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Bruce’s Ten Hot Takes for July 27, 2023

hot takes

Joe Biden knows more than he’s letting on about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.

If Joe Biden suddenly froze during a press conference, the right-wing media would scream about his fitness for office.

The left-wing media goes out of their way to minimize President Biden’s physical decline, much like Republicans did with Ronald Reagan 40 years ago.

Ozempic (semaglutide) is now causing gastroparesis (stomach paralysis) in some people. Welcome to my world. You will now lose weight without taking a drug. I call it the vomit, nausea, lack of appetite diet.

Most weight loss programs don’t work, yet Americans spend billions of dollars trying to be slimmer, trimmer people.

Ohio students now attend public school 182 days a year, yet baby boomers only needed 154 days a year to get a similar education. I suspect the reasons for this are nonessential classes and parental work schedules.

If Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow is hurt and can’t play, their season is over.

Ukraine (and NATO) is obfuscating and minimizing the carnage and death in its conflict with Russia.

Memo to MSNBC talking head Nicole Wallace: you need to rethink your use of the phrase “historic day of news” every day on your program. Someone associated with Donald Trump getting indicted is not “historic.” It’s just another say in the USA.

2,000 Americans under the age of 25 suffer cardiac arrest every year. This was happening long before COVID-19 vaccines.

Bonus: The only absolute right seems to be the freedom of religion.

Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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7 Comments

  1. Avatar
    Linn

    Regarding number of school days (I’m a boomer and a teacher of 42 years)-in the 70s there was a push for improved teacher training, which involved in-service days. Parent conference days were added around the same time, which resulted in a week of 1/2 days (in most districts). Unions pushed for a weekly meeting day, which resulted in a weekly early release day in many states (about 120-90 minutes early). When government realized how bad our test scores were compared to the Russians (in the early 80s), many states mandated extra days (example: in my state it is 180 days a year of school). And, unfortunately, Johnny still can’t read very well, but I’m still teaching.

  2. Avatar
    Charles S. Oaxpatu

    “Ohio students now attend public school 182 days a year, yet baby boomers only needed 154 days a year to get a similar education. I suspect the reasons for this are nonessential classes and parental work schedules.”

    No. The K-12 kids have a lot more to learn than we did back in the 1960s and 1970s. Have you seen a high school biology textbook lately? My son’s book was almost entirely advanced genetics and DNA. I was an “A” student in high school biology back in the 1960s. I took a close look at my son’s textbook a few years ago. First of all, it was thick and incredibly heavy. That book must have weighed 12 pounds!!! The text—–nearly all of it——was like Greek to me. If I had tried to learn from that textbook way back in 1969, I might have committed suicide rather than go to class. I’m not kidding Bruce. I wish you could have seen it. I pity any kid who has to study from that book all year.

  3. Avatar
    steveastrouk2017

    UK schools do 190 days/year and pretty well always have. We also study all three major sciences in the curriculum every year from 11 to 16 (and optionally, 18). America education is way behind the curve. My sons were educated in the UK to 16 and 14, then transferred here, we had a direct comparison. In math, they were doing stuff at 14 they’d done at 11 back home. At 18 you might be admitted to a university where you study for a degree in your subject – no minors, because you were supposed to learn the rest of what you need on the journey to university, not at it. A bachelor degree is usually completed in 3 years, a Masters in 4. As Charles points out, kids have in some ways more to learn.

  4. Avatar
    Benny S

    “Joe Biden knows more than he’s letting on about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.”

    “Ukraine (and NATO) is obfuscating and minimizing the carnage and death in its conflict with Russia.”

    My Spidey-senses tell me the same thing.

    xox

  5. Ben Berwick

    I was thinking about Ukraine the other day, and whilst I don’t want Russia to get away with slicing off swathes of land (where does that stop?), I can’t help but feel that Ukraine is now well-and-truly stuck in the crosshairs of a proxy war. It’s all well-and-good for the West to supply Ukraine with weapons, but Putin is never going to willingly withdraw his forces, and so the people of Ukraine suffer in order to make Putin bleed.

  6. Troy

    Re: “Joe Biden knows more than he’s letting on about his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.”

    I doubt it. Hunter basically used his Biden last name to get cushy jobs which is used to finance hookers and blow. If Joe Biden was crooked he would have been a millionaire as a Senator and not have to ask Obama for help to keep his house. Biden’s kids all seem to be a hot mess, but I know he didn’t foster his son’s name dropping career in any way.

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