The greatest existential threat to humanity is climate change but Joe Manchin just doesn’t give a shit; certainly not if he is able to continue to score serious income from his fossil fuel holdings. That’s what all the Manchin bullshit is about. He won’t tell you that. He’ll whine about waste and the grand theft that accompanies every spending bill that manages to get through congress. But instead of dealing with those evils, he tries to kill the bills that will provide the services that his coal mine owners have never provided for their employees. There’s a reason why Manchin, a Democrat, has been able to get elected in a state that is so red it bleeds, and it has everything to do with a misguided electorate and the complete support by the billionaire class that owns the mines that have already poisoned the state’s water and formerly gorgeous landscape.
Those who think Manchin and the tragically misguided Krysten Sinema are doing anything but killing desperately needed legislation are tragically misguided themselves because they fail to understand the most important aspects of this battle.
Yes, we need the changes that this money will provide and of course we need the improvements that these services will make in the lives of millions of Americans but the real fight here is about proving that Biden and the Democrats can get done what the GOP could not. And that victory along with the changes it will make in American life is what the Democrats need to win the mid-term elections and keep our democracy together. If the GOP takes the House and the Senate in 2022 they will, as they have in the past, prevent congress from passing any of the legislation that is needed to allow climate change, gun control, better healthcare, voting rights, pre-school and any number of other improvements that will make life inordinately better for the citizens of this nation. It’s no secret that the keys to our democracy, one man, one vote and the civilized transfer of power are in grave danger if the GOP takes either house of congress in the next election. We already see it in the dozens of states that are entertaining changes in their voting regulations that would interfere with the ability of Americans to vote. The Republicans are pretty much in a minority now and all indications are it will get worse for them in the future. Their only chance to rule as a minority is to destroy one man one vote by installing commissioners that will have the power to overrule the actual votes cast and appoint electors of their political choice. Don’t forget, elections that put George Bush and Donald Trump into the White House, despite them both losing the popular vote, shoved this nation down a path that led to the chaos of Jan.6th and along the way gave the United States the worst 12 years of leadership or lack thereof in its history. Now we are faced with a Republican Party that wants to abolish the constitution and lead the nation on a violent journey that ends in anarchy. They must be stopped and the best way to do it is to pass the Infrastructure and Reconciliation bills now and get started on guns, voting rights, healthcare and climate change immediately.
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There was a time when School Boards, made up mostly of parents filled in the blanks where educators were too busy or not equipped to function. They dealt with things like school lunches, cafeteria cleanliness, sports, after school programs, etc. At that time in our history the educators dealt with what subjects to teach, how to teach them and where to place the emphasis that would lead to a well-rounded education for our kids.
It seems that both the School Boards and the educators have failed, leaving us with a large percentage of schools that neither provide a well-rounded education nor a student body that is equipped to go on to higher education.
To make matters worse the School Boards are now stocked with political proselytizers who have little interest in actual education and great motivation to pursue their political goals by dragging our children through a quagmire of stupidity and nonsense.
The battles between the Left and the Right have infected our classrooms and we are faced by zealots inspired by political gamesmanship and religious fanaticism who want to make sure that our kids are on their side of a race grounded argument that should not even be approached until late secondary school or college. Getting children involved in a philosophy of race relations is ridiculous. Inform them as to what has happened in this country among the races, educate them in a way that teaches them to think and keep all this Critical Race stuff on hold until they get to a place in their own lives where they can understand what it’s about and how to deal with it.
Yes, we have had terrible race problems in this country and this isn’t the only place such problems have existed. They have been with us since the dawn of man. Slavery has existed for every step of the evolution of man. Race relations: us against them, is almost the basis of the way mankind has developed and evolved. Yes, it’s way past time we developed a better way and it’s to the shame of all mankind that we haven’t but blaming those around us for sins committed in another time, in another world surely isn’t the way to get it fixed. There are plenty of bigots and racists around to point a finger at. Let’s not make more problems by creating them where they don’t exist.
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The GOP version of what they would like our government to be, a Federation of States, is surprisingly enough pretty close to what it actually is, but they keep ignoring the first word, Federation. That’s the part where we established a federal government that leads the States, holds them together, keeps them from running amok and saves their bacon when disaster hits. It’s also the part that must step in when a non-functional state elects a brain-dead moron as governor, to save the citizens from their own misguided decision making at the polls.
Yes, I have a “for instance” in mind as I write this and it’s Texas. Here we have a huge state that has all the resources and advantages necessary to be its own country but even if that choice were available it couldn’t take advantage of it because of its propensity for electing the most absolutely brain-dead idiots ever to stain the political spectrum, to sit in the governor’s mansion.
You don’t have to look hard. Just go back to George W. Bush, follow him with Rick Perry and end with Greg Abbott and you have three of the dumbest governors in the history of political hackery. They and their like are the reason that Attorney General Merritt Garland is currently looking into getting into Texas politics in two big ways, abortion and voting rights.
Garland understands that you can’t just let some state run by idiots do what it pleases, violate the constitution and trample on the rights of the majority of its citizens just because it managed to gerrymander enough districts to get a minority of doddering idiot fanatics in power. Here’s hoping Merritt has the balls and the smarts to stop all this nonsense that is currently the wet dream of its fascist class and put all these notions of abortion shutdown and white voters only to rest.