As usual, when a meme says “Let me get this straight” they, in fact, do not get it straight. This meme makes it appear like this is somehow a response to shootings like Uvalde, but it’s not. And the well meaning program goes back decades.
▪️The Texas Legislature passed this bill in Sept 2021, well before the Uvalde shooting. It provides DNA and fingerprinting kits to school districts to distribute to parents. The kits are totally optional, no parent is required to use them.
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/87R/billtext/pdf/SB02158F.pdf
▪️These kits from the Child ID Program were developed back in 1997, and more than 70 million have been distributed in North America. It began with kits given out at college and NFL football games, but has since expanded.
https://childidprogram.com/about-us/
▪️In fact, back in 1999 the Texas legislature passed a resolution supporting the program and outlined efforts offering every child in TX a kit. Other states as well as the US Congress have also passed resolutions praising the program.
https://journals.senate.texas.gov/sjrnl/76r/html/4-26.htm
▪️These kits are primarily used for missing children, although could be useful for other emergencies. The kid’s DNA isn’t sent to the government. Parents keep their child’s fingerprints/DNA at home in a secure envelope. If their child is ever missing, they then have it to give law enforcement.
▪️The whole thing is a non issue and seems to be a well meaning program unrelated to school shootings that somehow got turned into a political issue after media reports skewed its coverage and politicians like Gavin Newsome and Beto O’Rourke hyped it up.
It’s funny to see the left use the same conspiratorial rhetoric as the right did a year ago regarding the jobs numbers being downwardly revised. So many on the right, who knew nothing of how the jobs numbers are calculated or why they revise them, were convinced the downward revisions were a conspiracy to help Biden win.
If people want to have a debate about the birth death model or the survey methods, ok, but that’s not what’s happening here. Most people are under the delusion that the BLS report is the govt reporting every job created and lost, and are thus easily swayed it’s rigged when it suits their political ends.
This is almost laughingly misleading, as it leaves out everything before the letter.
▪️After being repeatedly lampooned by the Smothers Brothers over Vietnam, Johnson finally had enough. One night at 3 am he called the head of CBS William Paley, demanding that he “get those bastards off my back.”
▪️Paley then asked the heads of CBS entertainment to get them to back off of LBJ. However, instead of backing off the Smothers Brothers doubled down, booking a folk musician performing “Waist Deep,” an anti-war song about a soldier being stuck in the mud while “the big fool says to push on,” clearly a dig at LBJ.
▪️At the last minute, CBS cut the song from the pre-taped show to the outrage of the Smothers. They continued to push the boundaries off and on for the rest of his presidency, with CBS sometimes cutting segments that they thought went too far. Basically, it was a soft form of censorship.
▪️It wasn’t until Johnson made his surprise announcement not to run in 1968 ...
