June, 2023 archive
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.
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.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet more pistol-pumping politeness on the pavement.
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:
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.)
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):
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.
Establishmentarians 0
As a reminder, establishmentarians are those who want to make sure that you have that their old time religion.
Or else.
“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.
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.
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.
GOP: When the Truth Hurts, Hurt the Truth-Tellers 0
Thom explores how the right-wing is trying to stifle fact-checkers.
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:
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.
