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Betsy Devos’s wants to give parents a lot more say in educating their kids. And since parents get the most say when they educate their kids on their own, her plan would make homeschooling the only way to give your kids a good education.
Image source: NYTimes

This Tuesday, the Senate has voted to confirm a billionaire/activist Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, despite the fact that she has no relevant education or experience, other than lobbying for more charter and religious schools, and donating millions of dollars to politicians. Oh, and she thinks schools need guns for protection against grizzlies. The vote was very close and Vice President Mike Pence had to be briefly released from the storage where he has been kept since the inauguration to cast the tie-breaking vote. Here are 10 reactions to her confirmation.

1)  Ivanka Trump: “Betsy DeVos is a great role model for girls, and her example, like mine, shows that any girl can achieve anything she sets her mind to, as long as her dad has a couple of billion dollars.”

2)  Sean Spicer, White House Press Secretary: “Here are the facts, you disgusting excuses for journalism. Write them down because you’re not gonna find these facts anywhere else! First of all, Betsy DeVos has a PhD in education from Hogwarts, second, she had very successfully ran the department of education in Gotham City, and third, her students include such great people like Frederick Douglass!”

3)  Mitch McConnell, Senate majority leader: “I don’t know why Democrats are complaining that the system of checks and balances has failed. The system is working as intended: the DeVos family wrote a lot of checks, and it balanced the nominee’s incompetence.”

4)  Donald Trump, Twitter addict: “Betsy DeVos is terrific. Look, the dishonest media is severely underreporting the number of attacks by grizzlies. This is a huge problem! There are many thousands of grizzlies in America and none of them has been vetted! It’s too bad she’s only a six, maybe six and a half, but she will be very tough on grizzlies! By the way, tomorrow I’m signing an executive order to ban immigration from all grizzly-majority countries!”

5)  Lamar Alexander, Republican Senator: “Let’s be fair, a lot of kids hate schools, and it would be refreshing to have someone who shares their feelings, and in a position where she could finally do something about it.”

6)  Greg Romm, immigration lawyer: “I get tons of calls about Trump’s executive order to block all new refugees. But to be completely honest, if someone as unqualified as DeVos can easily pass the government’s vetting process for one of the most important jobs in America, it’s obvious that our government’s vetting process for the refugees must also be a complete joke.”

7)  Steve Bannon, acting president: “All of Obama’s Education Secretaries kept droning on about standards, standards, standards. We don’t need no stinking standards! All those spelling and grammar rules are really just tyrannical and unconstitutional restrictions on our freedom of speech.”

8)  Kellyanne Conway, professional factmaker: “The Democrats and the media have no right to criticize Betsy DeVos! She absolutely deserves our respect and admiration, being a survivor of the Bowling Green Massacre!”

9)  Mike Pence, Vice President: “Every study says that the more education someone has, the more likely they are to be a Democrat.  Obviously, education is the real problem here, and our Betsy is a real problem-solver.”

10)  Betsy DeVos: “I’m truly honored to assume the position of Secretary of Education, but isn’t it more proper for the title to be called ‘Administrative Assistant of Education’?”