Demovictory9
Demovictory9's JournalNew classroom book screening process in Tennessee
https://www.dailydot.com/irl/teacher-books-screened/She explains that teachers have to catalog the title and author of every book in their classroom — even if they have hundreds of books. After a teacher catalogs their books, they must send the list to their school librarian, who has a list of “approved” books. Sydney says she doesn’t know what that list is based on.
Once the school librarian determines which books on a teacher’s catalog are approved, teachers have to remove the “unapproved” books from their classrooms. If a teacher has any books that a librarian is uncertain about, they send those books to a higher-up administrator. That person will then determine whether those books are acceptable for the students.
After the administrator determines the approved and unapproved books, teachers once again have to remove any additionally unapproved books. Then, the teacher has to post the finalized list of approved books from the librarian and administrator online where parents can view it. Parents can chime in about any books they deem inappropriate, Sydney says.
After all that, the kids can finally start reading the books.
The Republicans' Senate campaign arm cuts TV ad buys in 3 critical battleground states (PA, WI, AZ)
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/08/15/us/primary-elections-midterms#senate-gop-ad-wisconsin-pennsylvania-arizonaThe Republicans’ Senate campaign committee has slashed its television ad reservations in three critical battleground states for the fall, a likely sign of financial troubles headed into the peak of the 2022 midterm election season.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has cut more than $5 million in Pennsylvania, including its reservations in the Philadelphia media market, according to two media-tracking sources.
Reservations in Wisconsin, in the Madison and Green Bay markets, have also been curtailed, by more than $2 million. And in Arizona, all reservations after Sept. 30 have been cut in Phoenix and Tucson, the state’s only two major media markets, amounting to roughly $2 million more.
So far around $10 million had been canceled as of midday Monday, though more changes to the fall reservations were in progress. The states where ad reservations have been canceled are home to three of the nation’s most competitive Senate contests.
In a statement, Chris Hartline, the communications director for the N.R.S.C., said, “Nothing has changed about our commitment to winning in all of our target states.”
Mr. Hartline added that the committee had “been spending earlier than ever before to help our candidates get their message out and define the Democrats for their radical agenda. We’ve been creative in how we’re spending our money and will continue to make sure that every dollar spent by the N.R.S.C. is done in the most efficient and effective way possible.”
Los Angeles area 7-11 trashed after street takeover
Ohio's voters are moderate, but its legislature is to the right of South Carolina's
Ohio’s voters are moderate, but its legislature is to the right of South Carolina’s
As the Supreme Court anticipated when it overturned Roe v. Wade, the battle over abortion rights is now being waged state by state. Nowhere is the fight more intense than in Ohio, which has long been considered a national bellwether. The state helped secure the Presidential victories of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then went for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. Its residents tend to be politically moderate, and polls consistently show that a majority of Ohio voters support legal access to abortion, particularly for victims of rape and incest. Yet, as the recent ordeal of a pregnant ten-year-old rape victim has illustrated, Ohio’s state legislature has become radically out of synch with its constituents. In June, the state’s General Assembly instituted an abortion ban so extreme that the girl was forced to travel to Indiana to terminate her pregnancy. In early July, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, the Indiana obstetrician who treated the child, told me that she had a message for Ohio’s legislature: “This is your fault!”
Longtime Ohio politicians have been shocked by the state’s transformation into a center of extremist legislation, not just on abortion but on such divisive issues as guns and transgender rights. Ted Strickland, a Democrat who served as governor between 2007 and 2011, told me, “The legislature is as barbaric, primitive, and Neanderthal as any in the country. It’s really troubling.”
According to David Niven, a political-science professor at the University of Cincinnati, a 2020 survey indicated that less than fourteen per cent of Ohioans support banning all abortions without exceptions for rape and incest. And a 2019 Quinnipiac University poll showed that only thirty-nine per cent of Ohio voters supported the kind of “heartbeat” law that the legislature passed. But the Democrats in the Ohio legislature had no way to mount resistance: since 2012, the Republicans have had a veto-proof super-majority in both chambers.
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Click, who is a close ally of the Republican congressman Jim Jordan, is one of Ohio’s most extreme legislators, but he’s hardly out of place among the General Assembly’s increasingly radical Republican majority. Niven, the University of Cincinnati professor, told me that, according to one study, the laws being passed by Ohio’s statehouse place it to the right of the deeply conservative legislature in SouthCarolina. How did this happen, given that most Ohio voters are not ultra-conservatives? “It’s all about gerrymandering,” Niven told me. The legislative-district maps in Ohio have been deliberately drawn so that many Republicans effectively cannot lose, all but insuring that the Party has a veto-proof super-majority. As a result, the only contests most Republican incumbents need worry about are the primaries——and, because hard-core partisans dominate the vote in those contests, the sole threat most Republican incumbents face is the possibility of being outflanked by a rival even farther to the right.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/state-legislatures-are-torching-democracy
The Republican Plan To Devastate Public Education in America
The Republican Plan To Devastate Public Education in AmericaConservatives talk about “school choice.” What they really want, though, will result in the end of public education for the poor, and disfavored minorities like LGBT people.
Unfortunately, using vouchers for private schools is not viable for most people either. The dollar value of the vouchers is several thousand less than what most charter schools or private (usually religious) schools charge. In Arizona, even advocates of the school voucher program (also called Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs) admit that they cover only about two-thirds of tuition at most private schools, leaving parents responsible for thousands of dollars in costs out of pocket.
Florida’s history with vouchers shows us where this leads: poorer students promised a better education end up in low-cost, low-quality charter schools in abandoned strip malls that go out of business with little or no warning, with devastating results for the students. Republicans across the country have ensured that there is little to no oversight of charter schools, and that they do not have to meet many state education regulations. This is ostensibly to foster “innovation,” but in reality it is to make them more profitable, and conceal how shoddy many of them are. In Ohio, as Jane Mayer reported in her gripping new article about the destruction right-wing Republicans have wrought in that state, after a decade of GOP operatives siphoning off public school funding and directing it toward politically connected charter schools, state education rankings have slipped from fifth in the nation to 31st.
https://newrepublic.com/article/167375/republican-plan-devastate-public-education-america
Private religious schools are in many ways worse. Many of them were founded by segregationists in the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education and remain nearly all-white (and racist) today. There’s very little government oversight of religious schools, leading to opportunities for graft and abuse. They do not have to comply with the ADA or Title IX, leading to discrimination (but higher test scores overall, since poorer children and students with special needs are generally excluded). Nor do they have to comply with state civil rights laws protecting LGBT students, or even students with LGBT parents, relatives, or friends.
The result is tremendous variance in the quality of charter schools, mostly reflecting how much funding they have. “Allowing the market to decide” hasn’t created a rising tide that lifts all boats; students with less money get a worse education, and charter schools don’t seem to produce better results overall. You get out of a system what you put into it, and Republicans want to put as little as possible into education.
https://newrepublic.com/article/167375/republican-plan-devastate-public-education-america
Jenna Bush invades her co host's space
https://youtube.com/shorts/tFimjPWIc94?feature=shareWhy Dems havent piled on Trump: 1. Surprised by events 2. Want tfg to be candidate
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2657860680/During a panel discussion on CNN's "Inside Politics" on Sunday morning, it was noted that Democratic lawmakers are remaining, for the most part, very subdued in their attacks on Donald Trump in light of his burgeoning legal problems after the Department of Justice sent FBI agents armed with a warrant to his Mar-a-Lago resort.
"You are very well-sourced on the Democratic Party on Capitol Hill," the host prompted. "I have been kind of interested to watch how Democrats have responded to date on this. It's been a little more cautious and I think they think it's damaging and not a good thing in any way, shape or form."
"But you haven't seen the kind of jump-all-in, he's going to jail, when are they going to be marching him out of Bedminster or wherever he is at this time? Why?" he asked.
"Well, they have held back because, first of all, they were also taken by surprise with this," Caldwell replied. "No one knows all the facts yet. We have a lot more information now than we did last Monday when this [the Mar-a-Lagon search] happened. But throughout this process, Democrats also know [Attorney General] Merrick Garland very well. They know how thorough he is and they have trust in him and the Department of Justice."
"So they are just going to see what happens because they also think the Republicans are overreaching by far here," she elaborated. "They jumped to conclusions so quickly after this search was announced on Monday night and they think Republicans are kind of sowing their own seeds and could regret a lot of their statements depending on what moves forward."
"And, as far as Donald Trump is concerned, Democrats still think Donald Trump is the best Republican nominee for Democrats to run against. They think he is politically weak, not only with Democrats but with moderate and independent voters as well," she added.
Anne Heche's mother has outlived 4 of 5 kids..
The deeply religious 85-year-old mother of the late actress Anne Heche is nothing if not a survivor.
Nancy Heche has now outlived four of her five children — in addition to her secretly gay husband, Donald, who died of AIDS in 1983.
https://nypost.com/2022/08/13/anne-heches-mom-nancy-survives-four-of-her-five-kids/
The Chicago-based Nancy Heche, who is a Christian psychologist who uses the Bible in her counseling practice, was initially furious when Anne told her in 1997 that she’d fallen in love with Ellen DeGeneres.
“I am plummeted into disbelief and outrage,” she wrote. “I am dumbfounded, in a state of shock. Doesn’t Anne know what homosexuality has done to our family?”
“How will we ever be able to close the gap, the avowed heterosexual mother and the avowed homosexual daughter?” she added.
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