He carried the worries of a nation on his shoulder for the last eight years, now the former president of the United States is using the first few weeks out of office to unwind,
Well deserved Mr. President!
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Readin’, Writin’ and ‘Ridiculous
There’s a certain perverse pride public educators should feel due to the fact that Betsy DeVos, the nominee for Secretary of Education, is, of all the Trump cabinet picks, the object of the most phone calls and other communications objecting to her confirmation. She’s also the only nominee that some Republican Senators will oppose. At last, education is at the top of the priority list. Feel better?
The corporatization of public education has been gaining strength since A Nation at Risk was released in 1983, warning the United States that students were not learning the content and skills they needed in order for our country to compete in the economic and political world. Despite efforts to reform the curriculum, incorporate technology, and change teaching practice to include cooperative learning, Back to Basics learning and the upside down classroom, schools are being shortchanged in state budgets and students are being tested over the course of multiple days which could be used for more quality instruction.
The solution? Betsy DeVos.
Yes, what this country needs is a Secretary of Education with no public school…anything. Not attendance, not school board, not having children attend public school, and not any knowledge of laws that govern the public schools. She is the perfect manifestation of the ideology that puts money, competition and strict, top-down management above all else. She represents the conservative view that, really, anyone can be in education because, well, teaching is easy and the schedule is cake and, honestly, if you were so smart, you would have gone into a field where you were respected and could earn piles of cash.
Stupid teachers.
But just public school teachers. Conservative ideology says that private school teachers are just fine because they understand the private nature of capitalism and that skimming the best students off the top is the American way. And Charter School teachers? You are even better because you are directly challenging the public schools and those nasty unions in your districts. Cynical? You bet. True? No.
But that seems to be where Betsy Devos is on the educational continuum. She is highly unqualified, regal in her detachment from all things public school, blithely ignorant of what she doesn’t know, and dismissive of what really works in education. She is also a reflection of the president’s (shudder) own uncaring attitude towards anything that requires thoughtfulness and academic rigor. What do you expect from someone who doesn’t read books?
The silver lining is that conservatives don’t want a federal presence in education, preferring to keep the major issues at the state level. The problem is that DeVos will champion vouchers and the growth of non-public schools. How much of an impact she’ll have will depend on how much power she can carve out of the department.
The responsibility of all public school educators is to oppose her at every turn and to do what’s right for our students.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
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Ellen Degeneres gave an unforgettable tribute to an unforgettable President and First Lady, Barack Obama and Michelle Obama. And in this unforgettable tribute were unforgettable footage of the Obamas doing some unforgettable dance moves.
This is a must see for all!
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She is an adviser to Donald Trump and has full access to the best research team the White House has to offer. Yet Kellyanne Conway cannot get it right.
In an interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, Conway sites “The Bowling Green Massacre” as proof that Donald Trump’s Muslim ban on 7 Muslim countries was valid. Conway then said that the media didn’t cover the massacre and most people don’t know about it.
“Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered,” Conway said.
The Bowling Green massacre didn’t get covered because it didn’t happen. There has never been a terrorist attack in Bowling Green, Ky., carried out by Iraqi refugees or anyone else.
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A new Twitter handle has popped up and like its name says, the handle is all about Trump’s drawings. You didn’t know Trump drew? It’s what he’s done every time he signs an executive order. Don’t believe me? Here are a few examples.
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
house pic.twitter.com/AHAjqMazJ4
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
kat pic.twitter.com/ra55wo0ulW
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
horse pic.twitter.com/9UK8xE4KsG
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
turkey pic.twitter.com/t6OJ15Fsan
— Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) January 31, 2017
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Nothing is sacred anymore. The Brazilian man follows a bride into a church, lifts his shirt and pulls out a gun shooting 3 people, and it’s all caught on tape!
In the video, an unidentified Brazilian bride is seen making her way down the aisle at Our Lady of Conception Church as a man in a striped t-shirt and jeans walks behind her.
As the bride gets to the front of the church, the man walks into one of the pews and says something to one of the guests. The man then lifts up his shirt, pulls out a gun and starts shooting. As guests run for cover, the shooter is seen calmly walking out the front door of the church.
Believe it or not, following the chaos the bride and groom actually continued the ceremony and got married.
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You can count on it that Donald Trump will somehow try to turn this tragedy into praise and self-admiration for a job well done.
Little Nawar al-Awlaki — the daughter of U.S.-born Yemeni preacher and Al Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki — was shot and killed during a Sunday raidtargeting militants in southern Yemen, her grandfather said.
“She was hit with a bullet in her neck and suffered for two hours,” Nasser al-Awlaki told Reuters. “Why kill children? This is the new (U.S.) administration — it’s very sad, a big crime.”
Medics on the scene said at least nine other women and children were killed in the raid.
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Understand this if you can. Donald Trump has basically demoted the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of National Intelligence and in his place, Trump has elevated Breitbart’s editor, Steve Bannon to sit in on national intelligence meetings.
But the defining moment for Mr. Bannon came Saturday night in the form of an executive order giving the rumpled right-wing agitator a full seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council — while downgrading the roles of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence, who will now attend only when the council is considering issues in their direct areas of responsibilities. It is a startling elevation of a political adviser, to a status alongside the secretaries of state and defense, and over the president’s top military and intelligence advisers.
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I honestly did now know there was such a record but apparently, there is. In just a little over one week, Donald Trump managed to get a majority of Americans to disapprove of the work he is doing as president.
It took former President George W. Bush 1,205 days to reach a majority disapproval rating. Former President Barack Obama crossed that threshold in 936 days.
And President Donald Trump did it in just over a week.
The Republican, who was sworn in on Jan. 20 as the least popular president in at least 40 years, hit majority disapproval in a record eight days, a new Gallup poll of 1,500 Americans finds. As of Saturday, 51 percent of Americans disapproved of Trump.
Trump’s majority disapproval rating comes after a tumultuous first week in office that was capped off with his widely protested executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. After the president’s first day in office, millions of women and men protested his agenda in the Women’s March on Washington and sister marches around the world.
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A growing petition in the UK is trying to stop Donald Trump’s upcoming state visit from happening. The petition states Trump’s “well documented misogyny and vulgarity” as some of the reasons for denying his entry, but since Trump’s new immigration ban, the petition has taken on a life of its own.
The petition gets hundreds of signatures per second.
“Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of the US government, but he should not be invited to make an official state visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.
“Donald Trump’s well-documented misogyny and vulgarity disqualifies him from being received by Her Majesty the Queen or the Prince of Wales. Therefore during the term of his presidency, Donald Trump should not be invited to the United Kingdom for an official state visit.”
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It’s Chauncey Gardiner On Crystal Meth
Something is telling me that this immigration ban isn’t working out the way the president (shudder) thought it would. He probably thought that since he’s, you know, Donald Trump and that, you know, Steve Bannon told him that Muslims are terrible, and that, you know, his rabid fan base voted for this craziness, that he could just, you know, do this immigration ban thing. Never mind that zero terrorists have come from the countries we’re banning people from. And make sure that we don’t include countries where Trump has businesses. Appearances matter, you know.
This is a nightmare. And it’s only been 10 days. All I can say is thank heavens for the Federal court system and the judges who understand the Constitution and our way of life, because clearly Donald Trump is the biggest Know-Nothing this country, or at least a minority of voters, has ever elected president. And it’s up to the majority who oppose him, a majority that’s getting more major every day, to stop him.
Consider what else we’ve learned since January 20.
We have a president who doesn’t read. He only likes to watch television and and then regurgitweet what he’s seen and heard. Using the same language as the news shows.
He engages in conspiracy theories about illegal immigrants, 3.5 million strong, who came out to vote in November for Hillary Clinton. They didn’t vote for anybody else–not Senate, not House, not Dog Catcher–only for Hillary. And she got almost every one of their votes. That’s amazing.
And that’s why its a conspiracy theory. Because to an average, thinking, reading, analyzing, overworked, underpaid, patriotic American, it makes no sense. But to the leader of the free world? A perfect explanation for why he simply couldn’t, ever, lose the popular vote.
I shudder to think of what Trump would have done had he lost the election and made good on his promise to not concede. Here he won the election and he still can’t let go of the fact that he’s not more popular than he’s convinced himself that he is.
And all of this has nothing to do with actual policy. Remember the fuss the GOP made about Obama’s use of Executive Orders? That’s all Trump has used since his inauguration and not a peep out of the purring, moist right wing. What about the deficit, you say? Hey, $20 billion on a superfluous, irrelevant, showy wall is a fine use of taxpayers pesos, I mean, dollars. We might not get Mitch McConnell to go along with funds for highways, bridges, roads, hospitals, airports, water systems and other extras that we really don’t need, but a wall that will immediately become cover for tunnels? I can see him sidling up to Paul Ryan, with a handful of bills and in a low, conspiratorial voice say, “Don’t tell your father I gave you this.”
The Trump administration is making good on its campaign promises, and now we are seeing why more people voted against them. They are creating chaos, uncertainty and unnecessary hardship for many Americans, and they contradict this country’s values of tolerance and equality before the law.
For more, go to www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives or Twitter @rigrundfest
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I find it hard to believe that a nation of immigrants is refusing entry to other immigrants, based for the most part, on the immigrant’s religion. But for Donald Trump and his Republican backers, this is exactly the outcome they are after.
Hours after landing in New York on Saturday, a doctor at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic was forced to leave the country based on an executive order issued by President Donald Trump that bans visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days.
Her flight to Saudi Arabia took off minutes before a federal judge in New York put a temporary stay on turning back people in such situations.
Suha Abushamma, 26, is in the first year of an Internal Medicine residency program at the clinic and held an H-1B visa for workers in “specialty occupations.” Born and raised in Saudi Arabia, she holds a passport from Sudan, one of the seven countries from which Trump barred visitors.
On Saturday evening, Abushamma was forced to make a choice by Customs and Border Protection agents: She could leave the country voluntarily and withdraw her visa — or she could be forcibly deported, which would have prevented her from coming back to the United States for at least five years. The latter also would have resulted in a permanent black mark on her immigration record.
She asked for a delay but was refused, she said in a FaceTime interview with ProPublica while she was flying over the Atlantic on her way back to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is not one of the countries on Trump’s list, but because Abushamma’s passport is from Sudan, she was told she is covered by the executive order.
“I’m only in this country to be a doctor, to work and to help people — that’s it,” she said. “There’s no other reason.”
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