90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #389

Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #387

‘Borderline Illiterate’: Christopher Rufo rips teachers union boss for ‘absolutely deranged’ attack against parents

Christopher Rufo and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, have publicly feuded over the future of America’s public education system in recent weeks.
Weingarten said Rufo and “far-right advocates of privatizing public education” are “using Big Lies to undermine public schools,” according to her Friday op-ed in Time magazine.
“Randi’s legacy is one of failure, is one of harming kids, and is one of working against the interests of parents,” Rufo told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “She should immediately resign and enroll in a remedial English and grammar course.”

Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo ripped American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten in a Monday interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, addressing the latest battle in an ongoing feud.

Weingarten wrote a Friday op-ed in Time magazine titled “Extremists Are Using Lies to Undermine America’s Public Schools: We Need to Take a Stand,” which criticized “Rufo and other dark money-funded extremists” for their “attack” on public schools. Rufo, an advocate against the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in public schools, responded to the op-ed, calling Weingarten “perhaps the single greatest oppressor of American children in the United States today.”

“She is virulently anti-education,” Rufo told the DCNF. “She wants to trap poor kids in failing schools with no exit and she’s fighting against the average parent, who simply wants to have a bit more control over his or her child’s education.”

“Sadly, Chris doesn’t like to be called out for not telling the truth,” Weingarten told the DCNF when reached for comment.

Weingarten claimed that “far-right advocates of privatizing public education are using Big Lies to undermine public schools,” calling on public school supporters to stand against “these ugly attacks,” according to the op-ed, which was written with Jonah Edelman, the CEO of Stand for Children. She also mentioned a lecture Rufo gave at Hillsdale College, where he discussed school choice.

In her op-ed, Weingarten also said “Rufo and other dark money-funded extremists” attack public schools through “lies, smears and distortions that stoke fear and anger” which are “spread on social media and Fox News.”

“They are demanding teachers remain neutral on, or worse—teach both sides of—Nazism, slavery, lynching, and other historical atrocities,” the op-ed read.

Rufo said Weingarten’s rhetoric “comparing parents who want to have more school choice to genocidal Nazi propaganda …. is absolutely deranged.”

“It mocks and minimizes the legacy of the Nazis’ brutal crimes against millions of people, and shows the absolutely lunatic desperation of people like Randi Weingarten, who have wrecked their own credibility, who have destroyed the education for kids for the last two years, and are seeking to find a convenient scapegoat,” Rufo told the DCNF. “She can come after me, but what she doesn’t know is that I represent millions of American parents, and they’re not going to be stopped by a petulant, whiny, deranged, middle aged bureaucrat like Randi Weingarten.”

Weingarten doubled down, stating the school choice movement, promoted by “Rufo and other extremists,” will “increase segregation,” undermine democracy and erode America’s middle class.

Rufo told the DCNF that Weingarten is “a borderline illiterate” evidenced by “her horrific punctuation and her tweets.”

“Randi’s legacy is one of failure, is one of harming kids, and is one of working against the interests of parents,” he concluded. “She should immediately resign and enroll in...

In a recent Texas Tech University podcast, Bryan K. Hotchkins, a professor of educational psychology, discussed how the movie 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' is 'anti-black' and projects 'expectations of whiteness.'

'His budding love interest, Gwen, is a blond-haired, blue-eyed white girl,' the professor noted.

On the most recent episode of Texas Tech University’s (TTU) “Humanities Now” podcast, Bryan K. Hotchkins, a professor of educational psychology at TTU, discussed how the movie Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is “anti-black” and projects “expectations of whiteness.”

The 2018 film features Miles Morales voicing the title role. Morales, who is African American and Puerto Rican, is the first Black person to depict the comic book superhero, Vulture reported around the film's release.

“This particular iteration of the Spider-Man movie, the ethnic version, is complete with suspense, action, and anti-black sentiment — which speaks to my being completely unsurprised at it being so notorious,” Hotchkins said.

The episode, titled “A Conversation with Dr. Bryan K. Hotchkins: ‘My Black is Exhausted,’” was released by TTU’s Humanities Center, which previously announced its "Anti-Racism!" theme for the 2021-2022 podcast episodes.

“When there’s finally a Spider-Man who is Black and Latinx, he is relegated to sharing a responsibility and the glory of protecting his city — while in every other Spider-Verse, there is a single super Spider-Hero,” Hotchkins stated.

He also found Morales’ interracial relationship to be problematic.

“His budding love interest, Gwen, is a blond-haired, blue-eyed white girl,” the professor noted. “As it pertains to the presence of a young black woman, there is not a single character who...

Visage à trois #215

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Quick Hits Of Wisdom, Knowledge And Snark #386

Amish Farmer Gets Prison Sentence for Processing His Own Meat

Processing meat on your own property in the U.S. can now lead to jail time, as has been proven by an Amish man from Pennsylvania who has been threatened with a hefty prison sentence and issued a whopping $250,000 fine for doing just that.

Amos Miller says he is being persecuted by the Biden administration for practicing his religious freedom to raise and prepare food the way he believes God intended food to be raised and prepared.

Miller practices rotational grazing on his independently owned, holistically managed, century old farm in Bird-In-Hand Pennsylvania. His heritage-breed cows are raised on organic pastures.

Ourorganicwellness.com reports: Around 4000 customers of his private, members-only, food buying club are dependent on his meat, eggs and dairy products, as well as fermented fruits and veggies… and are willing to spend top dollar to get it shipped to them all over the country, as they don’t trust food from the grocery store.

But a couple of weeks ago, a federal judge told Miller to cease and desist all meat sales, and sent armed U.S. marshals to search his property, farm store and freezers. They took an inventory of all his meat to make sure he doesn’t sell any or slaughter anymore animals.

Last summer, the judge also ordered Miller to pay $250,000 for “contempt of court,” and said he will also have to pay the salaries of the USDA investigators assigned to his case, $50,000 of which was due last week as a “good faith” payment to avoid jail.

(The court’s next hearing on Miller’s case will be this Tuesday, April 12. Please show up if you can. Details below.)

So what exactly is Miller’s crime?

Slaughtering and processing the meat he raises on his own farm and selling it fresh-frozen to members of his private food buying club, who’ve all signed contracts stating they understand the meat is not processed in USDA-inspected plants, or treated with USDA-required chemical preservatives… because that’s how they want it, and the very reason they are willing to go to such great lengths to get it.

But the USDA thinks his customers are too stupid to think for themselves and need them to come in and protect them from themselves.

You probably don’t know (because I didn’t until Miller told me) that all USDA-licensed processing plants are required to treat ALL meat (even the local, grass-fed, organic variety) with synthetic preservatives.

“Often they use citric acid, which you’d think comes from oranges or lemons, but it’s a modified substance made from corn… and they don’t even have to label it on the meat,” Miller said.

“The USDA processing plants require the meat to be treated with a chemical cocktail of citric acid, lactic acid and peracetic acid,” said a customer who handles Miller’s website and other modern communications (because he’s Amish).

“The peracetic acid is toxic and the citric and lactic are GMO.”

“It’s not lactic acid coming from the fermentation of sauerkraut. It’s all created in a dish in a lab. It’s a synthetic sterilizer that causes many health problems,” Anke (who preferred not to use her last name) told me.

“Our members don’t want any of that,” Miller said. “They want fresh, raw meat, with no additives. Our members want it straight from the farm with no preservatives on it.”

“As a farmer, you could invest all your energy and money producing the most healthy, nourishing meat and at the end of the day, you are ruining your meat sending your animals to a USDA facility for slaughter,” Anke added.

Additionally, USDA-approved processing plants aren’t allowed to sell certain organ meats and glands for human consumption. “The very nutrient-dense organs, that seem to help people, they want to ban,” Miller said.

Even if the USDA didn’t require preservatives and allowed the sale of organ meats, it still would still be nearly impossible for Miller and other small farmers to make a profit with Big Meat processors acting as middlemen. And the cost of becoming licensed by the USDA to process their own meat is too steep.

“The rules and regulations are such that you have to get into debt $100,000 before you ever sell your first pound of meat, and the market’s not guaranteed,” Miller said. “There’s no option for farmers to start small and add on and buy...