(12-22-2016, 03:23 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-22-2016, 02:47 PM)taramarie Wrote: Omg guys give it a rest. It is Christmas. Can't you be civil for at least a few days?

 I thought we were remaining pretty civil myself. I haven't ripped into Playdude as much as I could rip into Playdude in real life. Have you ever wondered how long Playdude/Eric/PB would last here, if I was able to write better and type faster and much more into doing stuff like this competitively?

It looks as if some Trump supporters (including some local Republican Party cells) don't appreciate academic freedom. Above a certain level of sophistication of students (roughly middle school) teachers in some subjects are likely to introduce potentially-controversial positions. Academic freedom does not protect teachers or professors from losing jobs for incompetence (let us say a biology teacher asserting that a frog is a mammal or a teacher of any kind denying the Holocaust) or teacher misconduct (like lewd behavior). Teachers are rightly protected from student misconduct, and are not expected to change their positions on current issues just because there is a new President or that the majority has changed in Congress or the State Legislature. Teachers have the right to their opinions but of course must recognize that there usually is another side (unless a dry fact or a controversy settled definitively decades ago).

Even as a substitute teacher I have had to deal with homophobia, including a time in which a student bragged that he loved to beat gays with a baseball bat. I of course called him on it because such is a crime (assault, potentially murder) and he accused me of being a homosexual. Eventually I turned most of the class against him, which I would never do on a trivial issue. Ordinarily one does not embarrass a student in the presence of his peers because such betrays the teacher-student bond -- but he betrayed that bond by exposing me as a homosexual who deserved to be beaten up. (I dodged the issue of whether I was a homosexual or not because violent crime is consummately dangerous, and I could have never satisfied him that I was straight. I could state that homosexuality was de facto legal in Michigan because nobody has been arrested for homosexual acts per se unless they involve some deed that would be illegal for a straight person, like messing with a child). I got my point across when I said that attacking gays for being gay was as senseless as attacking people for being "dentists or plumbers".

But I know what academic freedom is and is not. I follow the basic rules and the lesson plan, and if someone wants to assert that evolution is a hoax, then I have resources at my disposal... such as that from the neck down we humans are stereotypical apes, that pig valves can be used as heart valves in humans, that DNA dictates what life is, and that Linnaeus created a system of classifications that demonstrate the relatedness of all living things. If someone wants to disparage evolution as contrary to the Word of God, then I must ask whether God forged evidence of evolution to trick otherwise-upstanding people into a damnable sin... God as a Deceiver? I want nothing to do with such a god.

I am about to set up a news story. We may see more of this.

I found this article on Astrolada. Here is the URL: http://www.astrolada.com/articles/predic...music.html

Under the thread titled, "America Is a Sick Society," Eric the Green has provided an excellent reference to a book about neoliberalism.  The link is repeated below for those posters who missed it the first time:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/a...?CMP=fb_gu

Neoliberalism is the political/economic philosophy that has held sway in America, the United Kingdom, and indeed in much of the Western world since the days of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. Only in Latin America was any political resistance offered to neoliberalism, and that has met with only mixed--and in some cases, ephemeral--success.

As a whole, neoliberal policies--privatization, deregulation, free trade, tax cuts, austerity, to name just a few--have been in force in Western economies for over 35 years, regardless of the party in power. Ronald Reagan was a neoliberal, though he would never have referred to himself as such, as the very root word "liberal" would have been anathema to his conservative constituents.  Bush 41 and 43 were also neoliberals.  Bill Clinton, too.  And, yes, even Obama.  Hillary Clinton would also have fit the bill had she been elected president.  Sadly, the only real challenge to neoliberal orthodoxy in the US has been the insurgent presidential campaigns of Ralph Nader and Bernie Sanders, both of whom fell well short of overturning neoliberalism as a guiding political and economic philosophy.  And now, Trump is assembling an administration that, from all indications, threatens to send neoliberalism into hyper-drive. 

Make no mistake, neoliberalism is the old civic order that must be scuttled if America--and much of the West--is to ever regenerate itself politically and economically.  As a governing philosophy, it almost crumbled in the wake of the financial crisis.  The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Brexit were all challenges to neoliberal orthodoxy, each in its own way.  Yet neoliberalism lives on, and may enjoy a last desperate gasp with the policies and team that Donald Trump is now putting into place.

Who are the best leaders for the Democrats, which will make a comeback to power possible?

Should they be bold progressives, or mainstream compromisers?

Should they be Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore, Keith Ellison, Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, etc?

Or should they be Labor Sec. Perez, Gov. Cuomo, Tim Ryan, Sen. Manchin, Chuck Schumer, Steny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, et al?

Will it be important for our presidential candidate to have a good horoscope score? Or, in non-astrological layman's terms, someone who knows how to appeal to the American people? What does this look like? Who is the reverse Trump, or the new Obama/Bill Clinton? And not a Hillary or a Kerry or a Dukakis/Mondale/McGovern etc.?
(see the candidate scores here http://philosopherswheel.com/presidentialelections.html under who scored what)

Is someone from show biz, like Trump, the right answer to Trump? Seth Meyers, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Moore, or Stephen Colbert? (these are the best-scoring such alternatives from this realm so far)

Michael Moore has a disadvantage of Saturn born at his Nadir, and Colbert of a Saturn Return due in 2023-24.

Does appeal to the Rust Belt and the working class conflict with appeals to disadvantaged groups or "identity politics?" Why should there be a conflict?

Are there newcomers to the realm of presidential politics or on the horizon that might appeal, like Sen. Stabenow or Gov. Cooper? Gavin Newsom or Antonio Villaraigosa?

Eric Satt shared a link to the group: Democratic Open Forum.
18 hrs · 


The Electoral College was Founded, with Roots Grounded in Slavery!

James Madison, slave owner from Virginia and the nation's 4th President, proposed that we needed this Electoral College to give southern plantation owners, an equal shot at winning the White House. His fear (and other slave owners' fear) was that there were far more free, White males who could vote in the northern states and that they would control the presidency if each man received an equal vote.

First thing the framers of the Constitution did was count each slave as 3/5 of a person (instead of not being counted at all, which is how it should have been since they had no voting rights...The Three-Fifths Compromise). There were 500,000 slaves in the South. Counting 60% of their population towards votes and creating an Electoral College system that placed an inordinate number of Electors in the South, especially in Virginia, gave the them an unfair advantage towards the presidency. In fact, during the first 32 of 36 years after our Constitution was ratified, the presidency was won by a Virginian!! 

Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, because of the Three-Fifths Compromise and Electoral College.

Fast forward. Slavery ended in 1865 yet the institution of the Electoral College still exists. It's a holdover from a terrible time in our nation's past. Slavery is gone so why are we keeping this outdated relic and allowing it to decide Presidents?

In the last 16 years, we have seen two USA Presidents selected, not by the people but by the Electoral College - Bush and now Trump. The former was, by most accounts, an abysmal failure. I don't expect much better from the latter.

http://time.com/4558510/electoral-colleg...y-slavery/

Let's allow Americans to make decisions for America. Kill the Electoral College.

Eric Satt shared a link to the group: Democratic Open Forum.
18 hrs · 


The Electoral College was Founded, with Roots Grounded in Slavery!

James Madison, slave owner from Virginia and the nation's 4th President, proposed that we needed this Electoral College to give southern plantation owners, an equal shot at winning the White House. His fear (and other slave owners' fear) was that there were far more free, White males who could vote in the northern states and that they would control the presidency if each man received an equal vote.

First thing the framers of the Constitution did was count each slave as 3/5 of a person (instead of not being counted at all, which is how it should have been since they had no voting rights...The Three-Fifths Compromise). There were 500,000 slaves in the South. Counting 60% of their population towards votes and creating an Electoral College system that placed an inordinate number of Electors in the South, especially in Virginia, gave the them an unfair advantage towards the presidency. In fact, during the first 32 of 36 years after our Constitution was ratified, the presidency was won by a Virginian!! 

Jefferson beat Adams in 1800, because of the Three-Fifths Compromise and Electoral College.

Fast forward. Slavery ended in 1865 yet the institution of the Electoral College still exists. It's a holdover from a terrible time in our nation's past. Slavery is gone so why are we keeping this outdated relic and allowing it to decide Presidents?

In the last 16 years, we have seen two USA Presidents selected, not by the people but by the Electoral College - Bush and now Trump. The former was, by most accounts, an abysmal failure. I don't expect much better from the latter.

http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/
Let's allow Americans to make decisions for America. Kill the Electoral College.

"Science is essential to addressing humanity's problems, but it cannot address the human root causes that lead to them.

We need to expose the false logic of our current systems and behaviours and create new ones; only spiritual and cultural transformations and new narratives, can deliver them."

Happy birthday, Tony Bennett. Older Silent Generation guy who keeps the spirit alive. I respect him for that, and his singing. #1 album with Lady Gaga recently.

In a time when America just elected a racist president, voting rights are taken away, unarmed blacks are shot by police, racial profiling is rampant, inequality growing, prisons full of people of color, and "social justice warriors" are put down, it's clear that we often forget our history, and are thus doomed to repeat it. Freedom is fragile in a nation that does not remember its past. Bryan Stephenson pointed out today on the Newshour that nations like German, Rwanda and South Africa have become more free by facing their past of tyranny and racial hatred. The USA has refused to do so, and still suffers these inequities.

EJI Announces Plans to Build Museum and National Lynching Memorial



http://eji.org/news/eji-announces-plans-...g-memorial

August 16, 2016


MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA - The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) plans to build a national memorial to victims of lynching and open a museum that explores African American history from enslavement to mass incarceration. Both the museum and memorial will be located in Montgomery, Alabama.

From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration will be situated within 150 yards of one of the South's most prominent slave auction sites and the Alabama River dock and rail station where tens of thousands of enslaved black people were trafficked. The museum will contain high-tech exhibits, artifacts, recordings, and films, as well as comprehensive data and information on lynching and racial segregation. The museum will connect the history of racial inequality with contemporary issues of mass incarceration, excessive punishment, and police violence.

The Memorial to Peace and Justice will sit on six acres of land in Montgomery and become the nation's first national memorial to victims of lynching. The massive structure will contain the names of over 4000 lynching victims engraved on concrete columns representing each county in the United States where racial terror lynchings took place. Counties across the country will be invited to retrieve duplicate columns with the names of each county's lynching victims to be placed in every county.

In February 2015, EJI released Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, a ground-breaking report that documents more than 4000 lynchings of black people in the United States between 1877 and 1950. EJI identified several hundred more lynchings than had previously been recognized. For a copy of the full report, please contact EJI. A summary of the report is available here.
Racial terrorism forced millions of black people to flee the South during the first half of the 20th century and played a major role in shaping the demographic geography of America by creating large black populations in urban communities in the North and West.

The national memorial to lynching victims will be one of the nation's most ambitious projects relating to the history of racial terror lynchings. EJI has purchased six acres of land atop a rise that overlooks the City of Montgomery and out to the American South, where terror lynchings were most prevalent.


The memorial is constructed of hundreds of floating columns on which the names of lynching victims from over 800 counties across the United States will be inscribed. The classical structure will be surrounded by a park, where duplicate columns engraved with the names of lynching victims in each county will be placed until they are claimed by each county and permanently installed in the places where racial terror lynchings took place. The memorial will be dynamic, and seeks to inspire local efforts to make the history of racial terror in America more visible and tangible. The memorial is being designed in partnership with MASS Design Group, an award-winning architectural firm based in Boston.

After the release of Lynching in America, EJI initiated several cultural projects designed to deepen understanding about racial terror in America. EJI is placing markers at lynching sites across the country in an effort to change the landscape of the American South, which is saturated with iconography and memorials romanticizing the Confederacy and the effort to preserve slavery.

EJI also launched a project to collect soil at lynching sites and create an exhibit that tells the stories of lynching victims. Hundreds of people have begun to actively engage in community remembrance projects around the era of lynching.