Falwell tells local media that he and Trump met Thursday at Trump Tower to discuss the U.S. Department of Education and Falwell’s potential role. He wouldn’t confirm or deny whether he was being vetted as secretary of education, but says he will “definitely play a role” in the administration.
?
After the election I thought, ok let’s give him a chance.
CHANCE OVER.
OMG! As a former public school educator, I’m appalled.
This might change the entire home-schooling movement. My daughter and son-in-law have supplemented her son’s public school materials to battle the creationist biology teacher and the Texas sex education (spit!). Now they are planning to home-school the two little girls. I used to have misgivings about that, but now, not so much.
What’s that line in that old song? “You have to teach your children well.”
Try as I might, I just can’t figure out what it is that Putin could’ve offered Tchump, (that he can’t already buy), in return for screwing up the US.
(Cont. from 3) Could it be World domination, shared between Putin & Tchump?
The US & Russia, combined, take over Europe, then Japan, South Korea, Vietnam & the Philippines. India falls in line, along with Central & South America, Australasia & Sub-Saharan Africa. This isolates China, which was the objective. Chinese internal dissent is fomented, so that China’s military is hobbled, prior to the Putin-Tchump alliance overrunning the country.
Then Putin makes his move against Tchump, of course.
Crazy, you say? Not as crazy as Tchump’s appointments!
Somehow I don’t see how one can make America Great Again from the Dark Ages.
I can’t see the swamp through the swamp!
Imagine you look back on the dark ages and think “My my, back then things were GREAT! If only we could turn the clock back…”
That’s how.
Shit
(Cont. from 4) I omitted the Islamic countries from the previous list. They aren’t dangerous, except through terrorism. The Putin-Tchump alliance would consider their internal situations with regard to Islamic terrorism, Heavy-handed measures would be introduced to deal with it.
Of course, they might not work as intended.
magistramarla: “What’s that line in that old song? “You have to teach your children well.””
If it is the one from the musical “South Pacific”, it is about racism. Argh, looking it up it up the title is actually “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/308296815/six-words-youve-got-to-be-taught-intolerance
Well, that reference is what popped into my head when I read your comment. It does seem appropriate for the times though.
Foulbane’s god is anything but good
sez nullifidian @3: “Try as I might, I just can’t figure out what it is that Putin could’ve offered Tchump, (that he can’t already buy), in return for screwing up the US.”
What makes you think Putin had to make any offers? There’s a term of art in the espionage community: “useful idiot”. It refers to a person who is completely independent of your side, has no connections to your side whatsoever, and yet they’re still doing things that will benefit your side.
From Putin’s point of view, the Angry Cheeto is a useful idiot. All Putin had to do is recognize that the Cheeto’s ascendancy would mess things up in the US, and encourage the Cheeto to do all the things the Cheeto was going to do anyway.
@Nullifidian #3:
Not ‘encouraging’ Russian lenders to call in their loans?
Chris @ 10,
No, I meant the rock song by Crosby, Stills and Nash:
https://www.google.com/search?q=teach+your+children+lyrics&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
These lines seem especially apt to me tonight:
“Teach your children well,
Their father’s hell did slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picks, the one you’ll know by.
Don’t you ever ask them why, if they told you, you will cry,
So just look at them and sigh
And know they love you.”
My seventh grandchild is on the way. I’m really worried about their generation.
Re: magistramaria @ #14…
My second grandchild is on the way. I’m not worried *about* their generation, I’m worried *for* their generation.
Paraphrasing Goldwater (who wasn’t all that great, what with Southern Strategy and all):
Every good American should give Jerry Falwell a kick in the ass.
magistramarla, thank you very very much. My parents were very much into musicals and operas, so that is what I remember mostly (plus I am not much into music). So I knew “South Pacific”, but Crosby, Stills and Nash… not so much.
But I also liked that musical, especially after I saw my dad cry in front of me for the second time (the first was after the death of my mother). It was when he told me his best friend’s entire family was interned by the USA government just because his parents were born in Japan (his friend joined the US Army and did not survive). This was the first time I had heard about the Japanese internment during WW II, something that was apparently ignored in American history classrooms during the 1970s.
My kids are in their twenties… I seriously do not want to have grandchildren to worry about.
I want to share a little talk given by Stephen Lewis to the graduands of University of Alberta. Dr. Lewis addresses the recent election several times and I think he speaks for most of us….. skip to minute 33 to get past the ceremonials…
https://www.ualberta.ca/news-and-events/newsarticles/2016/november/stephen-lewis-honorary-doctor-of-laws
Lewis addresses both climate change and gender equality but his most poignant moment comes when he speaks of the legacy for our children, the collateral damage of Donald Trump as president. We are truly fucked.
Today, I was thinking of one of Atwood’s early works, her poetry book, Power Politics.
“You fit into me
like a hook into an eye
a fish hook
an open eye”
and then the end of the poem which I quote directly to your new leader:
“Please die so I can write about it.”
@nulifidian, #4:
Sounds like a great game of Civilization. Unfortunately, great games of Civilization don’t necessarily end well for the inhabitants of that simulated world:
http://www.pcgamer.com/ten-year-game-of-civ-2-results-in-hellish-nightmare-planet-permanent-nuclear-war/
“If you should go skating
On the thin ice of modern life
Dragging behind you the silent reproach
Of a million tear stained eyes
Don’t be surprised, when a crack in the ice
Appears under your feet
You slip out of your depth and out of your mind
With your fear flowing out behind you
As you claw the thin ice”
I am so depressed. I have never imagined living in a world like this. To be honest I don’t really want to.
So depressed.
He’ll ensure a new generation of YEC Trump voters.
Holla, that sounds not-so-good. If there’s any seriousness behind that, please a) check with professionals b) always remember there’s more than Trump’s America out there, like Canada.
It’s getting harder and harder for me to keep saying this, but…
…let’s wait and see what Trump actually does, before we decide.
Is anyone else here old enough to remember how we all thought Reagan appointing C. Everett Koop surgeon general meant the end of science-based medicine, but Koop turned out pretty well. He even stood up against the right-to-lifers’ junk science in spite of being an extreme right-to-lifer himself.
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was anti-abortion, but I wouldn’t call him “extreme” in the sense of current evangelicals, anti-abortion politicians, etc. He was a pioneer in pediatric surgery at a time when children were treated as “little adults” in surgery. And, as handsomemrtoad says, Koop followed the science on various controversial issues and stuck to the scientific answers despite them being inconvenient to the Reagan administration.
Nullifidian,
The US, Russia and China are planning to divide the world into three great empires. The US will get the Americas and Western Europe, Russia will get eastern Europe, the Middle East, and central Asia, and China will get eastern Asia and the Pacific islands. Africa, as always, will get screwed.
And remember, we have always been at war with East Asia.
Pence, Sessions, Flynn, Bannon, Fallwell….
How much do you have to see?
You left out an open white racist as Attorney General, Sessions.
Trump is systematically picking the worst of our society for his highest positions.
What you see is what you get.
One of the targets of the right wingnuts is…public education. Because it teaches kids stuff.
They may well dumb down our society to third world standards.
Which will eventually produce a third world country. We can’t run a Hi Tech society with huge numbers of uneducated people.
He was second on my list.
And if it wasn’t clear, the first line in my post was a quote from handsomemrtoad@23. If they haven’t seen enough already, I really don’t know what they have to see. I mean, it’s like getting to the front of the line for a roller coaster and seeing that there aren’t any seat belts, and saying “Sure, it looks bad, but until you fall out you can’t really know how dangerous it is.”
True.
The Trump administration is becoming clearer.
All you have to do is look at his appointments. Those are the people who will actually do the work.
Flynn was fired for cause.
30 years ago, Sessions was denied a judgeship for being too racist.
He is looking at Paetreus, a convicted criminal for mishandling classified information.
And other truly awful people like Pompeo, a fan of torture and mass surveilance.
What you see is what you get.
I survived Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. This is looking a lot worse than them.
So is this administration just trying to distract everyone by getting them into arguments about whether it is more of a kleptocracy or a kakistocracy?
How is appointing a mob of right-wing nutbars something that we haven’t yet “seen” or something which Trump hasn’t already “done”?
If not things like this, then what exactly would count as something he’s done which you can see, on the basis of which you can make a reasonable decision?
@25
Not that shit again! I live in one of those Eastern European countries, and we’ve already got screwed over once after WWII, when people who had no right to decide anything, least of all divisions of countries, went ahead and did it anyway. I think, especially in the younger generations, there is a very strong anti-communist, anti-Russian feeling.
Besides, just the idea that we are still doing spheres of influence in the 21st century, as opposed to working on the kind of open, shared spaces of the U.E. is just stomach-churning.
My country went through 50 years of communism – it left such marks on who we are as a nation, that I doubt we will ever go back to our pre-WWII state or standing.
Exactly. What is it we’re actually supposed to wait for?
Also, what are we supposed to do when we are done waiting? (according to those asking for patience….)
I suppose they want us to assume that Drumph will scornfully fire these guys for being such obnoxious dumbasses.
*as if* yuckity yuck *barf*
The late-night knock on your door.
Once you’re safely ensconced in their labor camps you can draw conclusions about their intentions. But before then, you should give them the benefit of the doubt. Mustn’t be hasty….
@#23, handsomemrtoad:
“It’s getting harder and harder for me to keep saying this, but…
…let’s wait and see what Trump actually does, before we decide.”
Just how hard does it have to get before ‘wait-and-see’ removes the decision from you?
@#8, slithey tove – “Shit
Allow me to amend that: “Holy shit”
re @37
cheers for doing the “meta” I hesitated from. cheers
I first started with the F word and pulled it back to single “shit” without expanding it further. EG “oh shit” “shit we really are fucked”. “he’s really dumping shit on us”. etc etc each with more shit.
did i hit my shit quota yet
foke
It’s teh trum-prat. Shite is perhaps the only physical object which will be easily available, not rationed, and increasing (in volume, weight, smelliness, and resemblance to the living environment (what of that can be found beyond the ratioactive wastelands)). More to the point. there isn’t a quota, unless that’s your term for the bribes needed to keep the mountains of it away from you, your family, and your food.
Ancor #36: RE: “Just how hard does it have to get before ‘wait-and-see’ removes the decision from you?”
A fair question. How about: if he ACTUALLY DOES damage civil rights, or ACTUALLY DOES impose evolution-denial on education, or ACTUALLY DOES de-fund basic science, or ACTUALLY DOES selectively defund scientists whose findings conflict with his ideology, or ACTUALLY DOES bomb the shit out of someone.
Based upon what he has said, which of the above do you consider the least likely to happen? I expect all to happen, based his his past performance….
Okay, so this should happen “before we decide.”
So we’ll have none of that and may be among those who are dead. But if we’re not dead, then we decide what?
That this stuff is bad? I already thought that.
That we should do something? We don’t have rights, educations, a functioning government, or maybe our lives. Why should we wait until then to decide some vague thing about it? At the point, it doesn’t look like we’d be able to do anything no matter what the decision is about.
Do we decide that “yep, sure enough, this is how it is now” and stoically let that fact wash over us like a gentle mountain stream?
What the fuck is the idea here? What is the motivation for acting like such a willfully-obtuse fucking idiot, ever, but especially when shit like that is on the line?
handsomemrtoad,
Jesus fucking christ on a pogo stick, how dense can you be? Look at the list in my 26 (and keep in mind that it is just partial), do you really have any question about the intentions of Trump? I mean, are you really waiting for the mushroom cloud to be your smoking gun?
Here’s a suggestion, go read the Nazi etc. thread, follow the links there, and then come back.
I agree that things look very ominous. Especially because, unlike Reagan, Trump will not be restrained by a Dem congress and a liberal Supreme Court. It does look like we’re in for a rough time.
But as L. Frank Baum (author of The Wizard of Oz) wrote in another book, “danger doesn’t mean getting hurt; danger only means you might get hurt.” Trump could surprise us. He has before, you know.
Especially, he might turn out better than we expect on science issues. I would not be very surprised if he were to INCREASE funding for scientific research, including BASIC science. I also would not be very surprised if his anti-vaxxism turned out to be an act.
I’ll concede, I do expect he’ll withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, which would not make me happy. BUT reasonable people disagree about how much actual good the Paris Agreement is likely to do, and, more generally, about whether or not there are any practical things we can do which would make a significant difference to climate change. We’re not gonna be able to stop the middle class in India from buying cars, for instance. We’re not gonna be able to make China clean up.
So again, things might be very very bad, but WE DON’T KNOW YET.
Take your fucking blinders off, asshole. It’s not just about “science”. The Trump administration is going to have very serious negative consequences for Muslims, Latin@s, people of color, LGBTQ people, women….
Even if he tries to walk back all his rhetoric, he’s given a megaphone to the alt-right. Things are not getting better.
Well, until you can provide evidence that any of the things you mention is likely, I will presume that they are unlikely, and behave accordingly.
This is a situation where not presuming the worst can be catastrophic.
46. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
RE: “I will presume that they are unlikely, and behave accordingly.”
By doing what, for instance?
As David Gorski has catalogued, Trump’s embracing of anti-vax nonsense goes back to at least 2007. For whom was he acting at that point?
48 Specialffrog:
In 2007, he didn’t need to get the vax question right. He could afford to talk out of his ass and say whatever was most shocking and fun to say. Now, there’s a possibility–a POSSIBILITY–that he might actually ask people who know something, before deciding what to DO about vaccination. Suppose he changed his mind, how surprised would you be? He’s changed his mind about much more meaningful issues. He used to support “partial-birth abortions”, remember?
People here keep throwing insults at me, but remember, I’m MOSTLY with you folks on this stuff–I’m quite terrified by the initial signs! Especially Jeff Sessions. But until Trump actually sets policies, we DON’T REALLY KNOW what it will be. His promises are worthless, including his promises to (some of) the bad-guys. He could be scamming the anti-vaxxers. Or, he could do something for them but not anything significant. I keep coming back to the way we all felt when Reagan appointed Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
Sure, by all means, keep flashing the danger signals! But don’t write the obituary until later.
Telling folks not to trust Trump, as he is an egotistical asshole who is out to wreck the country for his own purposes.
There is nothing to wait for. His reality is showing.
Never in a good way.
With the gambler’s fallacy, people believe that something which should happen but hasn’t “must” soon happen (or visa-versa, if that something has happened rather often, there “must” soon be a time when it doesn’t happen). It’s a total nonsense for independent somethings.
The claim teh trum-prat might be totally different than his record suggests strikes me as being of similar “reasoning”: He “cannot” be that bad all the time, or He has been so horrible for so long he “must” be sensible (soon). Why?
In the gambler’s fallacy, the error is thinking independent events influence later (or are influenced by previous) independent events. Which is nonsense, if there is such influence than the events are not independent (by definition).
In teh trum-prat’s case, his history is not independent. The different conspiracies and biases feed each other, and are further fed by various characteristics, such as an inability to accept criticism or admit mistakes. With this interconnected web it’s exceptionally difficult to see how or why he’d suddenly change and even begin to resemble a sensible person.
Whilst pedantically no-one knows what he will do, or attempt to do, as President — because he is not President yet — you can make predictions (some broad, some quite specific) based on his past not-independent history, coupled with the current set of confirmed actions.
handsomemrtoad (#49)
Like he asked the State Department about the leaders of other countries before meeting with said leaders? Like he’s listening to the pros about how blind trusts work? Like he’s listening to anyone who will tell him that climate change is real, man-made and dire? There’s no fucking sense in bringing up what’s “possible” when that moldy turd has a clear pattern of not listening to anyone unless it benefits or flatters him.
Okay, so? He changed his mind for the worse. It’s not at all surprising that a terrible person would change his mind to something more terrible in order to win the admiration of awful people who want to give him more power. On the other hand, it would be surprising if he did the right thing against the wishes of the awful people who put him into power.
It’s irrelevant. He’s far, far more likely to do stupid, awful stuff. And the more we pretend that it’s meaningful that we don’t know for absolute 100% complete certainty, the less we’ll do to try to change the odds in our favor.
If you have an aggressive cancer and you’re going to wait to see if it goes into spontaneous remission because that’s “possible,” then we might as well write your obituary right now.