Demovictory9

Demovictory9's Journal

September 19, 2022

Abortion ruling has put these 5 California House races in play..seats held by republicans

Abortion ruling has put these 5 California House races in play
The Roe ruling and an abortion ballot measure are expected to drive turnout in the state.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Control of the House will be decided by a handful of races around the nation, and California alone has at least five whose outcome may hinge on a single issue: abortion.

The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has made Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home state the place that may ultimately decide whether she continues to swing the House gavel in January — or gives a native son, Kevin McCarthy, a shot at the job.

Support for abortion rights is strong in California, where the Democrats who dominate state government have placed an initiative on the ballot to enshrine access in the state constitution. Prop 1, as it’s known, has support from 69 percent of likely voters.

That’s expected to drive supporters of abortion rights to the polls in a way that will likely hurt GOP candidates in the tighter races, such as those held by Republican incumbents Rep. Mike Garcia in the suburbs at the northern edge of LA and Rep. Ken Calvert, who now must face voters in Palm Springs because of redistricting.

Republican candidates in areas with significant numbers of college-educated voters will be in the most trouble unless they can change the subject to something else, perhaps immigration, says GOP strategist Mike Madrid. “There’s no good answer to abortion,” he said. “On the face of it, when Republicans are talking about the issue, they’re losing.”

Here’s a look at five races to watch:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/18/california-abortion-house-roe-00057023

September 19, 2022

MAGA activists, secessionists, vaccine resisters, self-described militia members control a CA county

They dress in red. Mostly older folks. Low population rural area way at top of California

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/us/california-shasta-maga-trump.html

In February, an alliance of MAGA activists, secessionists, vaccine resisters and self-described militia members ousted a longtime board member and won a 3-2 majority on Shasta County’s all-Republican — but officially nonpartisan — main governing body. Since then, the most populous county in California’s upper reaches has been a case study in the forces reshaping the Republican Party and governance in conservative parts of the country.

The health officer has been fired, the chief executive has quit, the head of the largest county department has retired, and Shasta has had difficulty hiring full-time replacements. The board has issued a declaration opposing state vaccine mandates.

During Pride Month in June, the majority killed a proclamation recognizing the local LGBTQ community’s contributions. Critics of the new policies complain that they feel unsafe at board meetings. Their supporters have surveilled the longtime county clerk, who oversees elections, following her to her car, confronting her in and outside her office and bombarding her with dubious fraud claims; some have circulated petitions accusing her, without evidence, of treason.

This week, Douglas Frank, a high school math and science teacher from Ohio whose widely debunked analysis of the 2020 election has gained currency with election conspiracy theorists, spoke for 20 minutes, urged by the board’s vice chair.

Such developments have dismayed longtime Republican leaders in Shasta County.

“I was born and raised here, spent 31 years in law enforcement and was involved in 15 different civic organizations. I remember people being reasonable,” said Leonard Moty, 69, the four-term supervisor and former Redding police chief who was threatened with violence, accused of being a pedophile and denounced as a “Republican in Name Only” before he was recalled. Now, he said, “there are people we’ve known for years who, you know, we’re careful what we say around them.”

September 19, 2022

GEN Z NEVER LEARNED TO READ CURSIVE How will they interpret the past?

The Atlantic: Gen Z Never Learned to Read Cursive.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/10/gen-z-handwriting-teaching-cursive-history/671246/

It was a good book, the student told the 14 others in the undergraduate seminar I was teaching, and it included a number of excellent illustrations, such as photographs of relevant Civil War manuscripts. But, he continued, those weren’t very helpful to him, because of course he couldn’t read cursive.

Had I heard him correctly? Who else can’t read cursive? I asked the class. The answer: about two-thirds. And who can’t write it? Even more. What did they do about signatures? They had invented them by combining vestiges of whatever cursive instruction they may have had with creative squiggles and flourishes. Amused by my astonishment, the students offered reflections about the place—or absence—of handwriting in their lives. Instead of the Civil War past, we found ourselves exploring a different set of historical changes. In my ignorance, I became their pupil as well as a kind of historical artifact, a Rip van Winkle confronting a transformed world.

In 2010, cursive was omitted from the new national Common Core standards for K–12 education. The students in my class, and their peers, were then somewhere in elementary school. Handwriting instruction had already been declining as laptops and tablets and lessons in “keyboarding” assumed an ever more prominent place in the classroom. Most of my students remembered getting no more than a year or so of somewhat desultory cursive training, which was often pushed aside by a growing emphasis on “teaching to the test.” Now in college, they represent the vanguard of a cursiveless world.

Although I was unaware of it at the time, the 2010 Common Core policy on cursive had generated an uproar. Jeremiads about the impending decline of civilization appeared in The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Defenders of script argued variously that knowledge of cursive was “a basic right,” a key connection between hand and brain, an essential form of self-discipline, and a fundamental expression of identity. Its disappearance would represent a craven submission to “the tyranny of ‘relevance.’ ”

In the future, cursive will have to be taught to scholars the way Elizabethan secretary hand or paleography is today.

September 18, 2022

Daily fail lead article: "trump's thin crowd" with pics of empty stands

Wow!.. for gop butt kissing daily fail to shine negative light on tfg

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11223087/Trump-Ohio-rally-crowd-size.html

Uncharacteristically thin crowd in Ohio as Trump prepares to take the stage for rally in support of Senate candidate JD Vance - just hours after saying most GOP candidates would LOSE without his endorsement

September 17, 2022

GOP Jesus

https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1570822428422705153

September 16, 2022

Attempts to Ban Books Are Accelerating and Becoming More Divisive

https://dnyuz.com/2022/09/16/attempts-to-ban-books-are-accelerating-and-becoming-more-divisive/

Attempts to ban books are accelerating across the country at a rate never seen since tracking began more than 20 years ago, according to a new report from the American Library Association.

So far in 2022, there have been attempts to ban or restrict access to 1,651 different titles, the group found, up from challenges to 1,597 books in 2021, the year with the highest number of complaints since the group began documenting book challenges decades ago.

Book banning efforts have grown rapidly in number and become much more organized, divisive and vitriolic over the past two years, splitting communities, causing bitter rifts on school and library boards, and spreading across the country through social media and political campaigns.

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Books that focus on L.G.B.T.Q. or Black characters have been targeted most often, the association said, with Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” the most frequently challenged book in the country. A debut graphic novel, the book is about coming out as nonbinary. It includes depictions of sexual experiences, masturbation and menstrual blood.

September 16, 2022