Cultural conservatives are trying to make the 2022 midterm elections about education in general, and the (phantom) issue of “parental rights” specifically. As someone who has been involved in education at various levels for the past 40+ years, I’ve not seen any evidence of a widespread lack of parents’ abilities to guide and influence their children’s schooling. To be sure, […]

So, about Virginia… The election in Virginia was not about “education”–it was about racism, and white supremacy. Maybe if establishment Democrats hadn’t tacked hard right on education, starting with Bill Clinton and reaching a crescendo with Barack Obama and Arne Duncan, we wouldn’t have given up the “high road” on public education. There’s been a lot of discussion about the […]

Margaret Atwood has been quite clear that there is nothing in her book A Handmaid’s Tale that hasn’t actually happened somewhere in the world at some point. Watching the astonishing recent television series The Underground Railroad, you quickly come to realize that some of these things happened right here in America not all that long ago. We know these things […]

Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas spent some time today questioning President Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Dr. Miguel Cardonas, and decided to focus on the issue of transgender students playing sports in school. Here’s what Sen. Marshall had to say… New Republican Sen. Roger Marshall (Kansas) also used his questioning time to push transphobia. Cardona quickly shut him […]

Democrats… You supported Amy Klobuchar, or Pete Buttigieg, or another “more centrist” candidate in the primaries; now voting for Biden… You consider yourself a moderate; thoughtful, empathetic, perhaps fiscally conservative yet socially liberal; you were attracted to the intelligence of Pete, or Amy’s “seriousness”, but believe that at this point, they would want you to vote for Biden, too.   […]

Anyone else starting to think that it’s the “closet conservatives” that pose the most danger during our current constitutional and health crises? With the “out” Trump supporters, for example, you can see them coming from a mile away. Confederate flags waving, no face masks, stupid, misspelled signs, support for the border wall, and hatred for women and minorities–it’s all on […]

During the time when the Flint water crisis was unfolding, right wing conservatives spent a lot of time trying to convince the country and the world that it was all the fault of the local government. They portrayed these local leaders as incompetent buffoons who poisoned themselves, countering the reality that the local government officials had literally NO POWER to […]

After eight years of an anti-science Bush administration, science got a bit of a boost with the election of Barack Obama. Political cartoonist Tom Toles from The Washington Post commemorated the event with this spot-on comic: However, Republicans continued to push their anti-science ways, working to thwart the Obama administration’s efforts to combat climate change at every turn. Again, Tom […]

We’ve been seeing a lot of posts and news pieces lately about how Roy Moore, the alleged child molester about to be elected to the Senate from Alabama, does not represent the Republican Party, Christians, or even conservatives.   Well, it’s time to call this out for the lie it is. It may make conservatives, or Christians, feel better about […]

There’s a lot of talk about Russian interference with our elections through bots and paid internet trolls spreading #FakeNews to through sand in the gears of the democratic process and the Democratic Party. However, there is plenty of classic ratfucking going on from conservatives masquerading a disgruntled Democrats and Sanders supporters or blatant fake progressive groups. In the latter category, […]

Let’s save the nostalgia Understanding conservatism is Corey Robin’s specialty. His book The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin — which Robin is updating for a reissue this spring — posits that the defining thread the movement that now defines the Republican Party is “the felt experience of having power, seeing it threatened, and trying to win […]