Last Call For Ban 'Em, Burn 'Em, Texas Style

Never forget that Republicans are white supremacists at their core, and that means a war on infomation more than anything else. Of course to protect kids from the evils of Critical Race Theory, Texas Republicans are now "reviewing library materials" in the state for these subversive texts.

The chairman of a Texas state House committee tasked with conducting investigations is launching a probe into books that school librarians keep on their shelves in the wake of a measure the legislature passed earlier this year to bar teaching of critical race theory in public schools.

In a letter to the Texas Education Agency and unnamed school superintendents, state Rep. Matt Krause (R) asked school leaders to identify the number of copies of hundreds of specific books they have sitting on library shelves, and how much money the districts paid to purchase those books.

Krause cited five Texas school districts that have recently removed some books from their libraries or classrooms after objections from parents and students. Krause asked the districts to provide information about books that deal with sexuality, sexually transmitted disease, AIDS and HIV and “material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.”

The specific books Krause is looking for, attached in a 16-page list first reported by the Texas Tribune, date back to 1968. Many deal with abortion, teen pregnancy, sex education or the life experience of young LGBT people. Others deal with the Black Lives Matter movement or the concepts of anti-racism.

Also on the list are some more popular works, including:

— The Confessions of Nat Turner, a 1967 novel by William Styron written as a first-person narrative of an 1831 slave revolt in Virginia.

— The Cider House Rules, John Irving’s 1985 novel about a protagonist whose childhood mentor is an obstetrician who performs abortions.

— V for Vendetta, the 1982 graphic novel about a dystopian, post-pandemic England ruled by a fascist regime, written by Alan Moore that became a hit movie in 2005.

— The Handmaid’s Tale, another dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood about a post-revolution United States in which women are subjected by a ruling class of men. Krause specifically asks about a graphic novel form of the book.

— We Were Eight Years in Power and Between the World and Me, two memoirs by the author and essayist Ta-Nehisi Coates.

The letter went to school districts without a vote from the full committee on investigations. State Rep. Victoria Neave (D), the vice chair of the committee, called the letter “politically motivated.”

In a statement, the Texas State Teachers Association called the letter a “political overreach” and a “witch hunt.”

“This is an obvious attack on diversity and an attempt to score political points at the expense of our children’s education,” TSTA president Ovidia Molina said. “What will Rep. Krause propose next? Burning books he and a handful of parents find objectionable?”

 

The answer, as American history has made clear time and again, is "yes".  Expect those books and more to be removed from school libraries and public libraries in Texas and in other states.

The Big Lie, Con't

It's only a matter of time before more Democratic election officials are hurt or killed by lunatic Trump cultists.

"I am a hunter -- and I think you should be hunted," a woman can be heard saying in a voicemail left for Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs in September. "You will never be safe in Arizona again." 

Or there's the man who spit, "Die you bitch, die! Die you bitch, die!" repeatedly into the phone, in another of several dozen threatening and angry voicemails directed at the Democratic secretary of state and shared exclusively with CNN by her office. 

Officials and aides in secretary of state offices in Arizona and other states targeted by former President Donald Trump in his attack on last year's election results told CNN about living in constant terror -- nervously watching the people around them at events, checking in their rearview mirrors for cars following them home and sitting up at night wondering what might happen next. 

Law enforcement has never had to think much about protecting secretaries of state, let alone allocating hundreds of thousands of dollars in security, tracking and follow-up. Their jobs used to be mundane, unexciting, bureaucratic. These are small offices in a handful of states with enormous power in administering elections, from mailing ballots to overseeing voting machines to keeping track of counted votes. 

None were prepared to be publicly attacked. They don't have the budgets to monitor threats, and certainly not to suddenly protect officials who never had to be protected before. No systems were in place on the state or federal level to back them up, and the Department of Justice admits that the federal government doesn't yet have the infrastructure to handle the situation. 

Staff members in the offices say they're dealing with long-term emotional and psychological trauma after a year of constant threats -- in person and virtually -- to the secretaries and to themselves. 

"Bullet," read one tweet reply to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, in September. "That is a six letter word for you." 

An email sent to her office over the summer read: "I'm really jonzing to see your purple face after you've been hanged." 

Asked by CNN last week if she feels safe in her job and going about her days, Griswold paused for nearly 30 seconds before answering. 

"I take these threats very seriously," she finally said, choosing her words carefully. "It's absolutely getting worse," she added. 

The threats come in from their home states and across the country. Few appear to be coordinated or organized, and are instead often driven by momentary, angry reactions to a news story or social media post. But some get very specific, citing details and specifics that leave the secretaries and their staff rushing to report them to authorities. 

Most anticipate the threats will increase going into next year, with Republicans around the country making election doubt conspiracies a central plank of their campaigns, and with many of these secretaries of state up for reelection themselves in races that are already generating more attention than ever before, with expectations that they will be the frontlines of potentially trying to overturn the next presidential election. 

But Griswold's problem was, ironically, summed up in one of the tweets her office has tracked: "Your security detail is far too thin and incompetent to protect you. This world is unpredictable these days... anything can happen to anyone." It ended with a shrug emoji. Griswold's vulnerability is greater than that person imagined: for now, she's had to contract private security, and only for official events, squeezing the money out of her small office budget. With all that's been coming at her, that's what she has.

 

The point is to drive good people out of politics like Jena Griswold and Katie Hobbs and replace them with Trump Cultists. The point is to make sure Democrats can't find candidates to field because they fear for their lives. The point is to terrorize Democrats into not running, not voting, and not registering. The Trump Cultists win by default if there are no other candidates.

It's working, too.

Climate Of Disaster, Con't

Decades of "Al Gore is fat!" jokes has given us an electorate that has no relation to reality when it comes to climate change. Even in 2021, the story is now "climate change is real but humans don't cause it" for nearly half of Americans.

Nearly half of Americans still don’t think climate change is caused by human activities, but Democrats were far less likely than Republicans to hold those views, a new VICE News and Guardian poll has found.

This year was marked by several unprecedented natural disasters, including a “heat dome” marked by sweltering temperatures of up to 113 F that plagued the Pacific Northwest, killing hundreds, and record-breaking wildfire seasons that razed entire towns and displaced thousands. Experts linked the string of natural disasters to the climate crisis, and yet, many Americans are still struggling to understand whether and why the generation-defining crisis is happening.

The poll, which surveyed 1,000 Americans on behalf of VICE News, the Guardian, and Covering Climate Now, by YouGov, comes less than a week before leaders and delegates from around the world meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations’ climate change conference. The data shows that climate change is a top voter issue in the U.S., behind health care and social programs. For college grads and Democrats, climate change jumped to top spot (for Democrats it was tied with health care).

But while 69.5 percent of respondents believe global warming is happening, they were divided on what’s causing it. Forty-five percent don’t think humans are mostly to blame for global warming, opting instead to blame “natural changes in the environment” or “other,” and 8.3 percent denied global warming is happening altogether.

That’s mostly due to Republicans (55.4 percent) and independents (33 percent) though, who were far more likely than Democrats (17.2 percent) to believe “natural causes” have led to global warming. Young people and educated folks too were significantly more likely to believe humans are to blame for climate change.

A significant group of people also believe scientists don’t see eye to eye. Many respondents (30.5 percent) think there's a raging scientific debate over the cause of climate change when there really isn't. Globally, there is consensus among scientists—97 percent or more—that global warming is happening because of human activities, according to NASA and international science societies.

 

The same anti-science narrative that is currently killing thousands daily in the US from COVID started with the anti-science narrative on climate change 25 years ago. You can draw a direct line from there to here. 

Even in 2021, only a quarter of Republicans believe in human-caused climate change. The vast majority believe it;s natural (55%) and 15% don't believe it's happening at all.

You want to know why nothing gets done on climate change?

Because for a quarter of a century, Americans have been lied to, and they believe the lies they've been taught.

StupidiNews!

• Georgia officials say the last of the capsized Golden Ray cargo ship that sank in 2019 has finally been removed, the project took some three million manhours.
• Longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin says in a new book that she was sexually assaulted by a US senator in 2005.
• Biden administration lawyers are pushing to have WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange extradited from Britain to the US, where he would face espionage charges.
• Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley calls China's test of a hypersonic missile a "Sputnik moment" in the realm of international nuclear arms.
• An FDA advisory panel has unanimously greenlit COVID vaccines for children 5-12, final approval expected early next month.