On Whose Side Is He?

[Steve] Bannon has been recruiting and promoting challengers to GOP incumbents and the party’s preferred candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

And

…it could also imperil Republican majorities in the House and Senate.

Indeed.  He’s trying to get farther right candidates nominated in place of incumbents, but he’s likely to drag the party too far right to suit a center-right population of Americans, force serious candidates to expend resources on frivolous primaries (rather than primaries involving serious Conservative candidates), even get candidates like Christine O’Donnell, Todd Akin, or Sharron Angle nominated—which in their time cost the Republicans entirely winnable Senate seats..

He could do more good for the Republican Party, and frankly for our Republic, by doing these things within the Progressive-Democratic Party to ensure incumbents spend their resources on primaries and are dragged farther left, even get Left-wing extremists nominated onto the Progressive-Democratic tickets in the general elections.

Of course Bannon knows all of this full well.  Hence my question.  Is he really willing to risk the Senate and lose the chance for a Republican President and Senate to get more Conservative jurists appointed to the Supreme Court and to our lower Federal courts?

Or, another question: is this just sour grapes run amok because Bannon can’t be a White House player anymore?

One More Reason

…for charter and voucher schools, this time provided by the Biloxi (public) School District.  They’ve banned Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird from its 8th grade classrooms.  Why?

…some of the book’s language “makes people uncomfortable.”

Never mind that proper education must make people uncomfortable because it challenges their preconceived notions, it makes them think, it makes them think for themselves.  It even confronts students with uncomfortable aspects of our history, like Atticus Finch explaining to his daughter, Scout, the term “nigger-lover.”  Or Tom Robinson referring to himself, ironically, as a nigger.

No, we have to raise precious little snowflakes unable to take care of themselves in adulthood.

Never mind, either, that the Web site associated with the district says that

To Kill A Mockingbird teaches students that compassion and empathy don’t depend upon race or education.

Instead, the school has ducked the question:

School board Vice President Kenny Holloway says other books can teach the same lessons.

No, very few do, and those that do don’t do it nearly as well.