Patterico's Pontifications

1/27/2021

Republican Party Courts Another Problem, and Her Name is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Filed under: General — Dana @ 11:49 am



[guest post by Dana]

Piggybacking on yesterday’s post here, and asking, just how much of a problem does the GOP have? Well, look no further than newly-elected Trump-supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whom Trump referred to as “a future Republican star”:

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows.

Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, frequently posted far-right extremist and debunked conspiracy theories on her page, including the baseless QAnon conspiracy which casts former President Donald Trump in an imagined battle against a sinister cabal of Democrats and celebrities who abuse children.

In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said “a bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In other posts, Greene liked comments about executing FBI agents who, in her eyes, were part of the “deep state” working against Trump.

In one Facebook post from April 2018, Greene wrote conspiratorially about the Iran Deal, one of former President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievements. A commenter asked Greene, “Now do we get to hang them ?? Meaning H & O ???,” referring to Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Greene replied, “Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.”

Rep. Greene’s response to inquiries about the report? Well, she didn’t exactly deny them. Rather she accused other people who apparently had access to her social media accounts of posting any number of these posts, and claimed that some of the posts didn’t represent her views. Finally, she suggested that CNN (Fake News) is attempting to cancel her. But of course. This ought to be part of the MAGA pledge: Never assume any responsibility for your own actions:

Rep. Greene is even a disgrace too far for Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy:

These comments are deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the Congresswoman about them.

But is a “conversation” enough? Will Leader McCarthy make it plainly clear to her that her views are completely unacceptable and not welcome in the Republican Party?

When McCarthy stripped [Steve] King, then a Republican congressman from Iowa, of his committee assignments in 2019, he signaled he was setting a threshold for the public comments of his caucus members.

King had wondered publicly why terms like “white nationalism” and “white supremacy” had suddenly “become offensive.” [Ed. Who are these people??!!]

Whether Greene’s comments cross the same line remains to be seen.

If they don’t cross the same line, then we will know all we need to know about today’s Republican Party, and the immense influence Trump has had on it. Given there is no chance she will be expelled, without swift and public denouncement of Greene’s comments and even a public rebuke, the GOP will be signaling a lack of seriousness in cleaning their house. At the very least:

Which isn’t to say that Greene should be removed from Congress. While her views are noxious, they were plenty well-known by the voters of Georgia’s 14th district when they chose her as the Republican nominee.

But that doesn’t mean that the Republican Party should actively welcome Greene in their conference by providing her with committee assignments and the other benefits of being affiliated with the Republican Party. Because in so doing, they are condoning these sorts of views as somehow part of the broad spectrum of thought within the GOP.

And that is a very dangerous thing to do — if McCarthy and the rest of Republican leadership wants to have an actual national party going forward. Because a party that allows views like Greene’s to have a seat at the table isn’t one that should be taken seriously.

Meanwhile, Rep. Greene has otherwise been busy doing the people’s um, business:

Greene’s reputation as chief engineer on the Crazy Train was most firmly secured by her hustle in filing an article of impeachment against Joe Biden the day after his inauguration, in which she claimed that he had “abused the power of the Office of the Vice President, enabling bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors, by allowing his son to influence the domestic policy of a foreign nation and accept various benefits — including financial compensation — from foreign nationals in exchange for certain favors.”

Convince me that, as it currently stands, the Republican Party is in good health.

–Dana

Pandemic Priorities: San Francisco Board of Education Votes To Rename Schools

Filed under: General — Dana @ 9:33 am



[guest post by Dana]

Well, it doesn’t have a lick to do with reopening the schools for in-person learning or improving distance-learning in the city, but hey, they’re doing something, right?

San Francisco will rename 44 schools, including campuses named after former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

The near-unanimous Monday vote by the San Francisco Board of Education, with only one dissenter, comes after years of debate — and some scorn — over the reckoning of historical figures and their contentious, flawed legacies.

“It’s a message to our families, our students and our community,” board member Mark Sanchez said in the meeting, per the San Francisco Chronicle. “It’s not just symbolic.”

The new namesakes for the schools must adhere to a new set of guidelines, including that individuals honored by a renaming are not slave owners or abetted in slavery or genocide, attached to human rights abuses, or are “known racists and/or white supremacists.”

Why the noted schools missed the mark:

Washington and Jefferson, for instance, were slaveowners, while former San Francisco mayor Feinstein was listed after reportedly reinstating Confederate flags by City Hall in the ’80s. Lincoln, widely revered for his issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation, was chosen based on “his treatment of First Nation peoples,” first-grader Jeremiah Jeffries told the Chronicle in a widely circulated December quote.

Some other namesakes’ legacies, such as Junipero Serra, Jose Ortega and Vasco Nunez de Balboa, were based on colonization and abuses of indigenous people.

Meanwhile, last month Bay Area parents rallied to get their schools reopened. Their complaints were focused on the need to get kids back into school because remote learning was not effective and they were falling behind:

“Remote learning doesn’t work at all,” said parent Daniel Kotzin.

Kotzin says his 5-year-old is falling behind.

“I’m a stay-at-home parent. We have reliable WIFI. My son still doesn’t know how to read. He’s in kindergarten. Remote learning, it’s cruel joke,” said Kotzin.

These parents say they want to see the district open schools for in-person learning.

“I’m here in support of all the parents in San Francisco who would like to have their children go back to school, get a safe education and resume normal life,” said parent Erica Sandberg.

In Berkeley, parents echoed the same complaint, distance learning has been a failure.

“We’re all frustrated with our school district,” said parent Lei Levy.

…8th grader Ella Hainsworth talked about her struggles.

“It’s hard for a lot of people, my mental health has not been great during Zoom school, it’s all been chaotic,” she said.

“We really believe guided by science, our schools could be reopened,” Levy added.

San Francisco Unified School District’s website charts out their in-person readiness goals:

Below are the major areas of work SFUSD is undertaking to prepare for a phased-in approach to in-person learning. This includes modifying learning plans and bell schedules, developing and deploying appropriate protocols and training for staff, providing sufficient cleaning and PPE supplies for all sites, and instituting prevention measures and changes to facilities. We will update this information bi-weekly to share the current status of each area.

Here is the current progress chart:

SFUSD

dashboard

Although the SFUSD had planned to reopen schools on January 25, they announced last month that union bargaining was not going to be wrapped up in time as the union believed that current health and safety measures were insufficient. The union insisted that the measures needed to exceed even those of the Department of Public Health’s Guidance. In response, Mayor London Breed issued the following statement:

“It is infuriating that our schools are not going to reopen for in-person learning in January. I can’t imagine how hard this is for our families and for our young people who haven’t been in the classroom since March and are falling further behind every single day. We should not be creating a false choice between education and a safe return to classrooms. As a society, we have a responsibility to educate our children, and safety is embedded in that responsibility. We can do both. We must do both.

Right now we are in a surge that requires us to stay home and stop the spread, but when we get through this difficult moment, we need to be ready to get our students in the classroom the moment our public health officials say we can. We can’t create unrealistic standards for in-person learning that aren’t even recommended by the Department of Public Health. I understand the concerns of some of our teachers who are in the vulnerable population, and we should listen to them. But let’s be honest: San Francisco’s public health officials have been among the most conservative in the country in terms of reopening. When they say our schools can start opening again, our kids should be in the classroom the next day.

And we have data that shows our kids and teachers can return to the classroom. Under the guidance of the Department of Public Health, our City’s 78 Community Hubs and 91 private and parochial schools across the City have been open for in-person learning for months and have not experienced any outbreaks. Even now, during this latest surge, the worst we’ve had, there have been no outbreaks. None of this is easy, but by following health protocols we can create safe environments that help us mitigate the spread of this virus and give our kids the learning environment they so badly need.

Meanwhile, the CDC has made the case for the safe reopening of public schools as they have found “little evidence that schools contributed meaningfully to the spread of COVID-19”.

–Dana


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