2713

Rah Roh!

2714

My Canadian relatives make a yearly trip to the US. This year they are reconsidering, they just don’t feel right about it.

2715

I never thought that “Blame Canada” would ever be something outside of the super awesome South Park movie of nearly 20 years ago. Now it’s the Administration’s policy.

2717

I don’t blame them, but just a reminder that the majority of the US population doesn’t like Trump. That’s especially true for most tourist destinations they might plan on visiting. :)

Random story: This is in Ottawa in the late 90’s, when I lived up that way. My girlfriend and I were planning a move to the States (I’m American, she’s Canadian). That year, her step-father decided that was a great opportunity to take the RV on an epic road trip the next summer, going from Ontario all the way down to Utah, hitting various sites along the way.

When he mentioned this, his two girls (around 8 years old or so) burst into tears, just absolutely bawling. When they finally calmed down enough to find out what was wrong, it was because they were terrified of heading south of the border. In their minds, they were going to end up shot and killed by some random lunatic with a gun before they made it back to Canada. I tried hard to stifle my laugh and explain to them that outside very specific places, they should be perfectly safe. I mean, it’s not like they were going to attend school down here or something.

2718

I was hoping to pull up an embed of the 1987 SNL skit “Amerida” (a parody of the miniseries “Amerika,” in which Canada rather than the U.S.S.R. invades the U.S.), but they’ve all been pulled down as far as I can tell.

2719

Betsy DeVos is taking her job seriously, guys. Why, instead of lazing away her summer, she’s gone on a learning tour …

… Of Europe. Switzerland, to be exact.

What hard work and sacrifice (I mean, not literal sacrifice, obviously, taxpayers are paying for the trip) from a public servant! I mean, she’s going during the off-season.

2720

What a rough job. Where do I sign up, BTW?

2721

Betsy DeVos is a monster, and is not fit to reform our educational system, but our one-size-fits all high school->college ladder is in dire need of change. We should definitely be learning from Europe and how they do things.

2722

Clearly a junket is the only possible way this can be accomplished!

2723

I was thinking today that i’m shocked someone hasn’t started an image campaign using trump and russian imagery. Ykow, the standard politician image smothered with things like vote DA in 2020, to using the red white and blue per the russian flag, to just using trump over cyrillic language.

Regardless how the whole investigation thing pans out, this just strikes me as a goldmine of PR, plus it puts trump in the unenviable place of doing what he wants to do/believes in (supporting russia and putin) and feeding the campaign, or not doing that and resigning himself to being manipulated by PR - and i don’t think he would take being manipulated either well or gracefully.

2724

Agreed, Menzo. So much is wrong with the schools system in the US, yet we’re largely stuck because it’s the only game in town. That’s why I appreciate at least the thought behind charter schools, but the reality of it is more often than not an even worse mess.

2725

And said messes often also hurt public schools even more by taking their funding with stuff like vouchers and the like.

2726

Yep, it becomes the worst of both worlds.

2727

I wonder how much time she has ever spent in an American public school?

2728

Aren’t public schools full of commoners? Why would she go there?

2729

How long can he last? Should we start a pool?

he enlisted Samantha Dravis, then serving as associate administrator for the EPA’s Office of Policy, to line up work for his wife.

2730

I don’t think he ever fires Pruitt. Trump seems to have a major hard-on for him. He’s survived countless shit like this already.

2731

Trump administration planning on building totally-not-concentration-camps for children:

2732

On some level, I think that Pruitt’s insane level of corruption has made him invincible somehow.

2733

The end is nigh.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/scott-pruitt-mentor-says-epa-203904025.html