The problem with belonging to a pollitical party is it is a cult and only sees what it wants to see

 

    The problem with belonging to a political party is it creates an inherent conflict of interest its members when their party, or its leader or leaders, screw up. Do party members then do the my party right or wrong, or do they call a spade a spade? 

    I think political parties are secular religious, aka, cults. I’m a political independent and have no inner conflicts about poking political parties and their leaders when they miss the mark, and  giving them attaboys when they hit it.

    I posted on my Facebook timeline:

Sloan Bashinsky

February 10 

As I read Amendment 25, it will take V.P. Kamala Harris joining in to remove Biden from the presidency, and I don’t see that happening, but I imagine Trump and the Republicans will make plenty more noise about it and it won’t help Biden at the polls. Biden responded poorly on TV yesterday to what’s in the Special Counsel’s report.

Amendment 25, Section 4

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Joan

President Biden's response by mixing ip some names does not rise to that level.......at all.

Sloan Bashinsky  

Ronald Reagen said he could not remember crucial (incriminating) details of the Iran Contra affair, I saw him say that on TV. Trump says stuff all the time that isn’t true, but his lemmings believe him. But, Amendment 25, by its very wording, requires the vice president, to sign on to invoking it, and surely the Republicans pushing to invoke 25 against Biden have actually read it? Or, they can’t read? Or, they need court appointed guardians? Or, they should walk out in front of the next speeding bus and do themselves and America a favor?

    In my email this morning, from Al.com’s John Archibald, who often nails bull shit squarely on the head:

 

Archibald: Whites will soon be a minority in Alabama schools, so the state will pay students to leave

Here we go again, Alabama.

I went to Banks High School in Birmingham. It was famous for football in its day.

Johnny Musso. Jeff Rutledge. A kid named Jimmy Haywood as smooth as anyone I ever saw.

In 1977, the year before I started as a freshman, 239 kids graduated as seniors, according to the Banks yearbook, Contrails.” 

Nine out of every 10 of them were white.

By the time I graduated in 1981 my senior class was 66% white.

By 1984, the kids who were freshmen when I was a senior graduated in a class that was 56% white.

Three years after that, in 1987, the senior class was 37% white.

You see where I’m going. You see how it went.

Two years later the Birmingham School Board turned Banks into a middle school. It later closed, though the name has since been adopted by a private academy.

It is the story of schools all over the South.

It took Birmingham, a place synonymous with civil rights struggles, twenty years after Brown v. Board of Education to really integrate its schools. It took less time than that to resegregate. 

There was white flight in the ‘70s and ‘80s, and Black flight since. A school system that was 70,000 strong when George Wallace shouted – predicted, as it turned out – “segregation forever” has lost 71% of its enrollment in the time since. Birmingham City Schools are about 1% white now.

It’s not just Birmingham. School systems in Montgomery, Huntsville and Mobile – though different in many ways – are all majority minority, according to U.S. News education reports.

And the state itself is now on that precipice.

White kids make up just 51% of public school students, while 32% are Black and 11% Hispanic, according to the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama. As that group put it in January, “this year’s enrollment continues a long-term trend. In 2000, 62% of students were white, and the percentage of Hispanic students barely registered.”

And here we go again.

Because flight has a new name, a new engine: School choice.

Gov. Kay Ivey and assorted lawmakers last week unveiled a bill that will designate $100 million in state money to pull from the public schools and hand it – in increments of up to $7,000 in tax credits per student – to those who would like to fly.

Click here to read the rest, about Alabama's plans (and my problems with it). 

 

Poetry

I love my job. And one of the things I like most about it is interacting with readers. Some send me their own writings from time to time, and some comes in the form of poetry.

I have been touched often by the words of Billy Field of Tuscaloosa. I asked him if I could share this piece with you, and he kindly agreed.

It struck home just a bit:

 

God does not let you remember 

God does not let you know 

Does not let you remember 

The last time you held your son 

In your arms

And carried him

When he was small enough to carry 

But almost big enough you could not.

 

God does not let you remember 

The last time.

He does not say 

(when it is happening), 

“This is it. This is the last time.” 

Because He knows you could not take it.

 

Maybe He knows 

That if you did know

You would never put him down.

 

Those things just happen 

Like something that happens while you’re asleep 

And then, years later, you think about it

And you say, “Yeah, that happened… 

But I don’t remember it.

I don’t remember exactly when it happened.”

 

                                        --Billy Field, Tuscaloosa

    My email to John Archibald:

Great job on white flight. 

Alas, the God does not let us remember poem is ... horseshit? .... political propaganda?

I remember very well that just before my last semester at the University of Alabama School of Law, early September 1967, my 7-week old son died of what then was called crib death and today is called sudden infant death syndrome.

    The Alabama School of Law is in Tuscaloosa.

    sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com