Terri Proud

PHOENIX – The state House voted 42-15 Tuesday to allow high schools to teach elective courses on the influence of the Bible on Western culture and civilization.

Tuesday’s vote came over the objections of House Minority Leader Chad Campbell. The Phoenix Democrat said limiting schools to using the Old and New Testaments “is going to run into a constitutional challenge.”

But Rep. Terri Proud, R-Tucson, who wrote HB 2563, said she does not see a problem. She said the language allowing the use of the texts for non-religious purposes has been approved by others.

via House OKs Bible course in schools.

I wonder if these same Republicans know that teaching from the Bible surely violates HB2281, the “Ethnic Studies ban.”

– It promotes Ethnic Solidarity, and many Arizonans will never part of the “chosen people” for not being circumcised.

– It promotes Ethnic Resentment, where the Infinitely Good and Almighty God allows his chosen people to leave not even the women and children alive after a city rampage of enemy territory.

It also suggests the ultimate resentment by suggesting eternal damnation for these other people. If God wants nothing to do with them for eternity, then in this world why should we bother with them, and what’s a bunch of radioactive uranium-tipped weaponry to them anyways?

Class lesson, Genesis 19

The Sodom (where the word Sodomy comes from) and Gomorrah story in this chapter is usually used to condemn homosexuality by Christians.

This will provide for some interesting reading in elementary schools as students ask the following questions that will naturally arise. For example, in verse 8 how does Lot respond to the evil towns people who want to have “fun” with his angelic guests (hence the homosexuality is bad connection)?

“No, my friends. Don’t do this wicked thing. ⁸ Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

Nice. It is better for Lot to offer up his two virgin daughters for the townspeople to “do what you like with them” all night long, but heaven-forbid (literally) they do anything with his grown men who are visiting.

That’s the way Yahweh rolls. It gets even better!

After they leave the city and God destroys it and Lot’s wife turns into a pillar of salt for turning and looking at it (yes it all happened! God wrote this book!), the juicy part begins:

³³That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

³⁴ The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” ³⁵ So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

³⁶ So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. ³⁷ The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. ³⁸ The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.

I have much to comment about the rest of Genesis 19, but I’m sure you can imagine what underage schoolchildren will be asking.

Terri Proud must be very proud of introducing these new texts to our children. It will surely benefit them in society.

Not those other texts of more recent history that TUSD has banned; those were filled with too many facts about history. What we really need in Arizona is more Genesis 19, maybe even a play based off this Holy passage from the Holy Bible?

Make us proud Arizona!

“After a tortuous process and long hours for the board-appointed committee which advised the Pima County superintendent of schools, Dr. Linda Arzoumanian, I was happy to learn that she had appointed Dr. Alex Sugiyama to be our new board member. Dr. Sugiyama, like me, teaches economics in UA’s Eller School of Management. (I play no role in his supervision or evaluation.) Whether this strikes you as good news or bad news probably depends upon whether you think it is good or bad to have people who think like economists governing school districts.”

- Mark Stegeman, TUSD board president.

What do you think? Do we need more economists governing school districts?

They have done a wonderful job with the US economy and their mathematical models of derivative destruction for society, but extreme wealth for the 1%.

Lack of empathy and white privilege allows white leaders to disregard the 61% Latino schoolchildren they are supposed to be helping.

Economists have the mind power to choose a threat of money loss over the children it affects, an ability like the Beautiful Mind’s John Nash to think in terms of numbers only.

Nobel Prize winner in Economics John Nash, who studied game theory just as Stegeman does, was asked why he believed such preposterous things outside of his field of knowledge.

He responded that they came from the same place his other knowledge came from, and since he was praised for being brilliant in math and economics (both abstract fields not always applicable to reality), he thought his other crazy ideas were valid as well.

In math departments you can find plenty of brilliant people with beautiful minds who tend to be on the spectrum, and I’m not talking about eigenvalues.

That’s what Beautiful Minds will do, and it will also not allow you to see the disaster that TUSD is in and that you have helped cause; how the nation and world and top intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky view it, and how someone like Mark Stegeman can continue to pretend there is nothing wrong… nothing in terms of racism at least.

One number that is conveniently ignored is the $63 million in desegregation money TUSD gets and in return it must follow federal court orders which require MAS classes be taught. Another number that was ignored was the higher graduation rates for MAS students.

Somehow Mark Stegeman thinks a lowly administrative law judge who mostly hears insurance and liquor license cases supersedes Federal Judge Bury who is also acting under orders from the Ninth Circuit Court ruling last year saying TUSD has a racism problem.

Things are so bad that the leaders of TUSD cannot even fix the problem that they make worse, so a Special Master has been appointed to fix what Pedicone and Stegeman have worsened.

Mark Stegeman

Consider the following from his Stegeman’s webpage:

[Stegeman] knows that TUSD must provide teachers the tools and support they need and let them teach!

With an exclamation point even! Let them teach!

Unless they are Mexican American teachers, and then not even the books can be in the classroom letting the teachers teach as they always have. The irony is surely lost on Stegeman due to his active role in stopping MAS teachers from letting them teach!

Stegeman’s lack of understanding of this hierarchy may be why he pretends a tenured professor has no influence over a lecturer in his department, as if department heads exist in isolation without any input from faculty colleagues.

I have two questions for Stegeman.

1. Did Sugiyama reveal that he could not attend any of the TUSD meetings on Tuesday on time when being interviewed? Now the ENTIRE community must wait for meetings to start late because of Sugiyama’s schedule?
2. Why has Sugiyama shown ZERO interest in TUSD before this? No committees, no attendance at board meetings, nothing? Why the sudden interest, and why him over all the other much more qualified candidates? As much as I disagree with the Hunnicutts, at least they show up and show an interest over time; an interest is being anti-Latino, but that’s a different story.

Surely it has nothing to do with being a few doors down from you at the UA Eller College?

After the nation’s Palinsanity when one of the two political parties actually considered the former less-than-one-term Alaskan governor as a great and qualified Presidential candidate, the nation was consumed (I guess, since I don’t follow sports that closely) by “Lin-sanity.”

Palinsanity

The spectacular New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin just made more headlines by leading his team to victory over the defending champion Dallas Mavericks, with twenty-eight points and a career-high fourteen assists. But that’s not the only reason Lin is in the news.

Outrage erupted when ESPN’s website posted a headline about the NBA’s first American player of Chinese origin that read, “Chink in the Armor.” Seriously.

via The Nation.

Was this a racist headline by ESPN?

There are only two conclusions one can draw from all of this. Either ESPN has a group of stone racists sitting at the SportsCenter Desk, hosting their radio shows and writing headlines (doubtful), or they have no anti-racist mental apparatus for how to talk about an Asian-American player. As a result we see again that people of Asian descent are subject to a casual racism that other ethnic groups don’t have to suffer quite as starkly.

No one at ESPN would talk or write about a lesbian athlete and unconsciously put forth that the woman in question would have a “finger in the dike.” If an African-American player was thought of as stingy, it’s doubtful that anyone at the World Wide Leader would describe that person as “niggardly.” They would never brand a member of a football team as a “Redskin” (wait, scratch that last one.)

They wouldn’t do it because a mental synapse would spark to life and signal their brain that in 2012, unless you’re speaking at CPAC, that’s just not OK.

via Jeremy Lin and ESPN’s ‘Accidental’ Racism | The Nation.

Mickey Rooney

Consider Mickey Rooney’s performance as the Japanese neighbor upstairs to Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

That was over 50 years ago!

Not much has changed when it comes to how Americans think of Asian Americans.

They better figure this out soon, because they are the ones owning more of America everyday to fund our wars, buying many of the foreclosed homes, and as the last Super Bowl demonstrated, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai and other foreign auto manufacturers are making their presence known.**

P.S. I know there is LOT more about this issue that I’m not covering. This was just intended as a quick blog and to encourage you to read the entire The Nation article linked to above.