In Case You Missed It (v52)

Only five posts for you last week - took a couple of days off (one on purpose, one due to technology issues).  Here's your week in review.

Sunday School brought us a conversation with Trump's Wisconsin Senator, Ron Johnson, who apparently can't bring himself to say anything even remotely honest about his boss. And Dana Bash, on CNN's SOTU, pushed him pretty hard to do so, particularly on his tweets about Kenosha, which she said were "agitating and actively encouraging his supporters." She wondered if that's what Johnson wanted to see from the president.

But, Dana, there are people -- there are people agitating all over the place. And what we need to do is get control of the situation.

He kept talking about Wisconsin officials; she kept asking about the president, finally asking him ..."would you prefer that the president not tweet agitating comments and agitating ideas on his Twitter feed?"

Well, that's how you -- that's how you are typifying it. What we need to do is, we need to encourage an end to the violence and the rioting.

It's a cult - I swear it's a cult. And the penalty for speaking ill of the Grand Poo-bah or whatever they call him must be of the utmost severity. Also in a classroom? Kate Bedingfield, who's a key person on the Biden/Harris campaign. She, too, had a hard time answering a direct question. 

For your Extra Credit this week, we sat in on conversations with athlete/activists Etan Thomas and Sue Bird (with Chuck on MTP) and Nneka Ogwumike (with Dana Bash). Those conversations centered on how current and former professional athletes are getting involved with social justice issues. 

Both Bird and Ogwumike, who are WNBA players and leaders in the player's association, talked about how much support they have from the league, and that the players have been leaders in speaking out on issues. Here's how Ogwumike sees how they're able to leverage their fame for good.

And the platforms that we have, just as the politicians do, need to be used to effect change in our communities. And, as athletes, we would be discrediting our essence if we didn't use that platform for good and for change. Quite frankly, too, a lot of what we speak about, it shouldn't be political, but, unfortunately, the way that our country has kind of evolved, certain issues, certain human issues have become political.

Thomas gave a great illustration of the difference being supportive and enabling, something that the Poo-bah could benefit from hearing.

So, for instance, I love my baby Sierra. You know, that's my girl. But if baby Sierra came to me and said, "Daddy, I want to have chocolate chips for dinner," I wouldn't be supporting her by telling her that she can go have chocolate chips for dinner, you know what I mean? That's not supporting her.

And Trump and the right believe that you have to allow the police to do anything that they want to do and then that equals supporting them... Applauding someone and saying, "Everything that you do is wonderful" is not supporting them. It's actually enabling them. And, you know, so I would say Trump is actually acting more anti-police than what he's claiming to be.

Too bad this will have fallen on deaf ears, right?

I tossed a Knock Knock post out there this week, wondering about Dems and their purity tests (never a perceived sexual predator or sexually indiscreet person shall you be) and their whole 'are we progressives or are we traditionalists' conflict.  On the latter, the answer is yes, we are progressives AND we are traditionalists, as least this cycle, at least in Massachusetts.

A Kennedy lost a statewide race for the first time ever, even though Joe Kennedy III is young, and progressive. Those two things, and his family name, were not enough to allow him to unseat 70-something progressive Ed Markey, who had the support of AOC.  In the other race, the one with the perceived sexually indiscreet young progressive, the battle went to the 70-something traditional Rep. Richard Neal, who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.  Fickle Dems? Principled Dems? Not sure.

Thursday's Email of the Week was from a politician, former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who through his massive charity is going to be donating millions - 100 of them, actually - to historically black medical schools over the next four years.

This funding will allow the schools to provide scholarships up to $100,000 to nearly every medical student currently enrolled and receiving financial aid.

These four schools tend to have higher graduation rates of Black students than medical schools overall -- in part because increasing diversity in medicine and offering medical services for communities most in need are ingrained in their mission, so they provide more support to help students overcome obstacles and graduate.

Good stuff - the kind of thing real billionaires do with their money - and what real billionaires do with their charities (you get the drift, I'm sure.)

And, back to normal for our TGIF post after spending the last two weeks publishing the acceptance speeches of Biden-Harris and Trump-Pence, I shared coverage of the very different visits to Kenosha made by Trump the Agitator and Biden the Listener, and the president's bizarre tale about a plane full of looters and rioters and vandals, dressed in black, and six people who were generally like a seventh who told the story... confused yet?  There's more confusion to that one I can assure you. 

And I couldn't resist talking about Trump's bizarre claim about Joe Biden "abandoning" Scranton PA... it's a big deal for the president, it is -- he mentions it frequently, as shown in the example below of the president getting all of this straightened out for Pennsylvanians.

He keeps talking about, ‘I was born in Scranton. I lived in Scranton.’ Yeah, for a few years, and then he left for another state. You know the state. But this Scranton stuff. That’s why I figured I’d come here and explain to you one thing. But I think you people know it better than I do. He left! He abandoned Pennsylvania. He abandoned Scranton.

Yep -- he sure as heck did. When he was 10. And his family moved to Delaware. Because all 10-year-0lds have the power to keep their families from moving, right? And didn't the president just abandon his home town, his state, too? Hypocrisy much, Donny?

After the conventions, it was kind of nice to slow down for a bit, but I'm expecting this week to take off again. Hope you stick around for the ride.

I'll be back later with today's Sunday School.