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Deutschmeister's avatar

A few quick hits today:

1) I saw Scott Walker on CNN last night dutifully dog-whistling that Joe Biden's economic policies have failed America, as if opinion automatically equals fact. Let's take a closer look ... 216,000 new jobs added to the economy. Gas prices significantly down. Inflation down. Record online holiday season purchases. Jammed airports and highways for holiday travelers. In other words: Thanks, Joe. It's nice to see that Governor Divide-and-Conquer is just as wrong now as he was when he made hyperpartisanship and demonization of the political left and public sector workers fashionable in Wisconsin. Walker's schlock is well past its expiration date. Why anyone seeks his opinion at this point is beyond my comprehension.

2) Donald Trump's faith was on full display with "Two Corinthians" in 2016. Using the Bible as a prop during the George Floyd crisis wasn't a good look either. Anybody here think he breaks bread with friends and family with recitations from the Scriptures? Perhaps "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth."?

3) Can we stop pretending that whatever happens at Harvard is representative of what takes place at all other institutions of higher education? It has become exhausting to hear commentators equate what happens there, under their circumstances, with the very different reality at the vast majority of other, smaller, less affluent, less elite, more public than private, more classroom-driven schools. It isn't. For all the good work people like me do in the educational environment every working day, we wouldn't be allowed to walk on Harvard's campus, much less have a say in their policies and working conditions. So let's stop assuming that one size fits all on this issue. Better still, how about if we take some time to point out all the many things that our universities do well and right in preparing our students for bright futures, good careers, and becoming well-rounded citizens in our society and global community instead of always looking for reasons to denigrate them and call into question their legitimacy? The discussion has been way out of balance for far too long. In this forum as elsewhere, let's hit a reset button and see it as more than just a convenient, and too often disingenuous, political football, please and thank you on behalf of all of us who deserve better than the prevailing guilt-by-association approach.

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Harley "Griff" Lofton's avatar

Ruy Teixeira and John Judis are kind of (literally) whitewashing the history of the New Deal. They totally ignore the sausage making that went into the enduring legislation from that period and the dirty compromises necessary to get Southern segregationist Democrats to pass them.

What happened to the Democratic Party is that after the Second World War it began to take equality before the law for ALL people as a serious concept and a certain portion of the American people have never accepted or forgiven them for that.

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