My condolences to you and everyone else in VA.
It's typical for VA to swing against whomever is in the presidential party after a presidential election. I'm sorry that so many have forgotten how bad the last R governor in that fair state was. Correct me if I'm wrong - didn't he embezzle taxpayer money to line his own pockets?
I said to my hubby last night - don't forget that Twitler still has a big golf course over in Ashburn. Foreskin (my name for Youngkin) is probably a member there.
I knew McAuliffe couldn't win - once again a bad choice by the Dem party. He wasn't a great governor, just ok, and I figured the come-back attempt would fail. VA has that one term limit for a reason, and I agree with it, but think it should be a single 5 or 6 year term.
The Democratic Party: Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory since 1980.
For the first time in "I can't remember when", my county (southeastern PA) used paper ballots. I thought to myself, how long would it take to tally thousands of ballots, let alone hundreds of thousands across a state? It's labor intensive. I suspect a lot of voting was paper (including mail-in) and will be paper going forward, which means you can't assess the winner a few hours after the poll closes, much as the media is wont to do.
They may have called VA too early, might continue counting ballots, or a recount may happen. I'm still thinking about @dannyboy 's vision of Y's "seething rage and anger" and curious about its cause.
Yes, Dinkins was the first. Adams is the second, although we did elect our first ever African American Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg. I'm more excited about him.
The mayoral democratic primaries were crowded and two really qualified women lost to Adams. I would have preferred one of them (Kathryn Garcia and Maya Wiley).
I'm not sure how progressive Adams is (he's a former cop), but he definitely deserves a chance to lead. I'm rooting for his success and I hope he is given the respect he deserves. Dinkins was treated shabbily. Guiliani referred to him at a "men's room attendant."
Racism is everywhere folks. NYC is no exception.
I have to say I'm pretty discouraged. I know elections are cyclical but the problem is the GOP destroys, then the dems spend time trying to rebuild and govern. Yet people continue to vote for republicans and the rest of us who are awake are left to see the horror with eyes open.
Yesterday also gave me 2016-2020 PTSD. I mean we didn't really get a chance to enjoy the 2020 election because of all the denial and refusal to concede, then the insurrection, followed by sanitizing the insurrection. What a horror show.
I know there are positive predictions down the line and of course there will be setbacks, but for today I'm feeling pretty low. It'll pass, but it's where I am now.
I'm thoroughly uninterested in the the explications media outlets are providing about yesterday. The thing is, there were two damn gubernatorial elections plus a host of local elections. No pattern can be drawn from those results. But identify a pattern the media will, then they'll settle on some sort grand of narrative of what will happen next year and in 2024.
As I've said before, the media loves to play pretend oracle. Thanks but no thanks. I'll leave the the tea leaves to the professional psychics.
Wanted to share this tweet with y'all. While this might be not be entirely true it does raise the question of why wasn't this point raised?
@coyote I certainly see a pattern: The Democrats did not do anywhere near as well in the gubernatorial elections as they should have. Virginia is essentially a Democratic stronghold but they lost. New Jersey is also a Democratic-leaning state and they had a hard time winning there also. We do know that Joe Biden has greatly slipped in the polls and I think it's perfectly reasonable to believe it was a factor. The thing that really bothers me is the fact that Donald Trump and his major accomplices have never been held accountable for their terrible crimes. The only people that are getting punished for the riot and attempted overthrow of our democracy on January 6th are those low on the totem poll who were just carrying out the desires of their evil leader.
I'm thoroughly uninterested in the the explications media outlets are providing about yesterday. The thing is, there were two damn gubernatorial elections plus a host of local elections. No pattern can be drawn from those results. But identify a pattern the media will, then they'll settle on some sort grand of narrative of what will happen next year and in 2024.
As I've said before, the media loves to play pretend oracle. Thanks but no thanks. I'll leave the the tea leaves to the professional psychics.
Thank you! I am so with you on this, Coyote. I deleted media stories that came to my inbox that tried to blame the democrats, or Obama, or Biden. I don't like when we blame our own.
@dannyboy Hi Dannyboy,
I had a quick look and have 3 websites on Australian education you might like to have a look at some time. I have no idea how our schooling is going these days. It was a mighty long time ago since I was there. I just thought you might find it interesting to have a nosy look about.
www.my school.edu.au and www.australiancurriculum.edu.au
www.acara.edu.au which is the independent authority which sets the curriculum for Aust schools
Regards Matildagirl
@jeanne-mayell Interesting facts on the NJ governorship courtesy of Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report:
Phil Murphy broke a 40 year curse by being the first democrat in all those years to win re-election.
NJ is no stranger to close elections. 1993 and 1997 were decided by 1 point. In 1981 the election was decided by 1000 votes.
So looks like Murphy's win is bigger than it appears. And an ugly win is still a win.
Also, as for VA, the governorship has gone to someone in the party not in the white house for the past 40 years. So yesterday's loss for the dems isn't an aberration, but a consistent trend.
Trying to cheer myself up over here. :)
@matildagirl I did a cursory look but will look deeper.
In terms of social studies it's always amazing to me to see how many states and countries start off with some version of "Myself and Others" as the theme for Kindergarten, "My School" as the first grade theme, and "My community" as the second grade theme.
Also interesting is, at least here in Michigan, we have a very well developed set of standards for United States History which gets taught over the course of three different grade levels. Australia puts that larger focus on WORLD History, and seems to have much better standards than the ones we drafted when we revised a couple of years ago.
I also wonder how much confusion might be eliminated here in the US if we stopped calling the next iteration of our standards "The new standards" - for example, I was in HS when Michigan's first sets of standards came out in the late nineties. (Before that schools and districts chose what they wanted to teach where) - I ended up teaching under them for a few years before they changed in 2007 - they were introduced as "new standards" but it was an iterative update. And then in 2013 I joined the writing team for the next version of the "new standards" which was once again an iterative update.
Australia seems to cut that off at the pass with "Version 8.4 of our standards are out now. Version 9 is in review and will be out shortly" - which I love because teachers hear "new standards" and think "Here we go again!" even though we have yet to completely pull the rug out from underneath them and replace everything.
Looking forward to digging deeper! Thank you for sharing this!
I still have "zen" and I'm sticking by it.
I've been trying to ignore the news for the sake of my mental health, which has been shaky esp. since my brother died. And I tell myself that all these frustrating conflicts are noise and distraction. And that I/we need to get our heads out of the weeds and look to the horizon. That could be true or it could be just me trying to keep my grip.