From Pine View Farm

June, 2023 archive

A Tune for the Times 0

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Extra-Special Bonus QOTD 0

Bob Cesca:

“Anti-woke” is the new Jim Crow.

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Vaccine Nation 0

Honest to Betsy, these lying liar anti-vaxxers will latch onto anything to promote their perfidies and imperil the polity.

One more time, “social” media isn’t.

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Sunk, One More Time 0

Rebecca Watson points out that the Titan submersible did not sink because of “wokeness,” despite the claims of right-wing nutjobs.

It sank because of stupid.

And, in the spirit of woke and in anticipation of the recent decision by the Supreme Supremacist Court, she also makes some telling points about the value of diversity.

Or you can read the transcript.

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Plessy v. Ferguson Redux 0

White man wearing shirt labeled

Click to view the original image.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet more pistol-pumping politeness on the pavement.

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Numbers Gaming 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Christopher J. Ferguson makes a strong case that the recent dip in school children’s test scores on the NEAP standardized test was not nearly so severe nor so alarming as depicted by (some) press reports and politicians. He points out:

Since 2020, drops in both reading and math were noticed, likely tied to school closures during the Covid-19 epidemic. News media dutifully referred to these drops as “alarming,” an “emergency,” or “grim.” But how bad is the news, actually?

When we look at the official charts released for the NAEP, we can see a small 4-point drop in reading and a larger 9-point drop in math.

. . . even across 5 decades, scores overall didn’t change very much. For reading, scores improved slightly over time before becoming largely static since 2012, then dropping a bit during Covid. Math scores improved a bit more, then dropped a tiny bit since 2012, then more rapidly during Covid. Since scores can range 500 points, how worrisome is a drop of 4 or even 9 points?

Follow the link for his answer to his (admittedly rhetorical) question.

(Broken link fixed.)

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QOTD 0

Adous Huxley:

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

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A Notion of Immigrants 0

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

At The Philadelphia Inquirer, Solomon Jones sees behind the rationalizations to the reality behind the recent decision by the Supreme Supremacist Court against affirmative action in college admissions. Here’s a bit of his article (emphasis added):

But the generational nature of racial preference is cemented into American culture through education. From underfunding schools in Black communities, to allowing toxic materials to languish in Black school buildings, to disproportionately denying college admission to qualified Black applicants, America has used education to maintain and perpetuate inequality. That’s why it was so important for right-wing activists to abolish any effort to correct racial disparities in higher education. Keeping affirmative action would give at least some African Americans a chance to compete on a level playing field. That has never been the American way.

Aside:

God forbid that America should do anything to compensate for the legacy of its original sin of chattel slavery, or, for that matter, even admit that it was.

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Establishmentarians 0

As a reminder, establishmentarians are those who want to make sure that you have that their old time religion.

Or else.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

A `14-year-old was backpacking heat and it did not work out wel–well, actually, it worked out exactly as any thinking person might have predicted.

And thus passeth another day in NRA Paradise.

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The Art of the Con 0

Beggar on street holding a sign reading,

Via Yellowdoggranny.

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Suffer the Children 0

We are again reminded that that is not scripture.

Rather, it is Republican policy.

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Gutting Out the Vote 0

Steve M. thinks he knows why the Supreme Court overturned North Carolina’s attempt to subvert elections.

He suggests that it was too obvious.

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QOTD 0

S. S. Van Dine, in the voice of Philo Vance:

I suppose that almost anything is possible in this illogical world.

Van Dine, S. S. (Willard Huntington Wright), The Scarab Murder Case (Driffield, Yorkshire, UK: Leonaur LTD, 2010), p. 80.

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GOP: When the Truth Hurts, Hurt the Truth-Tellers 0

Thom explores how the right-wing is trying to stifle fact-checkers.

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Mean Girls 0

Mike Littwin looks at the recent kerfuffle between Lauren Boebert and Margery Taylor Greene on the floor of the United States House of Representative; he argues that it was all about the Benjamins.

Here’s a bit from his article:

The fight was not over whether one had the better case to make against Biden — it would be difficult, given that there is no such case — but who would get the headline, and the coveted Fox News/Breitbart/Newsmax interviews and the resulting fundraising bonus.

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A Choice, Not an Echo 0

Tom Harper, in a letter to the editor of the Las Vegas Sun, thinks we have a clear choice in 2024:

Do you want a president who fully recognizes that no man is above the law, or an autocratic crook?

I find myself confronting an inability to take exception to his reasoning, which you may review by accessing the Uniform Resource Locator referenced herein above.

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“The Candy Man Can” 0

More stuff you couldn’t make up.

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