We begin today with Heather Digby Parton of Salon stating a truth that’s in front of all of our faces.
The GOP base actually loves Trump for his out-of-touch, imperial ways, which he's making more and more obvious in this second term. For instance, he clearly has no idea what every single person in the country calls the store where they buy food and household supplies. [...]
He's decked out the Oval Office to look like the Las Vegas version of the palace of Versailles and is running around the Middle East right now gushing over his favorite fellow world leaders — oil-rich Sheiks and potentates — as if they are his long-lost relatives. He's whining that they have bigger planes than him, so he is planning to accept a "gift" of a $400 million dollar flying palace from his good friends the Qataris. A few MAGA influencers and GOP politicians have objected, but Trump doesn't care. He is running his presidency as if he were a monarch who answers to no one. At this point, it's unclear if he does.
Consider this roundup to be a bit of a follow-up to yesterday’s post by Markos.
Jamelle Bouie of The New York Times indicates the many ways that Trump’s most ardent supporters— that is, white rural Americans— will be severely hurt by the current Republican policy agenda.
Given the importance of rural voters to his political coalition — and that of any Republican who hopes to follow in his footsteps — you might assume that Trump would prioritize the interests of rural voters. This is, after all, what you’re supposed to do in a democracy: reward your supporters for their support.
Not so for Trump and his Republican allies in Congress. If anything, their agenda is calibrated to devastate rural America. [...]
Much of the conversation about the political state of rural America, and specifically that of white rural America, is preoccupied with questions of culture. Democrats are seen as incompatible with the norms and mores of this segment of the country, with commentators engaged in endless conversation about the specific positions and the specific language the party could use to make inroads.
The irony is that for all of the Republican Party’s cultural affinity for rural America, its policy agenda is singularly hostile to the material interests of the millions of Americans who live in rural areas. But no one seems to want to ask Republicans, or Donald Trump for that matter, to explain the yawning distance between what they promise for rural Americans and what they actually do for rural Americans.
Auzinea Bacon of CNN says that the tariffs that the tacky shoe salesman wants WalMart (and presumably every other company) to “eat” will literally include what WalMart shoppers eat.
Economists have told CNN that the tariffs will burden lower- and middle-income Americans, who have historically been Walmart’s primary customer base. And consumers often go to the retail giant for non-negotiable purchases, such as groceries.
“We have always worked to keep our prices as low as possible and we won’t stop. We’ll keep prices as low as we can for as long as we can given the reality of small retail margins,” Walmart told CNN in a statement Saturday. [...]
Bananas, avocados and coffee are among some of the groceries that McMillon said come from Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru. America also imports beets, cabbage, melons, and pineapples from Costa Rica. Sweet potatoes and citrus are imported from Peru.
Walmart did not say how much prices could increase on fruits and vegetables.
Beth Mole of Ars Technica writes that a proposed plan to ban prescription fluoride supplements for children by the RFK Jr-run health department will hurt rural dental health.
This week, the US health department announced a plan to ban prescription fluoride supplements for children. These ingested fluoride products are dispensed at safe doses by doctors and dentists to prevent tooth decay in children who are unable to get adequate fluoride doses from community water systems—something that may become more common as more states and cities remove or ban fluoride from their water.
Both the American Dental Association (ADA) and the American Academy of Pediatricsrecommend fluoridating community water and advise prescribing fluoride supplements for children who do not get adequate fluoride dosages through their water. [...]
ADA President Brett Kessler worries what children in places such as Utah and Florida will do to get adequate fluoride if the ban on supplements goes through. “In non-fluoridated communities, especially rural areas, fluoride supplements are the only chance for individuals to get the appropriate amount of fluoride to prevent tooth decay," Kessler said in the statement. The move will be "particularly harmful to the most vulnerable and those who lack access to care," he added. [...]
The ADA noted that places that have removed fluoride from drinking water, such as Calgary, Canada, and Juneau, Alaska, have seen increases in dental decay, particularly among children and low-income populations.
Maya Yang of the Guardian details the plan in Oklahoma to teach 2020 election conspiracy theories in schools.
The previous standard for studying the 2020 election merely said: “Examine issues related to the election of 2020 and its outcome.” The new version is more expansive: “Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of ‘bellwether county’ trends.”
The revised curriculum standard comes at the behest of Ryan Walters, the state school superintendent, who has publicly voiced his support for Trump. In October, Walters lauded Trump in an
interview, saying that “Trump’s won the argument on education”. [...]
The new standard raised red flags even among Walters’ fellow Republicans, including the governor and legislative leaders. They were concerned that several last-minute changes, including the language about the 2020 election and a provision stating the source of the Covid-19 virus was a Chinese lab, were added just hours before the state school board voted on them.
Jacques Berlinerblau of MSNBC examines the pros and cons of college professors that use AI tools in order to prepare for the classes that they teach.
Last week’s New York Magazine story “Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College” chronicled the myriad ways undergraduates are abusing ChatGPT. This past Tuesday, The New York Times shared its own shocking reveal about AI malfeasance in the classroom: It turns out that professors are abusing generative AI chatbots too! [...]
These revelations about professors reportedly behaving badly are emerging at the same time that faith in American higher education is sinking to its lowest point in decades. They also coincide with the Trump administration’s unprecedented attempts to punish ideologically noncompliant schools by withholding federal funds. Narratives about professors using AI to fashion their lectures or, distressingly, to grade students’ work, aren’t doing anything to boost our approval ratings. [...]
Tenure’s demise bears a causal relationship to what is referred to as “the casualization of academic labor.” The vast majority of professors in the United States have become harried, overworked cogs in a brainy gig economy. They are teaching larger and larger classes for lower and lower wages, with less and less job security and no academic freedom protections. It’s under these circumstances, and these circumstances alone, that I would suggest we extend some imaginative sympathy to academics; if they use AI to mark term papers and stack their slide decks it’s only because their classes are crammed and their wages are meager.
Finally today, a seven-person reporting team from Pew Research Center looks at what a wide swath of Americans consider to be “news.”
Before the rise of digital and social media, researchers had long approached the question of what news is from the journalist perspective. Ideas of news were often tied to the institution of journalism, and journalists defined news and determined what was newsworthy. “News” was considered information produced and packaged within news organizations for a passive audience, with emphasis (particularly in the United States) placed on a particular tone, a set of values and the idea of journalism playing a civic role in promoting an informed public.
In the digital age, researchers – including Pew Research Center – increasingly study news from the audience perspective, what some have deemed an “audience turn.” Using this approach, the concept of news is not necessarily tied to professional journalism, and audiences, rather than journalists, determine what is news. [...]
There is not a one-size-fits-all answer to what “news” is – news means something different to everyone. Some online discussion board participants seemed aware of this: As one man in his 60s said, “What I consider news might not be news to others.” [...]
In both our qualitative and survey research, three attributes remain consistent when people describe what news means to them: Information must be factual, up to date and important to society to be considered news.
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
