Before I get into my rant for today, I want to share this cute picture a friend sent me. When I saw it, I thought about all the times my kitties have sat at a window trying to catch a bug crawling on the outside.
Hope that brought a smile. Now…
I wasn’t going to do it. Honest. My plan was to just leave the blog alone until I got back from my little mini vacation over the weekend. But when I saw the news report about a new law in Texas, I could hardly believe what it said, and you know what happens when I come face to face with people acting like they left their brain at home when going to work.
Apparently that’s what happened with some Texas legislators – the brain/body separation – when they wrote the convoluted HB 3979. (But then, everything is convoluted when it comes to government.)
The NBC news story centers on the Carroll ISD in Southlake Texas, near Fort Worth, where administrators were having a training session to implement the new law and figure out how the district would comply. Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction, told the teachers “that they are not allowed to have books in the classroom that deal with controversial subjects unless they have another book that presents an opposing view.”
She used the Holocaust as an example. Perhaps not her smartest move, especially since one of the teachers was recording the session
NBC News acquired audio from a teacher’s response when told that she couldn’t have a book about that event without a book offering an “opposing” view. Without missing a beat the teacher said, “What?! How can there be an opposing view to the Holocaust.”
Yeah. I agree. What!?
The school administrator deflected that question and just reiterated that this is a new law and people are trying to adjust to the requirements of the law.
Yeah, well, it sure set up a very slippery slope, and who suffers? Students who are limited in developing a broad world view. Teachers who are now afraid to teach anything “off the books.”
Since Texas is politically controlled by Republicans, it’s easy to see that that deeply ingrained Republican tendency for it misinformation has firmly taken root. These are the same Republicans who have joined the former president in his attempt to overturn the 2020 election with the false claims of voter fraud, missing ballots, and a number of other things.
That ongoing conspiracy theory is another thing that constantly gets my ire up, so it was a relief to read a story in the New York times that there is definitive proof that there was no election tampering in the 2020 election.
None. Nada. Zilch.
“After President Trump falsely claimed that widespread voter fraud had stolen victory from him, The Times called election officials in every state. They said that there were no irregularities that had affected the outcome of the election.”
I wish that report from The Times would put that particular conspiracy theory to rest, but sadly, I have little hope of that happening. After all, those same people that are promoting the conspiracy theories, are also the people who think that mainstream media is their sworn enemy.
Snopes, the go-to site for clarifying misinformation and quashing rumors, also recently posted a list of some of the rumors surrounding the legitimacy of the election, pointing out what is true and what isn’t. The upshot of that report is that the rumors are false. And they firmly stated there is no proof of election fraud.
While reading at Snopes, I had to laugh at the story about ballots burning up in a fire at a chicken farm in Arizona. If you haven’t ever had the pleasure – said with tongue firmly in cheek – of being inside a chicken house on a corporate chicken farm, believe me, that’s the last place anyone would stash a bunch of stolen ballots.
I wouldn’t even stash a dead body there.
If you’ve stayed with the post this far, thank you. I appreciate that, and keep in mind that I have no official party affiliation. I do welcome comments on the topics, and as always, I only ask that they be respectfully presented with no name calling, shouting, or obscenities.
Have a great weekend. I plan to. I’ll be a a craft show at the Holly Brook Baptist Church in Hawkins, TX. It’s one of my favorite events and I always finish up my holiday gift shopping while I’m there. Whatever you have planned, I hope you will have some enjoyable moments. Be happy. Be safe.