#partisan divide

Hope continues to spring forth

My optimistic wellspring isn’t bottomless, but it remains quite full. Thus, I want to share briefly my holiday wish for two levels of government: state and federal. Two new legislative assemblies are about to take office. The Texas Legislature and Congress will be seated soon after New Year’s Day. They’ll take oaths to protect the Constitution and defend it against enemies “foreign and…

by Joe Janes

The Perks of Being a Slave – A Patriotic History Lesson 

Memo from Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education,

to the Boards of Education of the United States

regarding teaching Patriotic History in our schools

This memo is to encourage your history teachers to promote Patriotic History in their classrooms. Patriotic History that supports the positive aspects of our great and special and sponsored-by-God United States of America.

Here are some bullet points to keep in mind when discussing one of our America’s earliest forms of industrial ingenuity some refer to as slavery. 

 -       The Texas Board of Education recently came under fire for using the term “worker” in place of “slave” in the textbooks. We do not endorse this as it offensively shields students from the truth. The SU Department of Education prefers the more accurate term “unpaid interns” that participated in “work training programs”. 

-       In America’s first immigration initiative, interns were recruited from Africa and given free passage on cruise ships across the ocean. 

-       Interns were placed with a company (plantation) in a highly competitive bidding process, much like the one used by the NFL today.

-       Unlike today’s unpaid interns, they were given free room and board – 12 people to a room. One board to sleep on. 

-       The interns received training in useful vocational skills – agriculture, carpentry, culinary arts, housekeeping, service, and feigning happiness in front of one’s employer

-       Interns were also encouraged to expand their horizons by  – learning English,  Christianity, music, dance, and wearing pants or dresses.

-       Perks! Interns got plenty of sunshine and fresh air. There was also a rewards system for good work that might include being invited into the main house for a visit. Co-worker romances were allowed, and free childcare was offered. Parents could even bring their children to work.

-       The Underground Railroad was actually begun by southern plantation CEOs as a work placement program for interns ready to move on. Interns had to pass a rigorous exit exam that included being chased by men with guns and dogs to promote physical fitness. 

-       Many people believe the Civil War was a fight over “slavery”. It was,  but only because northerners were too lazy to start their own intern programs and were jealous.

-       Lincoln was a republican. (Repeat this as often as possible while also mentioning that Hitler was a democrat.)

While this “work training program” model may be thought of something as a thing of the past, keep in mind that its foundations are reflected in today’s corporations. CEOs receive most of the profits from their company while the people who do the real work barely make enough to survive. 

Put partisan politics aside to fight the pandemic … please!

We are living in perilous times in light of the pandemic that is sweeping around the globe and has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.

OK, that is no flash on the part of this blog and your friendly blogger. Still, the idea needs a bit of fleshing out.

One would have thought — or could have thought — that a pandemic on the scale of the COVID -19 crisis could unite a nation that is divided sharply…

Put partisan politics aside to fight the pandemic … please!

We are living in perilous times in light of the pandemic that is sweeping around the globe and has killed nearly 100,000 Americans.

OK, that is no flash on the part of this blog and your friendly blogger. Still, the idea needs a bit of fleshing out.

One would have thought — or could have thought — that a pandemic on the scale of the COVID -19 crisis could unite a nation that is divided sharply…

“Open everything!” or “Stay at Home:” The Partisan Divide in Perceptions of the Pandemic

When a contagious disease breaks out in a city, the most certain means of preventing it from becoming epidemic, or from spreading, is to prohibit all intercourse between the sound and the infected. –Dr. William Currie, 1794 We are obviously in a unique time. No school, no sports, no conferences, at least…

Many wary of virus reopenings as partisan divide grows in US

Perhaps the grimmest image of the coronavirus episode — a funeral home set up in a Madrid skating arena — shut on Wednesday as stores and different organizations revived in places across Europe, while the U.S. was plagued with progressively factional differences over how and when to restart its economy.

As certain governors in the U.S. — to a great extent Republican ones — moved to revive an…