Situations can often get complicated and we further complicate them when we obfuscate for our own advantage. The situation with supply chains is both complicated and simple at the same time. Of course, anyone that can grasp that paradox isn’t likely to appear as a talking head on television anytime soon.

The latest in a long line of supply chain issues is baby formula. It would seem that people should be able to get by without it, but that is one of the areas where talking heads can be purposefully obtuse. Not all women can breast feed and not all of them want to. It’s that whole bodily autonomy thing rearing its ugly head again.

Abbott had to shut down its production when some children were getting sick. The FDA intervened because that is what they are supposed to. It was not that dissimilar from when Bluebell shut its factories down for a short time. Formula is just slightly more important than ice cream. Yet, the concept is the same. When people get sick you have to find out what is going on.

People love to complain about these things and they love to point the finger, but ultimately they really don’t want to do anything about it. The Republicans have recited the chorus of their favorite hymn these days: blame Joe Biden. As we know, the president of the United States spends countless hours each day pouring over supply chains and individual products. It’s not like he’s doing anything else.

So, the House of Representatives got the ball rolling by passing a bill to help with supply chain issues. Whether the Senate will also pass it is unknown. The Senate would struggle to pass a bill asserting that water is wet. You have a 50-50 split which is difficult enough. Then, you have the 60 vote filibuster threshold, Joe Mancin and Kirsten Sinema, and the craven politics of Mitch McConnell.

Nearly 200 Republicans in the House voted against a measure to alleviate these issues. They decided the problem doesn’t need government intervention. That’s fine as a philosophy but the likes of Jim Jordan have blasted Biden and the Democrats on Twitter for not solving the problem. His tweet says it all.

What do you suggest Jim? If you vote against nearly every measure to solve the problem then you either don’t really care about Americans and their formula shortage or you just want to exploit the problem for political gain. Of course, there is a third door here, but far be it from me to point it out. You could actually govern. You could say that the Democrats’ plans are all wrong and we should do something else instead. In this case he has tried nothing and he’s all out of ideas.

Fox News has a solution. See, the problems stem from the fact that we are giving too much formula to those babies on the border. You know the ones I’m talking about. They are the ones the Trump administration cravenly ripped from their mother’s arms so they could put them in cages. Well, we should just take their formula and give it to American babies.

These illegal children don’t deserve it. Let’s ignore that the numbers we are talking about are much lower than what they were under Trump. According to the report, 22,500 children are being held at the border. Even if every last one of them was an infant needing formula, we are talking about less than one percent (about 0.6%) of the total number of babies in the United States. Jonathan Swift would be proud. This is your “pro-life” party ladies and gentlemen.

Here ya go – your own personal copy.

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022

Honey, that wasn’t a Freudian slip. That was a Freudian confession.  Or maybe Freud’s whole underwear drawer.

In 2018, just hours after the Parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that left 17 people dead, Alex Jones posted a picture on his website of a 25 year old man living in Worcester, Massachusetts. Jones posted the picture, which he had received from 4Chan, claiming this was the shooter.

Marcel Fontaine almost immediately began receiving calls from friends and family, telling him he had been identified as the gunman.  Fontaine has never been to Florida in his entire life, never been in any trouble whatsoever, and had an airtight alibi – plus, he didn’t even own a gun.

He notified Jones that he was not the shooter. They ignored him. When he began to get threats, he notified them again that they were broadcasting a picture of the wrong person.  The picture identifying him as the shooter remained on Jones’ website for a full day, visited by hundreds of thousands of people.

Marcel Fontaine is autistic and gay. America is a dangerous place for him as is, and he sure didn’t need a nationally spread story that he killed 17 high school students in Florida.  Through a friend of a friend, he found a lawyer in Texas willing to take his case and sue Jones.  

The first lawsuit against Alex Jones for malicious and false content was filed in Texas, where Jones broadcasts, by Marcel Fontaine.  It was an act of amazing courage.

After that, parents of the students killed Sandy Hook began to come forward and used that same lawyer to sue Jones in his hometown, Austin.  

All of the lawsuits have been declared in favor of the plaintiffs that Jones did in fact defame them. They’ve won the hard part – all that is left is the determination by a jury of how much money Jones has to pay them.

One week before the Texas cases were set for trial Jones filed a sham bankruptcy claim on three of his companies that had no money, office, staff, or even their own letterhead. It was a ploy to once again postpone the trial. Once he saw that it wasn’t going to work, he dropped it, but postponing the trial was his goal.

The trial will soon be reset, probably for June, in Austin.

Marcel Fontaine will not be there.  He died when fire engulfed an apartment complex in Worcester, Massachusetts, on May 15th.  The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

The Alex Jones scam bankruptcy denied Marcel Fontaine his day in court. 

Marcel Fontaine’s initial courage is probably what is going to take Alex Jones down.  Marcel Fontaine is an American hero, not because he died, but because he lived. May he fly on the wings of the angels.

I first saw it on my Facebook feed. I belong to one of those somewhat politically active teacher groups that’s ultimately a place where teachers can safely complain. It’s the end of the year, so there will be a lot of complaints. This year feels kind of different and it was hard to put my finger on it, but I think I noticed it when this story popped up.

I really didn’t take notice until I saw it on a different news source. It’s not that the teachers on social media lie. However, they are subject to hyperbole every now and then. However, more than one source has verified it, so I get to bring it to you.

For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, essentially the bill proposes outlawing the teaching of anything deemed anti-religion and allows for parents to be able to pull books from the bookshelves that they deem to be offensive. The kicker was the following,

“Teachers could be sued a minimum of $10,000 “per incident, per individual” and the fines would be paid “from personal resources” not from school funds or from individuals or groups. If the teacher is unable to pay, they will be fired, under the legislation.”

People at school seem to think I know how to write for some reason, so I primarily support English classes. We hold meetings once a week to make sure everyone is on the same page. Social studies classes are even worse. They teach via Power Point and all of them are on the same Power Point.

Earlier in the year we had to take a workshop on the “teaching of controversial topics.” Essentially, we don’t. It isn’t so much that we teach the Bible so much as not teaching anything at all. Far be it for us to actually hit a topic that would force students to think critically about anything at all. Fortunately, we aren’t getting sued in Texas quite yet, but I’m sure Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and the rest of the dream team will copy Oklahoma before too long.

I’ve been in education for 24 years now. With the way teacher retirement works, I am almost vested and simply am too far in to really do anything else. Many of my colleagues are not and are choosing to get out. This is different. Most of the time they simply have had enough of a certain campus or principal and want to go to a different campus. Sometimes a better opportunity just comes along. In this case, they are leaving education all together.

I promised myself a long time ago that I would never become one of those “back in my day” guys. Yet, here I am. When I started teaching history we had a rough timeline they wanted us to follow, but ultimately we had the autonomy to veer off the beaten path every now and then to hit a unit we cared deeply about. It’s what made teaching history fun. Everyone had their own time period they enjoyed teaching.

Seeing an entire hallway of history teachers on the same Power Point every day is just demoralizing. The only way I can make it through six or seven more years is to remind myself that it is about the students. Those relationships are crucial for their success and our sanity. We just have to watch what we say for now on.

Surprisingly, the Pope and I don’t have as much in common as you might suspect.  Except maybe this.

About 6 months ago, I shared with a friend that when I got up in the morning, it sounded like popcorn, and that it was mid morning before I didn’t feel like ouch when I did my chores.  She suggested a little hooch. I assured her that I had some vanilla kaluha in decaf coffee at night before bedtime.

“You’re doing it all wrong,” she scolded me.  “Put the kaluha in your morning coffee.” Well hell, I was already drinking alone so I might as well drink before noon, too.

It works like a twenty dollar knife on room temp butter.

So, I was glad to see the Pope.

So, I’m on the lookout for a killer breakfast Tequila Sunrise recipe.

On another good news item, this morning I learned that Madison Cawthorn got beat so badly last night that his grandchildren will be born shaking.  It’s my theory that Republicans were mad about the cocaine sex parties. Because they didn’t get an invitation.

A lot has been made of the so-called “replacement theory” since the kid in Buffalo shot up a grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood. Since we are always aiming to be helpful, I thought I would break it down for those folks that don’t make watching Tucker Carlson a habit.

Replacement theory is the far-right white supremacist theory that liberals, progressives, and leftists are determined to allow or even encourage minorities to move to the United States in droves so they can get a permanent majority in Washington and in key states.

That’s a very simple statement and it doesn’t require much explanation, but it does have far-reaching implications. The kid supposedly travelled to a black neighborhood on purpose. Has anyone ever wondered why there are so-called “black neighborhoods” and “white neighborhoods” in the first place?

The notion of replacement theory relies on two very insidious ideas. First, it relies on the notion that anything really belongs to any of us. Sure, there is private property, so when we finally pay back the bank then our home will literally belong to us. Our cars literally belong to us.

However, that is not what far right conservatives are referring to. They are referring to America in the larger sense. It belongs to them. That means that all policies have to continue to perpetuate this madness. This is why we oppose the estate tax. This is why we preach trickle down economics. This is why we fight a drug war that disproportionately affects people of color.

These policies are all designed to make sure that those in power remain in power. Furthermore, they are able to convince the poorer amongst us that this is ultimately a good thing. Even though they will not get the assistance they need and will ultimately remain poor, it also means that none of “them” will get that assistance either.

That brings us to the second insidious idea. The basic assumption is that if you are black, Hispanic, Asian, female, or a member of the LGTBQ+ community then you are destined to be a Democrat. It ultimately isn’t even worth trying to appeal to them. It’s destiny after all.

It’s a not so subtle conversion of people into cattle. They just follow the rest of the herd. It ignores the fact that numerous people from any group might have very conservative views on a number of subjects. They could be persuaded if their key issues were addressed. They could be persuaded if you treated them as individuals with self-determination. They could be persuaded if you treated them like equals and human beings.

Sure, they’ll traipse out the occasional Alan Keyes, Candace Owen, Marco Rubio, or Amy Coney Barrett. See, there are some women and minorities that are conservative. It isn’t literally everyone. Yet, let’s consider the implications of this point of view for a second. Why are we so afraid to allow people of color to vote in large numbers? The idea that this is not about racism is downright hilarious. Why exactly should we assume that those people would never vote for us in the first place?

Not only does it reduce America to a zero sum game, it provides a unique way for poor, white men to keep score. I’ll never get ahead by continuing to vote Republican, but I can damn well make sure that they will never get ahead too. So, ultimately it starts as an irrational fear that Democrats will take over and transfer ownership of America to all of its inhabitants. The truth of the matter is that if they had anything worth selling to the masses then they would buckle down and present their case to everyone. They know they can’t do that. They don’t have a case and they don’t have anything worth selling. It’s only about what they perceive as worth keeping.