Concrete Arrows

Why Is America Dotted with Giant, Concrete Arrows?  

Ancient settlements got more productive as they grew

Just like modern cities, ancient settlements got more productive as they grew

Living in bigger, denser settlements allowed the inhabitants of ancient cities to be more productive, just as is true for modern urbanites, according to a new study by scientists at […]

Here's scientific proof that the Simpsons live in the Southern Hemisphere

by Joseph Stromberg 

While watching a recent episode of The Simpsons, Slate's Phil Plait uncovered a shocking secret.
Springfield is in the Southern hemisphere.
Sure, there have been hundreds of references over the years to the Simpsons living in the US. But last month's episode "The Musk Who Fell to Earth" featured incontrovertible astronomical evidence to the contrary.
In one scene, SpaceX founder Elon Musk stared out at a crescent moon just after sunset. Crescent moons that appear after sunset are called waxing crescents: they appear during the part of the lunar cycle when the illuminated part of moon is "waxing," or growing every night.

Due to the alignment of the Earth, Moon, and Sun, the pointy tips of waxing crescents always point to the left for viewers in the Northern Hemisphere. But Musk saw a crescent moon that pointed to the right. Ergo, Springfield must be in the Southern hemisphere.
People in the Northern hemisphere do see crescent moons that point to the right, but those are waning crescents: they appear during the other part of the lunar cycle, when the illuminated part of the moon is "waning," or shrinking. And crucially, waning crescents appear in the early morning, not the evening.

The lunar cycle, for viewers in the Northern hemisphere. The waning crescent was visible February 13-17, and the waxing crescent is visible February 21-24. (MoonTracks.com)

Never mind the many hints dropped throughout the Simpsons' history that Springfield was located in one US state or other, or the interview in which Matt Groening revealed the town was named after one in his native Oregon.
The moon doesn't lie. Springfield must be in the Southern hemisphere.

City Thunderstorms

Cities Spark More Thunderstorms Than Rural Areas

Pollution and the urban heat island effect may cause slightly more thunder and lightning than rural areas get. 

Niagara on Ice

Niagara on Ice: Falls Freeze Up Photos

Take a tour of a mostly frozen Niagara Falls by drone, all from the comfort of your warm living room.

Big wonders in tiny genome

Carnivorous plant packs big wonders into tiny genome

Great, wonderful, wacky things can come in small genomic packages. That’s one lesson to be learned from the carnivorous bladderwort, a plant whose tiny genome turns out to be a […]

Bald Eagle Lays Egg ...

Bald Eagle Lays Egg, Becomes Internet Sensation

A livecam placed above a nest in Decorah, Iowa, has turned a family of bald eagles into online celebrities.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

Hey, wingnuts, yeah, we're talking about you ...!

 

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Today in History

786   Pepin the Short of Gaul dies. His dominions are divided between his sons Charles (Charlemagne) and Carloman.  
1525   In the first of the Franco-Habsburg Wars, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V captures the French king Francis I at the Battle of Pavia, Italy.  
1538   Ferdinand of Hapsburg and John Zapolyai, the two kings of Hungary, conclude the peace of Grosswardein.  
1803   Chief Justice John Marshall, by refusing to rule on the case of Marbury vs. Madison, asserts the authority of the judicial branch.  
1813   Off Guiana, the American sloop Hornet sinks the British sloop Peacock.  
1821   Mexico gains independence from Spain.  
1836   Some 3,000 Mexicans launch an assault on the Alamo with its 182 Texan defenders.  
1895   The Cuban War of Independence begins.  
1908   Japan officially agrees to restrict emigration to the U.S.  
1912   Italy bombs Beirut in the first act of war against the Ottoman Empire.  
1912   The Jewish organization Hadassah is founded in New York City.  
1914   Civil War soldier Joshua Chamberlain dies.  
1916   A film version of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea opens in New York.  
1921   Herbert Hoover becomes Secretary of Commerce.  
1928   The New Gallery of New York exhibits works of Archibald Motley, its first show to feature a black artist.  
1944   Merrill's Marauders, a specially trained group of American soldiers, begin their ground campaign against Japan into Burma.  
1945   U.S. forces liberate prisoners of war in the Los Baños Prison in the Philippines.  
1947   Franz von Papen is sentenced to eight years in a labor camp for war crimes.  
1959   Khrushchev rejects the Western plan for the Big Four meeting on Germany.  
1968   North Vietnamese troops capture the imperial palace in Hue, South Vietnam.
1972   Hanoi negotiators walks out of the peace talks in Paris to protest U.S. air raids on North Vietnam.  
1991  General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the coalition army, sends in ground forces during the Gulf War.

America Is a Liberal Nation

Sorry wingnuts: Poll Finds Huge Support For Tax Hike On The Wealthy 

America continues to move to the left as President Obama’s proposal to increase capital gains taxes on the wealthy was supported by a 56%-14% margin in a new AP/GfK poll.

The poll found:

According to the poll, 68 percent of those questioned said wealthy households pay too little in federal taxes; only 11 percent said the wealthy pay too much.

Also, 60 percent said middle-class households pay too much in federal taxes while 7 percent said they paid too little.

Obama laid out a series of tax proposals as part of his 2016 budget released this month. Few are likely to win approval in the repugican-misled congress. But if fellow Democrats were to embrace his ideas, they could play a role in the 2016 race.

One proposal would increase capital gains taxes on households making more than $500,000. In the survey, 56 percent favored the proposal while only 16 percent opposed it.

Democrats, at 71 percent, were the most likely to support raising taxes on capital gains. Among repugicans and independents, 46 percent supported it.

On taxes, polling has revealed that the American people side with Democrats, liberals and progressives.

The repugicans like Rep. Paul Ryan (r-WI) continue to claim that raising taxes on the wealthy would harm the economy, “We’re six years into the Obama economic policies, and he’s proposing more of the same, more tax increases that kill investment and jobs, and policies which are hardly aspirational.”

The American people overwhelming disagree with the repugican position of lowering taxes on the wealthy while increasing them for everyone else. What is disguised by the repugican victories in gerrymandered midterm elections decided by deeply polarized electorates is the unpopularity of repugican policies. The repugican triggered Great Recession has shifted the country’s economic thinking to the left.

Democrats have yet to figure out how to break through the partisan polarization to unify all Americans who support their economic policies. As repugicans continue to move off to the lunatic fringe, the country is moving to the left. This dynamic more than anything else is the reason Democrats will likely continue to do well in presidential election years.

In poll after poll, the nation’s opinions are revealed to be more liberal than the media and the repugican cabal will ever admit.

Random Celebrity Photos

Scarlett Johansson

White House Website DESTROYS Myth That The Poor Are The Problem …With FACTS!

It’s no secret that the repugican cabal keeps its base de-focused from its inability to govern and its ridiculously expensive agenda of supporting massive wealth by criminalizing the poor.
You’ve seen the rhetoric plastered all over social media:

It’s a ridiculous notion. Poor people aren’t anything but lazy. The lies are backed by ridiculous studies from conservative propaganda machines like the Cato Institute, who published a “study” that says that those “lazy” people are earning more than $40,000 a year.
For those of us who like to actually find facts, there’s this thing called the Google that allows anybody to look up information that was previously hidden in books and publications.
This dumbing-down of our economy to “never-mind what’s really happening, just blame the poor” is easily dispelled in multiple articles and studies, but none of that matters to the wingnut base, a huge percentage of whom are themselves on some form of government assistance, because all media other than Faux News and Mr, Wingnut is “liberal bias.”
Not really surprising from a coven who idolize the likes of Ted Nugent and think Sarah Palin is smarter than the President.
The best source of information on the subject comes from none other than Whitehouse.gov, where the federal tax receipt calculator shows exactly how much money goes to those “lazy poor people.”

Food assistance only costs four cents on the dollar.  Housing assistance two cents.  Cash assistance one cent.
The three programs conservatives claim are sinking our economy cost a whopping seven cents for every tax dollar spent.
Well there it is, in black and white. Anyone can go to the site and enter the amount of their tax bill to see just how those “lazy” people are destroying the American way of life.
Maybe the reason poverty levels remain so high in America has something to do with repubgcans blocking just about any education spending and reform in an attempt to keep people uninformed.  Uninformed people equals more repugicans.  Here’s the breakdown of what the solutions cost:

Financial aid for college actually earns money here in ‘Murica. Thanks repugican cabal. While the rest of the civilized world finds ways to educate their populations for a better tomorrow, we find ways to profit from it.
Job training and employment services costs are so low they don’t even register as a percentage point.
Damn those lazy people.
Of course there’s the issue of defense. Just how much do we spend building billion dollar jets we don’t need and policing the areas Republicans destroyed with unnecessary wars?

Wow. That seems like a lot, but it can’t be.  Poor people are the problem. They’re lazy and get free iPhones.
That’s how the repugican cabal operates: Rich people paying crooked politicians to convince stupid people to blame poor people.

Three Minutes Of Terror for The Koch Brothers As Bernie Sanders Storms Sunday Show

It was a terrifying three minutes for the Koch brothers, as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took on the Kochs directly and delivered a message of populism that struck at the heart of their oligarchic plot to buy control of the federal government on ABC’s This Week.
Video:

The short segment on Senator Sanders highlighted the Vermont senator’s anti-Koch message, “It is likely in a very short period of time that the Koch brothers themselves will have a strong political presence than Democrats or repugicans.”

Sanders was asked by ABC News if he thought this was a winnable fight. He answered, “Well, I think that’s a fair question. I don’t want to tilt at windmills. I’ve got so much to do. I just think that out there, there are so many people who are hurting, so many people who disillusioned, so many people who are viscerally upset that they’re working longer hours for lower wages and the billionaires are getting richer, and they need a voice.”

The ABC segment was short, but it was a good introduction for the rest of the country to Senator Bernie Sanders. An introduction isn’t needed for liberals and progressions, but it was interesting to see corporate-driven Sunday shows give any airtime to Bernie Sanders.

This Week didn’t dwell on whether or not Sanders will run for president in 2016. They devoted much of the segment to his message. It was refreshing to see Senator Sanders not treated as a novelty or dismissed. As the country has reacted to the Great Recession by drifting left in its economic thinking, Senator Sanders’s message resonates more with the country’s basic economic populism.

Bernie Sanders is the last person that the Koch brothers want to see on a network Sunday morning show. Senator Sanders (I-VT) did more damage to the Koch conspiracy to buy control of the federal government in three minutes than almost anyone else could have done in ten.

Studies have shown that the Sunday show guests are mostly white male repugicans. One of the reasons why a potential Bernie Sanders presidential candidacy could matter is it could generate a lot of mainstream media attention for the issues of income inequality, money in politics, and the looming Koch-backed oligarchy that is attempting a hostile takeover of nation’s electoral process.

In a media realm where repugicans dominate, Bernie Sanders sent a lightning bolt of populism through the pro-Koch drumbeat of Sunday morning talk.

Senator Bernie Sanders remains the Koch Brothers’ worst nightmare.

Random Photos

Swill O’Really Bombshell: 6 Former Colleagues Say O’Reilly Lied About War Coverage

CNN’s Reliable Sources has blown apart Swill O’Really’s claim that he was a war correspondent by interviewing six former CBS colleagues who say that O’Really is lying about his time as a war correspondent.

CNN played a clip of O’Really claiming that he rescued an injured photographer in the Falklands “war zone:”

Host Brian Stelter said:

So O’Really there is describing a riot that happened in Buenos Aires right after Argentina surrendered to the British. Here is CNN’s footage from that night. It was hairy. It was scary. We can find no evidence that anyone from CBS was injured. We’ve been trying all weekend. To the contrary, six other people who were there working for CBS say they are unaware of any injuries. They also say they’re unaware of any civilians being killed in the riot. And O’Reilly has repeatedly claimed over the years that people were killed there. None of these people, none of them agree with O’Really’s depiction of it as a combat situation or a war zone.

Some of them remarked to us yesterday and this morning that the event in Ferguson recently were actually more serious and more severe.

Now, Jim Forrest, who worked with O’Really as a sound engineer on the day of this riot, told me, “There were certainly no dead people. Had there been dead people, they would have sent more camera crews.” Unfortunately, some of the other staffers we talked are requesting anonymity because they still work in the industry, or because they don’t want to be criticized by Swill O’Really.

Stelter brought in former CBS correspondent Eric Engberg, who was in Buenos Aires with O’Really. When asked if O’Really is lying, Engberg said, “Well, I think what is doing is trying to build it up into a more frightening and deadly situation than what it was. It wasn’t a combat situation by any sense of the word that I know. There were no people killed. He said that he saw troops fire into the crowd. I never saw that, and I don’t know anybody who did, and I was there on the scene. What’s interesting is not only did I not hear any shots, I didn’t see any ambulances. I didn’t see any tanks. I didn’t see any armored cars. All of the things that you would have expected to see had people been shot.”

Swill O’Really and Faux News have refused to comment on the new allegations.

However, they did try to get Engberg to go on O’Really’s Faux News show. He refused because he didn’t want to get into an argument with O’Really on his turf about what he saw that night. Engberg added that he was simply stating the facts, and he’s not going to argue about it.

There are now a half a dozen journalists and personnel from CBS who were working O’Really on the ground in Buenos Aires who dispute his claims.

The evidence says that Swill O’Really is lying. Brian Williams got suspended for six months without pay for doing the same thing that O’Really. Both men exaggerated events to make them appear to be more dangerous. The difference is that NBC News is interested in journalism. Faux News isn’t.

The next step in Faux News’s defense of O’Reialy will likely be to call him a commentator, not a journalist, but O’Reialy tries to sell himself as a journalist on a nightly basis on Faux News. A large veterans group is calling for O’Reialy to be taken off the air. The media is afraid of Faux News and O’Really, but the hypocrisy must stop.

Brian Williams was suspended and taken off of the air. Faux News must do the same to Swill O’Really.

The repugicans Support And Defend Extremism Against America

It is too bad that Americans are so easily frightened because it allows repugicans to distract them from legitimate threats to their survival; conservative policies and repugicans’ base of support. It is actually curious why Americans are terrified of islamic extremists halfway around the world when, although the Islamic State is brutal, they pose no real threat to the American homeland. It is possible that is why repugicans are prepared to cut off funding for Department of Homeland Security under the guise of stripping executive authority from President Obama, or because they fully understand the only threat to this nation is from members of their own cabal and their hateful supporters. It is important to reiterate that repugicans are ardent defenders of wingnut extremists posing the greatest terrorism threat to the United  States and since they are loyal supporters of their so-called 'champions of freedom'; what better way to protect the real threat to America than shut down the Department of Homeland Security?

It is not breaking news or a revelation to any informed American that “law enforcement sees wingnut extremism as the top terrorism threat to the United States. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sees wingnut extremism as the top terrorism threat to the United States, or that the FBI sees wingnut extremism as the top terrorism threat to the United States.” It was no surprise that new analysis from the DHS warned that Americans should be frightened of increased attacks from so-called ‘sovereign citizens‘ on law enforcement, the government, and government agents and buildings. According to a recent report, since 2010 there were 24 violent attacks on American soil at the hands of sovereign citizens with unlimited firepower who reject government authority; a position establishment repugicans defend with religious fervor.

Prior to President Obama’s summit on Countering Violent Extremism, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report on domestic terrorism that revealed “A domestic terrorist attack or foiled attack occurred, on average, every 34 days. It also shows that fully 74% of the more than 60 incidents examined were carried out, or planned, by a lone wolf, a single person operating entirely alone. A total of 90% of the incidents were the work of just one or two persons.”

As it should have, the SPLC report slammed the nation’s focus on terrorism overseas while turning a blind eye to the real and present threat of a growing number of home-grown terrorists. What is interesting indeed is that the SPLC report held out hope that the government is preparing to shift its focus to the homeland and quoted Attorney General Eric Holder as a reason for its new found hope. Holder said, regarding wingnut extremism that, “It’s something that frankly keeps me up at night, worrying about the lone wolf or a group of people, a small group of people, who decide to get arms on their own and do what we saw in France with the Charlie Hebdo attack.”

Holder, like many Democrats, has the right mindset and says the right things, but one hesitates to believe their sincerity based on their inaction that belies their worries “keeping them up at night.” It is true that any legitimate Department of Justice action to thwart wingnut extremists’ will garner a robust response and certain attack from the repugican establishment, but at some point the extremists in the repugican establishment have to be met with action and not just anecdotes about sleepless nights, or meaningless summits on countering violent extremism; actions get results, words do not.  In fact, after wingnut extremist and ‘sovereign citizen’ Cliven Bundy summoned armed militias and former law enforcement to send federal agents and local law enforcement running for the hills, it is evident the federal government has no interest in combating wingnut terrorism and is likely terrified of challenging repugican extremism.

There was no better opportunity to send a powerful message and clamp down on wingnut extremism than during, and after, the Bundy ranch standoff. It is beyond refute that the armed militias violated several federal laws, and committed sedition, in chasing federal agents off federal land during the commission of their duties, but likely because they were supported by repugicans and Faux News, they are above the law. Months after the seditious incident, Nevada law enforcement claimed the criminals would face the consequences of leveling loaded weapons at police and sheriff’s deputies, but it is likely Nevada repugicans warned local law enforcement to back down or face the wrath of the cabal’s contingent of local armed sovereign citizens. Nothing has been done and it emboldened other repugican extremists to join the repugican cabal’s extremist war on the federal government.

Several repugican-misled states have passed laws criminalizing federal authorities’ attempting to enforce federal laws, and several repugicans have emboldened citizens to take up arms against the federal government; with impunity. Since the Bundy ranch success in forcing the government to acquiesce to extremists’ threats of violence, many red states are passing laws justifying seizure of federal land and daring the government to challenge the unconstitutional laws. In fact in Montana, repugicans are pushing legislation, SB 130, requiring creation of “state-sanctioned paramilitary groups known as ‘home guards’ to combat the grave danger posed by the federal government.” Home guards will be mobilized by local sheriffs’ who are, under ‘sovereign citizen’ ideology, the ultimate law of the land and the supreme Constitutional authority across America. It is noteworthy that this brand of “wingnut extremism” is sanctioned and promoted by establishment repugicans; not “lone wolves” or small groups of wingnut extremists.

It is true that the repugican establishment, and their media outlet Faux News, is responsible for encouraging wingnut extremism and the ‘sovereign citizens’ movement representing terrorist threats to America, but inaction on the part of federal government is, if not exacerbating the threat, legitimizing the movement. No matter what their reasoning for not taking action, allowing sovereign citizens and  establishment repugicans to intimidate voters, call for armed revolution, arrest and prosecute federal agents, aim loaded firearms at federal officials, and pass laws mandating paramilitary groups to combat the federal government IS legitimizing extremists and domestic terrorists.

Over the past months, repugicans have called for overwhelming force, including ‘boots on the ground’ to combat Islamic State extremism in Iraq and Syria; and why not? If they can keep terrified Americans frightened to death of extremists on the other side of the world, the people will not notice the real extremist threat to their survival and their nation are the repugican extremists in the sovereign citizen movement that enjoys the full support of the seditionists in the repugican cabal; the most dangerous terrorist threat to America.

The Truth Be Told

Or in this case - Denied

Red state repugican governors Slash Education To Grow Their Ignorant Base

Americans who have lived longer than 30 years are likely aware that fascist repugicans and their corporate money machine have had enormous success whittling away at the idea that America is a representative democracy despite counsel from a Founding Father on how best to preserve the nation. Thomas Jefferson knew, and said, that “an educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” However, because repugicans depend on “the widespread ignorance of objective reality,” their fascist threat to democracy is only succeeding due to the abundance of ignorance and gross stupidity of America’s uneducated citizenry.  Subsequently, repugicans are building on their success and slashing education funding at a record pace to produce an entire population of stupid conservative voters.

A couple of years ago a survey asked 1,000 Americans to take the U.S. citizenship test and surprisingly, only 38% of them failed miserably. The number is obviously higher today and at the rate repugicans in Congress and particularly red states are slashing education funding, it is not going to get better any time soon; if ever. The repugicans could not exist as a  political cabal without overwhelming numbers of ignorant, and frankly intensely stupid, Americans, and announcements from at least three repugican governors over the past month inform they are intent on adding to the number of repugican voters by creating the next generation of stupid Americans.

The latest repugican to announce severe cuts to education is Illinois’ Bruce Rauner. Rauner told lawmakers that “It’s time to make education our top priority again – and that’s what this budget does.” He promptly cited the benefits to education in his “turnaround budget” that slashes $209 million from the state’s higher education budget. Rauner said the education cuts are just one of several “difficult choices no one wants to make,” and then stressed the importance of filling the gaping $6.2 billion budget hole the state faces in the coming fiscal year. His turnaround budget plan includes no effort to raise taxes, close corporate tax loopholes, or raise revenue in any way; a typical repugican fiscal scenario playing out in red states across America. Illinois repugicans have spent the past four years giving the rich and corporations generous tax cuts that created the “gaping $6.2 billion budget hole.” It is exactly like the Kansas “trickle down” model that stupid Kansas voters continue supporting as Sam Brownback proposes more education cuts.

Barely a month ago, Louisiana repugican Bobby Jindal told wingnuts in Washington D.C. just how incredibly important public education was as a fundamental pillar of America’s democracy. Jindal asked the audience, “Why is it important to fund and support public education? Because if we want to keep the republic we have, we need an educated population with critical thinking skills. I always hear from parents, from the Chamber of Commerce, from business groups that we’ve got to fund education.” Jindal’s funding solution was immediately cutting the state college budget by over $300 million; or about a third of the system’s total budget.  Even Louisiana repugican David Vitter slammed Jindal’s gifts to the rich and corporations and accused him of “exacerbating the state’s outrageous deficit woes by recklessly expanding tax breaks for the wealthy.”

Another repugican, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, announced education cuts to the tune of $300 million he claims is crucial to try and make up a $650 million budget shortfall. Like Illinois, Louisiana, Kansas, and Arizona, the state is suffering major revenue shortfalls due to Walker’s $2 billion in tax cuts for the rich. Walker is currently pushing for more tax cuts for corporations that will put the state budget further in the red. Walker stole 're-election' despite the state’s budget woes and it is due to stupid voters; Walker’s education cuts will increase the number of ignorant voters he, and repugicans, depend on to stay in power.

Arizona's Doug Ducey is pushing at least $75 million in education cuts in his budget to “help address this state’s $1.5 billion revenue shortfall.” In typical repugican fashion, like Jindal, Walker, Sam Brownback, and Rauner, Ducey claims his education cuts are necessary to “preserve major business tax cuts” and “protect taxpayers by rejecting calls to address the budget shortfalls by raising taxes.” Ducey says that cutting education funding and preserving tax cuts for corporations are the only reasonable solution to Arizona’s red ink and they are fair because they “ask all areas of government to share in the work to develop and find savings.”

This list of repugican governors and state legislatures slashing education funding to continue providing tax cuts for the rich is long and demonstrates why Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said, “repugican charlatans and cranks have gained increasing favor in the cabal, despite, or maybe because of the fact, that they get things wrong.” Krugman makes a valid point, but he held back from stating the obvious; repugicans are gaining favor due to ignorance among the electorate that continues supporting repugicans despite the incredibly stupid fiscal decisions they have made over the past thirty years.

The repugicans understand that, as Jindal said, an “educated populace with critical thinking skills is crucial to maintaining the republic.” However, repugicans have no interest in maintaining the republic as a representative democracy any more than they want a well-educated citizenry with critical thinking skills to know when they are being crushed by corporate fascism. Many Americans wonder aloud after every election why a preponderance of voters in repugican-misled states perpetually vote against their own best interests and by extension their freedoms; it is sheer stupidity.

As much as one grieves to state the obvious, it is because too many Americans are beyond ignorant; they lack critical thinking skills borne of stupidity. The “widespread ignorance of objective reality” is better stated as “willful rejection of objective reality;” not ignorance, just sheer stupidity. It means that although Republican voters see and feel the effects of repugican economic and fiscal policies favoring the rich at their expense, they continue supporting wingnut.

If the repugicans’ storied trickle down scam was an exciting and novel fiscal policy, one may understand how ‘ignorance’ might play into the support from repugican voters. But for dog’s sake, repugicans have been pushing the same failed agenda for over thirty years and despite the damage to the population, stupid wingnuts continue electing repugicans. And, to increase the number of stupid people, repugicans hasten their horrendous cuts to education funding. They know that ‘an uneducated citizenry is a vital requisite for their survival as a party intent on rule by corporate fascism,” and tragically they are seeing their efforts reach fruition.

5 ways the repugican cabal is vainly trying to make Americans as dumb as possible

From AP history bans to university budget cuts, wingnuts are proving they're willing to do whatever it takes 

by Amanda Marcotte

If you ever want to make a conservative touchy, the quickest way—out of many quick ways—is to hint that the connection between ignorance and holding right-wing views is more than a coincidence. But when you look at what repugican politicians get up to these days, especially in state legislatures, it starts to look like repugicans are purposefully trying to make Americans more ignorant. The attacks on education are, if anything, just getting bolder all the time. Here are 5 recent examples.
1) Oklahoma is about to ban AP history classes. Under the guise of “emergency” legislation, the education committee in the Oklahoma legislature had an 11-4 vote to advance a bill that would ban the advanced placement history curriculum from Oklahoma schools. There’s not even a real attempt here, as with other conservative assaults on education, to hide that the goal is to keep students ignorant so that they are more susceptible to right wing propaganda. The bill’s sponsor, state representative Dan Fisher, argued that the schools should be teaching “American exceptionalism,” and avoiding teaching parts of American history that are less than flattering.
Sadly, this push to remove history courses that teach actual history and replace them with a bunch of flattering lies designed to imply that America can do no wrong is hardly limited to Oklahoma. The repugican national coven has endorsed the idea that AP history courses should teach less strife and present a more rah-rah view of American history. In Colorado, attempts to whitewash the history classes even resulted in student walkouts, garnering national attention.
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2) Scott Walker has it out for the University of Wisconsin. The University of Wisconsin is a point of pride for the state at large, to the point where their mascot, the badger, is blanketed over everything Wisconsin-related, including government services that aren’t affiliated with the school. Despite this, Scott Walker, flush with confidence after decimating public service unions in Wisconsin, has it out now for the university, apparently not caring that it’s the state’s pride and joy. The goal is to slash a whopping $300 million from the University of Wisconsin system over the next two years.
There may be some lip-smacking about “fiscal conservatism” going on with this, but Walker and his staff haven’t really taken many pains to hide that this is rooted in a deeper hostility to the very idea of knowledge itself. “A harbinger of what Walker might face came in an immediate uproar on social media this month after his staff proposed changing the university’s ethereal focus on the pursuit of truth, known as the ‘Wisconsin Idea,’ to a grittier focus on ‘workforce needs,’” reports the Washington Post. Walker backed off recasting higher education as nothing more than job training after his critics pointed out he is a college dropout, but the fact that this wording change was proposed at all shows that the hostility to education is ideological and has little to nothing to do with saving money.
3) Redefining education as “welfare” Mississippi repugican Gene Alday made national headlines recently by saying one of the most bone-headedly racist things to come out of a politician’s mouth in recent years, which is saying a lot. “I come from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call ‘welfare crazy checks.’ They don’t work,” he said during his rant. He added that he once went to an emergency room and, “”I liked to died. I laid in there for hours because they (blacks) were in there being treated for gunshots.”
The comments got coverage because they were clearly delusional, the result of a man substituting racist urban legends for actually bothering to learn about policy or reality. But what got lost in the shuffle a bit was that Alday went on his rant in part because he was trying to justify his opposition to increased funding for elementary school education. Mississippi schools are abysmally underfunded, resulting in shockingly high rates of kids being held back. Alday’s little racist spiel was an attempt to insinuate that teaching kids reading and writing amounts to “welfare” and to suggest that education is wasted on black people in particular. While his comments were extremist, the refusal to properly fund schools is mainstream in Mississippi. Gov. Phil Bryant, for instance, has revolted against the idea of putting more effort towards teaching kids to read, and suggesting that he’s fine with just holding them back instead.
4) Threatening to arrest teachers for sex education. In Kansas, which seems to get more lunatic fringe wingnutty by the year, repugicans are no longer satisfied with laws requiring teachers to pretend that it’s normal and expected for people to wait until marriage to have sex. Now there’s growing support for having teachers fear jail time should they ever hint, during sex education, that sex is a thing people do for pleasure. Using a teacher who had a poster up in class that suggested—gasp!—that sex is sometimes used to show affection, repugicans in the state are sponsoring a bill that would allow officials to criminally charge teachers for daring acknowledge such a thing ever again. The poster in question had no pictures on it, just words, suggesting advocates of the bill happily equate even the most minor acknowledgements that sex is fun with providing children with pornography.
5) Continued demands that science education be replaced with magic.Other pro-ignorance forces get more headlines these days, but creationists haven’t gone anywhere. In South Dakota, repugicans once again pushed for a bill that would “allow” teachers to “question” evolution in the classroom, which is a fancy way of saying that teachers would be permitted to treat being ignorant as the equivalent of being educated.
These kinds of laws don’t do well in court, so it’s no big surprise that legislators abandoned it. But that doesn’t mean that the wingnuts are giving up on creationism any time soon. Asked recently about evolution, Scott Walker stuck to the narrative that elevates ignorance over education, saying, “That’s a question politicians shouldn’t be involved in one way or another. I am going to leave that up to you. I’m here to talk about trade not to pontificate about evolution.” Far from a politician trying to have it both ways, the comment was the exaltation of ignorance over education. Evolutionary theory is a knowable thing. The basics can be grasped simply by watching an episode of Cosmos or reading a basic biology textbook. By treating something as simple as giving 45 minutes over to a TV show or an hour to a book as more education than he should be expected to handle, Walker epitomized the new conservative mentality of ignorance uber alles.