Wow you read the book? If you suggested for me to read something I might not do it but I sure as hell wouldn't act like I knew what you were talking about. Read the book and we can debate. Don't read the book if you don't want to.

It should have said read a book about Austrian economics but here comes DaddyTorgo persecution complex. Throw out a few more fuck's it really drives home your point.

What will it take for both of you to see how smug you both are?

.

SI

A third person who decides to get involved in our discussion?

You're welcome. :)

$20B is alot of money. BP stock price is down < 1% from the news.
BP agrees to place $20 billion in escrow for spill costs - Jun. 16, 2010

This may be my go to reply from now on:

"Sorry sir, the chef ran out of fish." Well what do you expect...

"This guy is tailgating me" Well...

"Shiloh Labuff can't act" Well...

"The weatherman said it would be sunny today" Well...

It's also completely irrelevant and actually destructive to high-performing and well-run schools in good communities. At various times prominent and consistently top-ranked high schools in Illinois like New Trier, Highland Park, Northside Prep, and Lane Tech have been cited as "failing" by NCLB tests, which is ridiculous. Both Highland Park and New Trier, for instance, average ACT composites over 25 and 26 respectively, and graduate over 95% of their senior class.

In my school district, which is also one of the top-performing ones in the country, there is yearly talk of having to "game" the system because of the existence of a particular minority and transient community in one part of our catchment area, which is ridiculous. We've also seen a massive shift in funding away from curriculum for top-performers to curriculum for the lowest performers (it used to be balanced, now it's not).

I'm really surprised, Jon, that you would be OK with a policy that drags down high-performers to mediocrity in order to coax better performance out of poor performers.

I've seen so few "high performing" public schools in my lifetime that such a thing simply doesn't compute. Most, frankly, aren't worth the cost of the explosives it'd take to demolish them. Their primary purpose around here is to provide government subsidized daycare & anything other than that is the equivalent of a unicorn for me, I've heard stories about them but have never actually seen one.

The schools aren't really the big problem, the parents are. Sure teachers and resources are better at schools with more funding from property taxes, but the gap shouldn't be this wide based on it. Parents need to give a shit about their kids education and make sure they are doing well.

I'm not saying the schools are off the hook, but the education they receive doesn't matter if the parents don't give a shit what their kid does.

As Jon said, schools are turning into daycare centers. That's not on the schools, that's on the parents.

That's not really that much. The fishing industry is billions a year I believe and that is shot for who knows how long. Tourism is huge and not only does money not come down to those areas, but people will lose a lot of jobs. Some estimates in Florida alone are showing the potential for 200,000 jobs being lost and they aren't even getting the brunt of this oil.

So when you add up all the businesses that will be destroyed, jobs lost, as well as cleanup costs, $20 billion seems kind of low to me. Especially when you consider that this thing is still spewing a shit-ton of oil into the Gulf as we speak.

Major review of No Child Left Behind. Kids moved ahead in math, but in little else. | Get Schooled

Rand Paul is not a libertarian. Call it "pragmatic" to make it sound better all you want, but he's a Republican.

Move to somewhere that's less of a "welfare" state then. Unfortunately that'd mean it was too blue for you.

Well you are JoninMiddle GEORGIA. Of course you haven't seen "high performing" public schools.

That's kinda what I said, but, yeah.

FOXNews.com - Poll: On Disaster Clean-Ups, Louisiana Voters Give Poorer Marks to Obama Than Bush

Louisiana voters think President George W. Bush did a better job handling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina than President Obama has done in the wake of the BP oil spill, according to a new poll.

The Public Policy Polling survey showed 50 percent of state voters rated Bush's performance in 2005 as better than Obama's. Just 35 percent picked Obama.

The survey by PPP, a Democratic-owned firm, comes as the president tries to inspire confidence in his administration's response to the BP oil spill. ... Louisiana voters by no means are happy with the way the Bush administration handled the flooding in 2005. But while the PPP poll showed just a third of voters approved of the way Bush handled Katrina, the numbers were generally worse for Obama. Sixty-two percent said they disapproved of Obama's handling of the crisis, compared with 58 percent for Bush.

The poll of 492 Louisiana voters was taken June 12-13. It had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen Reports released a new poll Wednesday showing Obama's approval rating hitting a new low -- 42 percent. The daily tracking poll puts a 20-point spread between Obama's strong approval and disapproval, 24 and 44 percent respectively.

While I certainly get the overall disapproval part, the oil spill thing baffles me more than a little. What exactly was he supposed to do, wave a magic wand at it? I'm all for criticizing the guy, I could go on for hours at a time, but this strikes me as pretty irrational unless you're pissed that they didn't start on the relief well a little sooner.

BP is fresher in their minds. If in a few years, the big problem is people not picking up after their dogs' shit, that'd be the biggest failure of the current president.

Obviously, neither have been terrific leaders during these times, but I'm not sure what peoples' expectations are.

So keep NCLB in Georgia and leave my schools alone.


And just to be clear, I am fully behind the idea that the majority of public schooling in this country is failing its students and needs to be overhauled. I have claimed before, and I continue to claim (and am increasingly backed up by the evidence) that NCLB was an overly-simplistic, overly-expensive-for-what-it-was/is, misguided attempt to deal with this issue.

I do agree 100% with Jon that in certain areas so-called "Education cabals" need to be broken up for real change to happen, and I agree with others that local communities need to take more of an interest in their schools. But NCLB was not the right way to try and do this.

Further reading:

NY Times Advertisement

Diane Ravitch: Why I Changed My Mind About School Reform - WSJ.com

:+1: - to both points.

I think it underscores one of the problems of having Presidents with very little experience running anything other than government offices or bureaucracies. They spend so much of their life cajoling people to do things that when they need to be directive, they have a hard time making the switch.

I mean, imagine if Steve Jobs or Jack Welch or Jamie Dimon had been President during Katrina or the Oil Spill.

Yet another member of the liberal media elite subjects Sarah Palin to a hostile interview:

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...lesias-aw.html

News Hounds: O’Reilly Demolishes Palin By Asking For Her Solution To The BP Oil Disaster

That just isn't fair that they did that to Palin.

Right, but NCLB is federal legislation. What Georgia needs is very different then what Connecticut needs. For that matter what Hartford CT needs and what West Hartford CT needs are very different.

I don't mind federal funding on education as I do believe that income disparities in states should be lessened when it comes to education.

I generally agree with lynchjm, but Jon's point does emphasize that local doesn't always mean better. The jackass from the block is still a jackass.

Somebody needs to sig this post.

I'm fine with federal funding and I could certainly support federal standards if they made a hell of a lot more sense then NCLB.

Rahm going to quit later this year.

Rahm Emanuel expected to quit White House - Telegraph

He's going to end up taking over for Daley someday in Chicago I think.

Joe. My. God.: Texas GOP Platform Calls For Making It A Felony To Perform Gay Marriages


http://static.texastribune.org/media...Y_PLATFORM.pdf

I mean, this isn't a fringe group here. Or even the Tea Party. This is the official Republican Party Platform of one of the most populous states in the Union.

Now, I know the response here will be that we shouldn't look to party platforms to see what parties actually believe or something like that. We should instead just assume that the GOP is actually what people here want it to be instead of what it actually is. Whatever. How does that kind of denial help anything?

Really, I can understand how people might hate the President and the Democrats. But how are we not closer to a third party here? What does the GOP have left to offer serious intellectual conservatives and libertarians anymore? Don't y'all still outnumber the "Kill the faggots and the Mexicans!" wing of the party? Why are they still driving the ship?

Nobody asked me if I wanted a turn.

If same sex marriage is illegal, than the state can certainly enforce that. It seems a misdemeanor would be more appropriate than a felony, but you have to leave yourself some room for negotiation.

I don't think we've reached the point where opposition to gay marriage is a "fringe idea".

The rest of their platform:

• Banning the use of red light cameras.
• Making American English the official language of Texas and the United States.
• Passing legislation requiring a sonogram for each pregnant woman seeking an abortion.
• Opposing legislation allowing stem cell research involving the creation of killing of human embryos for medical research.
• Calling for the immediate transition to a system of private pensions and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax.
• Calling for the repeal of the state lottery and opposing any further legalization of any type of gambling.
• Urging Congress to “repeal and reject the national healthcare takeover, also known as ‘ObamaCare.' ”
• Calling for the repeal of the No Child Left Behind law and the U.S. Department of Education.
• Removing the tenure system for Texas state colleges and universities.
• Opposing all bailouts of businesses.
• Recommending a national sales tax to replace all other federal taxes.
• Urging Congress to evict the United Nations from the United States to rescind U.S. membership.



What a bunch of fucking whack-a-loons. Jeezus.


Texas Republicans also want to limit citizenship by birth to those born to a U.S. citizen “with no exceptions.”
--yeahhh...ummm...good luck with that. That'll take a Constitutional Amendment.

How bout this wacky gem:
• Protecting the right to access raw milk directly from the farmer.

WTF is wrong with red light cameras anyways??

With the explosive population growth of Texas in the last decade or two thanks to an influx of out-of-state people, I wonder how much the reputation Texas of being a religious right stronghold is true anymore. I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, but it seems like the newer residents would be chipping away at that in both the polls and in society in general.

I really hope Bill White can replicate some the electoral success he had running for mayor of Houston to the Governor's race. In the last two races he got over 85% of the vote.

well put - i stole it for my facebook post. waiting for my texas-based relatives and other conservative friends to errupt...*cackles*

The problem is those people do not vote in primary elections.

They don't do what they have been marketed as to what they are supposed to do. Which is to reduce accidents at 'problem' intersections. They decreased certain accidents, but, increased other accidents. Cities have been caught reducing the time of the yellow to catch more people in the intersection to produce more red light tickets. Stuff like that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_light_camera

Yeah, red light cameras suck. Anytime you have the government with a vested financial interest in people engaging in unsafe behavior, we've really gotten ourselves turned upside down.

The fact that governments can make money on fines is supposed to be a side effect of the fine, not the primary purpose of them.

Guess we've just had them all over my hometown for...years now. In fact, at this point I think every traffic light in town has them.

Seen them only at certain intersections in San Diego and in Cupertino and I think maybe 25% of them are actually in use in San Diego and none of them are in use in Cupertino.

While we're talking about red light cameras, does anyone have any good ideas for fighting one? I was cited for going through a red light. I was able to go to the web site and see it, and I was making a right turn on a red light, and it looked like I *might* have come to a full stop, but the boilerplate language on the ticket implies that they think I didn't. Will I be able to convince them?

Going off what you posted, I can actually get behind some of those things (other than the abortion, gambling, and stem cell ones). The education one...eh.

Not actually sure what the purpose of the access to raw milk is.

Supposedly, there is also a video that is taken for situations like yours, but, I'm not sure all cameras are equipped with that though. I think depending on the state, if the picture can't clearly identify the driver, then it's supposed to be tossed out. A friend of mine in Chicago got his picture taken, but, when you looked at the picture, you couldn't really see his face and the ticket was dismissed.

It's a small, but vigorous debate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...aw_milk_debate

Thanks. Should be "access to" in my previous post.

You know, the raw milk folks that I know/know of seem to come to that place from a very free-earth/super-hippie kind of mindset. Not at all what I would think of as your typical Republican.

Which makes me think, (1) that someone with a personal economic interest in selling raw milk happens to have something to do with the Texas GOP platform, and (2) that--despite my earlier screed in this thread--maybe it is just a very very small handful of crazy people who wrote this thing. I hope so.

I'm pretty damn torn on the raw milk thing. I drank it when I was young but don't anymore. It can be pretty damn dangerous. One side of me wants to see some of these hippies drink raw milk and get dreadfully sick like will inevitably happen but then you'll get other hippies yelling about all milk being bad for you when that happens.

To put it in perspective, I won't even feed my baby calves raw milk, it gets pasteurized before we feed it to them because one bad batch with some nasty bacteria would wipe out a good chunk of my calves.

No mention of the Big 12 in the Texas GOP platform? :)

To put this to rest - the damn dairy farmer on the board won't even feed his COWS raw milk. And yet people want to drink it? That's some messed up shit.

I say let them drink it. Maybe it will streamline the gene pool a little bit. :)

Not to say that it can't be done well, but man, one bad day can lead to a lot of sick people and maybe worse.

The benefits to drinking are dubious at best. I could drink my own if I wanted, but my milk is of higher fat content than whole milk even. I prefer 1% fat actually. My cows' milk usually runs about 4%.

hah! Because fat people don't count for anything...

That woman's not just "fat", she's anatomically confusing.

It's just pointing out the hypocrisy. They ran around claiming government is too big and it should stay out of our personal lives and businesses. Then they propose a shit ton of changes that tells people how to live their life and dictates what businesses are allowed in the State. I know the people they are targeting are fucking retards, but I just can't stand hypocrisy like that.

And also, their platform is a little worse than what was posted earlier. Some things that weren't mentioned here:

- Banning all strip clubs
- Banning all pornography
- Banning all forms of gambling
- Banning oral and anal sex
- Banning the morning after pill (they call it dangerous!)
- Requiring a blood test to get married
- Use corporal punishment in classrooms
- Bringing intelligent design into the classroom
- Oppose any sex education other than abstinence before heterosexual marriage.

There's a lot of other goodies in the document, including calling Martin Luther King a Republican.

Any Texans on this board? How do you feel that it's going to be illegal to go to RedTube and get a blowjob from your lady?

zoinks - i didn't see those parts of it RainMaker. Not that I don't believe you, but do you have a source? My BFF moved to Texas and I'd love to point out to him that the fundies don't want his fiancee to be able to give him a BJ, or for them to be able to hit up the strip clubs in San Antonio

It's not the opposition to gay marriage which is fringe, it's what they write about it in the platform. They go on and on about homosexuals. You'd think they were talking about terrorists or child molesters. Here's an excerpt:


Not to mention the fact that they want to make it illegal for gays to have sex.

If you read through some of the writings from 60+ years ago about interracial marriage and couples, you'll see it's eerily similar.

I don't think (unfortunately) we've reached the point where opposition to gay marriage is "fringe" (although I hope we will in my lifetime), but honestly, I do think we've reached the point where the type of extreme homophobia put forth in their platform is "fringe."

And I don't just mean "disapproval." I mean the "the gheys are evil and they are all going to hell etc." type of homophobia. The Matthew Sheppard-style gay-hating.

http://static.texastribune.org/media...Y_PLATFORM.pdf

If there is something you can't find, let me know and I'll look it up again.

You can also tell him that they want to promote covenant marrage and get rid of no-fault ones. That means that they can't get divorced unless one of them gets convicted of a felony, beats the other up, or cheats. :lol:

re: raw milk - just lived through that bizarre tempest in a teapot during the last session of the state legislature here in Georgia, courtesy of legislation introduced by one of Athens left wing whackdoos. Last I can find, it died from inaction in committee (unless the provisions got added via amendment to some other bill that passed).

I don't understand the raw milk thing. Is it really an important issue? If someone wants to drink it, who gives a shit?

Can't say I expected to see folks talking about the drinking of raw milk when I opened up this thread.

Thanks, I have read something like that. That might work, since I was driving, and the car is in my wife's name -- so I guess if she went, maybe it's more likely to get tossed. But I was planning on taking care of it, since I was driving. Hmm.

It isn't about whether someone wants to drink t, but whether someone can sell it.

Couldn't it have just as easily said "I like big government. I haven't worked a day in my life but not to worry other people will pay for my house, for me and any kids I have to eat, and for my health problems" and had a picture of the same woman or (God forbid!) a big fat black woman? But that would be racist! Picking on fat people on the other hand is funny.

IMO it would have been a better caricature of Republicans with a Southern pastor than a fat woman.

I thought it was more about the clashing statements about not wanting big government to interfere, but then wanting the same big government to band homosexuals, abortions, and pornography.

I mentioned earlier that I hope Bill White can bring some of the electoral success he had running for Mayor of Houston to the Governor's race. There needs to be some ideological balance brought back in to the state government.

You are doing the same thing they are doing - using ideas that will never actually become law to rile up your base.

I was actually first introduced to the "raw milk thing" in England as a foodie thing. Specifically foodies sought out cheeses made with raw milk.

I was next acquainted with the "raw milk thing" back in the States listening to a rant by a free-market libertarian about how farmers should be able to sell milk without pasteurization and that this regulation was unnecessary government interference.

So I've never actually seen it as a hippie thing.

On a personal level, I don't have strong feelings either way. On one hand I wouldn't mind it being legal, but on the other hand I'd hate to see some kid (especially an infant) die because some stupid parent (at least as likely to be a libertarian as a hippie, in my mind) gave it to the kid.


lungs: does the cheese-making process reduce the risk, or does it remain the same?

I love me some unpasteurized apple cider, but don't think I'd do it with milk.

I don't get how this is anything groundbreaking. Hasn't this always been the stance of the right-wing GOP?

Aren't a lot of the quality, real butters and cheeses in Europe made from raw milk?

I don't believe so. Pasteurization occurs at about 160 degrees Fahrenheit and any cheese I've ever made the milk wasn't heated to much more than 100.


You are right. My problem isn't necessarily the sale of raw milk. It's the regulations attached to it that make me cringe, ie: not enough. Pennsylvania does allow the sale of raw milk but they also have very strict regulations and quality standards. The law that Wisconsin recently tried to pass had very lax regulations attached to it.

One of the farmers locally that is making a big stink about not being able to sell raw milk struggled to get a Grade B permit to produce milk before finally kicking government inspectors off his farm. Anybody that can't get a Grade B permit should not be producing anything for human consumption. I'd be utterly embarrassed myself to be producing at anything but Grade A.

I wouldn't have a problem with farmers being permitted to sell raw milk but they also need to be held to a much higher standard. Drinking raw milk from a Grade B dairy is playing Russian roulette and if this law would've passed in Wisconsin you would see sick people in due time.

Some of these facilities people want to sell raw milk out of aren't fit for a rat to live in.

Perhaps. But it's worth pointing out when the Governor and party have been bitching about big government infiltrating people's lives. Then they come up with a platform that does just that.

Certainly, the Obama numbers are going the wrong way, but what really caught my eye was the incumbent discontent. 57% are ready to toss out their incumbent. That's frightening stuff for people in Congress.

Confidence Waning in Obama, U.S. Outlook - WSJ.com

LOL

Do we think McChrystal (or however you spell his name) gave this interview on purpose so he'd have to resign rather than face the fact that his efforts in Afghanistan have failed?

Seems kindof obvious to me. People are mad about a lack of government regulation not too much at the moment. So, get some quality legislation done and you can fix your numbers pretty quick.


*Tho, in the end, I suspect it all goes back to "it's the economy, stupid".



SI

Seems like a bit of a loaded question there. Have the Afghanistan efforts failed? And, I suppose, if so, is it time to bring the troops back home? And, if things are going well (or as well as could be expected)- is this going to be a huge problem as I'm sure the transition won't be easy.

SI

Tough to blame one man for a war that can't be won by any General.

well okay - i could have phrased the question better, but it's something i've been wondering about since this broke.

I feel like I should post the Daily Show clip about the war in Afghanistan where John Oliver... well, here:

Video: The Unwinnable War in Afghanistan | The Daily Show | Comedy Central

SI

Petreus did it in Iraq. He can do it here ... but then it depends on your definition of "stabilized" and "won".

With numbers like that I wouldn't be surprised if only 90% of Congress got reelected.

:D (and doesn't that right there say something about how broken the system is)

SI

People want regulation, but nobody, incumbent or freshman, has the balls to put it out there. The two sides hate each other so much, the R's will just find a reason to filibuster (like they did with the Medicare reimbursement), and the D's are too diverse to put something cohesive together. I mean, there are already people in the gulf region that still want new drilling to commence, even though nothing has been put in place to prevent this from happening again. It puts jobs out there and their reps will whip them in to a foolish frenzy that the evil liberals are in favor of so much regulation that these companies just can't operate (false).

The first thing I thought after reading the article is that no one could be so stupid or PR-braindead so as to let that article go to press in that fashion. Even the article's author, in a separate interview, said he was very surprised the final draft came back from McChrystal's camp unedited.

So you have to wonder.

Of course, maybe McChrystal will spend the next year criticizing Obama and run for the GOP nomination in 2012. :D

Umm....


Ah....

I think more than regulation, the key is oversight/accountability, particulary over the government agencies that are supposed to be enforcing the regulations. BP deserves the bulk of our blame but they had a lot of help from the government.

No idea how you do that though.

Send people to jail.

The problem is that the MMS (and lots of government regulatory agencies) are in bed with the people they're supposed to be regulating. Fucking system.

What an asshole.

I can't decide if people like this are actually just really really stupid and don't realize it, or are actually "well i got mine so fuck you none for you" type people.

I'm not sure what the point is here, especially when he's right. This farmer is spot-on in his assessment of what the subsidy entails. It's used to even out market payouts when overseas markets offer a better rate than the national rate. The subsidy is done to make sure that U.S. produced goods remain in the U.S.

Now, if you're arguing that farm subsidies shouldn't be paid, that's fine and people like lungs and I who are deeply involved in farm subsidies would agree with you. But a subsidy requires the same work as a non-subsidized crop. The only difference is that the government pays you to keep it in the U.S. This isn't even remotely close to the welfare state that exists through many other government programs.

Money!
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie...

LOL

So many things wrong here. You've gone from turning in your notice to being the equivalent of lungs regarding farm subsidies. Don't insult him like that. You obviously aren't aware of the examples of subsidies paid to farmers to not grow crops, and let the fields lie fallow. Please explain how that requires the same work, and is not even remotely close to other welfare programs.

His business is propped up by taxpayers giving him free money. I don't care if he works hard, so does the maid at Motel 6 that pays no income tax that he's bitching about.

Yep. If he philosophically doesn't like it he should get a business where that's not the case.

I think these people are probably just selectively blind / stupid about it though.

And the EITC that leaves a lot of working poor with no federal income tax liability is designed to refund a portion of their FICA taxes, so it's just their money coming back to them.