I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!

The GQP playbook is to make up stuff in order to provoke visceral fear reactions among parents of school-age kids and stoke straight-white-Christian fear & resentment, especially among rural and exurban voters who feel "left out" and "left behind" by the perceived "woke agenda." It's more than "political correctness" and "wokeness:" it's about change. Change is scary, especially when it shakes up assumptions about what one has been taught for generations about this country's history.

I hate the term "woke." When it was first used back in 2014, many of us wore it in smug self-congratulation as a badge of intellectual & moral honor; but now the right-wing has turned it against us to mock us as conceited and rigidly (and even illogically) doctrinaire.

I prefer "enlightened," "reconsidered" or "evolving." (Emphasis on the "-ing"). Acknowledging that, ever since the first European colonists brought the first kidnapped enslaved Africans to our shores, this country's early history through the first "Juneteenth" was shaped by slavery and thereafter by Jim Crow is not the same as "hating America" or "making white people feel guilty about ourselves." It is an incontrovertible fact that even many Northern colonists not only "impressed" (i.e., forcibly "imported" from the British Isles) and employed indentured servants but also owned slaves--including Ben Franklin before he became an abolitionist (yet nonetheless never freed his enslaved couple during his lifetime). Slavery is mentioned in the Bible, and not just the fact that "we were slaves in the land of Egypt" (as we Jews recite from the Haggaddah at every Passover Seder). Both Leviticus & Deuteronomy even set forth rules regarding treatment of not just one's "laborers" but also of one's slaves. That doesn't make slavery morally acceptable of course, but neither does it make every one of our forebears and Founding Fathers who owned slaves (as well as employed brutally-indentured servants) evil and unworthy of our lauding their contributions to our history, much less require us to assertively negate those contributions and strip them of all honor.

It takes some intellectual heavy lifting to shed our binary notions of 100% moral vs. 100% shameful and recognize that times change and those people were creatures of their times. We now know better, but that doesn't make them worse nor us better. The mental gymnastics involved in nuanced thought are difficult. We tend to look at life and morality through a 20th-21st century lens. How many modern people, when first learning World History as kids, identify with the free landed gentry, nobility or even royalty--and then get the "bucket of ice water" dropped on their heads to learn that the odds are overwhelming that 99% of us, had we lived in pre-Renaissance Europe, would have been serfs leading nasty, brutish and short lives? How many of us didn't know till recently that settlement of the West involved starving indigenous peoples by slaughtering the buffalo in order for 19th century beef barons to graze cattle on the land for eventual sale as meat? But acknowledging that part of our history doesn't mean we should feel guilty or blame ourselves ("the sins of the father...."). It means that there are lessons to be learned, things to do and not to do...going forward.

Really seems like the Reps. are just stumbling all over themselves. I'm sure there is a method to their madness as far as they are concerned. All I really see is madness though.

Would like rules and laws not to apply to him -- above it all like the Loon.

I'm in heavy duty like with the last cartoon too. No one seems to think there will be reason to notice the Loon's period and after during the next elections. I'm not sure they will be individually named so much as hopefully thrown out on their ear along with what passes right now for the Reps. party. So, that being in our history a bit over 200 yrs. after the fact with much of the Reps. party reverting to total morons like their Loon leader of 4 yrs. duration and 2 impeachments -- proves their morons if they don't mind their ancestors reading all this. They will remain the moronic scorned throughout.

Me, too, and a male chauvinist teacher who thought "girls" were wasting their time learning Al Gebra and consigned us to sit in the far back of the room. Now imagine all the "boys" sitting front and center and at least 2 rows of empty separating them from us. I did not do well, did great with Plane Geometry but never took another math class after that. Yet, I taught Nursing Mathematics and Dosages for about 20 years so I wasn't totally turned off on math, just male teachers teaching math.

Yes to the MTG meme.

Betrayal, how horrible to have a teacher like that. I feel such outrage even reading about him.

I had a great Al Gebra teacher. He was a man and was in fact one of the high school football coaches. He was well organized so the students knew what to expect. Lessons Monday thru Thursday, test every Friday, graded tests back every Monday except during football season when we got tests back on Tuesday and we went over all the answers. I had him for pre-Algebra, Algebra I and Algebra II and I aced all the classes. The teacher showed no favoritism, treating boys and girls all the same, no class pets. He had a loud voice but never yelled. No one goofed off in his class but no one was afraid of him, either. He simply commanded the class and taught. One of my all-time favorite teachers. Mr. Marinnaci.

Have I mentioned the Netflix documentary “Picture A Scientist”. It’s excellent and uses several women’s personal stories to discuss gender inequality in the sciences. I highly recommend it. You will find it extremely interesting and insightful. The personal stories draw you in and the data supporting the claims is indisputable.

I've blocked out most of my high school experience, but do remember my female Geometry teacher referred to me as Randy's little sister, never by my first name. Math and most subjects were a challenge for me. Guidance counselor said I wasn't college material and signed me up for secretarial classes my senior year. I said no, wanted college prep classes. Graduated from colleg, moved away from my home town. I ended up in IT, mostly supporting financial applications. Just a late bloomer I guess.

Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night.
Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except
to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us
to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

Khalil Gibran

The Loon no longer goes to the bigger more 'known' places -- they don't want him. He doesn't pay and he would likely be being even more apt to ignore a payment now that he is a used up, has been that never really was anyway.

Still a joke, after all this time. Glad when he is gone for good.

I love math, algebra, and logic. (I don't care for calculus, though. It's rude to numbers.) I love watching mathematical patterns lay themselves out in beautiful manifestations of numbers dancing in fugues. I love how algebra is basically puzzles to be poked at and played with until they're at their simplest state.

I'm currently crocheting a blanket for my Dad. The pattern is a fractal called a Seirpinski carpet. Well, I guess this will be a Sierpinski blanket.