Theology, politics, and history nerd. Sports fan who loves handicapping games. GSSF pistol shooter. All around outdoorsman.
Virginia, USA
Joined April 2013
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Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
The left: Widely united in ideology, organized nationally, high rate of political activism, willing to use political power and violence to achieve goals.
The right: diverse ideology and factional alignment, using purity tests to narrow down groups, talks about wanting to be left alone, refuses to use political power but likes to post memes about watering a tree.
Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
Bill Maher and Coleman Hughes finish each other's sentences for 3 minutes straight as they lay out how teachers' unions wrecked public education.
The MS NOW host thought she could sit this one out quietly. Then Maher turned and lobbed a grenade right at her.
MAHER: "The reason why they don't know that socialism didn't work... is because NOBODY taught them in school."
HUGHES: "A lot of kids go to underperforming public schools, which is our euphemism for government-funded daycare centers with occasional school-like activities."
MAHER: "I knew they weren't learning anything, but like you said, it's like a daycare center and not a good one."
HUGHES: "And I think people on the left want to blame funding because that's the easy issue. But the truth is, this school was well funded. You know, it's 50,000 per pupil at this school. The problem isn't the funding. It's that you can't fire anyone bad."
MAHER: "Yes.... The problem is the union, the teachers union, is too powerful. We've seen it in results in states where the union is less powerful, the schools do better."
HUGHES: "I call it the chalkboard mafia."
MAHER: "The problem, the unions protect bad schools and bad teachers, and the party protects the union. It's almost impossible in a lot of these cities to fire a teacher. I mean literally like you could sell drugs to a kid and it's got to be two offenses before we get—"
HUGHES: "It wasn't that long ago that the unions lobbied for a law in New York State to ban even collecting data that you would use to assess which teachers are better than others. You can't even get the data. So obviously the teachers union serves the teachers, they don't serve the students, and if you're a Democrat or any American that's serious about public school reform, you have to challenge the teachers union, period."
MAHER: "And I think in this school, where they were learning nothing with no supervision and absentee principals and teachers, I think spending 50,000 dollars per year per student, it's not money. That's what you always hear from the left. 'Oh, it's underfunded.' It's not the funding. The funding isn't the issue."
HUGHES: "No, it hasn't been for a very long time."
MAHER: "I think this is the kind of thing I will NEVER hear on MS NOW."
ALI VITALI: "I think you hear a lot of perspectives on MS NOW."
MAHER: "I don't ever hear that one."
CONTEXT: Maher and Hughes aren't making this up. On the latest Nation's Report Card, high school seniors posted the lowest reading and math scores ever recorded on the test.
And getting rid of bad teachers is nearly impossible. Federal survey data shows the average school district dismissed just 0.2 tenured teachers for poor performance in a year. That's roughly 1 in 500.
Meanwhile, students do better long-term in states where unions have less power.
A 2019 study in the American Economic Journal found that boys who went to school in states that forced districts to bargain with teachers' unions went on to earn about $2,100 LESS per year as adults compared to boys in states without those laws.
If a business failed this badly, someone would get fired. As Hughes put it: "The teachers union serves the teachers; they don't serve the students."
Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
Being an American gun owner means that something perfectly legal yesterday can become a felony that gets you raided by armed men on a hair trigger. Not uncommonly resulting in your death.
Normal people bought guns, from federally licensed dealers, with pistol braces on them. We came THIS close to all of them becoming felons, with no recourse.
Better yet, it often happens by accident, or because of bad information. You’re not even the one who ran afoul of a law. The cops just fuck it up. The police mistook Duncan Lemp’s perfectly legal Tavor for a full-auto... for some reason? And shot him to death in his bed.
Tate Adamiak sat in prison for years because an informant just made shit up, and the ATF decided to keep rolling with it.
There are, without drama or hysterics, very few other entire groups of people where the mere act of existing can bring rapid and violent death or long-term imprisonment. Regardless of social or economic class, race, gender, location, age, or sexuality.
Beyond that, we have all the other hallmarks of every other oppressed minority group. Entire political parties campaign on our erasure. Basically the entire world outside of the US with few exceptions view us as a disgusting plague full of backwards people that the entire planet would be better off with us gone.
Police will often shoot you just for being armed, regardless of circumstance, sometimes even after YOU called them.
So what's the argument we aren't?
Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
They screamed for a decade about the Handmaid's Tale then literally voted for a Muslim whose wife and stepmom have to dress like this.
Liberal women are some of the dumbest c**** on the planet.
Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
The average American lost $8,200 from their retirement accounts today (401k + Roth IRA).
If gas prices were cut in HALF today and inflation was 0% it would take SIX years to recover what they lost.
SIX years; and that is obviously best-case scenario.
But the legacy media won’t tell you Wall Street is reacting to the Blue Wave—even though Democrats elected Tuesday are anti-capitalism, pro-regulation, pro-tax.
And they are anti-wealth (for all but themselves).
If you have a 401k or other retirement account, you likely lost more money today from some Democrats saying they will ban AI and data centers than you did from paying higher gas prices from the Iran conflict.
Democrats are already making things more affordable. Stock market share prices have already gotten cheaper. Thanks Democrats! $SPY
Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
Exactly!
When I grew up in Communist China, I was surrounded by completely brainwashed people, including myself.
Now in the US, I’m surrounded by people even more brainwashed than the communists I grew up with in China.
Communism thrives on a dumbed-down population. And the dumbing down is systematically carried out through schools, the media, and Hollywood!
Republican ballot measures won all across the country. What does it tell us that people support Republican policies when they see them on paper, but then vote for Democrats who reject these policies and often want to do the opposite?
Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
Seriously, the cost of living was the number one issue for California voters, and yet they voted for the guy who promised to make everyone pay to drive.
They actually have no ability to understand the consequences of policies they support.
No thinking beyond “Orange Man Bad.”
Interesting. Having kids make you significantly less left wing. Could this be because having children makes one think more about the future and the long term effects of policies?
Eric Russell 🦬 retweeted
Texas turned blue because of the war, gas prices, the rising cost of living, and immigration.
By contrast, California has some of the highest gas prices, one of the highest costs of living, uncontrolled immigration and when Obama went to war in Syria, it never turned red.
This kind of disparity in voter behavior will doom America.
The NC politician who said Trump supporters need to be put into concentration camps won her race. I've said it before and I'll say it again, progressives are the fascists we've been warned about.
