For all MAGAs that just can't comprehend why Biden won in '20 and will win in '24

[homersapien 12,302]

Here's a clue:

A Tennessee teacher planned a Mother’s Day class. Then came the MAGA rage.

By Greg Sargent

 

By now, it’s well understood that the right’s efforts to restrict classroom discussion are all about marginalizing LGBTQ people under the guise of protecting children. But they also harbor a less obvious aim: to convince parents that kids are under threat in the first place. That mild-mannered teacher over there? She just might be scheming to pervert, indoctrinate and snatch away childhood innocence.

Caroline Mickey, the librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School outside Chattanooga, Tenn., just learned this the hard way, when her idea for a Mother’s Day-themed lesson came under sudden and heavy fire from parents in the area. The vitriol of the attack, and the school district superintendent’s rapid decision to cancel her lesson in response, caught her off guard.

“It was overwhelming,” Mickey told me. “I didn’t realize it was going to be quite this intense.”

The saga started when Mickey sent out a notice to parents of a planned lesson in advance of Mother’s Day. She wrote that the lesson would be “sensitive to the fact that not all students live with a mother,” by celebrating those who aren’t mothers but “fill the motherly roles in our lives.”

Mickey notified parents that two books would be read aloud to kids from kindergarten through second grade. One was “Stella Brings the Family,” about a girl who is unsure how to approach a Mother’s Day celebration at school because she has two dads. The other was “Mother Bruce,” about a bear who adopts a brood of goslings who believe he’s their mother.

“We have students who don’t have mothers for a variety of reasons,” Mickey told me. “But everyone has somebody who loves them the way that a mother does.”

She offered parents the option of opting out of this lesson for their kids. In keeping with school district policy, she offered them an alternate lesson.

Then Moms for Liberty — which is restricting classroom discussion and getting books purged from school libraries across the country — wheeled into action.

Members of its chapter in the red-leaning area around the school in Hamilton County attacked the idea on social media and in local newspapers as Leninist indoctrination, anti-Christian and a threat to Western civilization. One woman called on locals to pray for children to guard them against the demonic threat posed by those children’s books.

A handful of particularly vocal parents in the area took the bait. They savaged Mickey as a “groomer” and an enemy of traditional birth mothers, some in long, rambling rants, according to emails that Mickey showed me.

After this pressure, Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson canceled the lesson. According to an email from Robertson posted by the Tennessee Holler, a progressive local news site, he agreed that the lesson and the books were unacceptable material.

It’s hard to see why. “Stella Brings the Family” isn’t really about her two dads. It’s about her anxiety about not fitting in with other kids with traditional birth mothers, and other kids’ uncertainty about her situation. The protagonist in “Mother Bruce” faces up to the complications of acting as a mother to goslings despite being a male bear. Both books are listed on Amazon as suitable for kindergartners.

“There’s nothing unusual about assigning books like these to readers in early grades,” Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression at PEN America, told me. “They are written with young children in mind, acknowledging the real world in which children find themselves — a world in which parental figures can differ. Hiding these facts from children does no favors either for them or for the society they inhabit.”

I asked Robertson to elaborate on his thinking, but he has yet to do so. Wherever his rationale, this chapter of Moms for Liberty is already known for regularly employing scorched-earth tactics, including hurling MAGA-type “pedophile” smears at foes. You can see why an educator might want to make the Moms for Liberty assault go away in the quickest possible way.

This is dismaying parents on the other side of this divide. As Taylor Lyons, who regularly battles the region’s right-wing warriors as the head of the local group Moms for Social Justice, told me: “We were deeply disheartened by our district leadership’s reactionary response to a few complaints from far right puritanical extremists.”

Yet as we’ve already seen on other fronts, local officials are easily pushed into doing the bidding of small bands of far-right culture-warmongers. Lone activists are getting stacks of books banned on the flimsiest of objections. Educators are erasing controversial topics from their syllabuses or getting chased out of town.

Mickey, for her part, has had no choice but to accept the cancellation of her lesson. “It threw me,” she said. “I think I had higher expectations.” The new politics of enemy-creation, which seeks to foment constant fear among and between parents and teachers, is working exactly as intended.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/09/moms-for-liberty-book-bans-maga-culture-war/

 

So y'all keep up the good work, ya hear?

 

 

Edited May 11, 2023 by homersapien

[aubiefifty 18,439]

12 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Here's a clue:

A Tennessee teacher planned a Mother’s Day class. Then came the MAGA rage.

By Greg Sargent

 

By now, it’s well understood that the right’s efforts to restrict classroom discussion are all about marginalizing LGBTQ people under the guise of protecting children. But they also harbor a less obvious aim: to convince parents that kids are under threat in the first place. That mild-mannered teacher over there? She just might be scheming to pervert, indoctrinate and snatch away childhood innocence.

Caroline Mickey, the librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School outside Chattanooga, Tenn., just learned this the hard way, when her idea for a Mother’s Day-themed lesson came under sudden and heavy fire from parents in the area. The vitriol of the attack, and the school district superintendent’s rapid decision to cancel her lesson in response, caught her off guard.

“It was overwhelming,” Mickey told me. “I didn’t realize it was going to be quite this intense.”

The saga started when Mickey sent out a notice to parents of a planned lesson in advance of Mother’s Day. She wrote that the lesson would be “sensitive to the fact that not all students live with a mother,” by celebrating those who aren’t mothers but “fill the motherly roles in our lives.”

Mickey notified parents that two books would be read aloud to kids from kindergarten through second grade. One was “Stella Brings the Family,” about a girl who is unsure how to approach a Mother’s Day celebration at school because she has two dads. The other was “Mother Bruce,” about a bear who adopts a brood of goslings who believe he’s their mother.

“We have students who don’t have mothers for a variety of reasons,” Mickey told me. “But everyone has somebody who loves them the way that a mother does.”

She offered parents the option of opting out of this lesson for their kids. In keeping with school district policy, she offered them an alternate lesson.

Then Moms for Liberty — which is restricting classroom discussion and getting books purged from school libraries across the country — wheeled into action.

Members of its chapter in the red-leaning area around the school in Hamilton County attacked the idea on social media and in local newspapers as Leninist indoctrination, anti-Christian and a threat to Western civilization. One woman called on locals to pray for children to guard them against the demonic threat posed by those children’s books.

A handful of particularly vocal parents in the area took the bait. They savaged Mickey as a “groomer” and an enemy of traditional birth mothers, some in long, rambling rants, according to emails that Mickey showed me.

After this pressure, Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson canceled the lesson. According to an email from Robertson posted by the Tennessee Holler, a progressive local news site, he agreed that the lesson and the books were unacceptable material.

It’s hard to see why. “Stella Brings the Family” isn’t really about her two dads. It’s about her anxiety about not fitting in with other kids with traditional birth mothers, and other kids’ uncertainty about her situation. The protagonist in “Mother Bruce” faces up to the complications of acting as a mother to goslings despite being a male bear. Both books are listed on Amazon as suitable for kindergartners.

“There’s nothing unusual about assigning books like these to readers in early grades,” Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression at PEN America, told me. “They are written with young children in mind, acknowledging the real world in which children find themselves — a world in which parental figures can differ. Hiding these facts from children does no favors either for them or for the society they inhabit.”

I asked Robertson to elaborate on his thinking, but he has yet to do so. Wherever his rationale, this chapter of Moms for Liberty is already known for regularly employing scorched-earth tactics, including hurling MAGA-type “pedophile” smears at foes. You can see why an educator might want to make the Moms for Liberty assault go away in the quickest possible way.

This is dismaying parents on the other side of this divide. As Taylor Lyons, who regularly battles the region’s right-wing warriors as the head of the local group Moms for Social Justice, told me: “We were deeply disheartened by our district leadership’s reactionary response to a few complaints from far right puritanical extremists.”

Yet as we’ve already seen on other fronts, local officials are easily pushed into doing the bidding of small bands of far-right culture-warmongers. Lone activists are getting stacks of books banned on the flimsiest of objections. Educators are erasing controversial topics from their syllabuses or getting chased out of town.

Mickey, for her part, has had no choice but to accept the cancellation of her lesson. “It threw me,” she said. “I think I had higher expectations.” The new politics of enemy-creation, which seeks to foment constant fear among and between parents and teachers, is working exactly as intended.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/09/moms-for-liberty-book-bans-maga-culture-war/

 

So y'all keep up the good work, ya hear?

 

 

joe won because people were tired of trump and his mouth. i find it funny they screwed ms cheney because she stood up for what was right. but they whisper they are done with trump behind his back so that makes what they did to liz even worse...................

[CoffeeTiger 5,948]

According to some on this forum parents/activists threatening teachers and schools for any lesson not approved by their local Church or Republican political is just ‘parental choice’ in action and should be celebrated! 
 

 

[aubiefifty 18,439]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

Here's a clue:

A Tennessee teacher planned a Mother’s Day class. Then came the MAGA rage.

By Greg Sargent

 

By now, it’s well understood that the right’s efforts to restrict classroom discussion are all about marginalizing LGBTQ people under the guise of protecting children. But they also harbor a less obvious aim: to convince parents that kids are under threat in the first place. That mild-mannered teacher over there? She just might be scheming to pervert, indoctrinate and snatch away childhood innocence.

Caroline Mickey, the librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School outside Chattanooga, Tenn., just learned this the hard way, when her idea for a Mother’s Day-themed lesson came under sudden and heavy fire from parents in the area. The vitriol of the attack, and the school district superintendent’s rapid decision to cancel her lesson in response, caught her off guard.

“It was overwhelming,” Mickey told me. “I didn’t realize it was going to be quite this intense.”

The saga started when Mickey sent out a notice to parents of a planned lesson in advance of Mother’s Day. She wrote that the lesson would be “sensitive to the fact that not all students live with a mother,” by celebrating those who aren’t mothers but “fill the motherly roles in our lives.”

Mickey notified parents that two books would be read aloud to kids from kindergarten through second grade. One was “Stella Brings the Family,” about a girl who is unsure how to approach a Mother’s Day celebration at school because she has two dads. The other was “Mother Bruce,” about a bear who adopts a brood of goslings who believe he’s their mother.

“We have students who don’t have mothers for a variety of reasons,” Mickey told me. “But everyone has somebody who loves them the way that a mother does.”

She offered parents the option of opting out of this lesson for their kids. In keeping with school district policy, she offered them an alternate lesson.

Then Moms for Liberty — which is restricting classroom discussion and getting books purged from school libraries across the country — wheeled into action.

Members of its chapter in the red-leaning area around the school in Hamilton County attacked the idea on social media and in local newspapers as Leninist indoctrination, anti-Christian and a threat to Western civilization. One woman called on locals to pray for children to guard them against the demonic threat posed by those children’s books.

A handful of particularly vocal parents in the area took the bait. They savaged Mickey as a “groomer” and an enemy of traditional birth mothers, some in long, rambling rants, according to emails that Mickey showed me.

After this pressure, Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson canceled the lesson. According to an email from Robertson posted by the Tennessee Holler, a progressive local news site, he agreed that the lesson and the books were unacceptable material.

It’s hard to see why. “Stella Brings the Family” isn’t really about her two dads. It’s about her anxiety about not fitting in with other kids with traditional birth mothers, and other kids’ uncertainty about her situation. The protagonist in “Mother Bruce” faces up to the complications of acting as a mother to goslings despite being a male bear. Both books are listed on Amazon as suitable for kindergartners.

“There’s nothing unusual about assigning books like these to readers in early grades,” Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression at PEN America, told me. “They are written with young children in mind, acknowledging the real world in which children find themselves — a world in which parental figures can differ. Hiding these facts from children does no favors either for them or for the society they inhabit.”

I asked Robertson to elaborate on his thinking, but he has yet to do so. Wherever his rationale, this chapter of Moms for Liberty is already known for regularly employing scorched-earth tactics, including hurling MAGA-type “pedophile” smears at foes. You can see why an educator might want to make the Moms for Liberty assault go away in the quickest possible way.

This is dismaying parents on the other side of this divide. As Taylor Lyons, who regularly battles the region’s right-wing warriors as the head of the local group Moms for Social Justice, told me: “We were deeply disheartened by our district leadership’s reactionary response to a few complaints from far right puritanical extremists.”

Yet as we’ve already seen on other fronts, local officials are easily pushed into doing the bidding of small bands of far-right culture-warmongers. Lone activists are getting stacks of books banned on the flimsiest of objections. Educators are erasing controversial topics from their syllabuses or getting chased out of town.

Mickey, for her part, has had no choice but to accept the cancellation of her lesson. “It threw me,” she said. “I think I had higher expectations.” The new politics of enemy-creation, which seeks to foment constant fear among and between parents and teachers, is working exactly as intended.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/09/moms-for-liberty-book-bans-maga-culture-war/

 

So y'all keep up the good work, ya hear?

 

 

in case my earlier reply came up looking weird i agree with you.

[homersapien 12,302]

You gotta love the irony that the group trying to ban books is called "Moms for Liberty". 

They need to organize a book burning and call it "bonfire for liberty". 

Edited May 10, 2023 by homersapien

[Leftfield 3,415]

Just now, homersapien said:

You gotta love the irony that the group trying to ban books is called "Moms for Liberty".

They need to organize a book burning and call it "bonfire for liberty". 

"Trumpettes for Democracy"

[homersapien 12,302]

15 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

joe won because people were tired of trump and his mouth. i find it funny they screwed ms cheney because she stood up for what was right. but they whisper they are done with trump behind his back so that makes what they did to liz even worse...................

More to the point, they voted for Biden because they were concerned about our democracy under Trump - thus the Biden campaign slogan - "Save Democracy".

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by homersapien

[Mims44 2,033]

15 hours ago, homersapien said:

Here's a clue:

A Tennessee teacher planned a Mother’s Day class. Then came the MAGA rage.

By Greg Sargent

 

By now, it’s well understood that the right’s efforts to restrict classroom discussion are all about marginalizing LGBTQ people under the guise of protecting children. But they also harbor a less obvious aim: to convince parents that kids are under threat in the first place. That mild-mannered teacher over there? She just might be scheming to pervert, indoctrinate and snatch away childhood innocence.

Caroline Mickey, the librarian at Alpine Crest Elementary School outside Chattanooga, Tenn., just learned this the hard way, when her idea for a Mother’s Day-themed lesson came under sudden and heavy fire from parents in the area. The vitriol of the attack, and the school district superintendent’s rapid decision to cancel her lesson in response, caught her off guard.

“It was overwhelming,” Mickey told me. “I didn’t realize it was going to be quite this intense.”

The saga started when Mickey sent out a notice to parents of a planned lesson in advance of Mother’s Day. She wrote that the lesson would be “sensitive to the fact that not all students live with a mother,” by celebrating those who aren’t mothers but “fill the motherly roles in our lives.”

Mickey notified parents that two books would be read aloud to kids from kindergarten through second grade. One was “Stella Brings the Family,” about a girl who is unsure how to approach a Mother’s Day celebration at school because she has two dads. The other was “Mother Bruce,” about a bear who adopts a brood of goslings who believe he’s their mother.

“We have students who don’t have mothers for a variety of reasons,” Mickey told me. “But everyone has somebody who loves them the way that a mother does.”

She offered parents the option of opting out of this lesson for their kids. In keeping with school district policy, she offered them an alternate lesson.

Then Moms for Liberty — which is restricting classroom discussion and getting books purged from school libraries across the country — wheeled into action.

Members of its chapter in the red-leaning area around the school in Hamilton County attacked the idea on social media and in local newspapers as Leninist indoctrination, anti-Christian and a threat to Western civilization. One woman called on locals to pray for children to guard them against the demonic threat posed by those children’s books.

A handful of particularly vocal parents in the area took the bait. They savaged Mickey as a “groomer” and an enemy of traditional birth mothers, some in long, rambling rants, according to emails that Mickey showed me.

After this pressure, Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Justin Robertson canceled the lesson. According to an email from Robertson posted by the Tennessee Holler, a progressive local news site, he agreed that the lesson and the books were unacceptable material.

It’s hard to see why. “Stella Brings the Family” isn’t really about her two dads. It’s about her anxiety about not fitting in with other kids with traditional birth mothers, and other kids’ uncertainty about her situation. The protagonist in “Mother Bruce” faces up to the complications of acting as a mother to goslings despite being a male bear. Both books are listed on Amazon as suitable for kindergartners.

“There’s nothing unusual about assigning books like these to readers in early grades,” Jonathan Friedman, the director of free expression at PEN America, told me. “They are written with young children in mind, acknowledging the real world in which children find themselves — a world in which parental figures can differ. Hiding these facts from children does no favors either for them or for the society they inhabit.”

I asked Robertson to elaborate on his thinking, but he has yet to do so. Wherever his rationale, this chapter of Moms for Liberty is already known for regularly employing scorched-earth tactics, including hurling MAGA-type “pedophile” smears at foes. You can see why an educator might want to make the Moms for Liberty assault go away in the quickest possible way.

This is dismaying parents on the other side of this divide. As Taylor Lyons, who regularly battles the region’s right-wing warriors as the head of the local group Moms for Social Justice, told me: “We were deeply disheartened by our district leadership’s reactionary response to a few complaints from far right puritanical extremists.”

Yet as we’ve already seen on other fronts, local officials are easily pushed into doing the bidding of small bands of far-right culture-warmongers. Lone activists are getting stacks of books banned on the flimsiest of objections. Educators are erasing controversial topics from their syllabuses or getting chased out of town.

Mickey, for her part, has had no choice but to accept the cancellation of her lesson. “It threw me,” she said. “I think I had higher expectations.” The new politics of enemy-creation, which seeks to foment constant fear among and between parents and teachers, is working exactly as intended.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/05/09/moms-for-liberty-book-bans-maga-culture-war/

 

So y'all keep up the good work, ya hear?

 

 

I didn't think you were a fan of Biden? Was I mistaken?

[autigeremt 7,255]

It’s ok! Biden and his inner circle are as corrupt as they come trading inside leverage for cash with multiple heads of state and wannabe winners. Our choices suck. 

[TexasTiger 14,511]

36 minutes ago, autigeremt said:

It’s ok! Biden and his inner circle are as corrupt as they come trading inside leverage for cash with multiple heads of state and wannabe winners. Our choices suck. 

Who are you identifying as inner circle?

[homersapien 12,302]

On 5/10/2023 at 10:20 AM, Mims44 said:

I didn't think you were a fan of Biden? Was I mistaken?

I didn't vote for him in the primary.  (I wisely assumed Hunter Biden would become a political issue and hold him directly responsible for that.)

But do I agree with most of his policies.  And I think he has gone a great job so far regarding Ukraine.

But like he has said, "don't compare me with the almighty God, compare me to the alternative". 

The truth behind that clinches my support, even if I am not a "fan". 

Edited May 11, 2023 by homersapien

[homersapien 12,302]

17 hours ago, autigeremt said:

It’s ok! Biden and his inner circle are as corrupt as they come trading inside leverage for cash with multiple heads of state and wannabe winners. Our choices suck. 

Until we see evidence, that's merely your fantasy. 

[arein0 1,109]

18 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Until we see evidence, that's merely your fantasy. 

But but but the Truth 

[Mims44 2,033]

1 hour ago, homersapien said:

I didn't vote for him in the primary.  (I wisely assumed Hunter Biden would become a political issue and hold him directly responsible for that.)

But do I agree with most of his policies.  And I think he has gone a great job so far regarding Ukraine.

But like he has said, "don't compare me with the almighty God, compare me to the alternative". 

That clinches my support, even if I am not a "fan". 

I meant more the title claiming he'll win in '24.

Is it already a foregone conclusion that he is THE democrat candidate?

[TexasTiger 14,511]

17 minutes ago, Mims44 said:

I meant more the title claiming he'll win in '24.

Is it already a foregone conclusion that he is THE democrat candidate?

Anything can happen at this point, but if walking upright next year, it’s highly likely.

[wdefromtx 3,712]

30 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Anything can happen at this point, but if walking upright next year, it’s highly likely.

Does it have to be on his own power or are we talking Weekend at Bernie's here?

[TexasTiger 14,511]

5 minutes ago, wdefromtx said:

Does it have to be on his own power or are we talking Weekend at Bernie's here?

Has to be able to say, “Malarkey!”

[Mims44 2,033]

52 minutes ago, TexasTiger said:

Anything can happen at this point, but if walking upright next year, it’s highly likely.

There is no maximum age limit is there?

Has there even been talk of putting one in? We seem to sorely need it.

[TexasTiger 14,511]

7 minutes ago, Mims44 said:

There is no maximum age limit is there?

Has there even been talk of putting one in? We seem to sorely need it.

I’m not aware of any meaningful effort at an amendment.

[homersapien 12,302]

2 hours ago, Mims44 said:

I meant more the title claiming he'll win in '24.

Is it already a foregone conclusion that he is THE democrat candidate?

Pretty much.  Unless he changes his mind.

[Mims44 2,033]

7 hours ago, homersapien said:

Pretty much.  Unless he changes his mind.

Does it make you sad?

It makes me sad.

 

And apparently the GOP is gonna ride with Trump again....

 

 

 

Are the two parties just intent on running bad candidates to make a point of their power?

[TexasTiger 14,511]

9 hours ago, Mims44 said:

Does it make you sad?

It makes me sad.

 

And apparently the GOP is gonna ride with Trump again....

 

 

 

Are the two parties just intent on running bad candidates to make a point of their power?

Makes me sad there aren’t better known and willing choices. The known & willing ones don’t thrill me.

[I_M4_AU 9,038]

11 hours ago, Mims44 said:

Does it make you sad?

It makes me sad.

 

And apparently the GOP is gonna ride with Trump again....

 

 

 

Are the two parties just intent on running bad candidates to make a point of their power?

It’s not over yet. I know the press on both sides are pushing Trump, but hopefully a better candidate will emerge and we actually see a Republican debate.  Trump is trying to avoid that, but it needs to happen.

I’m also not convinced Biden will actually be the Democratic nominee.  It would just be like the Dems to push a Trump/Biden rematch and change up after (if) he is the Republican nominee.  Conspiracy I know.  The RNC is mid July and the DNC is mid August.  hmmmm.

[TexasTiger 14,511]

Just now, I_M4_AU said:

It’s not over yet. I know the press on both sides are pushing Trump, but hopefully a better candidate will emerge and we actually see a Republican debate.  Trump is trying to avoid that, but it needs to happen.

I’m also not convinced Biden will actually be the Democratic nominee.  It would just be like the Dems to push a Trump/Biden rematch and change up after (if) he is the Republican nominee.  Conspiracy I know.  The RNC is mid July and the DNC is mid August.  hmmmm.

Those dastardly Dems!

[I_M4_AU 9,038]

Just now, TexasTiger said:

Those dastardly Dems!

Yep, the party that orchestrated the 51 secret service agents right before the debate between Biden and Trump.  They would never manipulate the American public like that.