Stephan: The Texas anti-choicers are doing everything they can to turn the people of Texas into vigilantes spying on each other for a $10,000 bounty. Texas is being deliberately turned into a christofascist White supremacist state, and other states controlled by Republicans are following Texas. This is the America the Republican party seeks to create.
Anti-choice handout literature Credit: Carter Sherman/Vice News
DALLAS — The anti-abortion activists carried two brochures as they walked from doorstep to doorstep on Tuesday evening. The first was small and brightly colored, boasting a picture of a diverse group of smiling women under the headline “Free Women’s Health Services in Dallas.”
The second brochure was four pages of type and printed in stark black and white. It bore a very different title: “Search, Sue, and Shut Down Texas Abortion Facilities.”
“The abortion industry has been victimizing women and children for decades—and Texans now have the power to stop it,” announced the brochure, which was carried by a group dispatched by Students for Life of America, a national organization that seeks to mobilize anti-abortion young people. “It’s TIME to abolish abortion in Texas.”
It was a call to action for anti-abortion advocates in Texas, who, in the last week, have been handed an unprecedented power. A recently enacted law bans abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, before many people know they’re pregnant. But unlike other similar laws in a handful of conservative states, which have been blocked from taking effect, the Texas government does not […]
Stephan: In Texas, the MAGAts are tyring to turn their fellow citizens into vigilantes. In other states they are trying to close down vaccination sites. I think it is time that we recognized that about a third of us no longer want to live in a democracy based on gender and racial equality. I think it is important that we get this because otherwise America is going to be turned into a country we hardly recognize.
Jefferson County, Colorado vaccine station Credit: Jefferson County Public Health
JEFFERSON COUNTY, COLORADO — Frustrations that have been boiling over recently came to a head over the weekend in Jefferson and Gilpin counties.
The executive director of Jefferson County Public Health, Dr. Dawn Comstock, had to shut down several mobile vaccine clinics after one driver ran over their sign, others screamed profanities at the vaccine staff and one driver even threw water on a nurse.
“Unfortunately, this isn’t new,” Comstock said. “We’ve had someone throw live fireworks. We’ve had someone drive up onto a curb toward a vaccination staff member.
Comstock says she’s fed up.
“I respect everyone’s right to their own opinion. What I do not respect is violence and contempt and acting abusively toward Jefferson County Public Health staff,” Comstock said.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office released a statement Wednesday saying, in part, that it is “aware of instances of bad behavior.”
The statement goes on to say the sheriff’s office has increased patrols around the sites, “however, our investigations have not resulted in criminal charges. We will continue to […]
Stephan: What stands out for me at the moment about American culture is our capacity to inflict grievous wounds on ourselves. The anti-vaxxer, anti-masker, and anti-choice male-dominant nastiness are but three examples from a long list. Then there is the very basic issue of hunger. All of this comes from not making wellbeing the first priority of America.
Volunteers fill boxes of food at a food distribution event in Kissimmee, Florida on December 10, 2020. Credit: Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty
More than 38.2 million Americans struggled with food insecurity at some point last year, a roughly 9% surge in hunger compared with the 2019 level of 35.2 million, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“While hunger was already a massive, systemic problem in all 50 states before Covid-19 hit the U.S., domestic hunger surged during the pandemic.” —Joel Berg, Hunger Free America
The USDA’s new report (pdf)—the federal government’s first comprehensive attempt to document how the Covid-19 pandemic and corresponding spike in unemployment exacerbated food insecurity—found that the number of children in the U.S. suffering from hunger increased from 10.7 million in 2019 to 11.7 million last year, also an uptick of approximately 9%.
Another USDA report (pdf) released last month showed that federal spending on domestic food and nutrition assistance programs in Fiscal […]
Stephan: Here is the fact-based view on where we stand with Covid-19 in all its variants. We're not close to ending this pandemic, because of the anti-vaxxers, and anti-maskers. This has become predominately a Republican disease; there is a strong correlation between political views and vaccination status. That linkage has never before happened in our history.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci after President Trump referred to the “Deep State Department” at a briefing on March 20. Credit: Erin Schaff/The New York Times
The U.S. is “still in pandemic mode” with new COVID-19 infections some 16 times higher than what’s needed to end the public health crisis, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an interview with Axios published Thursday that “the endgame is to suppress the virus.” But 160,000 new cases of the coronavirus per day is “not even modestly good control,” he declared.
“In a country of our size, you can’t be hanging around and having 100,000 infections a day,” Fauci explained. “You’ve got to get well below 10,000 before you start feeling comfortable.”
Last month, Fauci said the spread of the highly transmissible delta variant — responsible for a surge in infections, especially among unvaccinated people — could be largely contained by the spring of 2022 if an “overwhelming majority” receive […]
Casey Parks, Reporter - The New York Times Magazine
Stephan: About 15 years ago, while doing research on something else I came across the graduation exam given to 8th graders at a rural one-room schoolhouse in Saline County, Kansas in 1895. It has since become quite famous and several academic papers have been written about it because most college graduates today can't pass it.
Here’s the test, see how well you do.
April 13, 1895
J.W. Armstrong, County Superintendent.
Examinations at Salina, New Cambria, Gypsum City, Assaria, Falun, Bavaria, and District No. 74 (in Glendale Twp.)
Reading and Penmanship. – The Examination will be oral, and the Penmanship of Applicants will be graded from the manuscripts.
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GRAMMAR
(Time, one hour)
1. Give nine rules for the use of Capital Letters.
2. Name the Parts of Speech and define those that have no modifications.
3. Define Verse, Stanza and Paragraph.
4. What are the Principal Parts of a verb? Give Principal Parts of do, lie, lay and run.
5. Define Case. Illustrate each case.
6. What is Punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of Punctuation.
7-10 Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.
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ARITHMETIC
(Time, 1 ¼ hour)
1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weights 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50 cts. Per bu., deducting 1050 lbs for tare?
4. District No. 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find cost of 6720 lbs. coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 per cent.
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. long at $20 per m?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 per cent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance around which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt.
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U.S. HISTORY
(Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided.
2. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus.
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States.
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas.
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whtney, Fulton, Bell, Lincoln, Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, and 1865.
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ORTHOGRAPHY
(Time, one hour)
1. What is meant by the following: Alphabet, phonetic orthogaphy, etymology, syllabication?
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: Trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals?
4. Give four substitutes for caret ãuä.
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ãeä. Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: Bi, dis, mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, super.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: Card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: Cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane, vain, vein, raze, raise, rays.
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.
*****************************************
GEOGRAPHY
(Time, one hour)
1. What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of N.A.
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia, Odessa, Denver, Manitoba, Hecla, Yukon, St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall, and Orinoco.
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S.
7. Name all the republics of Europe and give capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
10. Describe the movements of the earth. Give inclination of the earth.
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PHYSIOLOGY
(Time, 45 minutes)
1. Where are the saliva, gastric juice, and bile secreted? What is the use of each in digestion?
2. How does nutrition reach the circulation?
3. What is the function of the liver? Of the kidneys?
4. How would you stop the flow of blood from an artery in the case of laceration?
5. Give some general directions that you think would be beneficial to preserve the human body in a state of health.
I go into this to make the point that in rural Kansas 126 years ago, in a school that today would barely qualify as a garage because education was valued by the government students could pass the test, and were expected to.
Today, in contrast in rural Republican states, because the government does not want an educated populace, since educated people tend to vote Democratic, things are rather different. This is a lengthy report but worth your attention because it is describing a trend that few people who live in Democratic controlled cities are even aware of. This is how MAGAts are created.
Harvey Ellington. Credit: Joshua Rashaad McFadden/The New York Times
One Saturday afternoon in late May, a few days before the end of his junior year, Harvey Ellington plopped onto his queen-size bed, held up his phone and searched for a signal. The 17-year-old lived in a three-bedroom trailer on an acre lot surrounded by oak trees, too far into the country for broadband, but eventually his cell found the hot spot his high school had lent him for the year. He opened his email and began to type.
“Good evening! Hope all is well! Congratulations on being the new superintendent for the Holmes County Consolidated School District.”
A week and a half earlier, the school board chose Debra Powell, a former high school principal and mayor of East St. Louis, Ill., to lead the rural school district that Ellington attended in the Mississippi Delta. Powell worked as an administrator at Ellington’s school before the pandemic, and she ran track with Jackie Joyner-Kersee when she was a teenager. Maybe, Ellington thought, Powell had what it took to turn the district […]
