the "n' word

 

I know what you are thinking.

The “n” word is a word that you can no longer say in public because it could get you fired or harshly criticized.

However, this article is not about THAT “n’ word.

It’s about THIS one:

Neurodivergent - and it’s a word that none of us were familiar with until this past week.

We watched nearly all of the DNC convention this past week, and were amazed at how uplifting it was. In addition to the numerous entertainers, we also heard some of the best political speeches that we have heard for a long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_National_Convention

 In contrast, the RNC convention was the polar opposite. It was so bad, in fact, that I could not watch it after Tuesday night, since I nearly threw my shoe at the TV after listening to Kari Lake.

The “entertainers” were Kid Rock and Hulk Hogan, who tore off his shirt.

Kamala Harris has been a successful prosecutor, a competent senator, and a highly credible vice president. Tim Walz took a 0 and 27 football team to a state championship. In addition to that, he served 24 years in the National Guard, and also served many years as a public education teacher.

The top of the ticket on the other side is a convicted felon and con man who never grew up (hence, all the name calling) and an inexperienced young politician who claims to have had sex with a couch.

Lost in the shuffle was a moment that utterly defines what the Democratic party is, a party that is committed to building up, and not tearing down. It’s a party that proudly wears “compassionate” on its sleeve, and one brief moment provided visual proof of that.

Tim and Gwen Walz struggled with fertility issues.

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/20/politics/gwen-walz-fertility-struggles/index.html

Minnesota first lady Gwen Walz clarified in a statement to CNN that she did not use in vitro fertilization to conceive, sharing new details about her and Gov. Tim Walz’s fertility struggles as the governor has highlighted their experience with infertility on the campaign trail.

In her statement, Gwen Walz said they used a different fertility treatment, intrauterine insemination.

In campaign speeches since joining the Democratic ticket as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate, Walz has often characterized the issue of access to IVF treatment as “personal” to him and his family while sharing the story of his and his wife’s journey to conceiving their two children.

“This one’s personal for me about IVF and reproductive care,” Walz told supporters at a rally in Glendale, Arizona, earlier this month. “When we wanted to have children, we went through years of fertility treatment.”

And in an MSNBC interview in July, he continued attacking Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance for his opposition to a bill that would have guaranteed access to IVF nationwide, while appearing to link the treatment to the birth of his two children.

“Thank God for IVF, my wife and I have two beautiful children,” he said.

In a statement to CNN, Gwen Walz said that they tried intrauterine insemination, a process she described as “an incredibly personal and difficult experience.”

“Like so many who have experienced these challenges, we kept it largely to ourselves at the time – not even sharing the details with our wonderful and close family. The only person who knew in detail what we were going through was our next-door neighbor,” she said in the statement.

“She was a nurse and helped me with the shots I needed as part of the IUI process. I’d rush home from school and she would give me the shots to ensure we stayed on track,” she continued.

 Their first child was a daughter, who they named Hope. Their second child was a boy, who they named Gus. Although their daughter was normal in every respect, their son, who they named Gus, was not.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/opinion/tim-walz-son-gus.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

 

Gus Walz has, according to his parents, a nonverbal learning disorder, A.D.H.D. and an anxiety disorder, all of which they regard not as a setback but as his “secret power,” that makes him “brilliant” and “hyperaware.”

The sight at the Democratic convention on Wednesday night of Tim Walz’s 17-year-old son leaping to his feet, with streaming eyes, a hand to his chest with a cry of “That’s my dad” was heart piercing.

There’s something of a trend at the moment for certain businesses to say they encourage the hiring of people who are neurodivergent. Sadly, it can be just virtue signaling. Employers like to think that a person who is neurodivergent is some secretly brilliant introvert who writes code in his apartment all day, not the more likely candidate: an awkward kid with a gentle smile who takes time to get the hang of things and talks too much about the same subjects.

 

The most painful thing for a parent is to pick up on the scorn of strangers that her child often doesn’t notice; the whispered insults or titter at the next table. Remember Donald Trump Jr.’s sneer at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference? Referring to Senator John Fetterman’s struggles to recover after his stroke, Mr. Trump said that Pennsylvania had “managed to elect a vegetable.”

“I’d love for John Fetterman to have, like, good gainful employment,” he continued. “Maybe he could be, like, a bag guy at a grocery store.”

Is it possible to go any lower than that?

Trump, of course, has a long history of mocking just about everyone, as exemplified ty the childless nicknames that he has used.

The low point, of course, was in 2016, when he mocked the New York Times reporter,

Trump has denied that he meant to mock the reporter, Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition affecting the joints.

His initial offense, in Trump's eyes, was denying the candidate's description of Kovaleski's reporting on unsubstantiated allegations that Muslims in New Jersey celebrated on 9/11.

As recently as July 29, Trump insisted, “I didn’t know what he looked like. I didn’t know he was disabled."

He has maintained that his physical affect in imitation of Kovaleski was because "He was groveling, grovel, grovel, grovel. That was the end of it. All of a sudden, I get reports that I was imitating a reporter who was handicapped. I would never do that."

The Washington Post’s factchecker responded, “Much of what Trump says is Four-Pinocchios false.”

Among other falsehoods described by the Post, including the fact that the "groveling" charge makes no sense in context, and Kovaleski, who now works for the New York Times, has said, "Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years."

The poll was conducted before Trump sparked furor with a comment about "Second Amendment people" that was interpreted by many as a veiled suggestion of violence against Clinton.

Still, given the lasting stigma around people with disabilities and the easiness with which pop culture has mocked them over the years, the outraged reaction from the public is striking.

"People are starting to see people with disabilities for their abilities,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of the advocacy group RespectAbility, citing Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, who has Attention Deficit Disorder, and Nyle DiMarco, winner of America’s Next Top Model and Dancing with the Stars, who is deaf.

“But one thing they don’t want to see about people with disabilities is for us to be bullied,” she added.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-s-worst-offense-mocking-disabled-reporter-poll-finds-n627736

But how could Don Jr. be any different from his father? The elder Donald Trump has never missed the chance to denigrate people with disabilities, and already the MAGA crowd is mocking Gus Walz’s emotional embrace with his dad. “Talk about weird …” the conservative media ghoul Ann Coulter posted (and later deleted).

If the Harris-Walz ticket wins, will parents of people who struggle with being different at last find a powerful advocate in the White House? This voiceless community is in desperate need of a new, mighty champion.

 

Coach Walz, you who have been such an inspiring role model to kids all your life, and were caring enough to offer your own credibility to the role of faculty adviser of a new high school gay-straight alliance, please make this your cause.

 

 

 

 

 

The Horne of plenty

 

 

The current superintendent of schools in Arizona is man named Tom Horne.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Horne

Thomas Charles Horne (born March 28, 1945) is a Canadian-American politician, attorney, businessman, and activist who has served as the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction since 2023 and previously from 2003 to 2011. A member of the Republican Party, he was Attorney General of Arizona from 2011 to 2015. Horne ran for reelection as Attorney General but lost to Mark Brnovich in the 2014 Republican primary.

He returned to the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction in 2023, having been elected to that office in the 2022 election.

Horne was first elected to public office in 1979, when he was elected to the Paradise Valley Unified School District board. He served on the board for the next 24 years, and was board chair for ten of those years.

Horne was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives in 1996, and served from 1997 to 2001.

In 2000, Horne ran for the Arizona Senate for District 24, but lost the Republican primary to Dean Martin.

In 2003, Horne was elected Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction; he served two terms, ending in 2011. Horne oversaw the adoption to new Arizona's social studies standards, implemented beginning in the 2007-08 school year, under which all students "learn lessons in five areas including American history, world history, geography, civics and government, and economics" in each year from kindergarten through high school.

Horne was an advocate for full-day kindergarten, citing research that showed that such programs reduce the achievement gap between students from poor households and those from more affluent homes.

He also pushed for nutritional standards that removed junk food vending machines from elementary schools and created incentives for secondary schools to do so on a voluntary basis.

Horne, a classically trained pianist and founder of the Phoenix Baroque Ensemble, advocated for increasing arts education in schools.

Horne also continued to implement the Arizona Instrument to Measure Success standardized test; performance on the AIMS test (either alone or in combination with Advanced Placement examss and International Baccalaureate exams) determines graduating high school students' qualification for a "high honors" diploma, which guarantees free tuition at Arizona's three public universities.

Horne implemented policies that discouraged bilingual education and sought to shut down the Tucson Unified School District's controversial Mexican American Studies Department Programs. He argued that the Tucson ethnic studies programs "separated students by race, taught them that they are oppressed, and was influenced by Marxist and communist philosophies." He drafted a 2010 state law (which was adopted and went into effect in 2011, as HB 2281.) that effectively banned ethnic studies, and led to the Tucson Unified School District board closing its program in January 2012. A group of students and parents sued over the state law, leading to seven years of legal proceedings. In July 2017, Horne testified in the litigation; in his testimony, he defended the law and asserted that the Tucson program was led by radical teachers. The federal district court, later in 2017, ultimately issued a permanent injunction blocking Arizona from enforcing the law, determining that the decision to ban the Tucson program was "motivated by a desire to advance a political agenda by capitalizing on race-based fears" and was unconstitutional.

In 2021, Horne announced his campaign for a third term as Arizona superintendent of public instruction, challenging Democratic incumbent Kathy Hoffman. In the November 2022 election, Horne narrowly defeated Hoffman.

In 2023, Horne sued the governor, attorney general, and an Arizona school district over a dispute on how English-language learner students in Arizona should be taught. In the lawsuit, Horne contends that the 50-50 Dual-Language Immersion model, one of four methods used to teach such students in Arizona, violates Proposition 203, a 2000 ballot initiative.

In January 2024, Horne announced that the state would cooperate with PragerU, urging schools to adopt as part of their curriculum.The announcement was met with criticism since the organization has been accused of promoting climate change denial, anti-LGBTQ+ politics, and whitewashing history. House of Representative Democrat Raúl Grijalva criticized the announcement stating "It’s masquerading as a serious educational resource when in reality it’s unaccredited right-wing propaganda.

If you look at Tom Horne’s history from an unbiased standpoint, you would have to admit that some of his earlier ideas made sense, but his more recent ideas highlight the fact that the “Horne of plenty” is plenty of nonsense.

Here are some examples:

1)    Praeger U is right wing news source that has low credibility. The state of Arizona should NOT be using any information from that source.

 https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/prageru/

2)   Tom Horne feels that state school boards should encourage more members of Moms for Liberty to be on school boards. This is the group that has pushed for book bans nationwide. As I mentioned previously, book bans make no sense.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/01/should-books-be-banned.html

In 2012, in response to state law HB2281, the Tucson Unified School District district put into storage, or distributed to the district libraries, several books used in a course that were determined to be against state law A.R.S. 15–112, including the textbook Rethinking Columbus and the Tempest. Books were taken away while students were in class.

 The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that he wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, the rest of the story is set on a remote island, where Prospero, a wizard, lives with his daughter Miranda, and his two servants: Caliban, a savage monster figure, and Ariel, an airy spirit. The play contains music and songs that evoke the spirit of enchantment on the island. It explores many themes, including magic, betrayal, revenge, and family. In Act IV, a wedding masque serves as a play-within-a-play, and contributes spectacle, allegory, and elevated language.

Although The Tempest is listed in the First Folio as the first of Shakespeare's comedies, it deals with both tragic and comic themes, and modern criticism has created a category of romance for this and others of Shakespeare's late plays. The Tempest has been put to varied interpretations, from those^] that see it as a fable of art and creation, with Prospero representing Shakespeare, and Prospero's renunciation of magic signaling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage, to interpretations that consider it an allegory of Europeans colonizing foreign lands.

Rethinking Columbus is a revised and expanded edition of a popular 1991 booklet that changed the way "the discovery of America" is taught in classroom and community settings. The new edition has over 100 pp. of new material, including a role-play trial of Columbus, materials on Thanksgiving Day, resources, historical documents, poetry, and more. It will help readers replace murky legends with a better sense of who we are and why we are here -- and celebrates over 500 years of the courageous struggles and lasting wisdom of native peoples.

3)   The dismantling of the Mexican-American studies departments and similar Mexican cultural courses has caused controversy regarding the ideas of xenophobia and racism against Mexican-American students and their heritage. However, studies demonstrated that students enrolled in these programs had higher rates of graduation and attendance.

The TUSD board meetings, in response to the proposed bill HB2281, resulted in several students and faculty who demonstrated against the legislation being arrested and/or injured. Due to the impending loss of state funding should the TUSD continue the program, the board ruled in a 4-1 decision in January 2012 to ban the program. On January 13, 2012, students walked out of class and held a protest against the banishment of the Mexican-American Studies program.

The Daily Show aired a satirical piece on April 2, 2012, concerning the banning of Mexican-American studies as voted by the school board. Michael Hicks, a voting member, said that he was concerned with the "revolutionary" aspect of the curriculum that encouraged students to take part in "bloodshed" against the "gringos." When asked if he had ever been to a class himself to support his claims, he answered that he had not visited the school but based his opinion on "hearsay from the others."

The TUSD Governing Board's resolution of this issue has been to establish a course to be taken by all students that emphasizes multiculturalism and diversity. The current program, much like the Mexican studies program, seeks to educate students on themes of identity. It is based on four pillars namely, "identity, diversity, justice and action." This program strives to "promote intercultural understanding and addresses the needs of students who have been historically marginalized or underrepresented." Some students and their parents sued the school board and government, claiming that the TUSD ban of the Mexican American studies program violated their rights under the First and 14th amendments. In August 2017, A. Wallace Tashima, a federal judge, ruled that the students and parents had had their rights violated on both counts. A US judge in 2017 also blocked an ethnic studies ban because he found the ban to be racially motivated.

Tom Horne was one of the earlier opponents of dual language instruction in Arizona. Since 65% of the students in Arizona are minorities, dual language instruction make sense.  In May of 2024, State schools’ chief Tom Horne has been ordered to pay more than $120,000 in legal fees over his unsuccessful bid to quash dual-language instruction in Arizona schools.

Arizona taxpayers are on the hook for the money because Horne, a Republican elected in 2022, sued in his official capacity.

The new order comes more than two months after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Katherine Cooper ruled Horne had no legal authority to force all Arizona schools to use only “structured English immersion’’ to teach the language to students who are not proficient.

Cooper said nothing in state law even allowed Horne to go to court and ask her to declare that school districts are violating a 2000 voter-approved measure dealing with English instruction. Any such right, she said, actually belongs to the state Board of Education.

https://tucson.com/news/local/subscriber/arizona-public-instruction-superintendent-tom-horne-lost-lawsuit-dual-language-english-instruction/article_b6e11be6-1dde-11ef-ba83-1fef2c0db9ea.html

 4)   Arizona was one of the first states in the country to pass a universal voucher system, called the Empowerment Scholarship Program. Initially, the program made, but in 2022, it was expanded to cover every student in the state, which had the effect of taking money from inadequately funding public schools, and giving to wealthy parents who send their children to private schools. Th cost of the program is now close to $900 million, and was a large contributor to the state’s $1.3 billion budget shortfall.

 

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2024/05/30/republicans-never-reform-school-voucher-esa/73909844007/

Arizona has had a superintendent of public instruction since 1912, and they have been a mix of Democrats and Republicans. Since 1995, there have been 6 Republicans and one Democratic.  As of 2017, Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction is the lowest paid state education administrator in the United States, being paid $85,000 compared to the national average of $174,000.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Superintendent_of_Public_Instruction

 Arizona has long been stingy on funding for education. Although progress has been made in recent years, the state currently ranks #48 in school funding. The only states that are worst are Oklahoma and Idaho. Oklahoma recently tried to divert public funds to private religious schools, but the state Supreme Court recently blocked the effort.

 

https://stacker.com/education/states-spending-most-and-least-student-education

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/25/us/oklahoma-religious-charter-school-supreme-court/index.html

Over time, education instruction in Arizona will improve, for the following reasons.

1)    Tom Horne is now 79, and is not eligible for re-election.

2) The energy generate by the Harris-Walz team will mean more Democrats will win “down ticket” elections. Since the Republicans in Arizona currently have a slim one vote majority in the legislature, that means that control of the legislature could likely switch to the “adults in the room”, and that is good news for all of us.

Lola

 

In 1970, the Kinks released a song titled “Lola” If you would like to hear it again, just click on the link below:

The Kinks - Lola (Official Audio) (youtube.com)

If you would like to read the words as you listen to the song, click on the link below:

https://genius.com/The-kinks-lola-lyrics

 

The song came to mind on Monday of this week, when I reported for a job at Tucson High School. On the first floor of one of the buildings in the campus complex, there is a room that USED to be designated “male teacher bathroom”.

 

It is now known as the “all-gender” bathroom, much to the chagrin of the male teachers on the first floor, who no longer have private bathroom facilities available to them. According to one of the teachers that I talked with, it is an attempt to be more accommodating to transgender students. He said that he has already been in the bathroom when a person of the opposite gender came in, so it’s obvious that a better monitoring system needs to be put in place to avoid further embarrassing situations.

 

Trans gender bathrooms have been a hot topic since 2016, when North Carolina passed HB2.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/transgender-bathroom-bills-are-back-nation-care-rcna137014

A transgender “bathroom ban” in North Carolina caused a national uproar in 2016. Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Nick Jonas and a long list of other A-list performers canceled shows in the state. Global corporations Deutsche Bank and PayPal torpedoed plans to expand in Cary and Charlotte. The NCAA moved its scheduled championship games elsewhere.

Now, eight years later, after Utah passed a similar bill on Monday, the reaction beyond the state’s borders appears to be more of a shrug.

Neither of Utah’s largest businesses released statements in response to the legislation. Tens of thousands of out-of-towners, and an ensuing economic boost, were just heading home from the Sundance Film Festival, held annually in Park City. Global sensation — and queer icon — Bad Bunny is slated to headline a concert in Salt Lake City in upcoming weeks. Next month, Salt Lake City will be hosting first- and second-round games in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Representatives for the NCAA, Bad Bunny and Sundance did not immediately return requests for comment.

In fact, nine other states passed so-called transgender bathroom bills in the years between those passed by North Carolina and Utah, with little fanfare as well.

HB 2 — which was later partially repealed in 2017 — also prevented local governments from passing LGBTQ nondiscrimination measures and rendered then-existing protections, including one in Charlotte, moot. For this reason, the law affected a much broader segment of the population compared to today’s bills and therefore drew national ire, said Shannon Gilreath, a professor at Wake Forest University’s School of Law and a faculty member of the university’s gender and sexuality program.

“When one’s own interests are not directly compromised by some form of discrimination, one is less likely to respond or to care,” Gilreath said. “I might not believe that’s necessarily the right attitude to have — to do what’s expedient versus to do what’s right in a situation — but that’s human nature.”

Some studies back Gilreath’s line of reasoning.

A survey from the nonpartisan research group Public Religion Research Institute conducted last year found an estimated 79% of Americans support anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Policies that largely favor trans Americans solely received significantly less support; the poll found. However, Americans who say they know at least one trans person are much more likely to support pro-trans policies, a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center found.

Reed said that what’s changed from 2016 to now is that people — and even billion-dollar corporations — have become afraid of provoking the far-right.

She pointed to a group of conservative provocateurs who collectively have amassed tens of millions of social media followers in part by stoking outrage over LGBTQ issues. In several instances, threats of violence have followed the subjects of posts made or amplified by the group of right-wing influencers.

“These people are scary,” Reed said. “If the NBA All-Star Game threatened to pull a game right now? In this atmosphere? Today? They’d get bomb threats from conservatives.”

Last year, bomb threats were made to Budweiser factories across the country after trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney’s brand partnership with Bud Light created an online firestorm in pockets of right-wing social media. Target also pulled some of its LGBTQ-themed merchandise for Pride Month from its shelves last year after it said it received “threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”

Reed also suggested that it might not be politically advantageous for Republicans to go against the grain when it comes to issues that affect trans people.

Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine faced political blowback after vetoing a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors in the state in December. Former President Donald Trump urged Ohio state lawmakers to override the veto, writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he was “finished” with the Republican governor. Ohio senators overrode the governor’s veto last week.

In recent weeks, local activists had been unsure whether Utah Gov. Spencer Cox would sign HB 257. Cox in 2022 vetoed legislation that aimed to limit transgender students’ ability to compete on girls sports teams in school, citing the disproportionate rate of suicidal ideation among trans kids.

But since then, anti-LGBTQ political rhetoric and legislation have surged.

Conservative lawmakers introduced more than 500 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures across the country, according to a tally by the ACLU, with the majority of them targeting trans people. Seventy-five of those bills became law, including a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in Utah, which Cox signed into law.

Cox signed Utah’s “bathroom bill” on Monday evening with little fanfare and issued a short statement after weeks of speculation on his position.

“We want public facilities that are safe and accommodating for everyone and this bill increases privacy protections for all,” the statement read.

The law is effective immediately.

In addition to Utah, legislators in five states — South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kansas and Iowa — have introduced their own “bathroom bills” or legislation that further expands “bathroom bills” already on the books, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

What is ironic about all these bills is that the greatest danger to ladies in the bathroom is not trans people, but Republican legislators.

https://www.complex.com/life/a/amanda-wicks/republican-legislators-arrested-for-bathroom-misconduct

Research shows the only thing Republican lawmakers have to fear when it comes to inappropriate behavior in bathrooms is—wait for it—themselves.

At least three Republican legislators have been arrested for soliciting or performing sexual acts in a bathroom, according to NewNowNext.

But lawmakers in North Carolina, Arizona, Florida, and Texas have been pointing the finger at trans people. Those states continue relying on the claim that sexual predators will be able access to women's bathrooms if trans people are allowed to use facilities that match their gender identities instead of the sex assigned on their birth certificates.

 

Media Matters, a non-profit organization dedicated to monitoring media for conservative misinformation, found that no actual incidents involving predatory transgender people have occurred. What stories have circulated in the press have all turned out to be false and perpetuated by hate groups.

 

There has never been a single reported case of sexual abuse  perpetrated by a transgender person in a bathroom.

My wife and I know a few gay people, and we also know at least one person is trans. It is also noteworthy that a few of those trans people are well known celebrities

Neither one of us is bothered by that, so we are definitely in favor or legislation that prevents discrimination against LBGT folks. The realty today, though, is that are still a lot of crazy people in this country who will resort to violence if their beliefs are threatened.

In 2022. Boston children’s hospital received bomb threats because they provided gender-affirming care to trans youths.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/boston-childrens-hospital-faces-bomb-threat-right-wing-harassment-camp-rcna45620

If I could tolerate Bud Light, I would have bought a few bottles during the controversy about when Dylan Mulvaney was a hot topic, but the controversy has now died down.

The best response that I have recently about controversial topics was uttered recently by the new vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz:

“Mind your own damn business”.

 

 

 

 

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