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The Boxer Blimp & the Texas Textbook Turmoil On the Filter

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Monday, night I was on KNBC’s The Filter, which has rebooted after hiatus. The two topics were Carly Fiorina’s new political video, and about the conservative revisions to Texas’s text books—changes that may affect California’s school texts as well.

FIRST FIORINA:

In early February, Carly Fiorina-–the ex-Hewlitt Packard CEO who wants Barbara Boxer’s senate seat—ran a truly odd and unintentionally hilarious political ad depicting her primary opponent, Tom Campbell, as a demon sheep. The ad, (which is jaw-droppingly bizarre,), resulted in a jump in Campbell’s fundraising and his poll numbers.

Now Fiorina and her ad guy, Fred Davis, are taking aim at Boxer—with a new 7-plus minute commercial that depicts Senator Barb as a gigantic blimp. It’s pretty funny.

But will it help Fiorina? That’s what we talked about on the segment.

And then we went on to…..


TOPIC 2

The second topic was the conservative fact-revision spree by the Texas Board of Education, which has a 10/5 Republican majority. The conservative cabal happily fiddled with the state’s curriculum guidelines. Here’s what the NY Times reported.

Republicans on the board have passed more than 100 amendments to the 120-page curriculum standards affecting history, sociology and economics courses from elementary to high school. The standards were proposed by a panel of teachers.

Among other things, say those opposed to the edit, the board dropped the reference to one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.

(By the way, a report about the Texas revisions on Fox News claims that the panel of teachers who originally set the standards, cut such figures such as Christopher Columbus and Thomas Edison out of the curriculum. I checked the teachers’ recommendations and most of what Fox makes a fuss about—didn’t happen. Check for yourself.)

The Texas Freedom Network live blogged the board meeting here.

Even the Dallas Morning News has an editorial that says the Ed Board has gone too far.

72 Comments

  • I guess the ad is funny in that a failed-CEO vanity candidate Fiorina calls Barbara Boxer “elitist.” Lucent Technologies, anyone ? A 60% slide in HP stock ? Come to think of it, from Fiorina’s vantage point I guess Boxer is “elite” – in that she has the qualifications to do her job. Does California really need a director of the Taiwan Semi-Conductor Manufacturing Company who has rarely voted in general elections to represent us in the US Senate ?

  • “most of what Fox makes a fuss about—didn’t happen”

    Who could have seen that coming ?

  • Loved the Boxer Blip advertisement.

    I also welcome that Texas is correcting the LIBERAL SLANT that have infected our text books for years by:

    1) Pointing out the fact about the unintended consequences of legislation such as the Great Society programs and Title IX.

    2) Pointing out the facts that capitalism provide more wealth to a nation than communism.

    3) Providing a factual perspective on history, and not packing it with 1/3 Black and 1/3 Hispanic faces to meet imagined historical quotas.

  • Thank God the days when Texas textbooks were packed with 1/3 black faces are over. Come to think of it, I’m thankful that they never happened.

  • “imagined historical quotas” – you said it, Pokey, not I. But thanks for that bit of apparently inadvertent “self-awareness.”

  • “2) Pointing out the facts that capitalism provide more wealth to a nation than communism.”

    When was anything remotely suggesting that communism produced more wealth to a nation than capitalism taught to Texas K-12s ?

    I can’t help but think that folks like you are more than a bit insane.

  • We’ve been living with commie textbooks from California for decades. Ronald Reagan can’t get a fair shake in them. The U.S. is portrayed as bad. One of my son’s history books had a full page picture of Maya Angelou, the world’s worst poet, but less than a page on WWII. So, someone wants to fix errors. Quit complaining.

  • “The U.S. is portrayed as bad.”

    A lie. It’s really that simple – and what we’ve come to expect from reactionary cranks.

  • “One of my son’s history books had a full page picture of Maya Angelou… but less than a page on WWII.”

    Tell me the name of that book. I want to do a fact check. You’re a serial liar, so I’m convinced you made that ridiculous assertion up.

    (If it makes you feel any better, I happen to hate Maya Angelou’s poetry.)

  • I feel so guilty. I was born white, male and American!!! I AM THE PROBLEM. I can barely look at myself in the mirror. For the rest of my life I should feel guilty about the things my ancestors did. They were evil, therefore I am evil.
    Therefore my children will be evil, and I should resign myself to the fact that they also need to be brought up to feel guilty. The only way to purge myself of this guilt is to not become wealthy and to do my best to keep any other white male to become wealthy.
    For the record, white women are NOT the problem. They have been victimized by the white male. Please, everyone note, that I am specifically stating that I, the white male, am the problem. I couldn’t emotionally get thru the day if anyone thought I was being sexist by saying that white women had anything to do with the evils perpetrated on the world by the disgusting white male like myself.
    Please forgive me. I will try with every fiber of my being to make up for the past injustices done by my forefathers.

  • reg calls me a liar with no proof, so he’s lying about me.

    Yeah, the left-wing history books portray the U.S. as evil everywhere,from driving out savage Indians to bombing Japan after they started the war. The main question in the history book was about why the U.S. was wrong to drop the A-bomb rather than saying that the lesson learned should be “don’t start something you can’t finish.”

    I wouldn’t have the history book that my son had years ago. It was a public school book that they took up. However, I distinctly remember a full page picture in color each of Clinton and the poet. Honestly, the section on WWII was pathetic. It was almost like, “we got into a war, fought, and won by cheating.”

    Years ago I read a book called “The Battle for the Mind,” about how liberals were trying to steal the minds of young people in schools and in culture and steer them from traditional American values. Obama won, so it must have worked.

    Liberals hate America.

  • Kids don’t take history seriously anyway. Nobody takes history seriously until they get older. Where then, they only study the history they want to hear, that compliments their political agenda. You can teach these kids that Barack Obama is part of an islamofascist plot to take over America, they’ll still think he’s cool.

  • I wonder if or when the Texas Board of Education will assert and include in the school textbooks that the world is 7,000 years old, as biblical science concludes, backed up by the old testament of course.
    Thomas Jefferson deleted and Ronald Raygun highlighted, now there’s a switch for ya’ll

  • Obviously the textbook thing is rotten – we’ve got people overseeing a curriculum with no knowledge of the subject they are meddling with. Unfortunately, the conservative movement seems enamored with an ignorance-based approach.

    My “favorite” chapter of the wingers-rewrite-history saga is the elimination of Thomas Jefferson from the section on Enlightenment figures because he was too secular.

  • Let me second that request for the name of the textbook Woody claims has, “less than a page on WWII.”

    I await the furious name-calling and back tracking.

  • Just to put Woody’s intellectual pretensions in proper context, the book he’s talking about was one of dozens written by Tim LaHaye, the Rapture serial-novelist, who also believes in a “satanically-inspired, centuries-old conspiracy (The Illuminati) to use government, education, and media to destroy every vestige of Christianity within our society and establish a new world order.”

    The Rapture nonsense aside, this guy is totally looneytoons, but he’s made millions huckstering his paranoia and Revelations-inspired crankery to the far-right, fundamentalist bumpkins who will believe anything that flatters their ignorance, no matter how preposterous.

    We’re dealing with a child in the Woodster…

  • We need Sarah Palin to write a few books for the Texas kids, the kids can do some good learning from Sarah.

  • don quixote’s post makes me wonder if Liberty College has any plans afoot to send out their 3,000 year old dinosaur bone on a tour of the the U.S. You know, kinda like King Tut?

  • reg, as usual, doesn’t address the relevant points of Tim Lahaye’s book but, instead, tries to smear him with a crude, incorrect adjectives that liberals apply to spiritual Christians. Liberals avoid discussing points because the best they can do are personal attacks.

    But, when I read reg’s description of “made millions huckstering his paranoia,” I was sure he was talking about Obama and the Democrats. Want to know why reg hates Lahaye? It’s because of this book that Lahaye wrote: “The Unhappy Gays” (later retitled “What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality.) It hit home.

    – – –

    Jim, I have a smallpox vaccination, so I’ll survive a smallpox epidemic while Obama’s health care system screws around like it did with the H1N1 vaccine and let’s everyone else die.

  • Mrs. Pokey (who captions for deaf students) spends her days sitting in College class rooms taking down EVERY WORD of liberal professors, who even seem to get their liberal theology even into math examples.

    If the text books are anything like the majority of professors in Los Angeles colleges, of course they have a liberal slant and need to be stripped of the left leaning garbage.

    Schoolchildren will no longer be misled into believing that capitalism and the free market are dirty words and that America has an unjust economic system. Instead, they will learn how the free-enterprise system gave our nation and the world so much that is good for so many people.

    Liberals don’t like the concept of American exceptionalism. The liberals want to teach what’s wrong with America (masquerading under the code word “social justice”) instead of what’s right and successful. The SBOE voted to include describing how American exceptionalism is based on values that are unique and different from those of other nations.

    Texas curriculum standards will henceforth accurately describe the U.S. government as a “constitutional republic” rather than as a democracy. The secularists tried to remove reference to the religious basis for the founding of America, but that was voted down.

    The deceptive claim that the United States was founded on a “separation of church and state” gets the ax, and rightfully so. In fact, most of the original 13 colonies were founded as Christian communities with much overlap between church and state.

    History textbooks that deal with Joseph McCarthy will now be required to explain “how the later release of the Venona papers confirmed suspicions of Communist infiltration in U.S. government.” The Venona papers are authentic transcripts of some 3,000 messages between the Soviet Union and its secret agents in the United States.

    Discussions of economics will not be limited to the theories of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes and Adam Smith. Textbooks must also include Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, two champions of free-market theory.

    History textbooks will now be required to cover the “unintended consequences” of Great Society legislation, affirmative action and Title IX legislation. Textbooks should also include “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s.”

    By Phyllis Schlafly

  • Mavis, I have no idea. It was for something like my son’s sixth grade class, when kids are impressionable and need to know more about socialism than American heroes. If I had been able to predict that some crazy lefties would ask me for the name of the book after many years had passed, I would have been better prepared.

    Do you find this strange: OBAMA ON THE COVER OF TEXTBOOKS? Make me gag.

  • When I was 16 years old I took down Phyllis Schlafly in the letters to our local newspaper (St. Louis Globe Democrat, where Pat Buchanan was writing editorials at the time.) This batshit crazy lady – a local busybody crank who lived across the river in Alton Ill. – was on a crusade against “modern art” as a Communist plot. Not kidding. I pointed out the co-relation of her views to those imposed by Josef Stalin on the artists of the USSR. She’s a total f-ing idiot. Has been for decades. Hard to believe anyone takes these moonbats seriously.

  • Hey Mavis, prove the book Woody spoke about doesn’t exist and never has. My request is about as silly as yours. I tried every which way to find out and couldn’t, but I’ll keep searching.

    Rob is actually kind of close in his post as to how people, especially most young people view history these days.

  • “spends her days sitting in College class rooms taking down EVERY WORD of liberal professors”

    Wow – there were times in Germany and Russia when you could get medals and a promotion for doing that…”born too late.”

  • The reason I don’t believe Woody’s “book” exists is because he’s a proven liar. Serial.

  • Crazy old Phyllis: “the code word ‘social justice’ ”

    Pope John XXIII: “all forms of economic enterprise must be governed by the principles of social justice”

    On the one hand this old bird yammers hypocritically about Christianity – erasing Thomas Jefferson, the Constitution and the historical separation of church and state – and with the other slaps Christian moral foundations in the face.

    Can’t be emphasized enough – contemporary “conservatism” is nothing more than an “I’m with Stupid!” tee shirt.

  • I had a math textbook when I was a child that said Democrats were of the devil, and that all gradeschool children should be Mormon or else we would burn in hell. It also had a photograph of Ronald Reagan on every page, with an image of a burning cross hovering above his head.

    I can’t find the book anywhere, but I bet you can imagine how horrible it was!

  • Roscoe, you’re exaggerating. I don’t believe that book said that children should be Mormon.

    – – –

    When a serial liar (reg) calls me a serial liar, reach your own conclusions.

    – – –

    Why can’t we have textbooks like in the good old days? — Know Alabama

  • Hey Mavis, prove the book Woody spoke about doesn’t exist and never has.

    Logic 101: you can’t prove a negative. We grown-ups call it argumentum ad ignorantiam.

  • No points for being an arrogant liberal douche Randy. As I said in my second line..”My request is as sily as yours”.

  • FWIW, your request is actually sillier. Mavis merely asked Woody to prove something. I’ve grown so tired of asking for him – and most of you on the wingnut right – to back up anything and being met with insults instead of facts, I have largely stopped commenting here.

  • A real sample from one of the new Texas textbooks:

    “After God told President George W. Bush that attacking Iraq was the only option, President Bush wasted no time taking action…”

  • Another real sample from one of the other new Texas textbooks.

    “The minutemen is terrorist organization whose goal is to kill people in this country based on nothing more than their ethnicity.”

    “Mexican Drug Cartels would run the U.S. better than the Republians, the drug cartel would also be more compassionate than the Republicans.”

  • Mavis and Rob have run from threads when they have no answers only to pop up on another thread with meaningless drivel in their attempt, like yours, to prove their superiority.

    You and your snide remarks are firmly a part of the ego driven elitist leftist asswipes that litter this and many other sites is total bull shit and easy to see. See that’s an actual insult dumb ass, much like your comment, “We grown-ups call it argumentum ad ignorantiam”.

    Dumb ass leaves himself wide open as usual.

  • Joe, I actually think the Boxer ad is funny. I think she should be flattered, in a strange way. But the demon sheep ad is entirely bizarre. (And, thus, hilarious, but not in any way they intended.)

  • Woody doesn’t need my help with a light weight old geezer like you Reg. You’re a shell man, no substance to you just filth and hate with no guts at all. Bitch and snitch fits you like a glove, you called it right for a change.

  • More from the new Texas text books:

    “George W. Bush pleaded with the Supreme Court to recount all of Florida’s votes, because he was so confident that he had more votes, but the Supreme Court insisted it had to follow the law and stop the counting…”

  • Surefire – you’re a fucking joke. Look in the damned mirror. You’re nothing but a bitter burn out, stewing in your pile of resentment. Worse, you’ve reduced yourself to desperately trying to prop up the stupidest, most dishonest person who comments here.

  • Reg, you have to admit one thing about dear old Phyllis: She has fabulous hair. The kind of hair that would stand up to a force 5 on the Buford scale.

  • I thought only criminals and criminal sympathizers hated snitches. Guess ‘some’ cops hate them, too. Like Rafael Perez, David Mack…and Sure Fire.

  • “for being an arrogant liberal douche Randy”

    That’s an insult.

    “much like your comment, “We grown-ups call it argumentum ad ignorantiam”.”

    So is that, but unlike yours, it’s also informative.

    Surefire, you apparently have some insecurity about your lack of intelligence, and personal issues with smart people. It’s not their fault you’re as dumb as a rock. Suck it up, chump.

    (Btw, that penultimate comment is both an insult and uninformative, since I’m re-stating what’s already obvious).

  • Again Robbie, you misread my comment and post accordingly. Are you functionally retarded? Many moons ago Reg outed himself as a snitch and than came up with some story where it was somebody else and so and so on, typical Reg cat covering his bs story. It’s his m.o. He was pissed because I was a narc who, like all narcs, used snitches and Reg flew off like the psycho he is.

    When I started to use the term “bitch” which fits a human waste pile like Reg very well he started yapping about how cops like me are acrewed up because pretty much I was using his own type of language to fire back at his lame ass. Reg thought those words were his alone to use and cried like the bitch he is.

    I don’t like many snitches I worked, you’re right there Rob, but some were ok and the bottom line is there’s a need for them. Guess you’re another Carmelo Anthony type idiot and could give a shit if gangsters and other thugs go to jail. Would never have guessed that with your overwhelming support of law enforcement.

  • “Many moons ago Reg outed himself as a snitch and than came up with some story where it was somebody else and so and so on, typical Reg cat covering his bs story.”

    What the fuck are you talking about ? I have absolutely no idea. Nor, I think, do you – except for some delusional bullshit. Please put up or shut up, asshole. I think you’ve got some serious mental problems. I should probably pity you – but on the basis of the garbage you float here, you just make me puke. Metaphorically.

    PS: You’re a punk little bastard.

  • Also, you’re the fuck who started this crazy thing about “snitches” – although your pitiful career depended on them. Including making them. Your misogyny and this “snitch” bullshit is, I’m convinced, a stand-in for the self-hatred that racks you’re poor excuse for a soul.

    Go to hell.

  • That’s why Sure Fire’s here everyday. The fellow coppers don’t want anything to do with him after he showed up to the watering hole with a “snitches belong in ditches” t shirt.

  • Go ahead with your tired psychotic rap Reggie but the last thing I’d care about is an obvious weak worthless old man like you, you got nothing but a dark spot where character is supposed to be. Must truly be a bitch to be you Reggie. Maybe you need some r and r at Skywalker.

    If either of you light weights think I’m bad though I pity what would happen if one of you sissies ever ran into a cop that really had anger control issues on the street. They’d eat you up and spit you out. There are cops like that old man who wouldn’t think twice about slapping the shit out of someone like you. I’ve investigated the complaints on them, course if I knew you or Robbie was the “alleged” victim, I’d find a way to make it go away. I mean that’s what we all do right boys?

    Of course you’d never have the balls to talk the way you do here to a street monster; you’d be kissing his ass trying to get him to look the other way while you played executioner on some guy who got you all in a tizzy.

    Right Reggie?

    Robbie, you’re played out, Boyle said to shut up you’re embarrassing him.

  • That was nothing more than an admission that I was right about you. Ranting some slanderous, ridiculous shit and when you’re called on it, just pulling more demented, angry shit out of your ass because you’re so fucking weak. Talk about lightweight. You’re running on empty, asshole.

  • Sure Fire, I thought you were sworn to protect, “weak, worthless old men”? Between that and your hatred of “snitches”, you’re painting a pretty clear picture as to what kind of cop you are. The kind that winds up on the news, and not for good reasons. The kind who then blames society for his choices..that people don’t support the police enough so he has to break the law and whaa whaaa whaaa!!! The typical scumbag who became a cop just for the power.

  • Robbie, I never swore to protect “weak worthless old men”, find that line for me. I’m not a cop you said so yourself remember so why bitch about what I post? Oh wait, I’m still sworn, forgot.

    You’re such a metro sounding dude Robbie, such a little gelding. Cops to you are Nazis, you said it dickhead, so why would I care what you or the pathetic piece of diseased humanity you run after like a nursing puppy (a spineless one at that) says?

    I’m just here to twist you a little more from time to time. Wait a second, cops aren’t supposed to fire back right? We’re just supposed to take it from gutter slime like you two girls? Nope, not in my playbook Robbie.

    Reg, quit being such a puss with your slander drivel and learn the law before you try talking about it. I’ll never run on empty and dealing with a played out old man like you who goes off the deep end every time I push a button is as fun as watching a cat chase it’s own tail.

    You’re too easy old man.

  • You’re drowning in your own shit and you know it. You made up some bizarre lies to fit your slanderous invective, have absolutely nothing and you’re too much of a coward to admit it. Chickenshit. Weasel. Wimp.

    More yoga.

  • I don’t make up anything bitch, nope just don’t. You’re to big a fucking dolt to keep up Reggie Boy. Yoga’s just to keep me focused limp dick. I’ve been dealing with assholes since I was a kid and know a pussy when I hear them and you are 100% that.

    Now go change those depends Reggie boy, I’m sure you’re soaked killer. What a douche.

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