So You're a Texan for Hillary...

First and foremost, I want to thank you for your interest in politics. Believe it or not, it's a rare thing right now in our nation for people not only to care enough to vote, but to also research candidates and make an informed decision. With your help and a decent strategy, I believe we can turn the political tides in favor of a strong middle-class.

For those of you who have yet to determine which presidential candidate would best represent you, here is a link to a detailed questionnaire on ISideWith.com. Many of the questions have links for further information.

If after you take the quiz you find that Bernie Sanders is your best option, click here.

Alright. Now that you've decided on Hillary, let's go over five things you can do to help her win.

So You're a Texan for Bernie...

First and foremost, I want to thank you for your interest in politics. Believe it or not, it's a rare thing right now in our nation for people not only to care enough to vote, but to also research candidates and make an informed decision. With your help and a decent strategy, I believe we can turn the political tides in favor of a strong middle-class.

For those of you who have yet to determine which presidential candidate would best represent you, here is a link to a detailed questionnaire on ISideWith.com. Many of the questions have links for further information.

If after you take the quiz you find that Hillary Clinton is your best option, click here.

Alright. Now that you've decided on Bernie, let's go over five things you can do to help him win.

School Privatization Primer

Originally Published at Curmudgucation Blog by Peter Greene:

Every once in a while I try to take the many complicated and twisty threads, back up, and tie them into a bigger picture. Think of this as the kind of post you can share with people who don't read blogs about education every single day (no kidding-- there are such people, and they're too busy doing the work to spend time reading about doing the work).

There are many threads to the reformy movement in education, but perhaps the most predominant one is the push for privatization. Many folks look at education and they just see a gigantic pile of money that has previously gone untouched. To them, education is a multi-billion dollar industry that nobody is making real profit from.

Many of the aspects and features of what I'm about to lay out appeal to other sorts of folks for other sorts of reasons, but here is how they fit into the agenda of privatizers.

Step One: Create Failure

POTUS Does Podcast

President Obama talked for an hour on comedian Marc Maron’s WTF podcast program, episode 613, recorded live last Friday. President Barack Obama used the n-word during during the podcast discussion to make a point America continues to struggle with racism.

President Obama used the podcast format to have frank discussion of the issues as the nation examines the role racism played in a white supremacist killing nine African-Americans last week in a historically black church in Charleston.

"Racism, we are not cured of it. And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public," Obama said.

"That's not the measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter of overt discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior."

Marc Maron’s WTF podcast program, episode 613 - MP3

"I always tell young people, in particular, do not say that nothing has changed when it comes to race in America, unless you've lived through being a black man in the 1950s or '60s or '70s. It is incontrovertible that race relations have improved significantly during my lifetime and yours," Obama said. But he added that "the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination" exists in institutions and casts "a long shadow and that's still part of our DNA that's passed on."

Pres. Obama’s statement, that there is less American racism in 2015 than there was in 1965, is undoubtedly correct. Yet, last week, a white man walked into an historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. He sat inside the congregation for an hour, as churchgoers engaged in Bible study. Then he announced to the African American congregants that they are “taking over our country,” and he opened fire, killing nine men and women. That young white man was moved to violence by reading racist writings on the Council of Conservative Citizens website and other racist organization websites that promote white primacy. While Jim Crow segregation can not today be openly practiced, the racist beliefs behind those once prevalent Jim Crow laws remains alive and common across the states of the old confederate south.