a pandemic, however, how do we decide who gets the pomp and circumstance of a traditional burial and who has to watch their loved one go six feet under via Zoom call?
Funerals are important: they acknowledge the sanctity of life and allow friends and family to come together to grieve their loss. This reality doesn’t change based on how famous or revered an individual was to the general public: it doesn’t hurt any less to say goodbye to someone who was just a dad or just someone’s child or just a dear friend. Their lives aren’t any less significant. Yet politicians have decided that celebrity affords them the right to override the onerous restrictions on funerals that so many average Americans have been forced to accept.
Yes, Georgia is unique in that it allows anyone to have a funeral. However, the governor’s executive order prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people if social distancing cannot be maintained. Photos of Lewis’s funeral in Atlanta showed that many more than 50 people attended and that social distancing was not maintained in parts of the church, nor during the burial outside.
‘Even if social distancing is possible, the National Funeral Directors Association strongly recommends that funerals be limited to immediate family and close friends of the decedent,’ the Georgia Department of Public Health’s funeral guidance says.
At the same time, a significant number of attendees traveled from out of state to attend the funeral. 50 members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attended. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone who travels to Washington, DC from a coronavirus ‘hotspot’. Georgia was one of the states designated as a ‘hotspot’ on a list released by the DC government on Monday. Nevertheless, Pelosi (an essential worker) flitted around the Capitol all day Friday, almost gloating about her freedom from the rules. If politicians are above the restrictions that apply to the rest of us, perhaps they could at least successfully negotiate a COVID relief package?
How could any person who has lost a loved one during the pandemic see this blatant hypocrisy and not be incensed? “
“Portland Recorded More Homicides In July Than Any Month Over Last 30 Years”
“Portland recorded a higher number of homicides in July than they had during any other one-month period over the last 30 years, The Oregonian reported.
The surge in crime comes after the Portland City Council voted to cut over $15 million from the police budget.
The homicide numbers come as the city also deals with a spike in assaults, burglaries, vandalism, and shootings, according to the report. 15 people have been killed in Portland in July so far, bringing the total number of killings this year to 24. Compared to past years, person-to-person and property crimes have fallen, police data shows, according to The Oregonian.
Shootings have more than doubled in July compared to last year, according to the report. The Portland police’s Gun Violence Reduction Team is one of several police units that was disbanded by the City Council’s budget cuts, which were passed last month. ”
“Gretchen Whitmer Blocks GOP Bill That Would Have Kept Coronavirus Patients Out Of Nursing Homes”
“Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a Republican bill on Friday that would have kept coronavirus patients out of nursing homes and placed them in entirely separate facilities — an effort aimed at protecting those most vulnerable to developing serious complications from the coronavirus, which originated in China.
“The bill was a direct challenge to the Whitmer administration’s current handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has focused on caring for those with the virus in isolated spaces of existing homes,” The Detroit News reported. “About 33% of the state’s deaths linked to the virus have been nursing home residents or employees, according to state data.”
Sen. Peter Lucido (R-Shelby Township) blasted Whitmer’s decision to not take more action to protect vulnerable seniors in nursing homes, which “account for more than 41 percent of the country’s pandemic fatalities,” according to The New York Times.
“I am very disappointed and saddened that the governor vetoed this extremely important and commonsense legislation,” Lucido said in a statement. “Politics should not prevail over the health and safety of our seniors and health care workers, and I urge my colleagues in the Senate and House to consider passing a veto override. We owe this to our citizens, especially the seniors and vulnerable members of our communities who cannot speak for themselves.””
A unanimous panel of Dem nominees on the 9th Circuit has given Trump another win. 🙂
NEW: Appeals court hands Trump win over Stormy Daniels on her libel suit challenging a Trump tweet. Also: it was the court Trump loves to hate: the 9th Circuit. And, to boot, a unanimous panel of Dem nominees https://t.co/hA1tJllbhX
“Cancel Culture Backlash: Long Islanders Rally Behind Pizzeria Owner Attacked For Displaying Trump Flag
“I think he’s a fantastic president, I think he’s done a great job, and I think it’s my right to support him and to show my support of him”
“Slowly, oh so slowly it seems, we are starting to see more and more stories of pushback against the left’s insane cancel culture mobs that attack and attempt to impoverish and destroy individuals, businesses, whomever for failing to conform to their own ponderously illogical worldview.
A recent example of this welcome trend occurred in Long Island, New York and is one of my favorite stories because it involves a Trump flag, a restaurant owner refusing to be bullied by online “woke” mobs, and a community rallying to support the target of the leftist cry-bullies. And pizza. What’s not to love?
A Long Island pizza shop owner proudly displays an American flag at the front of his store and a Trump flag toward the back. A random Karen was violently pummeled in the eyeballs by the horrendous sight of the Trump flag, her shriveled little soul similarly assaulted and “offended,” she shrilly—I imagine, it could have been “self-righteously” or “indignantly” or whatever—declared that she would use her Facebook platform to run the pizzeria out of business.
Presumably, only the destruction of this business would be “justice” for the pain and horror inflicted upon this sad, tiny little person who somehow cannot bear the sight of a flag honoring the duly-elected president of these United States.
But a funny thing happened on the way to her plans to throw this owner and all of his employees into poverty and social ostracism. The community refused her call to boycott the establishment, and in fact, turned up in droves to show support not just for the pizza shop but for the president.
“Nearly Half Of Young Americans Say It’s Okay To Fire People Who Support Trump”
“The Cato Institute just released a new report showing that 62 percent of Americans are inclined to self-censor what they say politically “because others might find them offensive.” Even moderate leftists report they feel increased fear of offending the offendable, while only the most “staunch liberals,” as Cato described them, feel free to speak their minds. The “very conservative” have been pushed deepest in the closet: they are most likely to refrain from saying what they think politically, at nearly twice the rate of the “very liberal.”
Buried deeper in the report, however, is a stunning data point that might be one of the most troubling current cultural indicators. Forty-four percent of Americans younger than age 30 believe a company is correct in firing an executive because he or she personally donated to President Trump’s reelection campaign.
The companion finding was also disturbing. Twenty-seven percent of people under 30 said they were fine with an executive being fired because he or she donated to the Joe Biden campaign. The means that of Americans under 30 years old, 73 percent think it would be wrong to fire an executive from a company for donating to the Biden campaign, while only 56 percent believe it would be wrong to do so for a Trump donation.
While this problem is most pronounced among those under 30, it isn’t exclusive to young people. Across all age ranges, 78 percent said it would be wrong to fire an executive for making a personal donation to Biden, while only 69 percent believe it’s wrong to fire one simply for being a Trump donor.
This means a remarkably high number of fellow citizens believe it’s virtuous to punish you for your personal political beliefs, even if you express them merely through one private political donation, with the loss of your family’s livelihood.
People throw the word “fascist” around today much too carelessly for it to be useful. If that word can be applied to an everyday person, however, someone who believes you should lose your job based on who you vote for is a pretty sturdy working definition. Of course, this has less to do with the names of the 2020 candidates and more to do with how an alarming number of Americans today seem to know precious little about what it means to live in a representative democracy.”
“Fourth Grade Teacher Details How Schools Push Ban History And Leftist Agendas
‘The parents don’t even know what’s going on because it’s all at school,’ says a fourth grade teacher in an interview. ‘The parents question very little and they just assume the teacher knows what they’re doing.’
“A world without textbooks or homework and where getting the wrong answer is celebrated may sound like an elementary student’s dream, but if such a fantasy becomes a reality, it would damage a generation of young minds. That is, however, exactly what is happening in many public elementary schools.
Recently, I spoke with a fourth-grade teacher from the midwest, who shared her experience witnessing the shifting of curriculum from history and science towards overt political indoctrination, all to the detriment of students’ learning. To protect this person’s privacy, she will remain nameless.
In supervising fourth grade, she teaches a little bit of everything: math, reading, language arts, social studies, and science. Recently, her school district, like many others, switched to an “integrated curriculum.” On paper, an integrated curriculum sounds like a fair idea. Students learn subjects by exploring their intersections to deepen understanding. In practice, however, the curriculum all but eradicates history while working to push politics on impressionable children.
As the teacher reports, “It says ‘integrated curriculum,’ and some of its science, and some of its social studies but it really isn’t. It’s more of a push for the progressive movement.” Indeed, it’s a movement that has fundamentally altered her curriculum. As the school district’s new curricula are online, outsiders have the ability to dictate curriculum to teachers. The result? This teacher’s science and history classes were gutted.
History Deemed Expendable
In history classes, she taught things like U.S. government, the explorers, and the Civil War from a nuanced perspective that is still accessible to her young students. She told me:
I used to do a whole unit an Abraham Lincoln, and for some reason, it’s just all of that is gone, based on an integrated curriculum. When you look at our curriculum, they’ve removed everything that was in the textbook. They say, ‘Don’t use the textbook, and you don’t need to teach that anymore.’
The kids are missing out on learning why there was a civil war in the first place. They don’t learn the true meaning of slavery and how it got resolved because it’s just disappeared from the curriculum.
The only thing I can teach in social studies was a little bit of government. There wasn’t anything anymore about the Civil War; that was completely gone. I felt bad about that.
I spoke to a friend, who’s a fifth-grade teacher, and her Revolutionary War unit was gone. She used to do a great job on the colonists of America.
Can’t have private schools opening and actually educating children. We have to panic people and convince them these closings are necessary. There’s an election in 4 months ya’ know….
Whoa. Private schools in metro DC and across Mid-Atlantic have been planning to open even as local public schools go full remote. This is first bar against their doing so that I know of. Will be a big deal if other jurisdictions follow suit. https://t.co/7TJh1MjUKX
Our Catholic schools are ready to reopen with precautions, distancing, and an option for students to learn remotely. The County government, which has shown a record of antipathy towards organized religion, is ordering all private schools closed. This can’t stand.
Seriously, @Marc_Elrich and @MoCoDHHS? A Friday night news dump that you are arbitrarily wreaking havoc with thousands of families and dozens of communities?
That's a sure sign you know you're making the wrong decision. You know this is spite and cowardice.
“Kevin Williams reviews Thomas Sowell’s new book on charter schools in the July 27 issue of National Review. The review is published under the headline “The Collapsing Case against Charter Schools.” The review opens:
Thomas Sowell — who will have just turned 90 when this review is published — could have retired by now. He could be publishing the memoirs of a celebrated intellectual or the late-career tracts of an éminence grise. What does he give us, instead? A methodologically rigorous, closely argued, data-driven case for charter schools, with very little high-flown rhetoric (I noted one exclamation point) and 94 pages of data tables. Charter Schools and Their Enemies is a bloodbath for Sowell’s intellectual opponents, and it ought to be a neutron bomb in the middle of the school-reform debate. But Thomas Sowell has been giving the reading public and the policymaking class some of the most intelligent advice to be had for many decades — why would they start listening to him now?
Much of Charter Schools and Their Enemies is dedicated to the seemingly simple — but not simple — project of comparing educational outcomes at charter schools with those at conventional public schools. He begins with an illustrative case that will be familiar to many conservatives: The Texas–Iowa public-school comparison. If you judged simply by scores on standardized tests, you would conclude that Iowa has much better public schools than does Texas. But there’s a wrinkle: White students in Texas outperform white students in Iowa, Hispanic students in Texas outperform Hispanic students in Iowa, and black students in Texas outperform black students in Iowa. But Iowa is very, very white, and Texas is not. The source of the disparity in standardized-test outcomes for white, black, and Hispanic students is of course the subject of some controversy, but those disparities are longstanding, they are similar in many cities and states and from urban to rural areas, and they are slow to change — with one important exception: in charter schools. In conventional public schools, the majority of the students are white or Asian; in charter schools, the majority of the students are black or Hispanic. Studies finding that charter schools perform only about as well as conventional schools actually tell us something very interesting: that in charter schools the racial gap in achievement has been significantly diminished and in many places eliminated, while in public schools it has not.
Sowell’s major analysis considers the overwhelmingly black and Hispanic student populations in both charters and conventional public schools in New York City. Why these students? For one thing, Sowell has gone to great lengths here to compare students who are very similar to one another. In fact, Sowell’s main study is limited to charter-school students attending class in the same building as conventional public-school students in the same grade, in schools that are majority-black and -Hispanic, with a special focus on the charter-school networks that meet in five or more buildings, meaning the biggest charter groups: KIPP, Success Academy, Explore, Uncommon, and Achievement First. Focusing on these New York City students has a couple of added benefits: New York keeps track of students by ethnicity and socioeconomic status, facilitating a better apples-to-apples comparison, and — crucially, for the purposes of this kind of study — it assigns children to charter schools through a lottery. Parents have to nominate their children for a spot, and there is presumably some difference between the parents who bother and the parents who don’t, but the charter schools are not able to cherry-pick the best students and thereby pad out their performance numbers.
And the numbers? That’s the bloodbath I mentioned.”
“A fundamental and tragic fact of life in America today is that whatever President Trump is for, most media and half the country instantly reject. Even when he’s clearly right, the zombie-like resistance leaps into frenetic opposition.
Take the case of universal mail-in voting.
Trump insists that the plans of some states, such as California and Colorado, to counter the pandemic by mailing a ballot to every registered voter is a formula for disaster. It will, the president says, guarantee mayhem and cast doubts on the November results.
Nonsense, shout the usual suspects. That’s unfounded, he’s making it up, there’s no evidence, blah blah blah.
Ah, but there is evidence. Lots of it, and right in front of us, thanks to the continuing saga of two New York congressional races. Five weeks after the Democratic primaries, no winners have been declared. Results for two others were delayed for three weeks.
The major problem was the volume of mailed-in ballots — more than 400,000 across the city, against the 23,000 received and validated four years ago, The Washington Post reports. The Board of Elections, creaky, sloppy and unreliable on the best of days, is swamped.
In the race involving Democratic incumbent Carolyn Maloney and challenger Suraj Patel, in-person voting gave Maloney an edge of under 700 votes. But some 65,000 voters returned the absentee ballots they requested, and mailed ballots trigger additional safeguards and requirements.
Among those are proof the ballots were mailed by Election Day and received within seven days of the election. In the Maloney-Patel race, at least 12,000 mailed ballots have been invalidated, many because they were received too late and others because they had no postmark to prove when they were mailed.
State officials, who included pre-stamped return envelopes when they sent the ballots, apparently didn’t know that such envelopes often don’t get postmarked. Thus, there is no way to know if those ballots were marked and mailed by Election Day.
In some cases, ballots were returned late because election officials did not send them to voters until the day before the primary. Some lacked signatures and ran afoul of other technicalities.
One clear result: lawsuits. So judges will have the final say about which votes are counted. Already an estimated 28 percent of the votes from the Brooklyn portion of the district have been tossed out.
That’s smoking-gun evidence of chaos and grounds to doubt the accuracy of the final outcome. Now imagine the enormous opportunity for mischief and mistakes if every state opts for universal mail-in and 160 million ballots are mailed to registered voters and back to election offices in the fall.”
“Cuban community plans rally at NuLu restaurant in response to Black Lives Matter demands”
“Members of Louisville’s Cuban community plan to gather Sunday in support of a NuLu restaurant owner who says he was threatened by Black Lives Matter protesters during a recent demonstration.
Fernando Martinez, a partner of the Olé Restaurant Group, was one of dozens of business owners in the downtown Louisville district who recently received a letter from protesters laying out demands that aim to improve diversity in the area, which is known for its locally-owned shops and restaurants.
Martinez has publicly denounced the demands on Facebook, calling them “mafia tactics” used to intimidate business owners. And on Thursday, a small group of protesters confronted him outside his newest restaurant, La Bodeguita de Mima, on East Market Street.
“There comes a time in life that you have to make a stand and you have to really prove your convictions and what you believe in,” Martinez wrote in his Facebook post. “… All good people need to denounce this. How can you justified (sic) injustice with more injustice?”
——-
“The demands and an attached contract, which were created by local organizers and activists, ask NuLu business owners to:
Adequately represent the Black population of Louisville by having a minimum of 23% Black staff;
Purchase a minimum of 23% inventory from Black retailers or make a recurring monthly donation of 1.5% of net sales to a local Black nonprofit or organization;
Require diversity and inclusion training for all staff members on a bi-annual basis;
And display a visible sign that increases awareness and shows support for the reparations movement.”
AJ, are you familiar with a new social media platform for conservatives, USA.Life? It can be installed for free on Google Play. You may have already mentioned it here. I signed up today.
Arguments against lock down including mental health breakdowns, increase in spousal abuse, etc. Although you need to balance this against the increase in covid deaths, there is some validity to the claim. An increase in some level of crime in a summer of unemployment, financial difficulties and yes demonstrations will not be surprising. Crime should be measure over the long term not month to month. It remains to be seen if we are marking a return to 90s level crime rates or this summer is an anomaly.
“Biden has no good VP choices in the field under consideration
The pickings are slim in a campaign where the Dem VP nominee is the presumptive president due to Biden’s clear mental infirmities.”
“So maybe as early as next week Joe Biden will announce who he is picking to be his vice presidential nominee. Or more precisely, the vice president nominee will be picked, Biden will be informed, will come to believe he made the choice, and will appear in front of a camera with a note written in large crayon with the person’s name.
There really are no good choices among the people known to be under consideration.
If you want the full list of possibilities — some of whom are so unlikely it’s unclear why they are on anyone’s list — see this NY Times write up of 13 women who have been under consideration by Mr. Biden.
The choice of VP for Biden is more important than usual because Biden is half-baked. No one expects him to be much more than a figurehead, and it’s unlikely he’d make it through a full first term without a babysitter. So the VP choice really is the presidential choice this time around. That means the Dem VP nominee will be under even more intense scrutiny than is normal.
Top contenders in the order listed by the Times
Kamala Harris — The conventional wisdom choice. Brings the most ‘gravitas’ of the various contenders, which shows you how little gravitas the group has. She was the Attorney General and now a U.S. Senator for the largest state, and ran in the primaries so she has some national campaign experience. The problem is, she is very unlikable and harsh. Her only big moment during the primaries was when she savaged Biden on stage over forced busing decades ago. She was unable to garner enthusiasm among black voters, or really any voters. She was a vicious prosecutor, not exactly a plus for a Democrat base that hates the police and law enforcement. And, her rocket to political power was due to her dating the most powerful politician in the state at the time, Willie Brown, who is not shy in talking about it. She’s the conventional choice, and I think most likely, but she’s underwhelming.
Elizabeth Warren — Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with a cherry on top, pick her Joe. There are a lot of leaks and rumors — which probably are false flags, that Biden may choose Warren despite the pressure to pick a ‘woman of color.’ I don’t understand that, since Warren held herself out as a woman of color while climbing the law professor ladder. In no sane world would Biden bring Warren’s baggage into his campaign, but this isn’t a sane world. While I think it unlikely, I won’t be shocked.
Tammy Duckworth — Willing to have a conversation about removing George Washington statues. Perfect. Has the wounded veteran personal narrative, which could count for a lot. But not an impressive political figure otherwise, comes across as a whack job who is not ready for prime time. Is from Illinois, so the oppo researchers are bound to have a field day. We don’t know much about Tammy, but if she’s the nominee, there is bound to be some Illinois intrigue — bet Blago knows stuff, or knows people who know stuff, and guess who set him free?
Susan “Benghazi Video” Rice — While Harris is the conventional choice, don’t discount Rice. She’s from Team Obama, and that counts for a lot with Biden, who has good long-term memory, but poor short-term memory. He knows where he’s been, but not where he is. And where he’s been is around Susan Rice. Of course, this would be back to the future, as Benghazi and Rice’s lying about it would be relitigated. I put Rice as the No. 1 sleeper for Sleepy Joe’s nominee.
Karen Bass — Before a couple of weeks ago, had anyone heard of her? What we have heard is that she pledged allegiance to communist causes earlier in life, and praised Scientology. She’s the “rising star” in the field, but unless team Biden is super confident in its vetting, she’s really risky. Picking Bass would be an act of desperation, which seems unlikely for a candidate ahead in the polls.
Val Demmings — Another person who doesn’t have a national profile, though was one of the impeachment managers against Trump. An ex-cop, which should fit awkwardly in a party driven by cop hatred. Another person who has not been vetted in public life, a risk.
Michigan places Covid patients in isolation within the nursing home. Unless there’s issues with the isolation rooms, its a reasonable way to accommodate covid without overwhelming hospitals. A 33-40% share of covid deaths doesn’t really tell us much about the success of nursing home isolation rates. About 80% of Covid deaths in Ontario were in nursing homes — now this may indicate horrible nursing homes (they were all for profit and had major issues) and/or may indicate a successful fight against covid in the general population. I think its both. In the case of Michigan, we can’t really tell without more stats. However, the Michigan death rate is about 3x the Canadian/Ontario rate. This suggests the problem lies in the high rate of death outside of nursing homes. The Michigan governor currently has a high approval rating and I’m sure this bill was also meant to embarrass her.
A boycott is not cancel culture. A hallmark of a democracy is the ability of groups to organize and express their opinion sometimes by using their pocket book. Don’t like the flag — don’t buy the pizza. Like the flag — buy the pizza. In the end, if the quality is lacking even if you like the flag, you won’t buy the pizza.
A large number of US states have had no excuse mail in absentee balloting for a long time and its worked fine and nobody raised red flags. Now the red flags are being raised by an admin who wants to cast doubt on the predicted results. Now, you can expect an increase in mail in absentee voting due to corona virus and hence the proper thing to do would be to increase election funds to hire more people but I have yet to hear that has happened. Nor has the postal service received funding to handle the increase in mail. It appears to some that casting doubt on the validity of the process and then not provide the necessary funds is a two prong strategy to discredit the results. In sum, Republicans claim to have identified a problem but then refuse funds to fix it.
And as an older teacher, once you’ve accumulated enough material and units under one part of the swing you are extremely loathe to change. In some cases, I have colleagues who will ignore any change claiming the pendulum will swing back to them. With the right principal, they can get away with it as long as kids behave, learning occurs and parents don’t complain. The article you cite essentially has two teachers whining about having to change their units. Teachers have a wide latitude in how they get curriculum across and with a few minor modification I’m sure they will satisfy their principal.
There’s been a move in the last decade away from textbooks. First because it saves money and second because some of it is online. Personally I never saw the wisdom in avoiding textbooks — publishers gear textbooks to provincial standards so nothing is missed (in the US textbooks are usually based on Texas and California). However, I have colleagues who pride themselves on not following just one text in math. Kids actually like textbooks — it gives them a greater security about the knowledge and is harder to lose.
Integrated curriculum annoys me but teaching middle school I can avoid any time it becomes popular once again (it swings back and forth in popularity). I find female students do better than male students in an integrated setting. Boys generally like one subject at a time.
John Oliver did an extremely good bit on charter schools. His long looks on particular subjects are well researched. Look it up — John Oliver – Charter Schools — he details fraud, profit taking, sudden closures, etc. The problem with evaluating charter schools is in the last few sentences in the article you cite; you need parents to sign you up. Its not charter vs public that makes the difference. Its parents. Parents are the biggest indicator of a child’s educational success, not the system and not the teacher. Rarely have I met a successful student with a bad parent, and I still remember those kids.
The more conservatives under estimate or mock Biden the greater chance he will “perform better than exceptions”. Lower expectations going into a debate is not a bad thing.
Not a fan of Harris or Denmings. Warren has more negatives than positives right now and probably would rather be in Senate or Cabinet with real power. Susan Rice impresses me as do most of the ladies from the upper midwest — Wittmer, Klobucher, and Baldwin.
The Dems seem desperate to ensure the debates never happen this time around. They fear what it would look like.
.@JoeBiden should definitely agree to more debates, so long as Trump agrees to one precondition: Before it happens, Trump releases his tax returns. If he refuses, well, doesn't that say even more about the magnitude of what he's hiding? And put that deception front and center?
Look at these crazy Americans protesting lock downs….
What?…. Really?…… Germans you say?……
Thousands of protesters against German coronavirus restrictions converge in Berlin for a demonstration proclaiming “the end of the pandemic” has arrived. https://t.co/RnlNY8DhRb
It's either Trump or a group that gets to decide whose skin color or personal preferences matter 'enough'. It's either Trump or those who hate me for my belief in God. It's either Trump or those who are ok with a former president raping young kids.
Not sure why Trump supporters think Trump will trounce Biden in a debate. Trump was horrible the first debate and not much better in the next two in 2016. My own opinion is that it will cringe worthy and most people will tune in for the same reason people slow down passing an accident on the freeway.
There shouldn’t be an audience in a debate — that’s a given. And due to the corona virus, its a good time to ditch the audience for good.
Cable TV ruined the debates — over analyzed it. And every person looks to have the one sound bite to make the 11 oclock news. One debate, no audience, one moderator.
I’m not sure a debate matters — Clinton “won” the debates but lost the electoral college. In a close election, the mechanics of getting people to the polls or the polls to the people is the key to success.
Biden is ahead by about 8 points why should he give Trump any chance to catch up or score points. Of course he should stay in the basement. For Biden, the corona virus allows him an excuse to meet small groups which he is good at — people like him when they meet him. For Trump, the corona virus has taken away his main electoral tool — the rally. Rallies do more than motivate the base — they collect data.
Cowards hide in their basements from examination. Men and women with the guts to lead debate their opponents publicly on tv. They explain to voters why they’re the better choice in a side by side comparison, as we’ve always done since the invention of tv. (1956) (1948 for radio)
Why trash precedent only because the left nominated a senile dementia patient?
That’s on you guys. It’s not America’s fault they have such a weak bench.
My guess is the German protesters belong to Alternative for Germany a far right party that has about 10% in recent polls. Merkel will ignore them. The CDU and Merkell are now polling at 38% which is up from 25% as recently as February. The only surprise for me is they are marching in Berlin — a bastion of the left wing. I imagine the police had difficulty keeping them apart.
Personally I think Biden will do better than Trump in a debate. However, I understand the strategy of a low-key campaign for Biden especially in August. His strength is small groups so play to your strengths. Trump’s strength is large crowds ie no one on one interaction or debate and he’s sort of twisting in the wind right now. Political campaigns are about strategy and right now Biden has the upper hand and is playing to his strength. As for getting your ideas out there….please this election is more or less a referendum on Trump. The onus is on Trump to run on his record and justify an other four years — he’s done neither.
“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-seven percent (47%) disapprove.”
—————–
And even worse news for Biden, the enthusiasm gap. 🙂
“Trump approval back to 51% and supporters 70% more enthusiastic than Biden’s”
“President Trump, scratching back to just 4-6 points behind challenger Joe Biden, is being bolstered by new polls showing a surge in his approval rating and a widening “enthusiasm gap” favoring him over his Democratic foe.
Just out is the daily Rasmussen Reports presidential approval rating for Trump at 51%.
Notably, said Rasmussen, at this stage of his presidency, former President Barack Obama had a 44% approval rating.”
I was wondering how long it would take you to cite the Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen is well known to lean republican and is rate C+ by 538. A poll aggregate by RealClear has an approval rate at negative 10. 538 has Biden at 50 and Trump at 42. Aggregate polling had Obama at 47% at this time in his presidency.
Right now I have Biden winning 212 electoral votes in his sleep vs Trump’s sure 88 votes. California, NY, Illinois and Virginia give Biden quite the head start. Right now, Biden is 5% ahead in group of states which would give him an additional 96 votes. Yes there’s three months to go but there’s no need to for Biden to leave the basement and Trump needs to get to work — today was yet another day on the golf course. When Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona are not safely in the Republican column; they have a problem. Biden is ahead by 6% in Florida. Without Florida, its very difficult for Trump to win.
Its true Trump has a committed base but he needs to have new voters in the Rust Belt to counter act increased turnout from people who stayed home because of Clinton. And there are no new voters for Trump but there are for Biden; he will get more than Clinton if only because he’s not Trump or Clinton.
Wandering Views 
The rank hypocrisy from Democrats continues…..
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Sorry lady, a funeral is not essential govt activity, but you already knew that.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/dc-mayor-exempts-john-lewis-funeral-attendees-from-citys-quarantine-restrictions?%3Futm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dwtwitter
“DC Mayor Exempts John Lewis Funeral Attendees From City’s Quarantine Restrictions
“Government activity is essential, and the Capitol of the United States is exempt from the Mayor’s Order.”
“Lawmakers who attended the funeral of late Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) in Atlanta earlier this week are exempt from Washington, D.C.’s, self-quarantine restrictions, according to District Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office.
According to the mayor’s July 24 order, titled “Requirement to Self-Quarantine After Non-Essential Travel During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency,” any residents who travel to “high-risk” areas for “non-essential” reasons must self-quarantine for 14 days and monitor themselves for symptoms of the virus.
The order mandates in part:
1. All residents and persons traveling to or from “high-risk areas” within the prior fourteen (14) days for non-essential travel must self-quarantine for fourteen (14) days following their return or arrival to the District.
2. Persons who are self-quarantining after non-essential travel must:
a. Stay at their residence or in a hotel room, leaving only for essential medical appointments or treatment or to obtain food and other essential goods when the delivery of food or other essential goods to their residence or hotel is not feasible;
b. Not invite or allow guests, other than caregivers, into their quarantined residence or hotel room; and
c. Self-monitor for symptoms of COVID-19 and seek appropriate medical advice or testing if COVID-19 symptoms arise.
3. Persons who are traveling through a “high-risk area,” such as through an airport or by vehicle, shall not be subject to this quarantine requirement.”
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Rules for thee but not for us ruling elite is what I’m hearing.
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https://twitter.com/Skyejohnson4/status/1289695510098513921
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So the question becomes, who deserves a funeral?
“Politicians have decided that celebrity affords them the right to override the onerous restrictions on funerals”
https://spectator.us/coronavirus-funerals-john-lewis-george-floyd/
“No one would argue that Rep. John Lewis doesn’t deserve a proper memorial. He was a civil rights icon and a long-serving member of Congress who was beloved by his colleagues. In the middle of a pandemic, however, how do we decide who gets the pomp and circumstance of a traditional burial and who has to watch their loved one go six feet under via Zoom call?
Funerals are important: they acknowledge the sanctity of life and allow friends and family to come together to grieve their loss. This reality doesn’t change based on how famous or revered an individual was to the general public: it doesn’t hurt any less to say goodbye to someone who was just a dad or just someone’s child or just a dear friend. Their lives aren’t any less significant. Yet politicians have decided that celebrity affords them the right to override the onerous restrictions on funerals that so many average Americans have been forced to accept.
Yes, Georgia is unique in that it allows anyone to have a funeral. However, the governor’s executive order prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people if social distancing cannot be maintained. Photos of Lewis’s funeral in Atlanta showed that many more than 50 people attended and that social distancing was not maintained in parts of the church, nor during the burial outside.
‘Even if social distancing is possible, the National Funeral Directors Association strongly recommends that funerals be limited to immediate family and close friends of the decedent,’ the Georgia Department of Public Health’s funeral guidance says.
At the same time, a significant number of attendees traveled from out of state to attend the funeral. 50 members of Congress, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, attended. Mayor Muriel Bowser issued a mandatory two-week quarantine for anyone who travels to Washington, DC from a coronavirus ‘hotspot’. Georgia was one of the states designated as a ‘hotspot’ on a list released by the DC government on Monday. Nevertheless, Pelosi (an essential worker) flitted around the Capitol all day Friday, almost gloating about her freedom from the rules. If politicians are above the restrictions that apply to the rest of us, perhaps they could at least successfully negotiate a COVID relief package?
How could any person who has lost a loved one during the pandemic see this blatant hypocrisy and not be incensed? “
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I’m sure this is all the police’s fault too.
Or Trump’s…….
https://dailycaller.com/2020/08/02/portland-homicides-july-30-years-crime/
“Portland Recorded More Homicides In July Than Any Month Over Last 30 Years”
“Portland recorded a higher number of homicides in July than they had during any other one-month period over the last 30 years, The Oregonian reported.
The surge in crime comes after the Portland City Council voted to cut over $15 million from the police budget.
The homicide numbers come as the city also deals with a spike in assaults, burglaries, vandalism, and shootings, according to the report. 15 people have been killed in Portland in July so far, bringing the total number of killings this year to 24. Compared to past years, person-to-person and property crimes have fallen, police data shows, according to The Oregonian.
Shootings have more than doubled in July compared to last year, according to the report. The Portland police’s Gun Violence Reduction Team is one of several police units that was disbanded by the City Council’s budget cuts, which were passed last month. ”
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Own it lefties, this is on you.
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Democrat Govs continue to target the elderly.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/gretchen-whitmer-blocks-gop-bill-that-would-have-kept-coronavirus-patients-out-of-nursing-homes
“Gretchen Whitmer Blocks GOP Bill That Would Have Kept Coronavirus Patients Out Of Nursing Homes”
“Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a Republican bill on Friday that would have kept coronavirus patients out of nursing homes and placed them in entirely separate facilities — an effort aimed at protecting those most vulnerable to developing serious complications from the coronavirus, which originated in China.
“The bill was a direct challenge to the Whitmer administration’s current handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has focused on caring for those with the virus in isolated spaces of existing homes,” The Detroit News reported. “About 33% of the state’s deaths linked to the virus have been nursing home residents or employees, according to state data.”
Sen. Peter Lucido (R-Shelby Township) blasted Whitmer’s decision to not take more action to protect vulnerable seniors in nursing homes, which “account for more than 41 percent of the country’s pandemic fatalities,” according to The New York Times.
“I am very disappointed and saddened that the governor vetoed this extremely important and commonsense legislation,” Lucido said in a statement. “Politics should not prevail over the health and safety of our seniors and health care workers, and I urge my colleagues in the Senate and House to consider passing a veto override. We owe this to our citizens, especially the seniors and vulnerable members of our communities who cannot speak for themselves.””
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A unanimous panel of Dem nominees on the 9th Circuit has given Trump another win. 🙂
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Cancel Culture Backlash….
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/08/cancel-culture-backlash-long-islanders-rally-behind-pizzeria-owner-attacked-for-displaying-trump-flag/
“Cancel Culture Backlash: Long Islanders Rally Behind Pizzeria Owner Attacked For Displaying Trump Flag
“I think he’s a fantastic president, I think he’s done a great job, and I think it’s my right to support him and to show my support of him”
“Slowly, oh so slowly it seems, we are starting to see more and more stories of pushback against the left’s insane cancel culture mobs that attack and attempt to impoverish and destroy individuals, businesses, whomever for failing to conform to their own ponderously illogical worldview.
A recent example of this welcome trend occurred in Long Island, New York and is one of my favorite stories because it involves a Trump flag, a restaurant owner refusing to be bullied by online “woke” mobs, and a community rallying to support the target of the leftist cry-bullies. And pizza. What’s not to love?
A Long Island pizza shop owner proudly displays an American flag at the front of his store and a Trump flag toward the back. A random Karen was violently pummeled in the eyeballs by the horrendous sight of the Trump flag, her shriveled little soul similarly assaulted and “offended,” she shrilly—I imagine, it could have been “self-righteously” or “indignantly” or whatever—declared that she would use her Facebook platform to run the pizzeria out of business.
Presumably, only the destruction of this business would be “justice” for the pain and horror inflicted upon this sad, tiny little person who somehow cannot bear the sight of a flag honoring the duly-elected president of these United States.
But a funny thing happened on the way to her plans to throw this owner and all of his employees into poverty and social ostracism. The community refused her call to boycott the establishment, and in fact, turned up in droves to show support not just for the pizza shop but for the president.
Fox News reports:”
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This is what happen when your education becomes indoctrination. And it’s un-American.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/nearly-half-of-young-americans-say-its-okay-to-fire-people-who-support-trump/
“Nearly Half Of Young Americans Say It’s Okay To Fire People Who Support Trump”
“The Cato Institute just released a new report showing that 62 percent of Americans are inclined to self-censor what they say politically “because others might find them offensive.” Even moderate leftists report they feel increased fear of offending the offendable, while only the most “staunch liberals,” as Cato described them, feel free to speak their minds. The “very conservative” have been pushed deepest in the closet: they are most likely to refrain from saying what they think politically, at nearly twice the rate of the “very liberal.”
Buried deeper in the report, however, is a stunning data point that might be one of the most troubling current cultural indicators. Forty-four percent of Americans younger than age 30 believe a company is correct in firing an executive because he or she personally donated to President Trump’s reelection campaign.
The companion finding was also disturbing. Twenty-seven percent of people under 30 said they were fine with an executive being fired because he or she donated to the Joe Biden campaign. The means that of Americans under 30 years old, 73 percent think it would be wrong to fire an executive from a company for donating to the Biden campaign, while only 56 percent believe it would be wrong to do so for a Trump donation.
While this problem is most pronounced among those under 30, it isn’t exclusive to young people. Across all age ranges, 78 percent said it would be wrong to fire an executive for making a personal donation to Biden, while only 69 percent believe it’s wrong to fire one simply for being a Trump donor.
This means a remarkably high number of fellow citizens believe it’s virtuous to punish you for your personal political beliefs, even if you express them merely through one private political donation, with the loss of your family’s livelihood.
People throw the word “fascist” around today much too carelessly for it to be useful. If that word can be applied to an everyday person, however, someone who believes you should lose your job based on who you vote for is a pretty sturdy working definition. Of course, this has less to do with the names of the 2020 candidates and more to do with how an alarming number of Americans today seem to know precious little about what it means to live in a representative democracy.”
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They’ve become the fascists.
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And this has plenty to do with it.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/01/fourth-grade-teacher-details-how-schools-push-ban-history-and-leftist-agendas/
“Fourth Grade Teacher Details How Schools Push Ban History And Leftist Agendas
‘The parents don’t even know what’s going on because it’s all at school,’ says a fourth grade teacher in an interview. ‘The parents question very little and they just assume the teacher knows what they’re doing.’
“A world without textbooks or homework and where getting the wrong answer is celebrated may sound like an elementary student’s dream, but if such a fantasy becomes a reality, it would damage a generation of young minds. That is, however, exactly what is happening in many public elementary schools.
Recently, I spoke with a fourth-grade teacher from the midwest, who shared her experience witnessing the shifting of curriculum from history and science towards overt political indoctrination, all to the detriment of students’ learning. To protect this person’s privacy, she will remain nameless.
In supervising fourth grade, she teaches a little bit of everything: math, reading, language arts, social studies, and science. Recently, her school district, like many others, switched to an “integrated curriculum.” On paper, an integrated curriculum sounds like a fair idea. Students learn subjects by exploring their intersections to deepen understanding. In practice, however, the curriculum all but eradicates history while working to push politics on impressionable children.
As the teacher reports, “It says ‘integrated curriculum,’ and some of its science, and some of its social studies but it really isn’t. It’s more of a push for the progressive movement.” Indeed, it’s a movement that has fundamentally altered her curriculum. As the school district’s new curricula are online, outsiders have the ability to dictate curriculum to teachers. The result? This teacher’s science and history classes were gutted.
History Deemed Expendable
In history classes, she taught things like U.S. government, the explorers, and the Civil War from a nuanced perspective that is still accessible to her young students. She told me:
I used to do a whole unit an Abraham Lincoln, and for some reason, it’s just all of that is gone, based on an integrated curriculum. When you look at our curriculum, they’ve removed everything that was in the textbook. They say, ‘Don’t use the textbook, and you don’t need to teach that anymore.’
The kids are missing out on learning why there was a civil war in the first place. They don’t learn the true meaning of slavery and how it got resolved because it’s just disappeared from the curriculum.
The only thing I can teach in social studies was a little bit of government. There wasn’t anything anymore about the Civil War; that was completely gone. I felt bad about that.
I spoke to a friend, who’s a fifth-grade teacher, and her Revolutionary War unit was gone. She used to do a great job on the colonists of America.
Science Replaced With Propaganda”
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Can’t have private schools opening and actually educating children. We have to panic people and convince them these closings are necessary. There’s an election in 4 months ya’ know….
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The case for Charter Schools, by Thomas Sowell…
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/the-case-for-charter-schools.php
“Kevin Williams reviews Thomas Sowell’s new book on charter schools in the July 27 issue of National Review. The review is published under the headline “The Collapsing Case against Charter Schools.” The review opens:
Thomas Sowell — who will have just turned 90 when this review is published — could have retired by now. He could be publishing the memoirs of a celebrated intellectual or the late-career tracts of an éminence grise. What does he give us, instead? A methodologically rigorous, closely argued, data-driven case for charter schools, with very little high-flown rhetoric (I noted one exclamation point) and 94 pages of data tables. Charter Schools and Their Enemies is a bloodbath for Sowell’s intellectual opponents, and it ought to be a neutron bomb in the middle of the school-reform debate. But Thomas Sowell has been giving the reading public and the policymaking class some of the most intelligent advice to be had for many decades — why would they start listening to him now?
Much of Charter Schools and Their Enemies is dedicated to the seemingly simple — but not simple — project of comparing educational outcomes at charter schools with those at conventional public schools. He begins with an illustrative case that will be familiar to many conservatives: The Texas–Iowa public-school comparison. If you judged simply by scores on standardized tests, you would conclude that Iowa has much better public schools than does Texas. But there’s a wrinkle: White students in Texas outperform white students in Iowa, Hispanic students in Texas outperform Hispanic students in Iowa, and black students in Texas outperform black students in Iowa. But Iowa is very, very white, and Texas is not. The source of the disparity in standardized-test outcomes for white, black, and Hispanic students is of course the subject of some controversy, but those disparities are longstanding, they are similar in many cities and states and from urban to rural areas, and they are slow to change — with one important exception: in charter schools. In conventional public schools, the majority of the students are white or Asian; in charter schools, the majority of the students are black or Hispanic. Studies finding that charter schools perform only about as well as conventional schools actually tell us something very interesting: that in charter schools the racial gap in achievement has been significantly diminished and in many places eliminated, while in public schools it has not.
Sowell’s major analysis considers the overwhelmingly black and Hispanic student populations in both charters and conventional public schools in New York City. Why these students? For one thing, Sowell has gone to great lengths here to compare students who are very similar to one another. In fact, Sowell’s main study is limited to charter-school students attending class in the same building as conventional public-school students in the same grade, in schools that are majority-black and -Hispanic, with a special focus on the charter-school networks that meet in five or more buildings, meaning the biggest charter groups: KIPP, Success Academy, Explore, Uncommon, and Achievement First. Focusing on these New York City students has a couple of added benefits: New York keeps track of students by ethnicity and socioeconomic status, facilitating a better apples-to-apples comparison, and — crucially, for the purposes of this kind of study — it assigns children to charter schools through a lottery. Parents have to nominate their children for a spot, and there is presumably some difference between the parents who bother and the parents who don’t, but the charter schools are not able to cherry-pick the best students and thereby pad out their performance numbers.
And the numbers? That’s the bloodbath I mentioned.”
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More from Williamson….
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2020/07/27/the-collapsing-case-against-charter-schools/
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“Liberals can’t deny the complications of counting mail-in ballots”
https://nypost.com/2020/08/01/a-national-mail-in-ballot-election-would-be-a-disaster-goodwin/
“A fundamental and tragic fact of life in America today is that whatever President Trump is for, most media and half the country instantly reject. Even when he’s clearly right, the zombie-like resistance leaps into frenetic opposition.
Take the case of universal mail-in voting.
Trump insists that the plans of some states, such as California and Colorado, to counter the pandemic by mailing a ballot to every registered voter is a formula for disaster. It will, the president says, guarantee mayhem and cast doubts on the November results.
Nonsense, shout the usual suspects. That’s unfounded, he’s making it up, there’s no evidence, blah blah blah.
Ah, but there is evidence. Lots of it, and right in front of us, thanks to the continuing saga of two New York congressional races. Five weeks after the Democratic primaries, no winners have been declared. Results for two others were delayed for three weeks.
The major problem was the volume of mailed-in ballots — more than 400,000 across the city, against the 23,000 received and validated four years ago, The Washington Post reports. The Board of Elections, creaky, sloppy and unreliable on the best of days, is swamped.
In the race involving Democratic incumbent Carolyn Maloney and challenger Suraj Patel, in-person voting gave Maloney an edge of under 700 votes. But some 65,000 voters returned the absentee ballots they requested, and mailed ballots trigger additional safeguards and requirements.
Among those are proof the ballots were mailed by Election Day and received within seven days of the election. In the Maloney-Patel race, at least 12,000 mailed ballots have been invalidated, many because they were received too late and others because they had no postmark to prove when they were mailed.
State officials, who included pre-stamped return envelopes when they sent the ballots, apparently didn’t know that such envelopes often don’t get postmarked. Thus, there is no way to know if those ballots were marked and mailed by Election Day.
In some cases, ballots were returned late because election officials did not send them to voters until the day before the primary. Some lacked signatures and ran afoul of other technicalities.
One clear result: lawsuits. So judges will have the final say about which votes are counted. Already an estimated 28 percent of the votes from the Brooklyn portion of the district have been tossed out.
That’s smoking-gun evidence of chaos and grounds to doubt the accuracy of the final outcome. Now imagine the enormous opportunity for mischief and mistakes if every state opts for universal mail-in and 160 million ballots are mailed to registered voters and back to election offices in the fall.”
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Time to break out the RICO laws for Antifa and BLM, the organized crime syndicates. This is old style extortion redone….
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https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2020/08/01/louisville-cuban-community-rally-support-la-bodeguita-de-mima/5562669002/
“Cuban community plans rally at NuLu restaurant in response to Black Lives Matter demands”
“Members of Louisville’s Cuban community plan to gather Sunday in support of a NuLu restaurant owner who says he was threatened by Black Lives Matter protesters during a recent demonstration.
Fernando Martinez, a partner of the Olé Restaurant Group, was one of dozens of business owners in the downtown Louisville district who recently received a letter from protesters laying out demands that aim to improve diversity in the area, which is known for its locally-owned shops and restaurants.
Martinez has publicly denounced the demands on Facebook, calling them “mafia tactics” used to intimidate business owners. And on Thursday, a small group of protesters confronted him outside his newest restaurant, La Bodeguita de Mima, on East Market Street.
“There comes a time in life that you have to make a stand and you have to really prove your convictions and what you believe in,” Martinez wrote in his Facebook post. “… All good people need to denounce this. How can you justified (sic) injustice with more injustice?”
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“The demands and an attached contract, which were created by local organizers and activists, ask NuLu business owners to:
Adequately represent the Black population of Louisville by having a minimum of 23% Black staff;
Purchase a minimum of 23% inventory from Black retailers or make a recurring monthly donation of 1.5% of net sales to a local Black nonprofit or organization;
Require diversity and inclusion training for all staff members on a bi-annual basis;
And display a visible sign that increases awareness and shows support for the reparations movement.”
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AJ, are you familiar with a new social media platform for conservatives, USA.Life? It can be installed for free on Google Play. You may have already mentioned it here. I signed up today.
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I had not. I will check it out. 🙂
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Arguments against lock down including mental health breakdowns, increase in spousal abuse, etc. Although you need to balance this against the increase in covid deaths, there is some validity to the claim. An increase in some level of crime in a summer of unemployment, financial difficulties and yes demonstrations will not be surprising. Crime should be measure over the long term not month to month. It remains to be seen if we are marking a return to 90s level crime rates or this summer is an anomaly.
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And Biden himself is a horrid choice.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/08/biden-has-no-good-vp-choices-in-the-field-under-consideration/
“Biden has no good VP choices in the field under consideration
The pickings are slim in a campaign where the Dem VP nominee is the presumptive president due to Biden’s clear mental infirmities.”
“So maybe as early as next week Joe Biden will announce who he is picking to be his vice presidential nominee. Or more precisely, the vice president nominee will be picked, Biden will be informed, will come to believe he made the choice, and will appear in front of a camera with a note written in large crayon with the person’s name.
There really are no good choices among the people known to be under consideration.
If you want the full list of possibilities — some of whom are so unlikely it’s unclear why they are on anyone’s list — see this NY Times write up of 13 women who have been under consideration by Mr. Biden.
The choice of VP for Biden is more important than usual because Biden is half-baked. No one expects him to be much more than a figurehead, and it’s unlikely he’d make it through a full first term without a babysitter. So the VP choice really is the presidential choice this time around. That means the Dem VP nominee will be under even more intense scrutiny than is normal.
Top contenders in the order listed by the Times
Kamala Harris — The conventional wisdom choice. Brings the most ‘gravitas’ of the various contenders, which shows you how little gravitas the group has. She was the Attorney General and now a U.S. Senator for the largest state, and ran in the primaries so she has some national campaign experience. The problem is, she is very unlikable and harsh. Her only big moment during the primaries was when she savaged Biden on stage over forced busing decades ago. She was unable to garner enthusiasm among black voters, or really any voters. She was a vicious prosecutor, not exactly a plus for a Democrat base that hates the police and law enforcement. And, her rocket to political power was due to her dating the most powerful politician in the state at the time, Willie Brown, who is not shy in talking about it. She’s the conventional choice, and I think most likely, but she’s underwhelming.
Elizabeth Warren — Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with a cherry on top, pick her Joe. There are a lot of leaks and rumors — which probably are false flags, that Biden may choose Warren despite the pressure to pick a ‘woman of color.’ I don’t understand that, since Warren held herself out as a woman of color while climbing the law professor ladder. In no sane world would Biden bring Warren’s baggage into his campaign, but this isn’t a sane world. While I think it unlikely, I won’t be shocked.
Tammy Duckworth — Willing to have a conversation about removing George Washington statues. Perfect. Has the wounded veteran personal narrative, which could count for a lot. But not an impressive political figure otherwise, comes across as a whack job who is not ready for prime time. Is from Illinois, so the oppo researchers are bound to have a field day. We don’t know much about Tammy, but if she’s the nominee, there is bound to be some Illinois intrigue — bet Blago knows stuff, or knows people who know stuff, and guess who set him free?
Susan “Benghazi Video” Rice — While Harris is the conventional choice, don’t discount Rice. She’s from Team Obama, and that counts for a lot with Biden, who has good long-term memory, but poor short-term memory. He knows where he’s been, but not where he is. And where he’s been is around Susan Rice. Of course, this would be back to the future, as Benghazi and Rice’s lying about it would be relitigated. I put Rice as the No. 1 sleeper for Sleepy Joe’s nominee.
Karen Bass — Before a couple of weeks ago, had anyone heard of her? What we have heard is that she pledged allegiance to communist causes earlier in life, and praised Scientology. She’s the “rising star” in the field, but unless team Biden is super confident in its vetting, she’s really risky. Picking Bass would be an act of desperation, which seems unlikely for a candidate ahead in the polls.
Val Demmings — Another person who doesn’t have a national profile, though was one of the impeachment managers against Trump. An ex-cop, which should fit awkwardly in a party driven by cop hatred. Another person who has not been vetted in public life, a risk.
The “oh, please” choices”
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Just for a much-needed Monday-morning-pandemic smile:
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Michigan places Covid patients in isolation within the nursing home. Unless there’s issues with the isolation rooms, its a reasonable way to accommodate covid without overwhelming hospitals. A 33-40% share of covid deaths doesn’t really tell us much about the success of nursing home isolation rates. About 80% of Covid deaths in Ontario were in nursing homes — now this may indicate horrible nursing homes (they were all for profit and had major issues) and/or may indicate a successful fight against covid in the general population. I think its both. In the case of Michigan, we can’t really tell without more stats. However, the Michigan death rate is about 3x the Canadian/Ontario rate. This suggests the problem lies in the high rate of death outside of nursing homes. The Michigan governor currently has a high approval rating and I’m sure this bill was also meant to embarrass her.
A boycott is not cancel culture. A hallmark of a democracy is the ability of groups to organize and express their opinion sometimes by using their pocket book. Don’t like the flag — don’t buy the pizza. Like the flag — buy the pizza. In the end, if the quality is lacking even if you like the flag, you won’t buy the pizza.
A large number of US states have had no excuse mail in absentee balloting for a long time and its worked fine and nobody raised red flags. Now the red flags are being raised by an admin who wants to cast doubt on the predicted results. Now, you can expect an increase in mail in absentee voting due to corona virus and hence the proper thing to do would be to increase election funds to hire more people but I have yet to hear that has happened. Nor has the postal service received funding to handle the increase in mail. It appears to some that casting doubt on the validity of the process and then not provide the necessary funds is a two prong strategy to discredit the results. In sum, Republicans claim to have identified a problem but then refuse funds to fix it.
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Curriculum and pedagogy is a pendulum.
And as an older teacher, once you’ve accumulated enough material and units under one part of the swing you are extremely loathe to change. In some cases, I have colleagues who will ignore any change claiming the pendulum will swing back to them. With the right principal, they can get away with it as long as kids behave, learning occurs and parents don’t complain. The article you cite essentially has two teachers whining about having to change their units. Teachers have a wide latitude in how they get curriculum across and with a few minor modification I’m sure they will satisfy their principal.
There’s been a move in the last decade away from textbooks. First because it saves money and second because some of it is online. Personally I never saw the wisdom in avoiding textbooks — publishers gear textbooks to provincial standards so nothing is missed (in the US textbooks are usually based on Texas and California). However, I have colleagues who pride themselves on not following just one text in math. Kids actually like textbooks — it gives them a greater security about the knowledge and is harder to lose.
Integrated curriculum annoys me but teaching middle school I can avoid any time it becomes popular once again (it swings back and forth in popularity). I find female students do better than male students in an integrated setting. Boys generally like one subject at a time.
John Oliver did an extremely good bit on charter schools. His long looks on particular subjects are well researched. Look it up — John Oliver – Charter Schools — he details fraud, profit taking, sudden closures, etc. The problem with evaluating charter schools is in the last few sentences in the article you cite; you need parents to sign you up. Its not charter vs public that makes the difference. Its parents. Parents are the biggest indicator of a child’s educational success, not the system and not the teacher. Rarely have I met a successful student with a bad parent, and I still remember those kids.
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The more conservatives under estimate or mock Biden the greater chance he will “perform better than exceptions”. Lower expectations going into a debate is not a bad thing.
Not a fan of Harris or Denmings. Warren has more negatives than positives right now and probably would rather be in Senate or Cabinet with real power. Susan Rice impresses me as do most of the ladies from the upper midwest — Wittmer, Klobucher, and Baldwin.
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Biden won’t make it to the finish line… the Dems have some other radical in mind, anyway.
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Gotta disagree HRW.
The Dems seem desperate to ensure the debates never happen this time around. They fear what it would look like.
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https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1290324280971071489
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Panic time!
I love the smell of desperation 3 months out. 🙂
https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1290324282757840896
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https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1290324284829773824
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I love how every single lefty media outlet uses the exact same talking points too, the Dem ones….
https://twitter.com/EddieZipperer/status/1290324285744128002
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Look at these crazy Americans protesting lock downs….
What?…. Really?…… Germans you say?……
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From a known lefty and Never-Trumper…..
It’s an easy choice folks, so vote accordingly.
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Not sure why Trump supporters think Trump will trounce Biden in a debate. Trump was horrible the first debate and not much better in the next two in 2016. My own opinion is that it will cringe worthy and most people will tune in for the same reason people slow down passing an accident on the freeway.
There shouldn’t be an audience in a debate — that’s a given. And due to the corona virus, its a good time to ditch the audience for good.
Cable TV ruined the debates — over analyzed it. And every person looks to have the one sound bite to make the 11 oclock news. One debate, no audience, one moderator.
I’m not sure a debate matters — Clinton “won” the debates but lost the electoral college. In a close election, the mechanics of getting people to the polls or the polls to the people is the key to success.
Biden is ahead by about 8 points why should he give Trump any chance to catch up or score points. Of course he should stay in the basement. For Biden, the corona virus allows him an excuse to meet small groups which he is good at — people like him when they meet him. For Trump, the corona virus has taken away his main electoral tool — the rally. Rallies do more than motivate the base — they collect data.
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Cowards hide in their basements from examination. Men and women with the guts to lead debate their opponents publicly on tv. They explain to voters why they’re the better choice in a side by side comparison, as we’ve always done since the invention of tv. (1956) (1948 for radio)
Why trash precedent only because the left nominated a senile dementia patient?
That’s on you guys. It’s not America’s fault they have such a weak bench.
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My guess is the German protesters belong to Alternative for Germany a far right party that has about 10% in recent polls. Merkel will ignore them. The CDU and Merkell are now polling at 38% which is up from 25% as recently as February. The only surprise for me is they are marching in Berlin — a bastion of the left wing. I imagine the police had difficulty keeping them apart.
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Personally I think Biden will do better than Trump in a debate. However, I understand the strategy of a low-key campaign for Biden especially in August. His strength is small groups so play to your strengths. Trump’s strength is large crowds ie no one on one interaction or debate and he’s sort of twisting in the wind right now. Political campaigns are about strategy and right now Biden has the upper hand and is playing to his strength. As for getting your ideas out there….please this election is more or less a referendum on Trump. The onus is on Trump to run on his record and justify an other four years — he’s done neither.
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“The onus is on Trump to run on his record and justify an other four years — he’s done neither.”
Americans disagree.
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https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/trump_administration/prez_track_aug03
“The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-seven percent (47%) disapprove.”
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And even worse news for Biden, the enthusiasm gap. 🙂
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trump-approval-back-to-51-supporters-70-more-enthusiastic-than-bidens
“Trump approval back to 51% and supporters 70% more enthusiastic than Biden’s”
“President Trump, scratching back to just 4-6 points behind challenger Joe Biden, is being bolstered by new polls showing a surge in his approval rating and a widening “enthusiasm gap” favoring him over his Democratic foe.
Just out is the daily Rasmussen Reports presidential approval rating for Trump at 51%.
Notably, said Rasmussen, at this stage of his presidency, former President Barack Obama had a 44% approval rating.”
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I was wondering how long it would take you to cite the Rasmussen poll. Rasmussen is well known to lean republican and is rate C+ by 538. A poll aggregate by RealClear has an approval rate at negative 10. 538 has Biden at 50 and Trump at 42. Aggregate polling had Obama at 47% at this time in his presidency.
Right now I have Biden winning 212 electoral votes in his sleep vs Trump’s sure 88 votes. California, NY, Illinois and Virginia give Biden quite the head start. Right now, Biden is 5% ahead in group of states which would give him an additional 96 votes. Yes there’s three months to go but there’s no need to for Biden to leave the basement and Trump needs to get to work — today was yet another day on the golf course. When Texas, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona are not safely in the Republican column; they have a problem. Biden is ahead by 6% in Florida. Without Florida, its very difficult for Trump to win.
Its true Trump has a committed base but he needs to have new voters in the Rust Belt to counter act increased turnout from people who stayed home because of Clinton. And there are no new voters for Trump but there are for Biden; he will get more than Clinton if only because he’s not Trump or Clinton.
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