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Obama Would Redirect NASA Funding to Education
QuantumG writes "In a recent article on The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin reveals that Barack Obama plans to delay Project Constellation for at least five years, using the redirected funds to nationalize early-education for children under five years old to prepare them for the rigors of kindergarten and beyond, if he is elected president. It is feared that if this happens the Vision for Space Exploration will flounder and that may be the end of human spaceflight altogether."
Can we mod article summaries?
It is feared that if this happens the Vision for Space Exploration will flounder and that may be the end of human spaceflight altogether.-1 Drama Queen
So according to these doyens of space and associated fields, if a U.S. project is put off for 5 years (to educate children - how DARE they?) then this will quell humankind's desire to travel in space forever?
I think there's some space all right, but it's obviously not all out there beyond the stars...
The Mothership
It's actually the first major thing I have disagreed with Obama on. My hint for those keeping score at home is that quickly pulling out of Iraq would generate a lot more spare funds. It's not like NASA is actually a major drain at all, and almost all of the money comes back to R&D and the like. *sighs* Still not wanting HRC or McCain though.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
Aw poor poor. Heart broken? You gotta admit, that is one fucking stupid idea of Obama's.
"Oh no you don't! Not until you've studied up for your advanced color identification exam!"
Imagination is more important than knowledge -Einstien
Well, once you're out of Middle Eastern crapholes you won't be spending on that right?
an old star trek episode called First Contact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Contact_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)
His plan isn't for education, its for day care.
This story is based on someone's personal blog, who wrote this story based on a personal anecdote and a PDF that's hosted on some site I've never heard of. Meanwhile, I checked Obama's site and found no mention of any plan to make this particular cut. I think the author of the original story is making things up.
Finding God in a Dog
I will never understand why people have children they can't be bothered to raise. Shunted into daycare as soon as possible, raised by nannies, and they are still always clamoring for yet more school at younger ages.
Open letter to the people having these children: Your genes are not special. Your kid will not cure cancer. Get over yourself. It's expensive to raise children--especially when you have to pay the people who are actually doing it. Why don't you just volunteer for one of those Big Brother programs on the weekends? You'll see those kids just as often as your own, with the added benefit of not causing all that emotional damage.
Rigors of kindergarten, pffft.
that he wouldn't instead cut "defense/war" spending to pay for said education? Which candidates support increasing science funding, while at the same time decreasing "defense" spending?
Calling blog posts articles sets a pretty dangerous precedent. It puts someone's personal viewpoint on the same level as say, an article from a respected published like Reuters and can create lots of FUD and unnecessary debate.
Now I know this is Slashdot and there's many of you itching for an argument, waiting to pounce and say "Well the media is stupid and has bias too". That is correct. However, when we read an article from a respected news source, as opposed to someone's personal blog, we are assuming that they have some kind of qualification, have done certifiable research and the article has passed through some kind of review process. You can't assume any of that with a blog post.
However if this is true or not, I think, it's a good idea and should be at least taken in to consideration! Just ask yourself: What would be more useful for the world and U.S. citizens?
Note: NASA employees themself are recruited from people with the highest education level! So why not better educate our children, so that they have the chance to dream about space exploration, too?
Google disagrees. I think maybe you mistook who is the guy making stuff up.
Honestly I don't think this is a bad idea. NASA has lost its focus. Right now it's major scientific project is a space station to give the retiring space shuttle a place to go.
I think we've all been disappointed that the flying cars and weekend trips to mars envisioned by TV and authors in our childhood have not materialized. But the government was never a good way to go about space exploration. It's too risky, and governments are risk averse. A better way to do it is in the private sector. They're more tolerant of risk. The X-Prize has been phenomenally successful, and should be emulated. But government over-regulation, and subsidized competitors has prevented the private sector from flourishing. For a sad read, go over to Beale Aerospace's page.
NASA needs to refocus its effort on science by contracting launch services from the private sector. Congress should rearrange the regulatory atmosphere to allow this to happen (particularly with respect to human spaceflight and liability), and to enable a competitive launch industry rather than the the fat-cat subsidized government contractors we have now.
I want to go to the Moon and Mars too, but no more "flags & footprints". It's long past time we got serious about human spaceflight and did what it takes to make it an everyday occurrence. As long as all human spaceflight is in NASA's hands, nothing will change.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
education for children under five
Isn't that the parents job??
Space X is getting close to manufacturing rockets cheaper than NASA can. NASA should get out of the rocket business, saving us taxpayers money. In our capitalist nation, space travel will be done by rich geeks. Not astronauts.
Well, the fear is somewhat unreasonable, but it is there. But there're also people who fear the takeover of the British monarchy by alien lizards (insert your own choice for ludicrous things to be afraid of). So saying someone is "afraid" of a potential future ie not a useful observation to make.
My take is that Obama is exchanging a program with concrete goals, even if they are expensive and perhaps poorly planned, for a feel-good measure. The money might be spent on "education", but what guarantee do we have that it'll actually result in better educated children? Instead, I see a better approach being to fix the problems with NASA (eg, use existing launchers rather than making a competitor, Ares I) and take the funds for the proposed education program (assuming it actually has some value) from known overfunded areas like the entitlement programs, particularly Social Security, government retirement programs, etc. There might even be some savings from reduced military activity, if Obama doesn't screw that up.
But when you arbitrarily take that kind of funds from a program with long lead times like NASA, you will generate large costs down the road. A five year delay in the Ares program, for example, means a near dead stop in current development, loss of workforce (I know the program will lose workforce anyway, but the current approach by the Bush adminstration does preserve part of the existing workforce), and loss of infrastructure and tooling (unless someone pays to maintain that infrastructure or tooling), and complicate future efforts (assuming the five year suspension doesn't become permanent). I've never seen a delay reduce overall costs. These programs don't start and stop like welfare or education programs. NASA projects take many years to develope. For many such projects a five year suspension in manpower and effort pretty much resets the program back to the start. This is a really poorly thought out idea.
Any one but Obama. Look, as a conservative, I rather have Hillary in the WH with your party in complete control of Congress during the next two to four years. Economy is going to go ugly and want the party in control of Congress to take the full blame for what is about to happen. I don't like McCain, I don't think I could vote for him (plan to vote Barr if he runs as the LP candidate). I've got a very bad feeling about Obama's naÃvety and inexperience to deal with the bad guys around the world.
I have come to the uneasy conclusion that Obama may have some deeper issues then McCain has. For the GOP, the ideal win is Hillary. The US can survive four to eight years of her and Bill, I don't know if that is true for Obama.
On a side note, this should be a slam dunk for the Democrats. McCain does not enjoy solid support from the GOP base, the current situation should be highly negative for the GOP runner but he is ahead in the polls. How sucky candidates do you guys field to have someone like McCain maybe the next POTUS in today's enviroment? The leadership vaccum within the GOP gave you all a near perfect candidate to run against, and it's a up hill battle? What's up with that?
Dammy
Aw poor poor. Heart broken? You gotta admit, that is one fucking stupid idea of Obama's.
It's not the only bad idea he has. Unfortunately, Obama supporters have already modded you to zero for stating the readily-apparent truth, and no doubt this too will be modded down as well. It's a similar phenomenon to how they've taken over digg and spammed the forum with pro-Obama and anti-Clinton media for the past several months.
The bottom line is that NASA and human spaceflight are going to suffer because (a) the most competent leader running for office is being systematically drummed out of the running by the "old boy" leadership of her own party, and (b) without extremely clever leadership to get us out of the hole Baby Bush has dug for us (and it may not be possible at all given how deep into the Abyss we already are), the United States simply cannot afford space travel any longer. We have squandered our wealth as a nation acting as a proxy for the Bush-Hussein pissing match. It's debatable whether anyone could save the space program from the Bush deficit, but I do agree that a leader that will take money from an already underfunded space program that spins off countless technical and ecomonic benefits, and may well be the key to our countries economic future (not to mention, as Stephen Hawking and others have repeatedly argued, the future of the human race) in order to finance pre-kindergarden education is pretty damn incompetent. It bodes ill for what other kinds of decisions a President Obama is likely to make.
We're already third world in terms of our (lack of) basic national healthcare, we aren't doing too well on any of the technology fronts (Asia, Europe, and Canada have better and cheaper broadband, most technical innovations are coming out of the far east, and the US government has systematically underfunded and defunded some of the most promising areas of scientific research--stem cell research and genetic science being just the tip of the iceberg).
It shouldn't be news that Obama wants to gut the space program to increase handouts to the poor. He's made no secret of his stance on that. Bad public policy? Yes. Short sighted? Yes. Surprising? Not at all.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
the most competent leader running for office is being systematically drummed out of the running by the "old boy" leadership of her own party
You've got to be kidding me. The only real base of support Hillary ever had was the support of the party insiders.
And "most competent"? Her vote to authorize the Iraq war makes her incompetent at best.
Well ... avoid at least one of them! Best wishes from EU.
I'm not so sure it's all that unreasonable a fear. Consider how much public interest in NASA has waned over the last 20 or so years; since the Challenger, really. After five years of delays, I think there's a very real chance that the public, deciding they don't particularly miss NASA, would no longer support it at all.
The problem is that the pool of available and willing professional expertise is not static. I've already witnessed this at my current workplace, where, after less than 1 year of abandoning a relatively complicated process for a far more simple but grossly less efficient one due to temporarily relaxed requirements, the very same people who used to run the former process are unable to revive it as requirements swing back towards tighter schedules and resources--in fact their efforts to do so have made things even worse.
It is always harder to start (or revive) a program than to keep one running, and even highly skilled people who are capable of the latter may not be able to do the former if it is interrupted or temporarily disbanded for a significant period of time.
If you interrupt an extremely technically demanding program for 5 years, it will either or both take a long time or a director and team of a totally different caliber to bootstrap it again.
The principles described in the above also apply doubly to political will. At this point, NASA's funding is largely due to the legendary inertia of the government. If it were scrapped, it would take someone with an overwhelming mandate and clear, focused vision to build the political consensus and drive it through congress again.
Note that 5 years means that he is scheduling the program's revival in the next presidential term. He does not feel that it should be his responsibility to put humpty dumpty back together again after pushing him off a the wall.
It is hyperbole to say that this would kill manned space exploration, but it may well kill manned space exploration in the US until the next cold war/space race, which we are likely to lose if we try to revive gutted institutions to compete with a program with strong, decades-long unbroken momentum.
Also, speaking to the larger issue of education, 'more funding' is absolutely not a silver bullet that will guarantee better quality, and the education section in his 'blueprint' booklet is totally opaque. It identifies many issues (the easiest part), states proposals to address the issues (also easy), and then does nothing to explain why or how those proposals will work (the only part that really matters).
In all honesty, I think Obama is probably the candidate I dislike the least at this point, but--and I don't hold the following against him directly, per se--it really bothers me that his supporters seem to be under the influence of a Jobs-esque reality distortion field. That people on /. of all places are willing to trivialize the scrapping of a major program of NASA because a politician cries 'think of the children'--without even attempting a strong explanation of why this is necessary--is just sad.
If our education falls any further than it already has under NCLB, there won't be anyone smart enough to become an astronaut when the time comes. I don't think it's a terrible idea, as long as it's not a complete redirect and as long as it doesn't last forever.
America-centric bollocks. If NASA were razed to the ground and all its employees rounded up and shot, it still would not spell the end of human spaceflight... as John F. Kennedy knew perfectly well when he launched the race to the moon.
Nothing could please the Russians more than to have lost the battle for the moon, but to have won the war for space.
I piss off bigots.
It's founder, not flounder. A flounder 1) is a bottom-dwelling flat fish 2) was a Delta House pledge. Either could give NASA a run for its money,
Also, the more socialist Obama becomes the more my vote swings back the other way.
Humans are, fundamentally, abysmally unsuited to survival in space. Plus, we insist on bringing astronauts BACK, which makes every manned mission FAR more complex and expensive.
Human spaceflight may be romantic and inspiring, and a human may be far more flexible and adaptable than any robot, but humans also have outrageous supply and environmental demands. It's simply impossible for manned missions to do more than a tiny fraction of what far cheaper automated probes can do.
And every time NASA shoots a Shuttle into low orbit to feed the ISS so that it can be dropped into the ocean on schedule, they do almost zero to advance human knowledge, and spend enough money to send a whole new robot-rover mission to Mars and then run it for three months.
People who insist that manned spaceflight is worth the price do not, I think, usually comprehend the magnitude of the difference between that price and the price of unmanned probes. They also seem to have a pretty poor grasp of what space science actually entails, and how little of it even theoretically can be done by people.
You can always pay less benefits. And superficially putting money into education seems a more worthwhile use of Social Security than merely to transfer wealth from young to old. Second, while there are some tough jobs like in the military where the benefits are justified, most such positions would be filled anyway. The benefits are overly generous and those people would work anyway. The combination of job stability and benefits is hard to beat. Then there's such things as the federal retirement fund for railroad workers.
Well i think your being a little myoptic. I have heard this same claptrap. Why waste all that money on space, looking for little green men, studying the life cycle of spiders, pick your favorite science program. It is damaging feel good crap.
No different than a town near me. They had a big problem with drugs and prostitution. So they closed the topless bars. Looks like you are doing something with out really doing anything useful.
If the US puts off it's space program for a few years. Thousands if not tens of thousands of people will loose their jobs. NASA will loose tens of thousands of skilled workers. And a lot fewer talented people will want to work in the space program so when they try to bring it back on line it will be a shadow of it's self.
How do I know this?
It is what happened last time.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Sorry but exactly why do you think that Obama really wants any more true political awareness than any other political leader?
All to often "Political Awareness" means indoctrination into think the way we feel they should.
Let me see. Obama supports killing a big chunk of the space program for no good reason and lists a racist as a personal hero.
Yea I am sure that he is the type of leader I want...
Dang I really want a Democrat like Truman, FDR, or even Carter that I could feel good about.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It doesn't get much more fascist than this: "nationalize early-education for children under five years"
Obama the totalitarian: Everything controlled by the State. Now he wants to federalize education.
Go ahead and nominate this guy, Democrats. Hand McCain a landslide victory in November.
-john
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
Actually, putting more money into education merely creates yet more overhead, paperwork, and bureaucracy for the schools.
You want to actually increase the amount of money that schools spend on the children? Get rid of ALL federal education programs, and replace it with one program. Then if you want to argue that schools need more money, just increase funding for that one program.
Actually, a better way is to just get the fed out of education completely and let the local gov'ts handle it. Besides the Constitutional issues, don't forget too, that 1/3 of any federal program is lost to waste and bureaucracy.
-john
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
Personally, I think all of the remaining candidates are losers. Hillary is an insider and will be just another Clinton. Obama is too radical and disruptive. And McCain will continue in the Bush warmongering tradition.
I don't hold out much hope for this country if these three are the best we can do.
Possibly more than at any other time, this election is about choosing the lesser evil rather than the most capable candidate.
Compare it to other countries and US education's problem isn't even lack of money, the whole system's just fscked up.
Also, if Mister Universe would slash the DoD budget to more sane levels (i.e. less than the money spent by all other nations on earth combined when the majority of that money is spent by your allies), then instead a few billions he'd be able to distribute a few hundred billions and perhaps he could even give NASA another billion or two without anyone noticing.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Obama supports killing a big chunk of the space program for no good reason
Education is no good reason? Dear lord, the ignorant trolls I see these days...
One word....FIRST. NASA puts up a lot of money for high schools to start a FIRST team. And the people who participate are the same kind of people NASA needs in the future.
Whenever the federal government gets involved in things like education, they fuck it up. Department of Education and No Child Left Behind ring any bells?
they have a problem with priorities.
It is that simple. Yes, as another replier mentioned, women are equally within their rights to have a career. However, once someone decides to be a parent, they are equally oblighed thusly: to be the best parent possible. That requires reprioritizing.
And please let's not get started with any of this "we need to both work because we need to live in this overly expensive neighbourhood and dress and dine too expensively and need to drive that big SUV over there." junk. People have to learn that a choice is required: a lifestyle focused on you as an individual with zero children, or one focused on the maximal development of your offspring.
As a high school student, I have been told time and time again about how "budget" issues result in no new textbooks, computers, or building renovations this year. I think education is more important. After all, who would be left to work at NASA if public education continues to fail?
Do you really think that Department of Education is giving us four times the value that NASA is? (It's main initiative right now is something called "No Child Left Behind." )
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's quite sad really. Federally-mandated national education standards (not the voluntary standards we have now) would be a good start to fixing the U.S. educational system. Unfortunately the DOE and NCLB are used as evidence that mandatory national standards will end in disaster.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not entirely sure about the universe - Einstein
This idea Obama has here might be stupid, but it pales in comparison with the sheer stupidity of the Clinton campaign.
Clever signature text goes here.
Using the most dramatic scenario here, what happens when that one-in-a-trillion asteroid comes into contact with earth, and we have no space travel, and haven't done anything in space for five years? Besides, how many things come out of space travel every day? All the medications that can only be made in orbit, all the discoveries that could lead to extraterrestrial human colonization. I never went to pre-K, and I'm in the top 10 of my class. Besides, pre-K isn't what needs the money, my school district is $400k in the hole right now! All of this while military spending increases $40k a second... PRIORITIES PLEASE!!!
[Quick disclaimer: I'm not a US citizen, and will not be voting in any US elections.]
I would agree that he is shirking the issue of Iraq, but this policy (if it remains in place) would indicate that Obama at least has his eye on the ball.
There are lots of valid arguments for channeling a proportion of funds currently devoted to NASA into education. He is not saying that NASA should be closed down. There is no doubt that with appropriate planning, and sometimes with the assistance of a bit of plain luck (cf. Voyager, etc), great outcomes can be achieved with comparatively modest input of cash.
First and foremost, this has a vastly better outcome in terms of "bang for the buck". Investment in education is an investment in the future in terms much more realisable than NASA can EVER deliver.
Also, all three are senators. There's something about the US Senate which tends to detach you from reality. The longer you are there, the worse it gets. By now Ted Kennedy must be wondering when he's going to get his sainthood declared.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Radical and disruptive is exactly what the US needs right now.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
We can through the entire Federal Budget at "education" and still get the crap students we get now. It's not the money, it's the poor quality of teaching. We need to get away from all the PC driven social crap taught in schools and back to true education, the basics!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
This sounds would be more like Head Start, which has been mildly useful.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The first time he mentioned space in his campaign literature was on page 15 of a 15 page document about his plans for education (which in itself provides some insight into how important space is to him), where he says he's going to fund his additions to the 66 billion dollar education budget by cuts from NASA. The first citation is here
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I can't say who's more competent, as I haven't bothered to research much into either, but I definitely agree that it's a bad idea to take money away from the space program. How about taking it out of military funding? Not like they'll need so much after we pull them out of Iraq, right?
Bravery is not a function of firepower.
~J.C. Denton (Deus Ex)
Ahh, but if the public isn't interested in NASA, then why should the public be forced (at gunpoint no less)* to pay for it?
*yes, I know this is melodramatic. But the fact is that tax authority comes either from the consent of the taxed or the threat of violence.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I'm always amazed at the number of conservatives who believe that more money always buys a better gun, but more money can't buy a better teacher.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Quickly pulling out of Iraq will create an Iran which is double the size of present... yada yada yada.
Oh, grow up.
The world does not revolve around the US or its paranoid fantasy where America has to be eternally fighting the "Last War". This adolescent pseudo-culture is just so tiresome.
I apologise if this sounds flamebaity, but your post is a perfect indication of why most of the world thinks Americans are stupid.
America would start producing a lot more educated people, who would all say 'more space funding asshole!'
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
As my father always explained to me, the problem with getting Federal or State grants and funds as a local school is that it always has strings attached. You need to jump through dozens of hoops to get the money, so many that sometimes it renders any financial advantage provided by the grant moot, or at the very least diverts human energy which could be spent dealing with problems on the ground.
That said, for all its problems, more money for local schools would be a very good thing in the majority of cases. They don't have enough money at my fiancee's school, which is in a perfectly middle-class city, to hire back any of the first and second year teachers, and how are they going to meet class size standards (and thus get money) if they don't have enough teachers?
Finally, I think it bears stating at this point that the total cost of Bush's military actions is somewhere between one and three trillion dollars. Maybe it would be a disaster to pull out of Iraq now, maybe that won't happen - but I'd bet that McCain, with his military swagger, tough-on-terrorism platform, economic incompetence and neocon bent would engage in some other kind of military action during his term, costing the American taxpayers another trillion dollars for no real benefit.
At first, I was like, "Oh no, not the space program". But then I realized, maybe just because I'm trying to rationalize a way to agree with Obama, that I think I do actually agree. Here is why.
Firstly, thanks to Bush, we really aren't going to be doing anything interesting in space anytime soon. Sure we could putter around and send some probes, but we aren't going to have the resources to do something really extraordinary for awhile.
In the meantime, the US is slipping. We aren't the smartest, we aren't the biggest economy and we slowly shifting away from the center of the world. Like Egypt, China and Europe before, it is possible that the world's reins may slip from our hands unless we do something. Now whether that is a bad thing or not, I don't know, but as a government, I'm assuming a main goal is to retain influence.
One of the best ways to maintain our influence is through education. If we really go all out on the next generation, then in 30 years, we'll still be the center of the modern world. If not, then in 30 years, China, Japan, Europe and India are going to stop sending us their smartest people and keep them for themselves, and then we'll just have the brain-deads over here watching American Idol.
The best, most surefire way to increase the overall effectiveness of our education system is early education. We can pour trillion into high schools and get microscopic results, but just a fraction of that going into getting education out there to pre-kindergardeners and we will probably see general competency double. No I don't have a source for that, it being pure speculation, but it is well known that early development is a critical stage.
Lately I've realized how little parent teach their kids. Some, I dare say most, do absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. Maybe the teach them to count to ten, but that is all. You're lucky if you get the ABC's as well. I find it shocking when I talk to people who didn't get taught anything as a child, and even more shocking when I see children not being taught.
I was reading fluently and doing basic algebra before I entered kindergarden, and that lead has stuck with me my whole life. (Quite frustrating actually.)
So yeah, those of you who are complaining that Obama isn't thinking long term, take a moment to consider whether you are thinking long term. Getting off of the planet, to a different solar system is going to take hundreds and hundreds of years of dedicated work and research. Furthermore, throughout those hundreds of years, society will have to be intelligent enough in general to realize the need for such a project and support it (which they aren't now). Possibly, before we dive straight for space flight, we need to raise the intellectual level of society high enough that they aren't looking at their own wallets so hard that we'll never get off the ground.
Early education sounds like the best way to do that to me.
P.S. I've only gotten one, count them, one bad mod (overrated), and I've got several (8 or 9) good ones, yet my karma has decided to become "bad". So now all my posts start at zero and no one ever reads them (let alone mods them up), meaning I can never get my karma to good, or at least normal. What is up with that. Should I just start a new account. Seriously, does one overrated mean I should be censored like this? Bah. Bah. I bet no one reads this either.
What Constitutional issues? The ones you conjure up after a cursory glance and an internet rant don't count. Seriously. I don't mean to be combative. I'm all ears.
How about this for a compromise:
Divert $X million from NASA and give it to education of future aerospace engineers and other highly-space-related professions.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The truth is, the reason the middle east is in such shambles is because culturally, people from that part of the world are very complacent about the status quo. No thought of improvement for society as a whole, simply a view of what gets you ahead personally. It's the primary reason western civilization is dominant. It's because western culture has a long history of nationalism.
Mock it if you want, but tell me if you'd rather live in England or Saudi Arabia.
Simply superior culture.
So while you sit around with a bunch of professional student bemoaning the status quo, the Americans and British are trying to fix things. You may not like how they're going about it, but since you seem to limit your actions to sitting around a dinner table and complaining, that's all you'll ever accomplish.
I'm sure you're a wonderful person though. And I mean that sincerely.
Hillary is "the most competent leader running for office"? When did that happen? John McCain spent more time fighting and bleeding for our country than Hillary Clinton has in elected office, and after that distinguished military career, he was running for Senate when Hillary's most important position was on the Arkansas Rural Health Advisory Committee. Now, I know political biases make people say silly things now and again, but you're just being a tool if you think anybody but John McCain wins the experience issue.
With very few exceptions, people aren't guns.
This is a massive government babysitting project that Obama is proposing. This has NOTHING to do with our current education system.
Rob Reiner just tried passing a similar bill/program here in California. I'm surprised NASA's the target this time. It's ususally cigarette smokers or the "rich". Guess they're becoming an easy target, too.
Hey moms, dads - no need to spend time with your kids anymore. No time for babies. Send them off for early "education".
What a brave new world we live in....
Ted Kennedy must be wondering when he's going to get his sainthood declared.
Just as soon as he can bring Mary Jo back to life
What?
Show Clinton some respect! She came under heavy sniper fire in Bosnia from a small child. It takes a real hero to live through that and tell about it no less than three times... to hand-chosen audiences... finally admitting the lie in a most dismissive way 8 days later.
Her husband was even kind enough to resurrect and reformat the lie just this past week!
I love the Clintons. They're the best!
> I'm always amazed at the number of conservatives who believe that
> more money always buys a better gun, but more money can't buy a better
> teacher.
Simple, lets start with guns. There are LOTS of guns, built for every possible use and you can pick the one best suited to your intended use. There are lots of good reviews to allow you to make an informed decision.
Now lets contrast this with teachers. Testing teachers for quality control is forbidden. Parents disagree over what 'teaching' even should be, but the State prescribes one doctrine for all. If one disagrees with WHAT is being taught it is hard to see how buying more of it will change anything. If we can't quantify quality other than waiting thirten years to see how many children out of each batch gets destroyed it is hard to get a grip on quality control, thus throwing more money at a broken design is contra indicated.
Now consider the original published design goals for mandatory public education:
1. Create obedient drones to man the dehumanizing factories of the industrial revolution. (Leader types were to be the children of the wealthy who would continue attending the best private academies.)
2. Ensure every drone (child) was properly instructed in socialism, including their palce in the new order. i.e. They follow, and the annointed elite lead.
3. Remove children from the labor force, thus removing a major competitive pressure on the trade unions.
Even if the schools were operating with 100% efficency I'd be arguing for burning the lot to the ground and starting over. But the reality is even more horrible. No. Sending a child to government schools is child abuse and pissing away the entire Federal budget on the current schools could only, in a perfect world, bring them back to the dystopia I outlined above because that is their stated DESIGN GOAL.
When you are ready to join me in abolishing the current system and privitizing education we can talk about whether and how much the various levels of government should subsidize education.
Democrat delenda est
Quite a few Americans agree that radical and disruptive is exactly what we need.
Not true -- the secondary results of the space program are very valuable compared to the cost of running it.
To be fair, allocating federal funding to pre-kindergarten education is pretty damn unlikely to buy any K-12 teachers.
> What Constitutional issues?
The ones that forbid 90% of what the Federal Government is currently doing. It's quite simple actually and you might be up to the task.
Step One: Obtain a copy of the US Constituition (Hint: Google is your friend) and read it.
Step Two: Locate and quote the section that authorizes the Federal Government to do any/all of the following:
Step Two-A: Establish government schools, or to fund them
Step Two-B: Require children to attend government schools
Step Two-C: Establish nationwide testing requirements
Step Three: When you fail all of the sub parts of Step Two, reread Amendments Nine and Ten of the US Constituition. Anything not explicitly allowed is forbidden.
Thus the only valid question for your local congresscritter is that infamous line uttered by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, "English Motherfucker; Do you speak it?"
Democrat delenda est
Many gifted minds do not have the wealth or funds to go on to higher education and as thus America is becoming an Orwellian sub-third world culture.
As I observed during my college engineering degree period, brilliant minds and the highly educated do not see the world and solutions to the world's ills as neo-conservative republicans do. You will only find the uneducated illiterate bubbas and cooters of the back-woods holding their guns overhead and declaring we need to invade the "Rag Heads" to protect our borders.
It's depressing when you realize that America is run by uneducated dimwits.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Absolutely NOT. Radical and disruptive is what we have RIGHT NOW, in the form of the bizarre swing to authoritarianism that has taken place in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and oddly enough, France.
What we need is a return to rationality, common sense and decency, real compassion for other beings, and respect for human rights.
Decisions, decisions...
a) "Quickly pulling out of Iraq" and therefore loosing some major influence in the middle east? Largely regional benefits outside the USA?
b) Elevating the education level Largely regional benefits localized to inside the USA.
c) Realizing the "Vision for Space Exploration" Lasting benefits helping to ensure the continued survival of the entire human race.
Tough choice...
Mod Cops need to mod parent as Troll. Only an idiot would mod that comment as Insightful ...
unless you're inciting a riot of skin heads or the KKK.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Great points! My home schooled 13 year old can out read, is more articulate and far more interested in advancing her education then most adults let alone children of her own age. Add to this the fast track enrollment opportunities at some of the most prestigious universities just for home schoolers and you can see why the state sponsored schools are working overtime to banned home schooling in California. They fear what basic education can do, create people who can think for themselves! This is were the guns come in HAHA!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Testing teachers for quality control is forbidden.
And is hiring administrators without huge egos that won't run schools like their personal kingdoms also forbidden?
State
Ahh, a Libertarian. Right. Why are you even commenting? You're not in favor of fixing public education, you're probably partial to dismantling it. There's not much constructive you can contribute if your goal is destructive.
Now consider the original published design goals for mandatory public education:
No, let's not. You can continue to live in the 1800's, but it's the 21st century and those goals aren't applicable any longer. If you think they are, then I can't help you.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Who said: "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism, and loyalty to the state"?
A. The commissar of education of the former Soviet Union
B. The minister of education for the government of Communist China
C. Adolph Hitler
D. Justice H. Walter Croskey of California Court of Appeals
The answer is "D."
"Writing for the court of appeals' 3-0 decision, Croskey held that parents without teaching credentials do not have a constitutional right to home school their children
The court's decision was the result of a dispute between two parents who chose to educate their children in their home. The Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family services disagreed and brought suit to end this practice.
While all this took place in California, it has caught the attention of teachers' unions and home school parents everywhere, not to mention those of us who view Croskey's perspective as a basis for politically correct state indoctrination.
According to the court's opinion, parents must send their children to a public or private school, or if taught elsewhere, the teacher must hold credentials accredited by the state. Not surprisingly, a member of the California Teachers Association board of directors was pleased with the ruling.
"We're happy," he said, "We always think students should be taught by credentialed teachers no matter what the setting."
Translation: The teachers' union doesn't like competition."
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Are you joking? Higher pay lets you hire more qualified people. That includes better administrators too.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
I doubt your child is as well educated as you say, since you're seemingly incapable of stating the situation in CA accurately. You can't lie to me and then expect me to believe something else you say.
FYI, The goal is to institute standards on home schooling, not to abolish it.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Yes, I am joking.
He didn't say experienced - he said incompetent. And the sad thing is McCain is no more competent than Hillary or Obama. The sad thing is they're all incompetent boobs and at the time America needs a Great leader most: a mimic of Bush (4 more years! 4 more years!), a candidate who supports video game censorship and is hardly able to claim to be Liberal, and a naif smooth talker who keeps dubious, racist company as his spiritual advisors.
Let's hope America can survive this one and get things in shape for the next round in 4 years. FUCK IT PISSES ME OFF!
Hey I've seen tests given to students in the 1800's and 1900's and they are very difficult. So yes, I'd send my kids to school if the teachers were smart enough to teach at the levels indicated by the tests!! But due to unions and tenure all your children can be guaranteed is good indoctrination and instruction on what ever sensitivity is the PC of the hour.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
And the school administration should be handled by a teaching TEACHER or teachers not some over paid politico jackass with a whole army of useless flunkies kissing his ass.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
And this judge is an education expert how exactly???
That's the trouble with you Libertarians. You talk big about how independent thinking and freedom loving you are, but as soon as a moron with some letters in front of his name says something, you're quoting it as if it was printed in a red letter Bible.
And what's wrong with kids being taught by teaching-parents with credentials? Teach them at home if you like, but I'll be damned if you're going to turn out some uneducated brats for the rest of the world to deal with.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Obviously you've been brainwashed. You can't compose a sentence without using a right-wing buzzword (unions, tenure, indoctrination, sensitivity, PC).
If there's a group of people who have all appearances of being centrally controlled, it's the "independent" Libertarian conservatives.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Finally, a point I can agree with you on. Schools are far too often horrible places for teachers to work. Does it make sense to blame teacher's unions for the problems? Let me ask you, would you want to work in an authoritarian dictatorial environment without the benefit of a union? Of course not. Fix the school administration, and a lot of the other problems will become a lot better.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The counterpoint being that competence is as competence does, and nobody debates that McCain has been successful as both a senator and a soldier.
Of course, I'm supporting Obama for exactly those reasons....
Well then, in that case, carry on.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You've completely slanted the argument with your assessment.
You assume that if we pull out of Iraq we'll loose influence with the middle east and that nothing positive could come out of it. This would also significantly reduce the budget in coming years by a considerable amount.
I don't see how spending more money on education will automatically cause students to develop political awareness that will shield them from corrupt politicians. We've been increasing spending on education for decades now and a majority of the country is still politically inept. More money will probably not solve this problem in my opinion.
I feel as though NASA could do things differently or better with the money it has, such as sharing the information possess and data it collects with anyone else interested in obtaining space travel. I'm interested in seeing humans move out among the stars and I've had nothing to do with NASA. I think your statement is complete hyperbole.
Perhaps if you'd care to back up your assertions with something more than your own opinion I might be lead to believe your point of view.
So Obama's plan is to steal money from one underfunded program to pay for another underfunded program? We should be taking that money from the monstrously bloated DoD budget. Five percent of one year's military budget will put us on Mars.
Five percent of one year's DoD budget puts us on Mars.
I just might. You never know.
What do you think the teachers union is an an authoritarian dictatorial environment? Have you ever seen what happens to a teacher that speaks against it, I have they get mowed down like grass and quickly learn to shut up a tow the party line. What do you call an non union teacher? Unemployed!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Maybe I think that it will not help education one bit.
The time in US history when education was at it's best happens to be the same time when spending on the space program was it's highest.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Dude listen to what his pastor and his personal hero preached from the pulpit.
If you don't think it was racist just what do you think it is?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Now you're just talking nonsense.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The ones that forbid 90% of what the Federal Government is currently doing. It's quite simple actually and you might be up to the task.
Let's ignore the noise and skip to the signal.
Step Two: Locate and quote the section that authorizes the Federal Government to do any/all of the following:
Monetary incentives is long established law of the land. See NY v. US (1992, *not* 1946). Get used to it.
Step Two-B: Require children to attend government schools
Those are based on state law (your complaint, right?) *OR* are based on monetary incentive. A federal requirement would be unconstitutional, which is why there isn't one.
Step Two-C: Establish nationwide testing requirements
Let's all sing together now: Monetary incentive != requirements!
Step Three: When you fail all of the sub parts of Step Two, reread Amendments Nine and Ten of the US Constituition. Anything not explicitly allowed is forbidden.
I have a better idea. Why don't you come to grips with the fact that between the creation of the Constitution and now there are literally thousands if not tens of thousands of cases that have modified, tweaked, and otherwise made clear the supreme law of the land. Your cursory glance does not hundreds of years of case law make.
Thus the only valid question for your local congresscritter is that infamous line uttered by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, "English Motherfucker; Do you speak it?"
And as soon as you leave the room, he and his aide will have a chuckle about the one born every minute.
Wow, it's like digg! I go down as a troll, and the populist gets the plug. You guys are the best.
Why are Americans always so keen to elect soldiers? Is prior military experience really a good indicator of future success as a political leader?
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
I'm not. That's why I support Obama. But having said that, you do get points for knowing something about the military if you were in it, and, God forbid we found ourselves in a war we actually needed to fight, McCain would probably be better at the fighting part than Obama.
How do you equate education to hand outs to the poor?
Anyone who thinks either/any presidential candidate from any party would pull the troops out of Iraq when they take office is wilfully believing a lie. It simply won't happen for several reasons.
One, they won't want the loss of the war on their record. And regardless of if we are losing now, it would be the next president that lost the war when they take actions to, lose the war. If they could force Bush to lose the war first, it might be a different story. It doesn't look like that will happen though.
Two, we broke the eggs and scrambled them. It is our responsability to do something other then let them spoil. Like it or not, if we walk away and let Iraq explode, the rest of the world will be more pissed at us then they are now. This means the popular worry more about what France and Germany thinks of us then what's right or pertinent for the country will take a back seat and fuck their foreign policy agendas.
Three, if we walk away, Iraq will explode causing all sorts of problems in an already volatile area. Like it or not, we will be less safe and most likely screwed if the middle east exploded in inter-country war over control of Iraq. Iran will most likely step in seeing how they are backing Muqtada al-Sadr and is the supply for most of the weaponry that the insurgents are using. This will make Kuwait really nervous seeing how they paid Iraq to protect them before Iraq invaded them. Jordan, Syria and Saudi will not only have oil interest in Iraq, but will also contest Iran in the process which means Israel will be hit and all the middle east oil supply would be interrupted if not stopped completely. This would mean inflation not only all across the US, but the rest of the world too with shortages in oil causing 200 dollar per barrel or more prices and the possibilities of good old fashioned wars for resources that we sort of grew out of.
Anyways, that is the simplified version of an idiotic withdraw without taking certain steps first. It may be worse or not. The potential to fuck things up far worse then they are now exists if some lunatic actually withdraws the troops before Iraq is capable of supporting itself and defending itself. There are enough people "in the know" in the government that will warn whoever the next president is of these problems that a withdraw just won't happen. And as soon as it looks like it is going to happen, they will probably go public and warn everyone else in the country that their elected leader is worse then Bush was.
It seems to me, if memory serve me correctly, that presidential leaders with actual war experience as a soldier tend to keep us out of war longer then those without. Even Roosevelt, a war hero, kept us out of WW2 until it became impossible to ignore. Sure we sent supplies and munitions to our allies but we didn't send our boys to "die" until after pearl harbor. Ike sent advisers to help the French train the south Vietnamese in Vietnam but they were only trainers at that point.
Perhaps you might want to rethink part of that. Then again, maybe you don't.
Poor school districts are statistically the most needy. It's one solution to America's education problem, maybe not the best or the most effective, but we need to do something and soon.
If those are the facts of the situation, then why is it brainwashing? Wouldn't it be more prudent to think that you are brainwashed by labeling everything Right Wing that you don't agree with so you can just ignore those facts?
Seriously. Ignoring something that could be true because of the source is foolish. Even more so then ignoring someone speaking the truth but parroting what a third person said. Don't be a fool.
If you're so great at teaching your kid, then why aren't you in a school teaching a classroom of kids? Wouldn't that be better for everyone as you'd be able to properly educate your child's peers (giving her a better place to live) while still giving her a top tier education?
Oh, wait, right, you're all talk.Shh!!!
Don't inject logic, reasoning and history into an emotional thread. Especially in a short and concice post like that. Your likely to get branded a troll or down moded someway that no one will ever see your post unless they surf at -1. Play it safe and don't risk the Karma hit.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I guess I shouldn't meantion that you could spend more money on education without cutting the space program by cutting spending in other areas or increasing taxes.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Just to add some context and support to the above comment. Nixon scrapped the Apollo program, and today we do not have a moon return capability, or one that's even possible in the near term. This is despite all the advances in materials, combustion, computing, and massive aerospace commercial development.
I think this is probably the worst slate of candidates during the course of my life. McCain is unacceptable because he supported lies that led to American service people being killed to further his own policital ambition, and of course fully endorses the magic of voodoo economics which has hallowed out our nation. Hillary hates my freedom, for the children, because it's an idea popular with idiots despite little if any basis in fact. And now Obama hates the future, wealth and security. (How about 7 billion for the children by not subsidizing oil exploration? Pretty sure that sector is profitable enough.) Well fucking awesome, I suppose I'll just be finding my inner Richard Pryor and voting none of the above.
I'm surprised that you didn't go into Horace Mann and Jefferson's efforts to create a public education system in DC that failed miserably because it wasn't within the constitutional powers of the federal government to get involved in education. He stated something like it would work with a state who wold have the authority to create and fund a public education system but in Washington DC, they had to rely on donations from the public.
Of course most of his problems and probably the first failing of the first public education system in the US stemmed from the constitutional powers granted to the federal government. I don't have a link to this but PBS did a show on public education a while back that illustrated this story quite nicely. See if this would link works. Sadly I don't think it would offer anything useful except maybe more information as a starting point.
The military actions come from off budget financing. If the wars weren't there, the money would never have been spent. It isn't like they are taking away from any other budget item.
Wars are funded this way for several reasons. One of the most important reasons is that we never want to institute a provision to fund a war in the defense budget. The removes a lot of hurdles and obstacles for presidents wanting to goto war. If we budgeted them in, the president wouldn't have to report to congress every so often and explain why it is still necessary to stay in the war too. So they fund them outside the budget requiring the president to ask for money every quarter or perhaps even more frequently.
It does go onto our national debt though. But as long as we are spending above our constrains anyways, the war isn't stopping any funding from going to education.
Something you should look into is that almost all of the presidents with military experience within a time of war has kept the US out of war a lot longer then leaders with no military experience during a time of war. Don't get me wrong, we have went to war with these type of leaders in power, we just waited until the last possible moment and then attempted to just get the job done. Take Roosevelt for instance, A war hero before he became a politician, avoided WW2 until Pearl harbor happened. Ike only sent troops into Vietnam to help the French train south Vietnamese troops. They weren't fighting until long after he left office.
Have a president with combat military experience seems to keep us away from war longer for some reason. Maybe because they know the actual costs of a war is greater then ink on a ledger to denote how much money is spent per enemy killed.
There you go with that reason and logic again.
Actually, within the last 20-30 years, the democrats have always given NASA a rough time on their budget. During the Clinton administration before the republicans took over congress, they slashed NASA's budget more then the total of the previous cut and the next three cuts combined. It was a whipping post issue when Reagan and the first Bush was in office too. They might not have slashed the budget but they railed against it and cut increased purposed by the then administrations. Everything seems more important then NASA to them which is a shame. Most of what said "we can do it", came from mobilizing NASA in the 50's and 60's. Their continued success and leadership is what I think started the US in being the leader in technology and engineering fields. I think it is sort of important to stay out in front of the ever increasing competition in those areas simply so we can show we are more then capable or leading the way.
I don't understand why this got modded up. To claim that these countries are all experiencing a similar "swing to authoritarianism" makes no sense, for several reasons.
First, these countries aren't part of any logical group. Seriously, including China in a political freedom-related trend with the US or France really boggles my mind.
Second, I really don't know how true it is to say that the US has seen a "swing" to authoritarianism. I'd say it's more like a slow creep, with the Federal government gradually gaining more power; the Bush Administration has simply abused this power much more than other recent ones.
---
Also, you seem to forget that what is considered "radical" is in relation to the norm. If these countries are (as you claim) living in an authoritarian environment, then it logically follows that a "return to rationality" will actually be seen as radical. Therefore, to return to rationality you should support someone who is seen as radical. QED.
Care to cite that? Whose design goals? From when? And what elements of our present education system contribute to turning children to drones.
I agree on a few things. Public schools are in a terrible state, and we desperately need restructure. Competition and less bureaucratic control would probably be a pretty effective to this end. But no need to let your passion drive you to extremes. Damn.
wtf are you talking about? Conspiracy theories are rarely the same as history. The scary thing is how sure of yourself you seem that others might actually believe you.
Wait! Wait! Are you suggesting Clinton is the most competent to be president?? She voted for PATRIOT Act (and to renew it), she was callin' for Federal video game regulations (nanny state), blah I can't even keep going. I'm not a rabid Obama supporter, I have no clue who I will vote for. I may write in Charlie Brown.
I have looked over her terms as Senator. I don't see it.
You're worried about a few bucks redirected from NASA? I mean in the big picture of what the government spends, this is a few bucks. What about the billions blown by the Census Bureau over their botched hand held plans? How much space science could that have funded? You think Hillary is going to fix that? I don't think Obama will fix it, but so far I've seen more promise in him to at least start something.
No sig for you!!
He sure did, he was even a prisoner of war during a conflict which was manufactured under less than genuine pretenses for largely philosophical ideas on how a world should be run from a Pentagon that contained Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. It's therefore very understandable how he, once he came to real power and national stature, would then be so supportive of those who choose to serve in America's armed forces by making sure that should these events come to confluence again, he would at least speak in their interests even if it didn't serve his political ambitions. OH WAIT. That's right, he quickly and capreciously spent the blood of not just his fellow citizens, but his BROTHERS IN ARMS to serve his own political aims. Wow, I guess a turn at the wheel of this formerly great ship really is worth one's soul. McCain is by far the LEAST qualified to be president. What evil other's did out of ignorance, he did with foreknowledge. Worst coward. Ever. Of all the people with blood on their hands, McCain and Powell are some of the most deeply stained. I hope there's a hell for them to burn in.
Roosevelt never served in the military, except for being Undersecretary of the Navy during the Wilson administration. Perhaps you have him confused with Theodore Roosevelt (who was also Undersecretary of the Navy), who served during the Spanish-American War.
It is stupid to think you can easily judge Bob's thoughts from something Ralph says and believes in.
I don't spend much of my free time listening to the opinions emanating from Fox news, so I can't say exactly what Obama believes according to them, but I can honestly say I have heard some very intelligent and promising things for the future come from Obama's public addresses. Oh, and he can speak English without mangling the words.
Judging from the past 8 years of double speak, double standards, scandal, incest, cannibalism, 2 draft dodging assholes, "If you don't vote for us the terrorists will strike again soon" bullshit, and outright lies from Snarly and Smirky, I'm ready for someone less corrupt to try to bring us out of the dark ages those two assholes have plunged us into.
You have been watching way too much Bill O'Reilly and that faggot Sean Hannity. You may have put the crack pipe down now, but you've still got your head up your butt. There is much work to do son...******* ...
If you mod me as troll, the terrorists will eat your brain
If you don't mod me up to Funny, Interesting, or Damn He's Funny, I will find out where you live and will send the terrorists to crap on your lawn
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
You are right. I was thinking of the rough riders and was wondering how teddy got translated into FDR. I guess I suffered some brain freeze or something there. Thanks for correcting me.
How did the "Bush-Hussain" pissing match drain the nation of resources? Less money has been spent on the war in Iraq than any national health plan would. I dont care about what made up numbers they come out to say it would "only" cost so much. That would be of much larger economic damage than Iraq.
If we cant afford one, we cant afford the other either so it is retarded to say that the war has ruined us and yet health care would have been all hunky dory.
Not to mention that nothing give the federal government the ability to impose standards like that. Most of their involvement in education is outside their reach too but it seems to be tolerated.
As for NCLB, What makes you think it isn't working? The states are supposed to asses the students and set standards, this only presents funding for options when the school fails to accomplish those goals.
Ya, i mean fighting oppression and tyranny is so uncompasisonate. Those poor fools deserved to stay under a military dictator so can enjoy my big screen TV without worrying about the constant news alerts about the war.
Paraphrasing a line I just heard a while ago, in war the innocent die along side the guilty, but if you do nothing only the innocent die.
You forgot to mention how she is so neglected by everyone that she didn't have enough donations to fund her staffers health insurance. Show some sympathy and give her more of your money!
http://mpinkeyes.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/hillary-clinton-didnt-pay-health-care-premiums-for-her-campaign-staff/
Well, considering that the "rag heads" DID attack first then there would be some evidenct that the borders needed protecting.
I think that the DNC logo should be an ostrich. They always seem to think that ignoring a threat and disarming yourself would promote peace when all it really does is encourage hostility. Lets make a gun free zone so nobody can break the law by shooting a lot of people in the mall! Lets get rid of our military nobody can invade us! Yay! We are so smart!
The problem with "educating our childern" isnt the amount of money put in the system, but that children just dont want to be educated. Its much easier to live on a hand-out from a liberal welfare program.
BTW, i know that its a myth that ostriches hide their head, but the analogy works.
I don't teach, I work my ass off so my wife can stay home and give the kids a great education. I have taught at the college level and would never in my live put up with that shit again. I do spend a lot of time at schools though and thats what sold me on my wife's desire to home school.
So who's all talk?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
Who says that increased funding=higher pay? I rather see an increase in bureaucracy and programs and standardized tests etc etc. I really doubt much money is going to trickle down to the teachers and workers at the schools.
There is no money to divert. The funding for the Iraq war is off budget which means if we don't spend it, it simply isn't there. So you see there isn't anything to divert related to the war.
As for your observations of people in college, that is expected. People in college are there to learn things but have no real world experience most of the time. This allows them to have abstract views on life and society in general. Some people grow out of it and into other areas, some stay firmly attached. A whole lot more go in between and support bits and pieces of opposing ideals. Don't hold your experiences in college as the tell all for everything.
Also, it isn't a situation of You will only find the uneducated illiterate bubbas and cooters of the back-woods holding their guns overhead and declaring we need to invade the "Rag Heads" to protect our borders. Protecting our borders and rags heads isn't a logical statement that has entered any conversation relating to the Iraq war. There are at least 5 other countries over there that you could call rag heads that we don't even bother with. This sort of shows that you either never invested the time and effort to learn what the problems where about or you bought into some fallacy of a conspiracy theory and are more impressionable then you are smart. Take a step back and think about all of it for a minute.
The country isn't run by the uneducated.
Theres a big difference between being a good parent and choosing teaching as an occupation.
Interesting post. He was criticizing the judges statement. Meaning that the judge ISNT an education expert. Then you go on and agree with the judge, with whom you were initially disagreeing. Did you go to school in california?
BTW the problem with requiring parents to have "credentials" is it means that they are at the mercy and whims of what ever board that is put together to decide what "accredited" means. Don't like what Big Brother says? Wham! Your not accredited and you cant teach your kid. Send him to us and we will decide what is in his best intrests.
Final note, homeschool is done for one of two reasons. Good parents who know what to do, and lazy slackers who want their kids to be slackers too. Of course, even keeping the slackers in public schools they will still probably grow up to be slackers all the same so there is no reason to this decision other then to hamper the responsible parents who want to do home school.
Funny how left wing rants on the right involve so much hate and mud slinging when the right relies to much on logic, facts and proofs to discredit the left.
So, the summary clearly has an opinion of this idea, and pokes fun at it by referring to the "rigors of kindergarten," which is deliberately misunderstanding the purpose of the idea in the first place, and doing so in a way that is supposed to make it sound absurd. (I could just as easily mock kindergarten by saying it's to prepare for the "rigors of first grade." Education has to start somewhere, and starting at age 5 is not a universal practice.)
And then on top of this, there are comments on the article making fun of the phrase "rigors of kindergarten" as though it was stated seriously, and somebody is really arguing that kindergarten should be rigorous. So the disingenuous mockery actually succeeded in making something seem foolish a priori, without bothering to engage with what's really going on. That's just fantastic.
I am the man with no sig!
The truth is, people from your part of the world sit around a dinner table complaining.
If you don't like it, then do something besides sitting around a dinner table with people with 2nd rate education whining.
I'll bet "honor" and "duty" seem quaint. Unless Allah wills it and you're stoning your sister because she had sex. I think you're mostly afraid the U.S. will actually create a viable government in Iraq.
No wonder the Chinese killed all the "intellectuals" during the cultural revolution. It really *was* for the common good.
pix plz
Yeah, there's no hate on the right at all. None whatsoever directed towards gays, immigrants, Muslims, and atheists. Right-wingers are just so darned cool-headed and rational!
*rolls eyes*
Your glasses are looking a little rosy my friend.
I've never met a homeschool proponent who could comprehend the written word worth two rat fucks. And judging by your poor writing skills, your little homeschooled rat fucks must be astoundingly ignorant. Why is it that the dumbest of us think they can homeschool? Perhaps it's because they don't know what they don't know. Sad, really.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with the judge. I'm saying the judge isn't an authority, and what he says is not evidence of the claim.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Stupid -FUCKING- nigger.
Cut funding from NASA to teach stupid fucking children under the age of 5?
As an Aussie who watch the transition to UHN in this country 30yrs ago I can tell you that you are wrong, one major point you overlook is that your government already spends 1.5 times ours per head on health and your health outcomes are worse. Also health expenditure would stay in the country rather than forming craters in a faraway desert. Thing is though the democrats proposed UHC is trying to have it both ways and probably will be rediculously expensive and ultimately useless.
As for NASA, I think the man-on-mars thing is PR for Bush that was born a white elephant, get rid of it and you will save heaps. Wether the money goes back to NASA's autonomous projects or somewhere else is academic.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Learn to read. I'm talking about the uneducated homeschooled fucks that I have met. All of them without exception have been complete numbskulls. I attribute that to their Jesus freak creationist parents who thought they could homeschool and are so ignorant they can't be proven wrong.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
No, it isn't more prudent to say that, because I am being partisan on purpose. You, on the other hand, do not have a choice. If I chose to, I could restate all my positions in such a way that you would not be able to tell that I was not a libertarian. I have that ability because I understand Libertarianism from a neutral point of view. If you were to pretend to be a liberal, you'd fail because you haven't been through the same exercise.
I'm mocking your narrow viewpoint. Even calling me a fool is a sign that you're ignorant of who and what I am. If you join me in my journal, we'll talk politics, and you won't be calling me a fool. You won't agree with me, but you won't call me a fool. I'll still call you sumdumass though.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
You can't imagine any possible way that the schools could be improved if they had proper funding, so that must mean that it's impossible, right?
Sorry, but everyone with a brain can see that a failure of your own limited imagination doesn't mean a real solution doesn't exist.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Ok, what riggers do children face coming in to Kindergarten?
They need to be prepped to understand nap-time is not laying down and playing dead?
Parents can not be relied upon to make sure that a child can count to one hundred?
What is the problem in this country? What is Obama smoking and why is he not sharing?
Addressing your original point, though, this isn't the old days, and McCain isn't Teddy. He's a man who was in every respect a great soldier- a man who was willing to die not only to make safe the people and territory of our nation, but to stop it from losing face. That's important, and in many ways it is an admirable quality- but he expects it of others, and right now, I don't want our soldiers dying to preserve our reputation. I want them back home, alive, and safe, and sound of mind and body, and that is something he will not do- not for himself, and not for his brothers in arms currently serving. Obama will do that, and when the time comes when American power is questioned, I don't think he will be so willing to send the sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, mothers, and fathers of our armed forces into combat to achieve a goal that has even the slightest chance of being accomplished through diplomacy. That is, in many ways, the sign of a true leader- not the man who wins every contest, no matter the cost; but rather the man who feels the cost most keenly, but knows what must be done. Those are the qualities I respect in Obama, and for all the honor I accord John McCain, whom I truly consider an American hero, I do not believe that it is in his heart to place those things that a good man holds above the honor of his country in their proper place.
"We should do it because we should show everyone that we can do it?" I think the US is a world leader in many things, but showing the world how great it is just to prove they are the alpha male seems misguided. Oh sure, the bully with the biggest stick gets the most bowing and scraping from people who are scared of him, but I think this is a way to alienate others.
Why exactly must the US be the leader, in space or any other field. Why not accept that the US is just one nation among many? I like the fact that it is the "International" Space Station, though many partners may be under-contributing or late in their work. Collaborate, co-operate, rather than coerce.
It is a little like being open source rather than closed source. If I understand it correctly*, an open source project team may be like a herd of cats, but the possible good results and the absence of absolute control by any one individual outweighs the dubious advantages of closed source software.
Tony
*Rider: I have not been a part of an open source project, so I am operating from what I have read on Slashdot & OS project web sites.
If the answer is war, you are asking the wrong question
I fully agree with the sentiment of your post, but feel I must comment on this little snippet...
The problem as it stands is that the US has already LOST its reputation, so there's nothing there to preserve. The reputation needs to be regained.
40 to 60 years ago, the US was viewed by the world as a "shining light" - the "land of the free", where "the streets are paved with gold" and anyone who wants to start a new life there can do so and prosper.
5 to 20 years ago, the US was viewed by the world as a joke - we'd turn on the news, and laugh at all the silly things the US was doing, shake our heads and get on with our lives.
As of around the last 5 years, it's even worse though. We now no longer laugh at the silly things - you're starting to worry us. Everyone knows that the US is a great and powerful country, and what that means is that you have a great and powerful military. Recent events have shown terrible uses of that military, inciting violence and terrorism throughout the world. It worries some of us... and scares yet more. Unless you elect a president that will RADICALLY turn the government around, promote rationality, fix your economy and stop you falling in to a state of "dark ages mixed with Third Reich", the rest of the world WILL eventually react against you... and honestly, we really don't want to have to.
I may disagree with the policy Obama is in favour of in the article, I still think he's by far the ONLY sensible choice for BEGINNING the process of turning the country around (I think it will take longer than the time he is in power though, so after him, you need at least one more sensible choice).
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
This brings up the very tricky concept of democracy not always being a good thing...
Sometimes, just because everyone thinks/wants something, it doesn't mean it's not in their best interests to do it anyway. For example, I think if some kind of vote were held as to whether the government should give every citizen one million dollars, a very great deal of people would vote to take that money (which would both effectively destroy the economy, and make that million completely worthless). I really do believe that less than 50% of people would understand how stupid the idea really is, and vote against it.
Democracy requires an intelligent and educated populace, and since that's what's currently lacking, I think the government needs to do some things that are unpopular just to fix the damn situation.
I fully agree that it can be a slippery slope though and that there needs to be a definitive way to stop abuses of it, otherwise totalitarianism is only a stone's throw away.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
I'm actually curious about the effects that this had... my GUESS is that it increased the amount of prostitution, which in turn worsened the drug problem, but "hid it from view" a bit more... would I be right?
That's the problem with prostitution being illegal... legalise it, regulate it, and if necessary unionise it, and then almost all the negative issues around it disappear (note: Most of the western world has legal prostitution, and it's simply a non-issue)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
You left out "Massive Religious/Political Whackjobbery." Which I would think would cover a large range.
P.S. Having the belief that you know better than the state how to teach your kids does not magically make you able to teach calculus. Or writing. And most accreditation programs are just that: assuring basic competence at teaching fundamentals.
No public school teacher is a substitute for a parent. But by the same token, damn few parents are actually a competent substitute for the twelve to twenty teachers a kid usually has by the time they hit high school. And that's not even taking into account the associated lack of socialization homeschooled children often (though not always) suffer.
Ok, what riggers do children face coming in to Kindergarten?
They need to be prepped to understand nap-time is not laying down and playing dead?
Parents can not be relied upon to make sure that a child can count to one hundred?
What is the problem in this country? What is Obama smoking and why is he not sharing?
The problem is more that without pre-school education, the responsibility is on the schools to teach too much, and then they fail. If you take a survey of the smartest (note: "smartest", not "best educated") people in the world, I think you'll find the majority of them have a few things in common, such as a "love of learning" (instilled in the early pre-school years), very high literacy (and having been able to read BEFORE going to school), and so on.The idea of children not being able to read before they go to school still shocks me. I vividly remember my first year of primary school in New Zealand - we weren't "taught to read", we were told to go and read some books (VERY simple books admittedly, but the assumption was there that everyone could already read)
Note that this isn't the case these days... most kids in New Zealand are ALMOST (but not quite) as dumb as the kids in the US. Very, very sad.By the way, you misspelt "rigours"...
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Well, to be fair, testing teachers for quality control isn't so much "Forbidden" as "questionably possible." After all, teaching is not actually a simply definable process with well understood inputs and outputs. It involves a minimum of two individuals (Something a Libertarian should be concerned with), and it depends on the interaction between them and a huge slice of external environment. You can have a bright kid, a great teacher, and oops, asshole parents, welcome to the quickie mart, son. You can have great parents, great teacher, and whoops, kid's got emotional problems unrelated to either. Fuck.
Reductionism looks great on paper. After all, who doesn't love things being simpler. But things aren't fucking simple. Things aren't always, or even often self-regulating. And the free market works great for things where the end goal is profit. The end goal of education is not profit, it is to educate individuals.
When you are ready to join me in abolishing the current system and privatizing education we can talk about whether and how much the various levels of government should subsidize education.Honestly... are you just fishing for insults here? "When you are ready to get rid of government money for schools, we can talk about government money for schools" isn't a useful statement. You're not asking for debate or providing information, you're just posing yourself as so "obviously right" that only like opinions are valid.
My problem with Libertarianism in general is that it's just anarchy for people uncomfortable with admitting it, and who try to dismantle the protections built into our society for the bottom 90%, because they think they'll never be there.
Well, for 90% of everybody, that's not true. And frankly, too many of the libertarians I know have depended on those protections and services to make me believe that the majority of that 10% would be Libertarian.
Also: Anyone whose child is not currently chained to a desk in a sweatshop, who is not currently forced to work in a coal mine because the mine owners pay them in scrip, and who is being paid more than 3.50 and who gets vacation can shut up about "Oh my god, the evil unions." The U.S.A. has had a period with laissez-faire economic and regulatory policies for businesses. It was called the Gilded Age. It was HORRIBLE for almost everyone whose name wasn't Rockefeller or Astor. Unions were a big part of ending things like this, for example.
Other examples of the horrors of excessive privatization: Look at 16th through 18th century England. Especially note that a system of privatized police basically turned England into one huge crime ghetto for multiple decades, until Henry Fielding stepped in and formed a centralized police force answerable to the magistrate's office.
I have been a teacher for several years, and attended both public and private schools as a student. Public schools have their problems: many of them caused by exactly the attempts to dismantle them that you talk about. But what, then, do you propose to replace them with? A system where, if you're poor (and or your parents decide they don't want to pay for school/homeschool), you just don't get taught? That certainly won't raise the crime and unemployment rates through the roof. Oh wait, it would. Well, fudge.
While this is all mostly true, NASA hasn't been the answer for decades because all of this happened after Apollo was killed.
Innovation in space flight is going to happen from Burt Rutan et al; as more people actually get to do it, the excitement will return. Or people will realize that it's really boring out there after all. But we have an inner drive to explore. It's not going away...
I would really like to know what the ROI on the international space station *really* is. A couple of guys chewing bubble gum while circling the earth. I would have much rather have seen those billions go to kids.
I think you are right. I think there is a reality distortion field, but it's not around Obama. It's around space nuts who don't want to see a dime cut from NASA.
The shuttle was a waste of money too, as it never delivered on it's original promises. I love space and the space program, especially the unmanned probes. The fact is, we get far more bang for the buck from the space probes than we have the shuttle program or the ISS (that even NASA wants to decommission by 2012). I think the Hubble is worthwhile, but I can't help but wonder if with the billions spent on servicing missions if it would have not been cheaper to send a new one up on an unmanned rocket.
The fact is, a man in space, in my opinion, is no longer worth the investment. Anything that a man can do, a machine could do better, at less cost, and with less hazard. So much as sending a man up for "inspirational purposes," the fact is that the cost for that "inspiration" is huge. In case you haven't noticed lately, our economy is in the tank and we can ill afford endless programs with open ended budgets, which "man in space" has been, and will always be.
Obama gets my vote on this topic alone. Though I wish he would cut it "outright" rather than "delay" it. Maybe this is his way of doing it so that people will see that they really won't be missing anything at all.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
However if this is true or not, I think, it's a good idea and should be at least taken in to consideration! Just ask yourself: What would be more useful for the world and U.S. citizens?
Note: NASA employees themself are recruited from people with the highest education level! So why not better educate our children, so that they have the chance to dream about space exploration, too?
If you think pre-school will make or break your child from becoming a futurist, engineer, or some other highly educated person than you truly are an idiot. The deficiency resides with Parenting and the fact people are forced to have two incomes to offset many of their own inadequacies in balancing their needs vs. wants.
Any Presidential Candidate who thinks they should reduce NASA to fund Pre-kinergarten in this [public school, non-preschool Mechanical Engineer/Computer Scientist] election reminds me of another Moron who has reduced NASA and funneled Billions to Faith-based Organizations WHICH IS AGAINST THE US CONSTITUTION!!!
Yes I hate to break it to the 18-22 year old branch of folks who were pissing in their britches when Bill Clinton was running for US President his wife is the most competent of all the Candidates.
This fear of a Phagina in the United States under the guise of, ``We are all for a woman being President, just not this one,'' lemming of bulls*** is pure and simply a fear of a woman showing up men that she can actually balance a budget, divert funds into our crumbling Infrastructure, higher competent Scientists and Engineers to advance the Country and explore Space to benefit the Human Race. If you think another woman is going to be running for US President by the time you 18-22 reach us approaching the age of 40 then you truly know nohting about History.
We had a poster woman for VP in 1984. It's now 24 years later and Hillary is the first lady running for President. You wanna wager on if it's gonna be another 24 years before the next woman runs for President? The odds aren't in your favor.
While I wish he'd just redirect it to other (budget-cut) NASA programs instead, I'd be quite happy to see Project Constellation killed. Ares/Orion is a bad design built more around the politics of whose jobs would have to be cut with the loss of the shuttle program than an actual attempt to have a reliable, low-cost launch system. Most people I've talked with who have watched it's floundering through one problem after another, looked at how overweight the system is, the extreme measures they're having to go through to make fundamental design flaws tolerable (like having shock absorbers even on the seats of the crew to stop them from being shaken to death -- i.e., the rest of the craft is still going to shake like crazy, which translates to unreliability), aren't terribly enthused.
I'll BUILD someone to replace you. Some kind of gamma-powered monster, with a heart as black as coal!
Why do people always think that quality control is a simple solution to teachers?! Just get rid of the 'bad' ones and only have 'good' teachers... right? WRONG. People never think it through! So you get rid of the 'bad' teachers, then what? Who do you replace them with? Just grab another off the shelf and you are all set, right? I'm sure there a just a zillion good teachers just waiting around, just twiddling their thumbs.
Do you know how much shit people have to go through to teach already? Training, certification, a$$hole parents, a$$hole kids, and not great pay. Do you think any of these will go away by privitizing education? I think you are sadly mistaken.
Uh, apparently you don't know shit about the public education system. In my high school (i'm 20 now) we were prepared for weeks prior to the CAPT (Connecticut state testing) and all other standardized tests on how to take them, how to answer them, and given practice tests almost daily. The 'standards' dont do shit except encourage schools to go all the way up to but not quite giving out cheat sheets. No Child Left Behind fucks over schools that already do well overall because once the student body is already doing pretty well overall they don't really have much higher to go, so how the fuck are they supposed to keep increasing their standing to get more funding? It's a fucking joke.
"Now consider the original published design goals for mandatory public education:
1. Create obedient drones to man the dehumanizing factories of the industrial revolution."
Nobody needed an education system to create mindless drones, because there were already plenty of them working the land who proved more than capable of learning the simple repetitive sets of tasks that were required of a factory worker, and would perform them for extremely long periods while being paid pittances and both living and working under appalling conditions.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
I see. So your claiming that the only point of view that counts is yours and whatever is supported by your ideals or world view. Yes, that makes you a fool.
It makes you a fool not because you are right or wrong, but because you are ignoring others and their position not because of their view or argument but because it isn't what you think. Now you can be very well set in your thinking, perhaps even somewhat justified in it. But you have no way of knowing when you simply dismiss anyone you disagree with when they are spouting the essential facts of a situation. Your dismissing those facts don't make them go away magically, it doesn't solve the problems, it doesn't show that they aren't a problem. All it does is show that your a fool. I sincerely hope that you are also an idiot- with the meaning matching the historical notes of the Athenian democracy.
"Democracy requires an intelligent and educated populace, and since that's what's currently lacking, I think the government needs to do some things that are unpopular just to fix the damn situation."
A society that lacks an intelligent and educated populace is unlikely to either produce or elect a government with enough intelligence or education to "fix the damn situation".
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Well, their entire history is as part of the legislative process. They only exist to create laws. Therefore, their perspective is that the solution to every problem is with more laws (bigger government).
There ya go. Fixed that for you. (Not that I don't have suspicious about Ron Paul, too...)
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Therefore, their perspective is that the solution to every problem is with more laws (bigger government).
True. All they have is a hammer, so every problem is a nail. This is why the citizen-legislators of the U.S.'s early days was a great idea. Unfortunately -- at legislating -- a specialized legislator is more effective than a citizen-legislator, so the latter died off.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
This story was well known on the space blogs months ago. The fact that it didn't break slashdot until now & the mass media has avoided it like a third rail should settle any debate over whether it's a good thing. Obi should put it away and just lie so we can still vote for him.
All talk? I guess the one who says he's a great teacher but can't hack doing it outside of his own home.
Listen, if you can do your part to educate your own kids, that's great; we all do what we can and as long as you keep it positive, that's, like I said, great. You've got your family covered. It's just that a lot of us get sick of people thinking that as long as "I've got mine" that somehow they can sit back, enjoy what's theirs, and lecture others about how stupid others are for not having a setup exactly like theirs. If you've got yours, fine. If you've got an ability, then share it, don't brag about it. Either get out there and teach again, or STFU about how others should be teaching/paying more to teachers/home schooling/being more like you. BTW, I'm not big on kids, so I don't have any and I don't teach them. But a co-worker stopped me the other day to say how people don't take the time to say it, but how everybody appreciates that when people ask a question I take the time to stop, help people out, and explain things multiple ways until they understand the answer or have a way to get the answer they need. A few people within hearing distance popped up and said, yeah, they like that I help them rather than snap off an incomplete answer or sigh, roll my eyes, or say "you should know that". I share my knowledge because it makes my world a better place. I'm just upset with myself that I've lectured you instead of truly helping you to understand. But at least now I understand better why some people just roll their eyes and sigh.First, one has to believe that the honorable senator from the "Illinoi" state is going to become president; Actually, the senator has blindly caused an environment were the honorable senator from the "Sun Baked" state will create 4 more years of "business as usual" in the oval office.
But let us look at current NASA space designs. I cannot help but think that those plans were purchased at Barnes and Noble, and if one begins to look closely, one will find a copywrite of 1969 on those design plans.
I can not help but wonder if Burt Rotan should not be allowed a moment of 6 years to run NASA; I really am bored with manned excuses for unmanned space flight.
Throwing more money at it, especially for "preparing kids for kindergarten", is a waste. Theres so much wrong with our education system, throwing more money at the base of it like that would be like overclocking your geforce4 AGP video card instead of upgrading to a mobo that supports PCI-X and getting a geforce8.
FDR was never in the military, and therefore could not have been a war hero.
You obviously have NO IDEA what I'm doing, do you? And how in the hell do you call someone a fool without understanding what they are doing?
Go ahead, ask me what I'm doing.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Wow.. so improving your public education system will turn everyone into communists?
Putting private companies and religious institutions in charge of your children's education will just indoctrinate them in a different way. Not to mention reducing education opportunities for children who's families can't afford it.
Public or Private isn't the issue.. and it's most likely a good balance of both that is required and both could certainly use the improvement.
Now the NCLBa, says that schools not performing or showing an increase in performance get penalized by certain monitoring. If they are failing or continuing to fail, eventually they can either be taken control of by either the state or federal government and administrated appropriately. The students also have the option to goto any other public school withing the districts or even private schools. It does nothing to the schools that are performing, only give money to schools that aren't performing and gives students an option of getting a real education somewhere else. Your premise of schools performing well already is bullshit too. If the school meets the state requirements, it doesn't have to improve until the state moves the requirements. Perhaps you should actually read the act and how your state implemented it. I can guarantee that schools performing well aren't getting fucked for the unsupported reasons you claimed.
But don't just take my word for it, read it from your own states web site on the subject. You can start with the Faq page.
There are also times when you should never attempt diplomacy. Like when a terrorist organization is killing your civilians in an attempt to manipulate your political views. Appeasing them only invited others to do the same when they find a beef to grind. I think the most telling example of this is when the French paid the vikings not to invade because they were going to invade. (look it up if your not familiar with that part of world history)Your entitled to your own opinion. I happen to think your misguided in the reasoning behind it. This could be because your bitter for whatever reason. If you are, don't run for your guns, your religion, or antipathy to people who aren't like you, then you would be just another non-elitist being looked down on by the uberliberals.
Truthfully, I would be more afraid of Obama's inexperience and inability to know when diplomacy is working and when it isn't. Of course he could surround himself with a bunch or loyalist and do another GW bush stunt. We can probably survive another 8 years with a black bush so I guess it doesn't matter.
What you think you are doing doesn't matter as much as what it looks like your doing. For all I know, you could be thinking your having sex with a hot chick but to the rest of us, you are acting like a fool.
Now, I already told you what it looks like your doing. If you think letting us know what you "think" you are doing will help our understanding somehow, that is up to you to decide.
I'm afraid I can't agree with much you've written; for one thing, you seem to think that I am belittling John McCain, a man for whom I have enormous respect, when I clearly state the contrary. My statement that he would die to save face for our country was a compliment of the highest order for a man who is in every respect a soldier, but with whom I happen to disagree politically.
As for not engaging in diplomacy, we are past the point of defensible borders; we now rely on murky and often disputed loyalties to ensure our safety where military force alone cannot. We must therefore have a seat at all tables, even if it means dining with those we despise- but we should, as you say, take care to ensure we are not strengthening the hand of those who oppose us as we do so.
As for me being bitter, I'm not sure why you think that, but I'm sure you have some kind of reasoning if you'd care to explain it.
There is a dispute, of course, about the relative merits of experience vs fresh outlook in this campaign; in this case, however, I think that argument is misapplied, since neither McCain nor Senator Clinton nor Senator Obama have any executive experience. In fact, the largest organization any of them have ever run is their current campaign. So while I see where you are coming from, I dispute its relevance in this case.
Oh, I agree with you. I was being facetious about pulling out of Iraq, since that's what both of the Democratic candidates are promising. So when they pull out like they say they will, there will be leftover military funds.
Sorry for the confusion, it probably would have been more obvious in a face-to-face situation. :-)
Bravery is not a function of firepower.
~J.C. Denton (Deus Ex)
The reality of it is that diplomacy had failed and we see people continue to rail on how we should have used diplomacy instead of war in Iraq as if it is some sort of all encompassing panacea. You haven't went that far yet but it appears that your walking down that road. Diplomacy fails in many many instances and isn't some magic bullet that some attempt to make it out to be. Actually, the bitter part was simply something I worked in to show the contempt Obama has for normal people. He made a statement along the lines of ignorant people get scared and bitter and hold onto their guns, religion, antipathy towards people not like them. It is a modern day let them eat cake. I can agree with your dispute and the facts running up to it. As I said, I attempted to work that in simply because of the elitist tones coming from the "fresh and new" camp that many people are attempting to ignore. It sort of makes someone who isn't already convinced step back and think "what the fuck"?
I really don't consider myself pro right. Frankly I am not a big fan of McCain. I might even vote for Clinton if she gets the nomination. I will not vote for Obama.
My wife who is a proud Demarcate since she turned 18 will not vote for Obama.
As the extreme right and the left goes.
"A pox on both their houses!"
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Disposing of Hussein was not the reason we went into Iraq. If the good of the people was our mission, we could be in Darfur, DR Congo, Rwanda, Afghanistan (remember that 'war'?) or any number of other places where civil war, dictatorship, and authoritarian rule is leading to excessive innocent deaths.
Heck, just in Iraq, if we had done nothing, how many people could Hussein have killed over the last 5 years? hundreds? a couple thousand? Compared to how many hundreds of thousands that have died either in the invasion, or in the on going occupation and the pent up civil war.
Iraq was not about saving the people in Iraq, nor was it about saving the people in the US, to think otherwise is just post-hock silver lining hunting.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Radical and disruptive is what we need. But we need it to be in the form of a power stripping Congress and a passive President.
The executive branch has collected entirely too much power. Hell, Jefferson was very clear in his requirements that it was Congress's duty to determine when the country went to war. But guess when the last time Congress signed a declaration of War? Yup, WWII. For the last 60+ years we have not been in a single "war", just "military conflicts".
The executive branch needs to have it's knees broken, and to be brought back into balance with the Judicial and Legislative branches.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If we elect Hillary Clinton to the position of President, would you expect the amount of power in the Executive branch to contract, or to continue to expand?
If, on the other hand, we elect Obama, and Hillary takes over as Speaker of the House (a slight break from tradition, but that's what we're after at this point), would you expect the power of the Executive branch to contract, or to continue to expand?
Ideally, we would have had John Edwards in the oval office. While his plans were more left leaning than any other mainstream candidate, they would have been watered down a lot by Congress, and he likely would have been an easier negotiator for the reduction of executive power. Tie that in with his focus on infrastructure, health care, and the low/middle class, and you wouldn't have the greatest president in the history of the US, but you'd have the right president at the right time.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Alright, I'll tell you. You're dying to know.
First, I'm under no illusions:
1) I'm not educating you
2) I don't care if you like me
3) I know I'm smart. I know I'm rich. Hey, if it makes you feel better, I'll say that I WISH I were a fool, if only because it's a step up from sexual deviant.
4) I'm being a pain in the ass on purpose.
Now the why:
1) I'm fucking with you, because you're easy to fuck with
2) I don't care what you think, I am only interested in WHY you think it.
3) I'm trying to get you to say something original. So far you're just marching in lockstep with your fellow libertarian robots. All the things you've said I've heard before, from people far stupider than you. No, that's not something you should be proud of.
So, give it up. I'm worse than what you say. Times two. Now, since you can't insult me any more, tell me something original. I want to know why your brain operates in such a fucked-up way.
Watch your spelling too. Every time you miss a punctuation mark whilst calling me a fool, it makes me cum.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Sorry I mistook your intentions.
There are a lot of delusional people out there though. It was probably for the best even if it makes one more person actually think about the reality of the situation rather then hoping for something without understanding it.
I wasn't attempting to insult you. I was simply pointing out what you looked like to an educated third party observer.
BTW, I would say that probably on one of the things you thought you were doing, you where actually doing. I'll let you evaluate your own success and figure which is which on your own terms.
here is a id a treat for you. I bett you can fill a mason jar ip with this sentence sturcture.
First off, let me say that when I heard Senator McCain speak, one of my friends asked about the forced confessions, and his comments revolved around ensuring that he didn't didn't provide the enemy with propaganda, so, it's more his analysis of the situation than mine, and I think he's an honorable enough man to tell us the truth about that.
As for diplomacy- there's this idea that diplomacy is mostly haggling, that it's zero sum. It isn't, and anybody in foreign service will tell you so in a heartbeat. You spend a lot more time moving sideways than forward or back, and that's what people really mean when they say 'a failure of diplomacy'- not that the diplomacy wasn't working, but that it wasn't working fast enough, and especially in Iraq, a little patience probably would have done us a lot of good.
As for Obama's supposed contempt for normal people, I think you've got the man wrong. You're entitled to your opinion, but I've seen him operate in a room with 15 people in it, and he's just not like that. He comes across as tolerant, someone who genuinely listens to you, and who tries hard to make disagreements discussions instead of arguments. He does seem to feel that there are some kinds of disagreements, and a lot of kinds of violence, that are the products of a situation and a psychology rather than a personal predilection, and some people have a big problem with that, but if you walk around the world trying not to deal with bad people you're going to be in a bad way pretty quickly. To characterize that sentiment as a 'modern day let them eat cake' is, at the very least, a severe misunderstanding.
As for elitism, I hear this from a lot of ex-huckabee guys: that there's this big cadre of stuck up liberal pricks that come down and think they know better than everybody else (keep in mind I live in the deep South). I've just never understood it. I mean, there are stuck up liberal pricks, but I've just never seen Obama or anyone working on his behalf that was anything less than courteous, or anything close to condescending. So I guess my point here is that maybe it would be better to have a President that's willing to patiently disagree; that maybe it is time for us to try the long slow road of diplomacy, and abandon the rash haste of the Bush administration (who, it should be said, I voted for). I think it is time for a change from that course, and I think that in spite of his many virtues, Senator McCain is probably not the man to do so.
The thing is, it's not like we're not educating children now. In fact, educational funding comes, as I think it should, primarily from state and munincipal sources, allowing management and funding to remain closer tied to where it's applied. I'm not sure exactly where Obama is planning on utilizing the pitance of extra money cutting the Constellation program would gain him (about $3-4 billion/year or $50 per student), but I can guarantee it will have little effect on the core of the US educational programs.
If you look at educational funding in the US versus other nations, especially those we fuss so much about taking over in science and tech like China and India, it becomes extremely obvious that lack of funding is not the real problem with education in America. Lack of motivation, inspiration, and parental involvement, on the other hand, are most definitely problems.
One of the many benefits of a manned space program is pride and motivation to aspire to great things. It showcases one of the many the laudable ends of a good education. Much credit has been given to Apollo and the early years of the shuttle program for inspiring generations of students to excel in math and science.
And I would be remiss if someone didn't clarify how killing the Constellation program genuinely would be the end of US manned spaceflight until at least 2020, probably close to 2025, at which point the costs would be greater than they are now. It's not just a bad PR decision. It's a bad economic one. The shuttle will be retired in 2010. This is a necessity mandated by the Columbia accident investigation board, which stipulated that it's use be limited to finishing ISS construction. The shuttle program can be extended, but doing so will cost about the same amount as turning over all it's funding to the Constellation program, which was specifically layed out to be developed without budget increases, so Obama wouldn't get any extra money out of that.
The current Constellation plans have the first round (Ares 1/Orion) entering service at the beginning of 2015. In the interim, the only manned access to the space station is via Russian Soyuz launches. Fortunately, cargo support is available via the European ATV, the Japanese HTV, or the Russian Progress. If the COTS program is successful, NASA will have the option (if launch-specific funding is provided) of buying cargo services from either Orbital Sciences or SpaceX. Orbital Sciences is not planning a manned launcher (COTS-D). SpaceX is, but it is currently focusing on its cargo version. A manned launcher, if everything goes according to plan (which it hasn't so far), 2012 is the earliest they could have a manned launcher available.
On top of the issue of a 5 year access delay is the lapse of the available workforce and vendors. ATK and others can't simply put everything in stasis for five years. Tooling takes up floorspace, floorspace costs money. Engineers cost money. The shuttle-derived technology will virtually evaporate the same way the Saturn technology did. The details aren't lost, but the expertise and tools are. NASA is three years into the program now, so a restart in 2013 really looks more like a 2023 date just to get back or ability to go into low Earth orbit. Going to the moon is another 3-5 years beyond that, and it costs more.
Technically and economically, unless we as a nation determine space exploration isn't worth it, now is the time to take the next step forward. Waiting will only cost more, with at best a minimal gains to education (money doesn't buy smart students), and at worst a net loss as aerospace jobs disappear and few students are shown manned space exploration as one of the most visible reasons to excel at school.
Are you drunk? That post was almost incomprehensible.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Why haven't the comments pointing out how ludicrous it is to implement mandatory education for under-5s been modded up higher? That just seems like a bad idea on the face of it -- most parents are perfectly capable of taking care of their kids, and, of those that aren't, many end up in Head Start, which isn't terribly effective as things stand anyway. This changes my view on Obama quite a bit.
And uneducated fucks come out of public schools, too. Get a fucking brain.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I did not say that uneducated fucks did not come out of public schools. Where did I say that? One thing I did say was that I never argued with a homeschooler that did not have serious issues with grammar, spelling, or reading comprehension. And you are no exception to that rule.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Yea, I was drunk when I wrote that. But with the almost part, I guess I don't need to clearify anything.
But your still reading into it. And BTW, I'm not suggesting that he isn't and honorable man. Us military training states name, rank and serial/id number is all your to give the enemy. I have viewed training films from the WW2 era that was supposedly used by the military up through the 1990's when I saw it showing how bits and pieces of information was enough to tip off the enemy to the point that it could launch an effective attack or thwart attacks against them when it come from 20 different prisoner. It could be very well that it had nothing to do with saving face and everything to do with training and not wanting to tip off the enemy. Giving false information or propaganda would heavily rely on bits and pieces of real information in order to remain believable. Unless he specifically said it was to save face, I have doubts that it was a reason,
Well, lets take recent history and examine this. I don't doubt the idea behind it but when North Korea says X because of diplomacy and only puts up a front in order to get their benefits, it has failed. When Iraq was being lead by a crazy man (and saddam was crazy by most standards, he admitted to invading Kuwait because of a comment by a Luwaiti official calling Iraqi women 10 dollar whores), but when he was secretly making oil deals against UN sanctions with France and Russia and worked in scams revolving around the oil for food programs in order to disobey terms of his armistice agreement that ended the first war, diplomacy had failed. When a terrorist decides to kill innocent civilians in order to force some political ideal or position onto a population, diplomacy has failed. Diplomacy doesn't always work and on some situations, would invite violence which defeats the entire point of diplomacy. That is why it isn't some panacea.
I've seen him operate too. At first, I saw him as a trying to please everyone at the same time type of person who said as little as possible in the most confiscated ways as possible so everyone could leave with their own idea of what was actually said. This didn't happen with the grab your guns and religion comment. It was a deliberate and concise example of a disconnect that comes from people thinking they are better then others while attempting to explain or address a fault they see in them. This degree of separati
But your still reading into it. And BTW, I'm not suggesting that he isn't and honorable man. Us military training states name, rank and serial/id number is all your to give the enemy. I have viewed training films from the WW2 era that was supposedly used by the military up through the 1990's when I saw it showing how bits and pieces of information was enough to tip off the enemy to the point that it could launch an effective attack or thwart attacks against them when it come from 20 different prisoner. It could be very well that it had nothing to do with saving face and everything to do with training and not wanting to tip off the enemy. Giving false information or propaganda would heavily rely on bits and pieces of real information in order to remain believable. Unless he specifically said it was to save face, I have doubts that it was a reason,
He said that it would have been a propaganda coup for an enemy of the United States if they could have produced that document signed by him, and so he couldn't do it. I know of no other way to succinctly characterize that.
Well, lets take recent history and examine this. I don't doubt the idea behind it but when North Korea says X because of diplomacy and only puts up a front in order to get their benefits, it has failed. When Iraq was being lead by a crazy man (and saddam was crazy by most standards, he admitted to invading Kuwait because of a comment by a Luwaiti official calling Iraqi women 10 dollar whores), but when he was secretly making oil deals against UN sanctions with France and Russia and worked in scams revolving around the oil for food programs in order to disobey terms of his armistice agreement that ended the first war, diplomacy had failed. When a terrorist decides to kill innocent civilians in order to force some political ideal or position onto a population, diplomacy has failed. Diplomacy doesn't always work and on some situations, would invite violence which defeats the entire point of diplomacy. That is why it isn't some panacea.
It's not a panacea, but you haven't provided an example where diplomacy has actually failed. Five years ago everybody and his brother knew we we going to have to bomb the shit out of the DPRK, but we haven't because they have agreed to international monitoring. The Iraqi strike into Kuwait was neither motivated by craziness (and, might I add, it is disingenuous to pretend so) nor was it a failure of diplomacy, as was indicated by the size and breadth of the coalition built to repel Iraqi forces. The diplomatic, rather than military, solution also prevailed in the pure political arena: rather than risk occupying Iraq interminably, we put Saddam on a pretty short leash and walked away, a compromise arrived at through diplomatic means.
I've seen him operate too. At first, I saw him as a trying to please everyone at the same time type of person who said as little as possible in the most confiscated ways as possible so everyone could leave with their own idea of what was actually said. This didn't happen with the grab your guns and religion comment. It was a deliberate and concise example of a disconnect that comes from people thinking they are better then others while attempting to explain or address a fault they see in them. This degree of separation became obvious when he went to a state that has lost a lot of jobs and attempted to call them a bunch of racist rednecks because they had strong views on illegal immigration. He attempted to pass it off as if everyone in that area fell back to guns and religion because of racist attitudes towards illegal immigration which he was too good to understand the problem. I will tell you that problem isn't immigration but "illegal immigration". I caught a portion of the Glenn Beck program on CNN last night at the bar. There are strong illegal immigration issues and enforcements in PA were Obama made those comments. He was speaking to those acts when making those comments and the only
Not really. You see, off budget means that we don't include it in our fiscal accounting until the end of the year for various reasons. I think these reasons are valid in that we don't want to budget a war and be constrained by the limits of the funding as well as we don't want someone thinking they can avoid possibilities of ending a war simply because they have the funding to continue it. By funding it off budget, we are forced to revisit it frequently as the budgeting wears thin which gives us the opportunity to discuss things like conditional truces or armistice as well as monitor the progress and pressure changes or even increase funding when appropriate.
It also has the benefit of allowing the country to conduct it's legislation and operate as normal as possible without diverting money from welfare programs, education programs, science or NASA funding, and a host of other things that we can argue the validity of, but would have a lasting effect if we have to remove funding from them.
The down side is that almost all war funding is now debt that has to be paid back by future generations if we can't pay for them with the spoils of war. In this modern age of enlightenment, we aren't taking advantage of traditions spoils of war like resources and forced labor and so on. I know this might run contrary to the war for oil claims people make but you have to look at it from a serious and honest mentality to see the access to oil on the open market is totally different from taking something.
The other effect this has is that when the funding stops, the borrowing of money stops and it disappears as debt. So if the money wasn't there to begin with, and we stopped borrowing money, then the money simply isn't there. If the cause (whatever it is, Education, health care or whatever) is important enough to consider borrowing money for it, then it could happen without regard to the spending on a war. But when a war stops, we will still have to barrow in order to displace the funding which is actually debt (yea, that got a little recursive and confusing).
Now under certain circumstances, you can use debt as money which is backed by our "industrial wealth" which is partly the reason behind the economic boon surounding WW2 times but is also partly the reason we saw recessions a little later in which Kennedy cut taxes to remove. But now it seems that I am flopping around into different areas so I will leave it at that. I hope you can see why the position of money that "we are spending" not being there isn't as interesting as it first sounds. At least from the way I see the situation which I believe to be accurate.
My point was rather that it doesn't really matter how the accounting is done. Debt financing has roughly the same opportunity cost as cash up front in the long run, if not in the short run. When somebody talks about what could be done with the war money, they're talking about opportunity cost rather than simple accounting.
It all goes back to the simple rule that credit is best used for emergencies and capital investments. After a certain number of years, a war ceases to be an emergency and starts being a regular expense. Whether it is booked that way or not, it should be treated that way by any sensible administrator. It's time to start looking at other places to tighten our belts, because even if the budget were in balance when excluding "emergencies" like our years-long war, the reality is that it wouldn't be in a long-run equilibrium.
Of course, I don't think that either side of the aisle has had anything resembling sensible fiscal or economic policies in my lifetime, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised by the fact that we're using the easy availability of credit and "off budget" funding to shirk our responsibility to keep an eye on our finances.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Hey, that was a good guess. And I am still highly amused with the sequences of letters that you apparently think spell words. clearify?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Well, lets look at this a little then. Propaganda is something people use to impress a certain position onto people for an implied benefit or reaction. That is my definition but most forms of advertising could be included into it too. Most other definitions of propaganda are similar enough to match mine.
So he basically said it would allow the enemy to strengthen their position against the United states if he would have signed a confession. It really says nothing about egg on his face or saving face, it is about not losing the war or jeopardizing others fighting it on their side. You do understand that not aiding the enemy isn't the same thing as attempting to save face right? Saving face is simply an attempt not to look bad (sometimes against the facts) so you can keep your reputation, dignity or prestige. Granted, he would be attempting to not look bad, but for reasons such as saving American lives and not allowing the enemy to influence collaborators to their benefit. This is an especially bold distinction seeing how the North Vietnamese won the war in the media and not on the battle field. They were set to give up until news broadcasters stateside started declaring that we have lost. Then all they did was hand in until we left.
BTW, here is another definition of saving face If you happen to know of one that is different enough, please post it. But under the definition I know, you are attempting to say that McCain didn't sign the statement because he didn't want to degrade himself. But by your own supplying of his statement, he implies that he didn't want to give the enemy ammunition to use against us. It really says two different things to me. I would hope it does you to.
No, it failed. The entire sideways thing failed and NK was the same problem they where before. Clinton gave then agriculture technology for their suspension of nuclear programs. We find out later that they never suspended anything. Our diplomacy that you say worked was convincing China to tell them that if they didn't appease us in the matter, they would help the US invade and bomb or throw Kim Jong-il out. The threat of violence isn't diplomacy. Working with China might have been so I guess you could say diplomacy worked. But it isn't diplomacy to North Korea that worked. It was the threat of violence with the only ally they had in the area stepping away from them.
Sure, I can agree with that. Although I think the benefit of constantly putting a war up for comment by having to renew funding is worth more then the effects of hiding the real budget or making it look better then it is. I just think that is an acceptable situation but I don't think either of us would be fooled by claims of it actually being a better budget.
I'm sorry but most of the people I speak with on this subject are actually thinking that something in the budget was cut to fund the war. They have no idea that we aren't really paying for the way but financing it outside of the budget. That is why I spent so much time going over the off budget and what it means along with benefits of doing it that way. That being said, I'm sure there are people in the situation as you describe. But they don't describe it that way which leads to more people thinking that we don't have free health care or we are removing welfare funding because we are spending money on a war. I'm not used to talking about this subject with someone else who has a clue.
As long as efforts aren't confined to the restraints of a budget, I agree. However, I wouldn't want the Military spending too much on ammunition and end up sharpening wooden sticks until the next fiscal year roles around. As long as that never happens when they are in harms way, I can agree.
Technically yes. I have one reservation which revolved around being able to get our military what it needs in the field without hampering their ability to do the job we asked them to do. I can envision a stale mate between two parties because of ear marks or inflated projects unrelated to the war causing our soldiers to get killed or even worse, starting a war just so no one could veto a budget because of a provision in the budget. The time for playing politics was back when the decision to goto war was made. Not when funding it or passing the budget of the United States. I feel very strongly about taking care of the people who put their lives on the line because we made a political decision at some point in tim
I don't feel like being insulted, so, I'm going to leave this conversation. I wish you well, hope you get the leisure at some point to take another look at Senator Obama, and learn to discuss rather than to argue. Until then, the thread is yours.
I don't think I Insulted you at all. It is just that your view on McCain seems self induced with little to support it. Obama, whether you like his views or not is just riddled with problems to me. Especially when you attempt to place some contrived misinterpretations of the illegal immigration issue that ignores the reality of things and relegates it to racism in order to dismiss it. You might be perfectly fine supporting someone like that, hell, you might even believe it too, but it doesn't show a sign of a competent leader we should be considering for the office of the president.
So you want radical racism as well as disruptive economics in our capital?? That's what Obama, underling of the likes of Rev. White and Louis Faricon ultimately stands for.
This concept current democratic canidates have of "I know better than the rest of America and will change things how I see fit" is frightening.