Are there idiot sys admins? You betcha. But the biggest reasons for that are that the good admins:
1) get paid for shit, and look for better jobs.
2) work shitty hours (on-call 24x7, working after hours and weekends to patch/upgrade to reduce impact to IT consumers but damn well better be there during regular hours to provide support too), get burnt out and quit.
3) get treated like shit by arrogant assholes that think they know everything, and quit.
4) get pulled in 100 directions at once by 100 different people that all think their problem is the problem that admin has to solve RIGHT GODAMN NOW, and quit.
5) get hung out to dry by IT managers that are kissing up to the IT consumers to retain business, and allow false blame to go to the admins, who get pissed and quit.
6) get blamed for absolutely everything, even the things 100% out of their control and even things that dont actually exist, get fed up, and quit.
You're just one of the legions of jackasses that think your problem is the priority of the sys admin. In just the last 24 hours that admin has probably heard 20 reasons why the problem of personX is the one that takes precedent. But in IT one of the very small saving graces is that you have the ability to put the biggest jackass at the bottom of the list. It sounds as though you've perfected securing your place in line.
The impact of the way you treat your sys admin is much like the impact of the way your treat your waiter or bartender. Piss them off, and there's just no telling what they put in your food....
Some manager decides he's going to buy this awesome new application that's designed to do 123 running on XYZ. He then decides that since he wants the application only for this one little function he wont need all the suggested hardware. After it's deployed (in about 1/5th the time a rational human being would ask that it be deployed in) that manager decides that function #2 could be quite beneficial and asks you to turn that on too. Then he says that function #3 is really close to another application's function, and if we could modify the new application to do the old application's job we could eliminate that old application. However, by modifying the base functionality of the new application you are outside of any warranty and all issues are entirely your problem. Through all this no one will approve funding for additional hardware even though the original scope was underfunded, and has been tripled, and you've killed your support mechanisms.
The application limps along on life support, cobbled together with duct tape and bailing twine, and you (the sys admin) are a moron because this service performs so poorly.
And we're back around to the "more competent people" using small words to explain to the idiot sys admins how to do their jobs.
Allow me to reciprocate.
The lead developer comes to me to tell me that I must go to my management and procure funding for network upgrades because it's all fucked up, and while I'm at it I should ask if there is any training I might benefit from. I say, "No, we need you to justify the amount of data coming from your application. Do you see this list of IPs? Those are your servers running the latest release of your application. Here is the amount of data sent/recieved from these servers in the last 24 hours. Please come to me with a justification on why you need this kind of network utilization, and if justified please inform your business unit that you will need to procure funding to upgrade the network to your needs."
The lead developer then goes to his management with a complaint that I'm uncooperative. His management comes to my management with that complaint, and they come down to chat with me about what the hell is going on. The above is reiterated. My management goes back to the lead developer's management and says "Why the fuck is your application saturating my network and crushing the productivity of the 10 other business units at the site? Here, look at his data." The lead developer's manager goes to the lead developer and says "How the fuck are we supposed to sell and application that saturates a network like this and why the fuck didnt I know?" The lead developer tells everyone on the development team that IT are a bunch of uncooperative and incompetent idiots, and because they cant figure out how to fix the network the development team is now forced to redesign the application to work on a shitty network."
And thus, the myth of the incompetent Sys Admin is propogated.
And by the way, I'm not a sys admin anymore. I'm a senior systems engineer, architect and integrator. My job is now to shove condescending bullshit back down the throat of the IT consumer and make them actually do their job. I am the person that makes sure stupid situations like the above land squarely on the shoulders of the people that deserve it, and it's almost never the sys admins.
A wise person is inherently skeptical. A wise person will always be willing to reconsider what he or she may have thought in the past to be a fundimental truth. Specifically a scientist should never conclude that a debate is over and that the "science is settled". If true ethical scientists were to have gone with this line of reasoning so many things we once believed would never have been disproved through anything but dumb luck.
There is a reason that critics of global warming research are called "skeptics". The science is not proven and, being wise people, they prefer to not take what one group says is gospel when there are other groups that disagree.
On the topic of cherry picking :
If you have 99 items that suggest a truth, and one item that disproves the theory, the theory is inherently disproved. You cant discount that 100th item because it's inconvenient to the other 99. As a true scientist you are ethically compelled to further examine that one item and eliminate all possibilty of it's impacts before discarding it. Of the many items "cherry picked" by skeptics, few have been eliminated as concerns.
Even the scientists that are proponents of global warming dramatically disagree on the scope and scale. We've heard numbers ranging from.4degreeC change to 7degreeC change from "proven science". We've been told that the lack of snow proves the warming, and then that the abundance of snow proves the warming... We've been told that the abundance of storms is proof, while history shows greater periods and magnitude of storms from centuries ago. Ok... so there's obviously a great deal of debate remaining, even between the people who you say are "tens of thousands of intelligent, professional, scientists all over the world who've created a consistent, cohesive body of theory and information that concludes with near certainty... "
You would just be paying people more to come to work to listen to "more competent people" tell you to just shut up and do what they are asking you to do while explaining why it has to be done that way, but :
- dont understand you are doing exactly what your boss (and theirs) tells you that you're required to do by company policy.
- have no clue that their code sucks ass and has massive resource leaks that caused the problem in the first place (not POS servers with shitty administration).
- are asking you to changing routing and code in such a way that it's sending everything in triplicate and saturating the network which is the source of the latency (not a POS network managed by idiots).
- have no clue that if you comply with the request and give them some minor convenience or allow them to avoid actually having to design a solution, you will break the 10 other business unit's that use the same servers and/or network.
- have no clue that what you're asking is an inherent security risk, and telling me that it's such a hardship for you to keep track of two whole passwords instead of one doesnt make it any less of a risk.
- have no clue that just because Windows will allow you to do it, doesn't mean it's smart to do it. (Yes, I suppose you could nest directories 100 deep, but I'm not an idiot because I wont try to figure out how to make the anti-virus scans run faster on it just because you have the orginazational skills of a baboon in heat.)
I could probably spend the rest of today writing more of these... I really have to start a blog.
If when you say "their rules" you mean those of the airline, you are correct. A PRIVATE company has the right to enforce their own rules, and to refuse service to any person.
But that's not what we're takling about here. The TSA rules are government rules being forced on all people attempting to fly, regardless of what PRIVATE airline they choose. The Constitution does not grant government authority to impede the travel of it's citizens. In fact, the reality is the reverse; the Constitution ensures the rights of the citizens to travel freely.
This plan has nothing to do with capitalism. It's taxation. It's just a consumption tax on a government service. The irony is that government over-reach, over-regulation, political window-dressing and basic inefficiency bred the desire for the service, and thus the tax.
Keep trying to demonize capitalism though. It helps the image of the capitalists.
I'd prefer that we stop spending money on stupid shit almost no one could give a rat's ass about.
I'd prefer that people paid through tax revenues have their income adjusted accordingly for the quality of their work instead of just continuing to have a pulse.
I'd prefer that everyone who benefits from the outlay of services funded by taxes pay tax, not just those "evil" people who happen to contribute more than they consume in government subsidies.
Just so we're clear, you recommend one ineffectual government bureaucracy provide oversite for another ineffectual government bureaucracy?
Is this the start of your presidential campaign?
You're right. Terrorists will use any person of any type that they can. So you need to ask yourself some questions:
Is it ok for people to be subjected to this level of humiliation so that you get some illusion that you're perfectly safe? Or do you prefer that things go as far as they must go for you to actually be that safe?
First, you're not perfectly safe and you never will be. Getting a bomb on a plane might be difficult, but getting chemicals over the US border is not. It happens by the ton on a daily basis (drug trafficking), despite the fact that we have multiple agencies whose duty it is to prevent it. There are a myriad of methods that could be used to kill or sicken tens of thousands of people without crossing a single checkpoint.
Second, when is enough enough? Where is the line? This woman is 95 years old with end-stage Luekemia. She was forced to remove her soiled adult diaper for a patt down. The TSA is starting to show up at bus stations, and there's rumor of plans for them to start showing up at other locations. If it's ok for the Transportation Safety Board to go to these lengths, how long will it be before other law enforcement agencies start using the same philosophy. While it might be possible to better secure every possible location where groups of people meet, do you really want to live in a world where you have to get x-rayed to go to a ball game? Are you willing to have your children "patted down" so that you can take them to a movie? How about metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs at your church, or synagogue, or mosque?
Even the most draconian of the methods will not ensure that you cant get hurt. It's time people start to realize that they can live free and with some degree of danger, or they can live in a police state and fear only those keeping them 'safe'.
You find it quite easily plausible that the government covers up any number of crimes and lies, but assume that it will freely release information about how their inability to secure documents got confidential informants killed?
My mother does test grading for the standardized tests implemented with NCLB. They send the tests from one state to another state for evaluation. To grade the tests from a given topic you are required to have relevant college courses and pass an exam yourself.
My mom was telling me about a situation just a couple of months ago where the grading required evaluating the work shown by the student on an algebra exam. A student chose to use calculus instead. The student got the right answer, but was marked as having gotten that question wrong because of the method they used being too advanced for the grader to understand it. It caused a major stink in the group (they grade the exams in groups to check each other), and the question being marked as wrong eventually stood on the position of the senior leader (group lead).
Just annectodal and not fodder for an opinion one way or another.
I enthusiastically applaud his work in pulling off the lamb outfit from world governments and corporations.
What purpose is served in releasing the fact that Hilary Clinton worries about the mental health of other world leaders? How does that aid in our international relations?
That's just one of 1000's of items that were released that are not crimes, are not important for the American people to know, and still undermine our government's ability to operate on the world stage.
Releasing those kinds of documents doesn't serve a greater good. It doesnt expose any wrong-doings. It doesn't help create stability, ensure -anyone's- safety, or promote any kind of cooperation between nations. It was released to embarrass the US government and garner sensationlistic attention from a little weasle.
Not to mention that this guy released the names of confidential informants in the middle east. In doing so he signed the death warrants of those people. What greater purpose was served by releasing their names? What good will come of that? What crime did they commit? What evil are they responsible for? Where are your indignant tears for them and their families who will almost assuredly be slaughtered?
I don't really see issue with asking for ridiculous damages. It's basic bartering. You dont go up to a guy at a garage sale and say "I'll give you $50 for that $50 worth of dvd's". You offer $5 and he counters until an agreeable mean is met.
Even though I know that asking for the domain name in the damages is completely out of line, I respect the fact that the guy actually does have a case. If his photo was wrongfully displayed without consent, the photographer has every right to pursue the case.
I only have a problem with lawsuits that are themselves ridiculous. Like suing a bucket manufacturer because the bucket didnt have a warning label clearing stating that a baby might be able to drown in a bucket of water. That kind of thing should be thrown out and whoever brought the suit should have to pay damages instead. In that particularly case whoever was watching the kid should be brought up on charges for negligence.
Exactly right. And exactly like CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, Huffington Post, NPR,.....
Every single one of them is politicized now. Every one has a notable and definable slant. The trick is to read multiple sources, investigate on your own, and find the truth that lies somewhere in the middle of all the sensationalism.
Or you can go to a perfectly unbiased place like/., make a witty little quip that has no actually evidence or discussion point, and suggest through omission that all the world's evils lie in a particular political view... Because that's a hell of a lot more honest...
I'm not well-informed enough about NCLB to really argue it, and I don't have a solid opinion one way or the other for that very reason. The point I was trying to make was not that those were stupid lawsuits or even good ones. It was that there are people on the left filing lawsuits against laws generated by people on the right pretty regularly, which is counter to what mrsteveman1 suggested.
As I said in my post, that lawsuit is no more or less valid than one against the Health Care law. And as you stated (rightfully) we need people challenging laws that seem unconstitutional on both sides of the isle in order to keep the system honest. That's why it was designed in the way it was.
You make the assumption that kids are being taught a foundation upon which they can actually make well-informed decisions. You suggest that they are being given adequate understanding of the moral consequences and basic principles that result in good choices. You guess that they are told what the Constitution is, what it contains, why it was written, and how it is and was the single document in the world that ensures the freedom and safety of American citizens. In short, they arent.
Instead they are taught that it's perfectly acceptable to be a biligerant asshole to pretty much anyone that doesn't live the way they think they should live, or who asks anything them that they dont like. They are taught that if you don't like life's outcomes, sue. They are taught that you dont really have to work hard, you just have to file the right paperwork to get paid, or find the right public program you can milk.
I don't ask anyone to pledge blind loyalty to the guy who's President today, or 4 years ago, or 4 years from now, and no one else is either. But you're sitting here sanctomoniously telling me that it's a bad thng to pledge to uphold principles that help every citizen. You're suggesting that it's wrong to ask a kid to promise to uphold one of the greatest protections for people's rights ever created. Tell me, what exactly would you ask a kid to promise? To be a jerk? To rebel against all authority? To purposefully undermine any form of government? That kind of attitude started in the 1950's here in the US didnt it?... How's that working out? I mean other than having record high crime, record high dropout rates, and record high welfare recipients... ?
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See my other comments on the reasons for the many idiot admins. The good admins are smart enough to move out of such a shitty position.
Are there idiot sys admins? You betcha. But the biggest reasons for that are that the good admins:
1) get paid for shit, and look for better jobs.
2) work shitty hours (on-call 24x7, working after hours and weekends to patch/upgrade to reduce impact to IT consumers but damn well better be there during regular hours to provide support too), get burnt out and quit.
3) get treated like shit by arrogant assholes that think they know everything, and quit.
4) get pulled in 100 directions at once by 100 different people that all think their problem is the problem that admin has to solve RIGHT GODAMN NOW, and quit.
5) get hung out to dry by IT managers that are kissing up to the IT consumers to retain business, and allow false blame to go to the admins, who get pissed and quit.
6) get blamed for absolutely everything, even the things 100% out of their control and even things that dont actually exist, get fed up, and quit.
Disgruntled System Administrators Day seems a bit redundant.
You're just one of the legions of jackasses that think your problem is the priority of the sys admin. In just the last 24 hours that admin has probably heard 20 reasons why the problem of personX is the one that takes precedent. But in IT one of the very small saving graces is that you have the ability to put the biggest jackass at the bottom of the list. It sounds as though you've perfected securing your place in line.
The impact of the way you treat your sys admin is much like the impact of the way your treat your waiter or bartender. Piss them off, and there's just no telling what they put in your food....
Amen.
Some manager decides he's going to buy this awesome new application that's designed to do 123 running on XYZ. He then decides that since he wants the application only for this one little function he wont need all the suggested hardware. After it's deployed (in about 1/5th the time a rational human being would ask that it be deployed in) that manager decides that function #2 could be quite beneficial and asks you to turn that on too. Then he says that function #3 is really close to another application's function, and if we could modify the new application to do the old application's job we could eliminate that old application. However, by modifying the base functionality of the new application you are outside of any warranty and all issues are entirely your problem. Through all this no one will approve funding for additional hardware even though the original scope was underfunded, and has been tripled, and you've killed your support mechanisms.
The application limps along on life support, cobbled together with duct tape and bailing twine, and you (the sys admin) are a moron because this service performs so poorly.
LOL! Outstanding. You've returned the humor in full.
And we're back around to the "more competent people" using small words to explain to the idiot sys admins how to do their jobs.
Allow me to reciprocate.
The lead developer comes to me to tell me that I must go to my management and procure funding for network upgrades because it's all fucked up, and while I'm at it I should ask if there is any training I might benefit from. I say, "No, we need you to justify the amount of data coming from your application. Do you see this list of IPs? Those are your servers running the latest release of your application. Here is the amount of data sent/recieved from these servers in the last 24 hours. Please come to me with a justification on why you need this kind of network utilization, and if justified please inform your business unit that you will need to procure funding to upgrade the network to your needs."
The lead developer then goes to his management with a complaint that I'm uncooperative. His management comes to my management with that complaint, and they come down to chat with me about what the hell is going on. The above is reiterated. My management goes back to the lead developer's management and says "Why the fuck is your application saturating my network and crushing the productivity of the 10 other business units at the site? Here, look at his data." The lead developer's manager goes to the lead developer and says "How the fuck are we supposed to sell and application that saturates a network like this and why the fuck didnt I know?" The lead developer tells everyone on the development team that IT are a bunch of uncooperative and incompetent idiots, and because they cant figure out how to fix the network the development team is now forced to redesign the application to work on a shitty network."
And thus, the myth of the incompetent Sys Admin is propogated.
And by the way, I'm not a sys admin anymore. I'm a senior systems engineer, architect and integrator. My job is now to shove condescending bullshit back down the throat of the IT consumer and make them actually do their job. I am the person that makes sure stupid situations like the above land squarely on the shoulders of the people that deserve it, and it's almost never the sys admins.
The wise person looks a scientific consensus...
A wise person is inherently skeptical. A wise person will always be willing to reconsider what he or she may have thought in the past to be a fundimental truth. Specifically a scientist should never conclude that a debate is over and that the "science is settled". If true ethical scientists were to have gone with this line of reasoning so many things we once believed would never have been disproved through anything but dumb luck.
.4degreeC change to 7degreeC change from "proven science". We've been told that the lack of snow proves the warming, and then that the abundance of snow proves the warming... We've been told that the abundance of storms is proof, while history shows greater periods and magnitude of storms from centuries ago. Ok... so there's obviously a great deal of debate remaining, even between the people who you say are "tens of thousands of intelligent, professional, scientists all over the world who've created a consistent, cohesive body of theory and information that concludes with near certainty... "
There is a reason that critics of global warming research are called "skeptics". The science is not proven and, being wise people, they prefer to not take what one group says is gospel when there are other groups that disagree.
On the topic of cherry picking :
If you have 99 items that suggest a truth, and one item that disproves the theory, the theory is inherently disproved. You cant discount that 100th item because it's inconvenient to the other 99. As a true scientist you are ethically compelled to further examine that one item and eliminate all possibilty of it's impacts before discarding it. Of the many items "cherry picked" by skeptics, few have been eliminated as concerns.
Even the scientists that are proponents of global warming dramatically disagree on the scope and scale. We've heard numbers ranging from
How about we start with what a polutant is. You seem to take for granted that my exhale is filled with it (CO2). I dont.
Good sys admins are generally smart enough to quit so they can find work that doesnt involve hand-holding clueless jackasses.
Pay is only half of the issue.
You would just be paying people more to come to work to listen to "more competent people" tell you to just shut up and do what they are asking you to do while explaining why it has to be done that way, but :
- dont understand you are doing exactly what your boss (and theirs) tells you that you're required to do by company policy.
- have no clue that their code sucks ass and has massive resource leaks that caused the problem in the first place (not POS servers with shitty administration).
- are asking you to changing routing and code in such a way that it's sending everything in triplicate and saturating the network which is the source of the latency (not a POS network managed by idiots).
- have no clue that if you comply with the request and give them some minor convenience or allow them to avoid actually having to design a solution, you will break the 10 other business unit's that use the same servers and/or network.
- have no clue that what you're asking is an inherent security risk, and telling me that it's such a hardship for you to keep track of two whole passwords instead of one doesnt make it any less of a risk.
- have no clue that just because Windows will allow you to do it, doesn't mean it's smart to do it. (Yes, I suppose you could nest directories 100 deep, but I'm not an idiot because I wont try to figure out how to make the anti-virus scans run faster on it just because you have the orginazational skills of a baboon in heat.)
I could probably spend the rest of today writing more of these... I really have to start a blog.
That doesn't make much sense. Why would giving them information they already have make any difference?
You dont believe that the government would charge you to give them information they already have?
Correction: Many wont care until they realise its to late to. The rest will be called wingnuts up to the event horrizon.
If when you say "their rules" you mean those of the airline, you are correct. A PRIVATE company has the right to enforce their own rules, and to refuse service to any person.
But that's not what we're takling about here. The TSA rules are government rules being forced on all people attempting to fly, regardless of what PRIVATE airline they choose. The Constitution does not grant government authority to impede the travel of it's citizens. In fact, the reality is the reverse; the Constitution ensures the rights of the citizens to travel freely.
This plan has nothing to do with capitalism. It's taxation. It's just a consumption tax on a government service. The irony is that government over-reach, over-regulation, political window-dressing and basic inefficiency bred the desire for the service, and thus the tax.
Keep trying to demonize capitalism though. It helps the image of the capitalists.
I'd prefer that we stop spending money on stupid shit almost no one could give a rat's ass about.
I'd prefer that people paid through tax revenues have their income adjusted accordingly for the quality of their work instead of just continuing to have a pulse.
I'd prefer that everyone who benefits from the outlay of services funded by taxes pay tax, not just those "evil" people who happen to contribute more than they consume in government subsidies.
It's a start at least...
Just so we're clear, you recommend one ineffectual government bureaucracy provide oversite for another ineffectual government bureaucracy? Is this the start of your presidential campaign?
You're right. Terrorists will use any person of any type that they can. So you need to ask yourself some questions: Is it ok for people to be subjected to this level of humiliation so that you get some illusion that you're perfectly safe? Or do you prefer that things go as far as they must go for you to actually be that safe?
First, you're not perfectly safe and you never will be. Getting a bomb on a plane might be difficult, but getting chemicals over the US border is not. It happens by the ton on a daily basis (drug trafficking), despite the fact that we have multiple agencies whose duty it is to prevent it. There are a myriad of methods that could be used to kill or sicken tens of thousands of people without crossing a single checkpoint.
Second, when is enough enough? Where is the line? This woman is 95 years old with end-stage Luekemia. She was forced to remove her soiled adult diaper for a patt down. The TSA is starting to show up at bus stations, and there's rumor of plans for them to start showing up at other locations. If it's ok for the Transportation Safety Board to go to these lengths, how long will it be before other law enforcement agencies start using the same philosophy. While it might be possible to better secure every possible location where groups of people meet, do you really want to live in a world where you have to get x-rayed to go to a ball game? Are you willing to have your children "patted down" so that you can take them to a movie? How about metal detectors and bomb sniffing dogs at your church, or synagogue, or mosque?
Even the most draconian of the methods will not ensure that you cant get hurt. It's time people start to realize that they can live free and with some degree of danger, or they can live in a police state and fear only those keeping them 'safe'.
You find it quite easily plausible that the government covers up any number of crimes and lies, but assume that it will freely release information about how their inability to secure documents got confidential informants killed?
My mother does test grading for the standardized tests implemented with NCLB. They send the tests from one state to another state for evaluation. To grade the tests from a given topic you are required to have relevant college courses and pass an exam yourself.
My mom was telling me about a situation just a couple of months ago where the grading required evaluating the work shown by the student on an algebra exam. A student chose to use calculus instead. The student got the right answer, but was marked as having gotten that question wrong because of the method they used being too advanced for the grader to understand it. It caused a major stink in the group (they grade the exams in groups to check each other), and the question being marked as wrong eventually stood on the position of the senior leader (group lead).
Just annectodal and not fodder for an opinion one way or another.
I enthusiastically applaud his work in pulling off the lamb outfit from world governments and corporations.
What purpose is served in releasing the fact that Hilary Clinton worries about the mental health of other world leaders? How does that aid in our international relations?
That's just one of 1000's of items that were released that are not crimes, are not important for the American people to know, and still undermine our government's ability to operate on the world stage.
Releasing those kinds of documents doesn't serve a greater good. It doesnt expose any wrong-doings. It doesn't help create stability, ensure -anyone's- safety, or promote any kind of cooperation between nations. It was released to embarrass the US government and garner sensationlistic attention from a little weasle.
Not to mention that this guy released the names of confidential informants in the middle east. In doing so he signed the death warrants of those people. What greater purpose was served by releasing their names? What good will come of that? What crime did they commit? What evil are they responsible for? Where are your indignant tears for them and their families who will almost assuredly be slaughtered?
I don't really see issue with asking for ridiculous damages. It's basic bartering. You dont go up to a guy at a garage sale and say "I'll give you $50 for that $50 worth of dvd's". You offer $5 and he counters until an agreeable mean is met.
Even though I know that asking for the domain name in the damages is completely out of line, I respect the fact that the guy actually does have a case. If his photo was wrongfully displayed without consent, the photographer has every right to pursue the case.
I only have a problem with lawsuits that are themselves ridiculous. Like suing a bucket manufacturer because the bucket didnt have a warning label clearing stating that a baby might be able to drown in a bucket of water. That kind of thing should be thrown out and whoever brought the suit should have to pay damages instead. In that particularly case whoever was watching the kid should be brought up on charges for negligence.
Exactly right. And exactly like CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, Huffington Post, NPR, .....
/., make a witty little quip that has no actually evidence or discussion point, and suggest through omission that all the world's evils lie in a particular political view... Because that's a hell of a lot more honest...
Every single one of them is politicized now. Every one has a notable and definable slant. The trick is to read multiple sources, investigate on your own, and find the truth that lies somewhere in the middle of all the sensationalism.
Or you can go to a perfectly unbiased place like
I'm not well-informed enough about NCLB to really argue it, and I don't have a solid opinion one way or the other for that very reason. The point I was trying to make was not that those were stupid lawsuits or even good ones. It was that there are people on the left filing lawsuits against laws generated by people on the right pretty regularly, which is counter to what mrsteveman1 suggested.
As I said in my post, that lawsuit is no more or less valid than one against the Health Care law. And as you stated (rightfully) we need people challenging laws that seem unconstitutional on both sides of the isle in order to keep the system honest. That's why it was designed in the way it was.
You make the assumption that kids are being taught a foundation upon which they can actually make well-informed decisions. You suggest that they are being given adequate understanding of the moral consequences and basic principles that result in good choices. You guess that they are told what the Constitution is, what it contains, why it was written, and how it is and was the single document in the world that ensures the freedom and safety of American citizens. In short, they arent.
... How's that working out? I mean other than having record high crime, record high dropout rates, and record high welfare recipients... ?
Instead they are taught that it's perfectly acceptable to be a biligerant asshole to pretty much anyone that doesn't live the way they think they should live, or who asks anything them that they dont like. They are taught that if you don't like life's outcomes, sue. They are taught that you dont really have to work hard, you just have to file the right paperwork to get paid, or find the right public program you can milk.
I don't ask anyone to pledge blind loyalty to the guy who's President today, or 4 years ago, or 4 years from now, and no one else is either. But you're sitting here sanctomoniously telling me that it's a bad thng to pledge to uphold principles that help every citizen. You're suggesting that it's wrong to ask a kid to promise to uphold one of the greatest protections for people's rights ever created. Tell me, what exactly would you ask a kid to promise? To be a jerk? To rebel against all authority? To purposefully undermine any form of government? That kind of attitude started in the 1950's here in the US didnt it?