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June 29, 2023 12:02 AM UTC

Thursday Open Thread

  • 35 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

–Abraham Lincoln

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35 thoughts on “Thursday Open Thread”

    1. Photo I've seen shows Flynn, Stein, & Putin together in December 2015.

      Vladimir Putin’s guests that night included Flynn and future Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein—an odd couple who reflected the Russian president’s efforts to court fringe figures on both the right and the left and otherwise meddle in US politics. (Also at the table were Putin’s spokesman, chief of staff, and deputy chief of staff.)

      Add a film director, the director's wife, and the former Czech Republic Deputy Prime Minister, and the table was filled.

      In 2015, RFK, Jr. was still at "Pace Law School's Environmental Litigation Clinic, where he held the post of supervising attorney and co-director." He also was at "the environmental law firm Kennedy & Madonna, LLP, " Earlier that year, he joined "Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group … formerly known as the World Mercury Project."

      1. I always wonder who the others at the table were. You mean Yevgeny Prigozhin wasn't invited? Or perhaps he was catering the dinner.

    1. What "we" didn't learn is that a Presidential election is not just about one person, since whoever wins is empowered with determining what happens with large portions of our entire structure of government. Today's example – progressive/far left voters who might very strongly support affirmative action in college admissions just saw it stricken down in the SCOTUS, made up of a number of Justices nominated by presidents who might not have won if their opponents got just slightly better support in a handful of states. People, please save the protest votes for city council races or something.

      1. Yes, Elections are about Power. 

        Winning elections is about marketing, brand management and knowing the audience. The Republican Party knows this; the Democrats are a coalition of interest groups which are not as effective.

        Using the government is about power. WRT to power, Republicans put extremist Federalist Society judges onto the Supreme Court. This includes pretend moderates like Susan Collins.

    1. And sorry WHMLPWBML, I was writing my paragraph about affirmative action at the same time you were posting, but I took some time to adjust wording. Didn't intend to rip you off.

    2. Ummm…”color blind” Constitution??? Article one, section two of the Constitution declared that any person who was not free would be counted as three-fifths of a free individual for the purposes of determining congressional representation.  
       

      As an avowed “originalist”, does he ignore the Founder’s intent? 

      In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas repeated his long-held view that the Constitution is “colorblind.” He said he was writing “to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution,” as well as “to clarify that all forms of discrimination based on race — including so-called affirmative action — are prohibited under the Constitution; and to emphasize the pernicious effects of all such discrimination.”

      1. Well, originalism can be inconvenient to results-oriented judging.  There is no originalist defense to the colorblind Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment is not colorblind and wasn't intended to be.  But since originalism is nothing more than judges cherry-picking and playing bad, rank amateur historians, it's a useful tool for the agenda of the far right.  

      2. Thomas is a piece of work. I’ll bet dollars to donuts he was a beneficiary of AA. It’s called pulling up the ladder after himself, and it’s despicable.

        1. Some use their wealth and success to give a hand up to others, and some use it to grab more money and power and screw over everyone else in the process. Pulling up the ladder is an excellent way to describe it.

        2. Thomas often recounts that he was admitted to Yale Law through affirmative action. He also thinks that it scarred him for life.

          He has described how he was unemployable after he graduated. His white classmates, he says, got good jobs while he was relegated to a low-paying government job.

          A reasonable observer might conclude that the problem wasn’t that he got into Yale Law through affirmative action, but that he subsequently faced entrenched racism among the white shoe law firms that typically scoop up Yale Law graduates. That same observer (me!) would also note that the fact that someone who benefitted from affirmative action in law school admissions and who became a freaking Supreme Court justice is an example of how affirmative action benefits the individual and the law school by giving a boost to someone who apparently needed it to achieve his full potential. 

          1. Some “principles” are only aggregations or estimates.  There are those rare individuals, who regardless of or despite their race, ethnicity, religious affiliation, financial background, country of origin, orientation, or any other so-called societal challenges who continue to rise far, far above — farther than anyone, including themselves, might have dreamed possible — and ultimately then achieve orders of magnitude higher and beyond their “highest level of incompetence.”  They are the Super-Peters!

      3. Monstrous Arrogance of the Supreme Court. Ian Milhiser

        "Good news, everyone! The six Republican justices are so smart that they know more than the military, the business community, the medical profession, and America's great universities all put together!"

        …

        Chief Justice John Roberts’s opinion for the Court’s six Republican appointees faults the two universities for having affirmative action programs that “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race.” But there’s an obvious reason why they do not. The Court’s previous decisions permitted some limited forms of affirmative action, but they explicitly ban racial quotas and other mathematical formulas that could allow universities to determine whether they are achieving “focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race.”

        The Harvard case, in other words, is rooted in a Catch-22. Universities may neither have mathematically precise programs that violate the Court’s earlier decisions. Nor may they have the more vaguely defined programs that the Court prohibits in its newest decision.

        1. Roberts's opinion does not apply to the military academies. Apparently, the needs of the military to have an officer corps that is representative of the nation (and the troops) outweighs the constitutional infirmity that he has discovered with affirmative action.

          The rest of society, though, can live with segregation.

    3. Zelenskyy: It’s time to ‘finally’ legalize medical marijuana in Ukraine

      Zelenskyy said Ukraine should create Europe’s strongest mental and physical rehabilitation network using global best practices and unusual solutions so Ukrainians can endure the impact of the war, per Pravda.

      A proposed bill would allow patients to use medical cannabis to treat over 50 pathological conditions, including war-related post-traumatic stress disorders.

      Before the war broke out, Ukraine legalized certain types of medical cannabis products, including two synthetic cannabis-like chemicals and a cannabis extract.

       

  6. Oh, Bobes…Amtrak derailed because it hit a pickup truck that didn’t stop at the crossing.  A tanker truck filled with gasoline exploded under the Philly bridge and subsequently melted the overpass. Neither had anything to do with the condition of that particular infrastructure. But I’m confident you’ll support an infrastructure bill, right?!?  
     

      1. Bzzzzzzzt.  "I'm sorry, no.  The correct answer, as always, is:  'tax cuts and pray harder.'  Tax cuts and pray harder."

  7. Higher education institutions will still value and aspire to greater diversity and inclusion; however, they will have to become more creative in how to achieve that.

    For example, earning college credit while still in high school. Recruitment and scholarships for people based on economic need. Eliminating the “check this box if you’ve ever had a felony or been charged with a crime” on college applications.

    Strengthening trade school and alternative career path programs, and increasing the transferrability of these credits. My first degree was at RRCC; all of the math credits transferred, but few of the industrial credits did. Ending predatory student lending, cancelling old loans,  and increasing debt-free educational opportunities would ease the path to a degree for so many students.

    2. The ruling (and Thomas' position) basically requires students of color to talk about how they have experienced racism in their applications if they want race to be considered. I wonder how many will point to structural racism in our national institutions, including the Supreme Court?

    3. Creative minds already are making suggestions:  Leading the way:  ending "legacy" as an admission criteria.  ESPECIALLY if the legacy comes from someone from a family who had large donations in the past, offers an endowment or other sizeable donation, or makes a pledge of future giving.

      Next, create diversity by some sort of preference for those who consistently lived in "under-represented" zip codes or census tracts; or for those who attended schools "under-represented" in the student body.  Those who consistently lived in areas without lots of students going on to higher ed and those who graduated from schools with fewer selected to attend could make a substantial impact on "the best" of higher ed.  And who knows, that could also encourage families to work to improve the public schools of their town, creating learning centers to help students qualify for the higher education they wish to pursue.

       

  8. Just another Freedumb loving, Disney-hating Floridian bootstrappin’ his way to the American Dream! 
     

    DeSantis agency sent $92 million in covid relief funds to donor-backed project

     

    The administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) steered $92 million last year in leftover federal coronavirus stimulus money to a controversial highway interchange project that directly benefits a top political donor, according to state records.

    1. I see today that DeSantis has pledged to abolish the Department of Education, the Department of Commerce, The Department of Energy and the IRS. The man has gone from zero to completely unserious in no time. 

      1. He probably doesn't know what the Department of Energy actually does. 

        And the chance that he would get elected and have sufficient support in Congress to pass ANY such erasure of federal departments is probably a zero squared.

    2. Does it seem possible to genetically engineer the greatest parts of two of our greatest elected officials into one sentient being, to be called DeSantos?

  9. William Butler Yeats (I don't think I ever read the entire poem):

    The Second Coming

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
    The darkness drops again; but now I know   
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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