Trump's Stupid Wall

Aside from the fact that it will cost billions of dollars -- money we could put toward education, useful infrastructure, and health care -- here is a prime reason Trump's wall is a terrible idea.

And that's ignoring the fact that Trump is only throwing this tantrum to distract from the fact that he's in huge political trouble.

What Could Be The Cause of All This Disrespect for Teachers?

Over at his blog, Rod Dreher cites an amusing little anecdote  (from the Daily Mail -- there's a reliable source, Rod! almost as good as Steven Sailer!) where some Chinese teachers come into a British classroom, spend some time teaching some British kids, and improve their test scores -- by a whole 10%!

The Chinese teachers comment with amazement on the unruly behavior behavior of the British kids and blame -- what else! -- the "generous" benefits of the British social safety net.  Having welfare available made kids rude and lazy, one Chinese teacher claimed, since they knew they had the dole to fall back on.

Rod expresses some doubt about this theory.  He thinks it's more cultural -- you know, some cultures teach people to respect education (he doesn't come right out and say white culture, but you know who he means) and some don't.

Um, Okay Then...

Rod Dreher knows that demons are real.

A Haitian cab driver told him so.

"I am not a crackpot," Rod Dreher says.

And the comments on this post.  Holy hell, if you will pardon my pun.  My favorite is the fella who knows demons are real because when his daughter was little there was this little girl who came over to play with his daughter, see.

And she was wearing this sweater.  And orange sweater.  With yellow markings.  And without even looking it up on the internet he just knew that was a demonic sweater. Something's not right about that girl, he told his wife.  And sure enough later he heard these growling noises coming from inside the girl...long story short, now his daughter is all grown up and has all sorts of problems, like anorexic, and it's because of the demonic influence of this demonic devil worshipping child they were so foolish as to let their child come into contact with at that demonic public school.

Let this be a warning to you!  HOME SCHOOL RULES!

Okay, Well...

I said I wouldn't have time to blog today, but...

Yesterday evening the kid approached me warily (she knows my, ah, strong feelings on this issue) and asked, "What would be an okay reason for a woman not to get an abortion?"

Which struck me as an odd way to frame the question, but I answered it as carefully as she had framed it. "Listen, sweetie. The choice is entirely up to the woman. That's what pro-choice means. Whether or not to continue a preganancy, any pregnancy, is up to the woman. That's the end of the question. It's her body, it's her choice."

She gazed at me, obviously not satisfied by this answer.

"If you're asking under what circumstances I would get an abortion," I said, "I would abort a pregnancy if the fetus was so damaged it could not survive, or if its brain was so damaged it was not technically alive, or if my own life were at risk. But that's my--"

"What if she, what if the woman couldn't afford--"

"That's my point," I said. "Every woman has to make these decisions for herself. No one can make the decision for anyone else. Your body, your life, your choice."

She kept staring at me, thinking this over.

"That's how it has to be," I told her.

Well, except for Eric, over at RedState. He thinks he should get to decide, for me and for my kid. And if he doesn't get to decide? He's going to start a Civil War and start shooting people.

Because one massacre in Arizona? That's not enough.

Health Care Reform

A bit of movement on Health Care Reform, not supported by Blanche Lincoln, the Democratic Senator from my benighted state, and coming too late for one of my best students, who this past Saturday had a major stroke and is, as we speak, in one of our two local hospitals.

She had worked all of her life, as most of my students have, in one of our local factories, and suffered multiple health problems because of it, include severe hearing loss.  She also had no health insurance, although, because she had some Native American blood -- again, as many of my student do -- she was able to use what she called "the Indian clinic" in Tallequah.  

Well, she was able to use it when (a) she could reach it and (b) it could fit her into its schedule.  Since so many of our local impoverished depend on it, it was nearly always overbooked.

What this worked out to was that her high blood pressure (not to mention her hearing loss and bad vision and dental issues and other problems, but we'll stick to the blood pressure problem) went untreated for years.  All last summer she kept driving over to Tallequah, trying to get her medication adjusted.  Her car was ancient and unreliable, she had to sit for hours at the clinic, and often they sent her home unseen because the doctors were overbooked.

So: stress, poverty, illness, overwork, and she was a semester away from graduation, set to graduate this spring, so there's that too.

Now she's in the ICU, and who knows what she'll be able to do?

Nor was she that old -- late fifties.  With proper medical care, she would have been an excellent English teacher in the public schools, a productive member of our economy.  Now she's going to cost Arkansas a ton of money for quite some time.

Heck of a job, Blanche.

What We Should Do Now, See...

I swear, if I hear one more Right-Wing Tool say "What we have to do now is look forward...."

Apparently it doesn't even matter what they're talking about.  Liz Cheney was talking about the moronic Birthers and spewed the line.  Trying to weasel out of having to admit that the obsession with Obama's birth certificate was looney, and rather than just say, "Yes, of course Obama was born in the USA," or, "Yes, of course people who say he's not an American citizen are focusing on the wrong thing," or even, "Yes, of course Obama is an American citizen," what does she say?

"We need to look forward now, not backward."

What in shit does that even mean in this context?

It's like they've got ten things they can say, like they're fucking wind-up dolls, and they just spit these phrases out.

God, they're tiresome.

Stupid Idiots and the Idiots Who Listen to Them

Or, you know, Ditto:

I don't know if you've heard the shit Rush is spreading about Katrina, and how what's happening in Iowa "proves" black folk in New Orleans were really scum and white folk in the Midwest are really the really true cool Americans, but the bits I've heard about is enough to make me ill (it's the same filthy racist crap Ms. Parker was spreading under the Real America guise back then when she said Obama wasn't a real American, essentally): anyway, here's a rebuttal, if you need one:

From the blog Red Room:

"Consider Limbaugh's formulation, where he says, "I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street."

"Fair enough. Those things aren't happening in Iowa. Yet, according to multiple post-Katrina investigations, and stories written up by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the London Guardian, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Reason Magazine and the American Journalism Review, reports of shooting at helicopters or rapes or murders were almost entirely false. There were, in fact, no murders in the evacuation centers, few if any sexual assaults, no helicopters fired on, and no police officers shot by residents. Yes, there was looting, although by a distinct minority of persons trapped in the city, and overwhelmingly for necessities like food, medicine, water, and clothing to replace the rotting, soaked rags people were wearing after wading through waist-deep water. And according to persons on the ground in the flood zone, even the luxury items taken were typically used as barter chips, to get rides out of the city for oneself and one's family when it became obvious that large scale assistance wasn't going to arrive any time soon. In other words, reports of widespread thuggery in New Orleans during the flooding have been greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated, and have only remained believable to millions because of the race and class biases which allow people to believe the worst about poor black folks even without a shred of actual evidence."

"And while Limbaugh and others praise Midwesterners for pulling together in a spirit of cooperation--as opposed to the animalistic chaos we are to envision when thinking of New Orleanians during Katrina--the fact is there were innumerable acts of kindness in the streets of New Orleans as well. Those who personally brought supplies to the thousands trapped downtown reported little if any fighting or anger amongst the assembled; rather, they saw persons trying to shade the elderly, and make sure that old folks and the very young had first dibs on what little relief supplies were dribbling in. But the media focused on none of that, choosing instead to highlight reports--false as it turned out--of mass violence."

"Then of course have been the suggestions, especially common in the e-blasts and blog postings to the effect that Iowans, unlike New Orleanians, have helped themselves, because while the latter had grown dependent on government to solve their problems, Midwesterners in the "heart of America" still value the importance of self-reliance. But the fact is, Iowans are no less likely to receive government assistance than those in New Orleans were prior to Hurricane Katrina, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Surveys, taken in 2006 (the most recent year available) and 2004 (the last data collected for New Orleans before the flooding of that city)."

"In hard-hit Linn County, Iowa, 2400 households receive cash public assistance, out of 85,000 total households, meaning that 2.8 percent of all households in the County receive cash welfare. In New Orleans, prior to Katrina, and contrary to popular belief, only 2.6 percent of households received cash welfare (4600 households out of 180,000). So in truth, a slightly higher percentage of Linn Countians were on the dole than New Orleanians! In Black Hawk County (also hard hit by the recent deluge), 2.5 percent of all households receive cash assistance: again, suggesting no real difference between the mostly white and rural folks there, and the mostly black and urban folks in Orleans Parish at the time of Katrina."