McCain was no 'hero' for labor or for public education

Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Dick Cheney and Lynne Cheney at the memorial service for Sen. John McCain.

Okay, I understand why liberal pols, former presidents, congressional colleagues and union officials are being "civil" and paying their respects to Sen. John McCain. Some, like AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten, are spreading McCain-love around right now, in order to take shots at Donald Trump, his hated Republican competitor.

Others like neocon warmongers, Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman spoke adoringly at McCain's funeral in order to try and salvage something of what's left of the old GOP.

I'm okay with trying to take advantage of splits in the enemy's camp. I will even give McCain credit for being a voice for mild campaign finance reform and against the use of torture ("enhanced interrogation") of prisoners.  But gushing and going overboard in praise of McCain on the part of Democrats and union officials only makes them look like opportunists.

Case in point...Weingarten, who's not even running for office, lavished unnecessary praise on McCain, calling him "a hero of America". His heroism being all about his role as a village-bombing Air Force pilot and then a POW in Vietnam. I hope she can understand why those of us who fought so hard against that genocidal war, including many members of her own union, will take a knee on that one.

But the great irony here is that Randi's "hero" spent a career making war on organized labor, and teacher unions in particular. This piece from the N.C. AFL-CIO in response to the McCain/Palin 2008 presidential campaign, lays it out pretty well.

McCain rarely met an anti-union or anti-public-school bill he didn't like. He was the main sponsor of legislation supporting privately-run charters and vouchers. In his 2008 debate with Barack Obama, he called it, "the civil rights issue of the 21st century".

 And all this while more than 50,000 Arizona teachers were wildcat-striking for union rights and decent pay in one of the most anti-union states in the nation.

He was also okay with school districts opting to teach creationism. Supported the ban on teaching ethnic studies. Voted against the King holiday. And then there's his lifetime support of war, the greatest enemy of children and education along with massive defense spending, which takes billions of dollars directly out of American classrooms.

No, John McCain was no "hero" when it came to schools, teachers or their unions. Pay respects to the McCain family if you must. But no more B.S. please.

Not one iota of civility for a hero of America!!! Trump allies fume at McCain memorial addresses, urge counterattack - POLITICO https://t.co/c2gPymT0Xf

— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) September 2, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

If elected, Lightfoot would become the city’s first openly gay mayor, and the first African-American woman to hold the job. She joins an increasingly crowded field of challengers looking to unseat Emanuel in the February 2019 election. She is the ninth challenger to announce a run.

Lori Lightfoot

“We have seen example after example of top-down dictates that do not reflect any interest in true partnership with parents, teachers and principals. How do we chart a new progressive course? How do we make sure we take our city on a new, different direction? I will start with listening to the needs of the people.” -- Tribune

Joanna Klonsky, Chicago political strategist

“There’s a misconception that you need to out-raise [Rahm Emanuel] to beat him." -- WBEZ

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

“Secretary DeVos has filled the department with for-profit college hacks who only care about making sham schools rich and shutting down investigations into fraud." --New York Times

CPS Parent Lawrence White

“We have to repair or try to regain those losses,” said White, who wasn’t even aware CPS had implemented a secret overhaul of special education until it was revealed in the WBEZ report. -- WBEZ

Eden Hebron, 15-year-old freshman at Stoneman Douglas H.S.

But since the March for Our Lives protest on March 24th,  the media attention to the issue of gun violence has also changed. “It’s starting to die down, a little, all the news and stuff,” she said. “When I see people moving on, it’s like, How can you?” -- Guardian

Dick Cheney

“I think the techniques we used were not torture. A lot of people try to call it that, but it wasn’t deemed torture at the time,” he told Maria Bartiromo. “People want to go back and try to rewrite history, but if it were my call, I’d do it again.” -- Crooks & Liars

Happy Mothers Day from D.T. 

“I moved on her like a bitch. But I couldn’t get there. And she was married...

...I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” ~Trump https://t.co/mqcoEj5IKh

— Alyssa Milano (@Alyssa_Milano) May 13, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Wayne LaPierre, head of the NRA

... also pushed to arm teachers and called on schools to be “the most hardened targets in this country.” -- Washington Post

Derek Black

 We Shouldn't Call Teacher Salary Hikes 'Raises' -- EdWeek

Chicago Tribune Guild 

'We did it... We have a union' -- Statement

Charles J. Johnson, Tribune editor & union organizer 

 "We have been badly mistreated by a series of corporate owners, Tronc only being the most recent, and we've decided to take some control over the future of our journalism in the city of Chicago." -- NPR

Atty. Lorna McMillion

“You have a charter school that can, in one breath, say, ‘Hey, we’re a public school, don’t sue us,’ and in the next say, ‘Hey, we’re not a public school, don’t sue us.'” -- Texas Tribune

Greg Hinz

 I'm particularly interested to see if Police Board Chair Lori Lightfoot gets in [Chicago mayor's race] because, more than most candidates, she has a foot in all sorts of political camps. -- Crain's 

Afghanistan 17 years later...

 “They’ve got to screen everybody who’s going to be working directly with the [brigade],” said an Army officer who was involved in preparing bases for the new adviser teams earlier this year and who, like others contacted for this story, agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity. “That means screening basically the whole damn Afghan National Army, and we’re way behind the power curve on that.” -- Politico

Steve Doocy

"Keep in mind, whatever [Gina Haspel] did" to torture detainees, "she was doing it as a directive and it was all within the law". -- Fox & Friends

WEEKEND QUOTABLES 50 years ago, My Lai...

Journalist Seymour Hersh recounts the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam

Fifty years ago, on March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers "went from house to house and killed and raped and mutilated, and that just went on until everybody was either run away or killed". -- Democracy Now

Ex-CIA chief John Brennan on Trump

“When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history." -- Guardian

J.B. Pritzker on putting $69.5 million into campaign 

“We simply are trying to make sure that we’re paying the bills in the campaign, and we’re very excited about the opportunity to simply get our message out.” -- Tribune

Vincent Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights

Gina Haspel should be arrested, not promoted, and the Senate, if it has a single shred of respect left for the law, should not confirm her. -- Guardian

Gary Younge

The problem with Democrats looking on Donald Trump’s presidency as a slow-motion car crash is that it concedes they are spectators at a moment when they should be in the driving seat – and that, when we come to survey the wreckage, there will be many innocent victims. -- Guardian

Kate McKinnon doing Betsy DeVos

 Analyzing the merits of public schools and charter schools, McKinnon said: “I don’t like to think of things in terms of school. It should be up to the states. In Wyoming, for example, which has many potential grizzlies, there should be a school for bears. And in Louisiana, crocodile crossing guards. And in North Carolina, stop being trans, and that’s what’s best for them.” 

As for the school shooting issue, she added, “We are working hard to ensure that all schools are safe learning environments for guns.” -- SNL

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Chuck Schumer gives advice to Trump on how to be a good opportunist

"He likes us. He likes me anyway..Here's what I told him. I said, 'Mr. President, you're much better off if you can sometimes step right and sometimes step left. If you have to step just in one direction, you're boxed.'" -- CNN 

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) on Dem's deal with Trump

"I love Nancy Pelosi. I don’t have any doubt of her authenticity and commitment. But how do I now have to accept border security? Do I now have to put up half a fence? Is it going to have electricity and barbed wire on it?" -- Politico 

Robert Jay Lifton, psychohistorian

The American president has particular power. This makes Trump the most dangerous man in the world. He’s equally dangerous because of his finger on the nuclear trigger and because of his mind ensconced in solipsistic reality. The two are a dreadful combination. -- Bill Moyers & Co. 

Atty. G. Flint Taylor

About half (of the $125 million in taxpayer money used to defend torturer Jon Burge) has gone to the survivors. The other half has gone to...pin-stripe patronage'. That's all your downtown law firms that are hired to fight us in court, about twenty-five to thirty million that has gone into the pockets of those lawyers defending Jon Burge and Richie Daley. -- Hitting Left

Diane Ravitch

Betsy DeVos is the first secretary of education in our history who is actually hostile to public education. We've never had this before. -- NPE 

Racism works by raising the bar for some people, and lowering the bar considerably for other people. @chrislhayeshttps://t.co/paJ3Ztt4Dd

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) September 16, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Brandon Victor Dixon (Aaron Burr)

“We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir." --  Hamilton cast to Mike Pence

Alt-Right leader, Richard B. Spencer

“I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans.” -- New York Times

Ta-Nehisi Coates on Trump election

"This is who we are. If you understand the history of this country, this is nothing new so we should not be shocked. If we look at 250 years of slavery, you look at Frederick Douglas during reconstruction seeing it overturned, you look at Ida B Wells going south to document lynching, and all the violence we always suffer. Then you would know it is the same country and we just need go get up in the morning and get ready to fight.” -- At NCTE

John McCain (Store this one away for future reference)

 “I don’t give a damn what the president of the United States wants to do or anybody else wants to do. We will not waterboard. We will not do it...What does it say about America if we’re going to inflict torture on people?”  -- Halifax international security forum

New Dem Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sanders

“I’m not going to point fingers looking back. I think that is divisive. But Bernie makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways.” -- Huffington Post

 Dr. Martin Luther King on resistance (1963)

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. --  Letter from Birmingham City Jail

On issues of racism and bigotry, let me be very clear, there is no compromise. pic.twitter.com/anCFrunzGO

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 20, 2016

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Michele Bollinger, teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington, D.C.

“Why should Lynne Cheney get to tell me what I teach in my classroom?” -- N.Y. Times

Michelle Strater Gunderson, first-grade teacher

 I teach first grade in a neighborhood school for the Chicago Public Schools. The PARCC exam begins in the third grade, but even though my students did not take the test, their schedules and learning were still disrupted and negatively affected by the tests. -- Living in Dialogue

Kate Grossman

In a high-school universe defined by choice, these schools and students are the clear losers. Chicago’s neediest students are clustered at the bottom of the pecking order of the district, in the most under-resourced and embattled schools. -- Atlantic

North Carolina NAACP Pres. William Barber

 “We cannot be silent in the face of this race-based, class-based, homophobic and transphobic attack on wage earners, civil rights, and the LGBTQ community, Together with our many allies, we will coordinate a campaign of nonviolent direct action along with other forms of nonviolent protest that will instruct our legislators with respect to the rights of all people.” -- The State

Springsteen guitarist, Steven Van Zandt won't play in N.C.

  "This sort of thing is spreading like an evil virus around the country. We felt we better stop this, we should try and stop this early, and hopefully other people will rise up and join us." -- London Telegraph

Andy Richter remembers Hastert's chair

“I went to Yorkville HS ’80-’84 & I remember this chair. Purportedly ‘to keep boys from fighting,’” -- Sun-Times

CIA Director John Brennan on waterboarding

 "I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure," -- NBC News

Why not blame torture on teacher unions?

OINK! -- Rudy Giuliani blames "liberal guilty whites", teachers, and their unions for violence in black community. He claims that by resisting vouchers, expansion of privately-run charters, and teacher pay based on test scores, teachers are fomenting black violence.

BTW,Giuliani is an admitted water-boarder (of Americans and Italians).

MIXED SIGNALS...And how about former Chicago cop Steve Mandel, sentenced yesterday to life-plus-5 years for plotting gruesome kidnapping and torture. I guess it's illegal -- unless the government does it. I doubt that even monster Mandel could have imagined rectal feeding.

Burge

The Chicago PD has an inglorious record of such stuff. And it's not just about Daley's guy Commander Burge. Last month, a U.N. committee addressed the issue of torture committed by Chicago Police Department Commander Jon Burge and other police officers between 1972 and 1991 and share its dismay that no officer has been “convicted for these acts of torture for reasons including the statute of limitations expiring.”

It acknowledged that a federal investigation had asserted there were no “prosecutable constitutional violations” uncovered, however, the committee criticized the fact that the “vast majority of those tortured—most of them African Americans—have received no compensation for the extensive injuries suffered.”

Now top U.N. officials are calling for  individuals responsible for the "criminal conspiracy" revealed in the torture report to be "brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes." Good luck on that one.

Maybe Burge, Giuliani, Brennan, and Cheney types will blame it all on the teacher unions.

BEST CHUY QUOTE...Chuy Garcia held a news conference at Dyett High School in Bronzeville where he embraced the community's plan to turn the school that has been on the chopping block for years into the Dyett Global Leadership and Green Technology High School.

Emanuel’s handpicked school team recently reversed course and announced that Dyett would remain open. But instead of adopting the community plan, CPS is issuing a request-for-proposals from all comers.

Garcia likened the mayor’s decision to ignore the community plan for Dyett to his giveaway of 17 acres of precious lakefront parkland to movie mogul George Lucas to build a new interactive museum.

“You fly into Chicago from Hollywood. You give the mayor a lot of money and say, 'I would like to build a museum for Darth Vader.'” City Hall says, 'I like it. Here’s some of our lakefront. We’ll lease it to you for a $1. The mayor calls it 'bold,' " Garcia said.

“If you don’t live in Hollywood—if you have to take the bus downtown from Bronzeville—[but] still, you bring a plan supported by thousands of people to improve your community and save your high school. You bring a plan backed by the best institutions. City Hall says, 'You don’t know what’s best for your own kids. You’re not an expert. You don’t understand your own neighborhood.’ ”