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Monday, December 14, 2015

The Daily Drift

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Shocking Maps Show How Bad U.S. Sex Ed Is

Obama Signs Bill Overthrowing The Shrub’s Disastrous No Child Left Behind

Obama signs Every Student Succeeds Act
President Obama has signed bipartisan legislation that has gotten rid of another pillar of the failed legacy of the shub. No Child Left Behind is gone.
President Obama called the bill a Christmas miracle, a real bipartisan bill that he got to sign.
The President praised the bipartisanship behind this bill, “I just want to point out that it’s not as if there weren’t some significant ideological differences on some of these issues. No there were, but I really think this is a good example of how bipartisanship can work. People did not agree on everything at the outset, but they were willing to listen to each other in a civil and constructive way and to work through these issues, compromise when necessary, while still keeping their eye on the ball.”
According to a White House fact sheet the bill that President Obama signed will:
· Ensure states set high standards so that children graduate high school ready for college and career.

· Maintain accountability by guaranteeing that when students fall behind, states target resources towards what works to help them and their schools improve, with a particular focus on the lowest-performing 5 percent of schools, high schools with high dropout rates, and schools where subgroups of students are struggling.
· Empower state and local decision-makers to develop their own strong systems for school improvement based upon evidence, rather than imposing cookie-cutter federal solutions like No Child Left Behind (NCLB) did.
· Preserve annual assessments and reduce the often onerous burden of unnecessary and ineffective testing on students and teachers, making sure that standardized tests don’t crowd out teaching and learning, without sacrificing clear, annual information parents and educators need to make sure our children are learning.
· Provide more children access to high-quality preschool, giving them the chance to get a strong start to their education.
· Establish new resources to test promising practices and replicate proven strategies that will drive opportunity and better outcomes for America’s students.
One of the outcomes of the new law is expected to be a reduction in the amount of standardized testing that today’s students are subjected to.
The Every Student Succeeds Act should be a major improvement on No Child Left Behind. A major subtext of the Obama years has been this president cleaning up the messes left behind by the shrub. The shrub legacy of failure has been largely dismantled.
The shrub managed to sign an education reform bill that both increased federal involvement in local education and managed to leave tons of children behind by forcing teachers to teach to standardized tests instead of helping students grow and learn.
Another “achievement” of one of the worst pretenders in history has been sent to the dustbin as it seems that the one thing that Republicans and Democrats can agree on is the need to get rid of No Child Left Behind.

Wingnut Attacks 13-Year-Old For Renouncing Republicans, Gets Owned By 13-Year-Old

A 13-year-old boy from Georgia became an improbable star of the Republican cabal with his viral videos slamming (and lying about) President...

Fox Presents Stein As An Awesome, Stupendous Gun Control Genius (Because He Hates It)

Fox Presents Ben Stein As An Awesome, Stupendous Gun Control Genius (Because He Hates It)

Denying Reality

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/5G4JnJC8THowt1xWiB6lCQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3NfbGVnbztmaT1maWxsO2g9NDMzO3B5b2ZmPTA7cT03NTt3PTUwMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/tt151210.gif

President Obama’s Message To A Syrian Refugee: ‘Welcome’

Shrub-Appointed Judge To Texas: No, You Can’t Halt Resettlement Of Syrian Refugees

Islamophobic Shrieking Head Hilariously Loses His Shit When Confronted To Source His ‘Facts’

Islamophobic Pundit Hilariously Loses His Sh*t When Confronted To Source His ‘Facts’ (VIDEO)
Best thing you’ll see today. Hands down. Ha!

Paul Has One Message For Black Pastors, Another For Lunatic Fringe Wingnut Hate Radio

Top New Hampshire Newspaper Shreds Cruz’s 'Texas Tough Guy Act'

Cruz Challenged Science At His Climate Change Hearing - Science Won

Anti-Gay Idiots Rally Around Cruz

He's Not Wrong: Philadelphia Mayor Calls Trump 'An Asshole'

He's Not Wrong: Philadelphia Mayor Calls Donald Trump 'An A**hole'

Trump’s Anti-Muslim Campaign Is Helping Fuel White Supremacist Recruitment

Trump’s Cult Is Trying To Figure Out If It Can Essentially Excommunicate Him

English Petition to Ban Trump Now Stands at 370,000 and Counting

The carefully crafted and nurtured Trump brand has been re-branded as something nobody wants overnight by Trump's radicalization…
trump-nbcThe Dumbass’ Woes Mount as Trump Suffers Increased Backlash for Radicalism
The Black Death visited England in June of 1438 and nobody ever wanted it to come back. Today, it is Trump who is the cause of consternation, as the petition to bar him from England has now topped 370,000. The BBC reports that “Chancellor George Osborne criticised Mr Trump’s comments but rejected calls for him to be banned from the UK,” but “Any petition with more than 100,000 signatures is automatically considered for debate in Parliament.”
Yes. They will be debating the presence of Trump in Parliament. I bet that isn’t an outcome The Dumbass expected when he announced his candidacy.
A counter-petition begun Wednesday has garnered only 9,000 signatures, according to the BBC this morning.
I bet he also didn’t expect these other developments:
  • Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has stripped Trump of his status as a business ambassador for Scotland.
  • Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University has revoked Trump’s honorary degree, which he received in 2010 in recognition of his achievements as an entrepreneur and businessman.
  • One of the Middle East’s largest retail chains, Lifestyle, has withdrawn Trump products from its shelves following his comments.
Trump was named GlobalScot ambassador in 2006 but now Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, has dropped him, because, as a government spokesperson said, his “recent remarks have shown he is no longer fit to be a business ambassador for Scotland.”
Which shows the Scots are at least twice as civilized as Republicans, 65 percent of whom approve of Trump’s fascism.
Robert Gordon University said, in revoking Trump’s honorary degree,
“We respectfully request that Robert Gordon University strips Trump of the honorary degree it bestowed on him with immediate effect. Why is this important? We feel that Trump’s unrepentant, persistent verbal attacks on various groups of people based on nationality, religion, race and physical abilities are a huge detriment to RGU.”
Oh dear.
And his retail prospects don’t look so good either, as the move by Lifestyle will see his products – like a “table lamp in antique brass with crystal drops” and a decorative box with a “brilliant plume of a peacock…redecorated in gold finish for an exclusive look” – removed from 190 stores in the Middle East, Pakistan, and even Africa.
CEO Sachin Mundhwa told Reuters,
“In light of the recent statements made by the presidential candidate in the U.S. media, we have suspended sale of all products from the Trump Home décor range.”
Oh dear, oh dear.
The Price of Trump’s Ego
These are forms of backlash against Trump’s radicalism – not to put too fine a point upon it, his fascism. This is a sweet irony for his detractors, as he is responsible for a rather more frightening backlash against Muslims in the United States.
ThinkProgress has put together an interactive map to show just how extensive this backlash is (yes, the same backlash Fox News can’t see):
Now you could certainly argue that Trump hasn’t killed hundreds of thousands of people like the Black Death did in England, but Trump Tower residents in Chicago are not only too embarrassed to admit they actually live in Trump Tower, but some of them are worried about a terrorist attack if Trump doesn’t “shut up.”
His 20-foot high vanity name on the building he doesn’t actually own has become a beacon for terrorists. Make America great again? How about we settle for you not getting us killed?
The carefully crafted and nurtured Trump brand has been re-branded as something nobody wants overnight by Trump’s radicalization, and you have to wonder if he will ever recover from the things he has said over the past months. He can claim momentum in the Republican pretender race, but there is a growing momentum in reaction to him as well, and that is one he can control only by toning down his rhetoric, and that seems unlikely.
The hilarious thing is, Trump thinks he should have been Time Magazine’s Person of the Year:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Thank you @oreillyfactor for your wonderful editorial as to why I should have been @TIME Magazine's Person of the Year. You should run Time!
He tweeted his lament that instead of picking the person who plans to ruin America, Time picked the “person who is ruining Germany.”
Sure, he’s popular in South Carolina, but it’s hard to make that sound like an accomplishment; they were the first to secede from the Union, after all. Maybe they can secede again and make him dictator, like Il Duce. We can call him Il Trumpo.
Trump touts his business acumen, but as should be readily apparent, that acumen is nowhere to be found today. Khalaf al-Habtoor, a former Trump business partner in Dubai told Reuters,
“He is really creating war. He’s creating hatred between Muslims and christians. Muslims have invested hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars [in America], creating jobs for Americans. They can go invest it somewhere else.”
Take that, Mr. Tough Guy. Take that.

Trump’s Extremist Bigotry Against Muslims Is Now The Republican Moderate Position

Maybe now it is time for sane Americans to stop laughing or shaking their heads in disgust at Trump and follow President Obama and other Democrats in addressing…
trump-foxThere is a concept regarding political discourse known as “Overton’s Window” that loosely defines the range of ideas the public will accept as reasonable. According to James P. Overton (1960-2003), an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within “the window” the public, and not politicians, considers is not too extreme. It is safe to say that after six years of flirting with blatant Republican hate-mongering and bigotry using “dog whistles” conservative voters understand, Overton’s window is much, much larger and toxic bigotry and hateful-rhetoric is the new normal.
For many Americans, the idea of a television reality-show and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) celebrity like Trump as a viable Republican pretender candidate was beyond the absurd. However absurd Trump’s run for the wingnut nomination may seem, the reality is that whether he ultimately succeeds in gaining the nomination or not, he has thrown open Overton’s window and made abject bigotry as political discourse very popular among conservatives and mainstream media and an actual threat to all Americans.
While the rest of the world, and a few Americans, are dumbfounded by Trump’s success and conclude that he is an “only in America caricature” kind a fool, it is time to stop being shocked, or amused, and start fighting back. If Trump et al are not shut down sooner than later, decent Americans will have to gird themselves for some seriously dangerous hate driven by Trump’s deliberately divisive politics that will not stop at any one demographic.
Regardless how extreme, how bigoted, and how racist Trump’s rhetoric, he is still the wingnut front-runner. If the Iowa caucus were held today, Trump would cruise to victory over less openly-bigoted Republicans by a whopping 13 points. Maybe now it is time for sane Americans to stop laughing or shaking their heads in disgust at Trump and follow President Obama and other Democrats in addressing Trump’s open hostility against any non-white and non-'christian' for exactly what it is; patently un-American, hate-filled bigotry and genuinely inhumane insanity.
Of course there has always been bigotry and hate speech in America; it is part and parcel of America’s world-renowned ignorance and arrogance problem. However, it has never been as widely-accepted as reasonable political discourse or moderate campaign rhetoric; that is the real, present, and future danger of Trump and the other Republicans seeking the White House making extreme bigotry an acceptable and popular position.
About the only thing the shrub can be praised for even though he created ISIL is thwarting blatant American displays of anti-Muslim prejudice. It was seemingly simple to be complacent about the occasional anti-Muslim sentiments before an African American man became President, but it is that complacency, or tolerance even, of wingnut hate-mongering that has given Trump free rein to make open religious bigotry an acceptable Republican policy.
If being a decent American citizen is not reason enough to assail Trump, Fox News, and other wingnuts’ blatant anti-Muslim bigotry, then self-preservation and national security should. It is true there were barbarian hate-mongers in America before Trump, but they never proposed registering people as undesirables according to their faith, imprisoning them, spying on their places of worship, or banning them from daring to enter white 'christian' America.
It is also frightening that a reality television hack single-handedly made religious bigotry in a land with freedom of religion an acceptable, and madly popular, aspect of the nation’s political debate and discourse. Over the past six months, what was once considered beyond the pale, blatant anti-Muslim prejudice, not only suddenly seems “less” extreme to many Americans, it is actually regarded as palatable and prescient.
By proposing seriously foul anti-Muslim policies as the center-piece of his campaign, Trump is doing exactly what the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL) predicted was crucial to their victory. Remember, just last February the official Islamic State magazine’s editorial was a clarion call to Republicans to “fuel a sense among Muslims that they are unwanted, rejected, and hated” to drive them into the open arms of ISIL’s “global jihad.” Trump’s actions and speech are providing ISIL with proof that they control Republicans and are winning because Trump and company’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and fascist proposals are exactly what ISIL predicted “western nations” would do.
If it were just Trump and a few Republicans openly preaching hate against innocent American Muslims it would be horrific enough. But the real source of concern is that no matter how extreme and hateful Trump’s anti-Muslim, or anti-anyone, bigotry becomes it garners wild applause and cheering from his supporters who may be approaching numbers to give him the Republican presidential nomination.
Trump may be “a pitiful absurdity that can simply be laughed off” because he will never get near the White House. However, his hateful rhetoric is inciting more bigotry among an already hateful Republican base and doing the hard recruiting work for ISIL by creating home-grown terrorists who will strike in the homeland before Republicans finish chasing them out of America to join ISIL.

Childish Bully Trump Is Totally BUTTHURT Over White House Making Fun Of His Stupid Hair

Donald Trump with crazy hair. Photo from The Telegraph. www.telegraph.co.ukIt looks like 8th grade recess bully Trump can dish it out, but he can’t take it.

Trump’s Pathetic ‘Four-Step Plan’ To Win ‘100 Perfect’ Of The Black Vote

Donald Trump’s Pathetic ‘Four-Step Plan’ To Win ‘100 Perfect’ Of The Black Vote
You have got to be kidding me.
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