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posted 21-07-2009 16:53
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Bruno wrote:
Are folks talking about how you dodged a bullet?
Ha ha! It feels that way. Strangely enough, people aren't really talking about it much around the university where I work, probably because the bill seems to have just died in committee rather than actually coming close to being signed into law. I have no doubt our moronic governor would sign the bill, too, so I'm very glad it ended with a whimper, not a bang.
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posted 24-08-2009 15:01
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Phylis fucking Schlafly may be on the Texas history curriculum.
What's most bizarre about these proposals is how modern all the named figures are. It's a course on history since the Reconstruction and they don't even seem to want to go as far back as Buckley or Goldwater, let alone the Klan.
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posted 24-08-2009 15:35
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Ginger Yellow wrote:
Phylis fucking Schlafly may be on the Texas history curriculum.
What's most bizarre about these proposals is how modern all the named figures are. It's a course on history since the Reconstruction and they don't even seem to want to go as far back as Buckley or Goldwater, let alone the Klan.
They're unable to look at anything outside of the framework of the "culture war" and their narrow version of fundamentalist Christianity. I've argued with right-wing Texans numerous times, and generally they're just as ignorant about the history of things they supposedly favor—Christianity, conservatism, "Western values", the free market—as they are about things they oppose.
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posted 09-03-2010 14:54
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Bruno wrote:
It was real close, but McLeroy's out.
This is very good news, since that district is gerrymandered for Republicans. McLeroy would almost certainly have defeated the Democrat in the general election had he managed to win the Republican primary.
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posted 09-03-2010 15:21
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I never realized that Texas had partisan, constituency-based elections to the State Board of Education. That helps explain some of the nonsense they come up.
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posted 09-03-2010 15:31
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ursus arctos wrote:
I never realized that Texas had partisan, constituency-based elections to the State Board of Education. That helps explain some of the nonsense they come up.
Yes, it's crazy. We also elect Supreme Court justices, which means this lunatic has a good chance of sitting on the state's highest court.
(I know somebody who works at the Texas Supreme Court who told me the current justices, all of whom are conservative Republicans, think Rick Green is a dangerous, unqualified idiot, and are dreading the prospect of his election.)
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posted 09-03-2010 15:44
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Hey, this guy was elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, so it's not as if Texas has a monopoly on the crazy.
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posted 09-03-2010 15:55
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Ginger Yellow wrote:
Hey, this guy was elected Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, so it's not as if Texas has a monopoly on the crazy.
Yikes, I had forgotten about him. Rick Green is cut from the same theocratic cloth as Moore.
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posted 12-03-2010 23:45
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Wingnuts win culture war semi-final.
The board added a requirement that economics students "analyze the decline of the U.S. dollar including abandonment of the gold standard." Students must also learn about Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek, author of libertarian urtext The Road to Serfdom.
The famous clause requiring history students to "Describe the causes and key organizations and individuals of the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the National Rifle Association" remains in the standards, even after its author, Don McLeroy, lost his primary this month.
According to TFN: "the board stripped Thomas Jefferson from a world history standard about the influence of Enlightenment thinkers on political revolutions from the 1700s to today. In Jefferson's place, the board's religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to 'Enlightenment ideas' in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the 'writings' of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas)."
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posted 13-03-2010 00:17
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The only good thing to ever come from Texas is Buddy Holly.
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posted 13-03-2010 00:31
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Rave on, brother Reed. Rave on.
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posted 13-03-2010 01:44
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Scratch Acid, The Butthole Surfers, ZZ Top, the Rothko Chapel.
Had an amazing time in both Austin and Huston, regardless of any other stuff. Glad I didn't go to the former during SXSW though...
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posted 13-03-2010 01:45
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And The 13th Floor Elevators.
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posted 13-03-2010 01:50
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I stand by my gross over-simplification.
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posted 13-03-2010 02:06
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Don't mess with Texas!
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posted 13-03-2010 02:11
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''In Jefferson's place, the board's religious conservatives succeeded in inserting Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. They also removed the reference to 'Enlightenment ideas' in the standard, requiring that students should simply learn about the influence of the 'writings' of various thinkers (including Calvin and Aquinas)."
Hasn't anybody asked Mexico if they want Texas back yet?
Presumably the importance of Thomas Paine and the Rights Of Man in influencing the founding fathers as never been explained to such people?
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posted 13-03-2010 12:57
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Don't forget the Big Bopper.
Kelly Clarkson is from Texas. Janice Joplin and Scott Joplin. Beyoncé. Kris Kristofferson and Christopher Cross, Boz Scaggs, Stephen Stills, Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Barry White. Vanilla Ice. Meat Loaf.
Chuck Norris. Aaron Spelling. Gene Roddenberry, Michael Dorn, and Brent Spiner. The brothers Wilson, the brothers Quaid, Jennifer Love Hewitt, the list goes on and on...
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Last Edit: 13-03-2010 12:59 By Bruno.
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posted 13-03-2010 18:18
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I could certainly add to the list (Archie Bell and the Drells, Barbara Lynn, Lightnin' Hopkins, Slim Harpo, The Sir Douglas Quintet, Shearwater, White Denim, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears), but this is depressing, maddening news. Unfortunately, it seems our worst citizens are the ones that go into government. Who was the last statewide elected official who wasn't horrible? Ann Richards or Mark White, I guess? And before that, you've probably got to go back to Maury Maverick, Ralph Yarborough, and (at least for some of what he did) LBJ.
It's hard for me to believe that even conservative Republicans would think it's more important for Texas schoolchildren to learn about John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas than Thomas Jefferson, but these School Board people are completely off-the-deep-end, crypto-fascist theocrats.
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posted 13-03-2010 18:35
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Jim Hightower, though I guess that was actually longer ago than it feels to me.
The defenestration of Jefferson is the single most outrageous element of the draft in my book. His "crime" is having advocated the separation of church and state, which just proves how accurate your last line is.
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