It's definitely become more right-wing and reactionary.
Indeed. So much so, arguing with your kind has become more like shooting fish in a barrel. Too easy.
I would've gone to a place like DailyKos or HaffPo to hunt you in your natural environment — with some equivalent of bright orange sign sport-hunters wear to make it harder for themselves — but those places tend to ban KKKonservatives under the bogus accusation of "trolling". So, here we are...
To me? No, not to me — I was referring to the meaning OP attached to the word. When Illiberals declare something "unacceptable", their next move is to try to make it illegal...
Yes, the plan drafted by him years earlier — but it was Obama's execution, and his failure to make corrections when new developments made it obvious, the plan's original projections were too optimistic. Face it, Obama wanted to do it for political reasons — to look better...
You mean, like Reagan did with the USSR and Afghanistan invasion?
Hah! You lie, but that's a good example, thank you! USSR invaded Afghanistain in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was is office — another example of a weak "it is all America's fault" excuse for a President. But even he imposed sanctions against USSR. And the whole world boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Reagan assumed Presidency in 1981, with the invasion over a year-old, and proceeded to arm Russia's opponents in Afghanistan. He did not lift Carter-era sanctions — he expanded them. Obama, on the other hand, would not send Ukraine anything lethal, and even to get him to agree to supply blankets and body-armor took some arm-twisting and was delayed by months.
1) Gitmo is still open. 2) Drone strikes were started by Bush.
Yes, which is an embarrassment for Obama. To reduce the embarrassment, he is doing two things both of which are far worse: 1) he is releasing the current detainees — including bona-fide enemies of the US; 2) he vastly expanded the drone strikes "started by Bush". Bush used air-strikes to kill enemies, who could not be detained. Obama is using against all — such is his reluctance to increase the number of inconvenient detainees, he prefers to lose the intelligence value of interrogating them. That the remotely-killed people have no chance of clearing up any confusion makes Obama's policy even more immoral.
So far you've listed exactly the things that Republicans do.
Nonsense. You have no leg to stand on in this argument — the extrajudicial killing of bin Laden (ordered by Obama) defeats your point by itself... That you chose to ignore the earlier-raised point of Obama taking the drone-strikes to the whole new level, and his order to kill rather the detain bin Laden, shows your dishonesty.
On top of that you got Reagan's reaction to USSR's invasion exactly backwards, which demonstrates the level of ignorance so deep, I'm unlikely to respond again...
How could anyone, in 2014, have thought this was acceptable?
"Acceptable"? Was the First Amendment declared null and void, while I was sleeping? What do you mean by "acceptable", mister thought-policeman?
If burning American flag, calling for killing of the sitting President, or publicly defecating on a police car is acceptable, having a book with a hare-brained bimbo as one of the characters certainly is too.
Barbie teaches women to be stereotypes, dumb blondes, and how to fake your way through life.
She does not "teach" anybody to be like that — she just shows, such people exist. From what few Barbie-books I've seen (we seem to prefer the Berenstain Bears here, and Dora the Explorer is as boring as most government-sponsored things tend to be), I can not conclude, the books portray the character as the (or even a) role-model. In other words, whatever she is doing is not meant for the girls to emulate necessarily...
Some will, no doubt, and there is no helping that — some people think orcs of Mordor are cool... For another example, the adorable Vinnie the Pooh is not a good role model either.
unless the child is asking for Barbie, you can skip it altogether.
Like making close to or less than the minimum wage. See a single parent struggle.
Thankfully, the vast majority of America's 18-year olds do not witness either of those things.
But what if they did? That'd only given them half of the story, making them fall for a smooth-talking politician promising to raise the minimum wage and to provide a respectful husband for every single mother. Both promises would be idiotic, of course, but one of them is continuously being made nonetheless...
Your opinion on when people can drink is irrelevant - we are discussing the laws of our land
You asked me, whether I'd suggest a change of drinking laws. Your question made my opinion relevant...
As for who is affected when someone enrolls [enlists in the military -mi]... it would affect more people more certainly than one vote.
Those people — the military commanders — have decided, who they want to see enlisting. Indeed, it may affect them, but I am not qualified to question their judgement on enlistees. The soldiers' lack of life experience — their officers will be making most of the decisions anyway — may be compensated for by their energy and health, for example.
But there is no possible upside to expanding franchise to youngsters.
People used to be done with school by the age of thirteen and begun to support their family.
And today healthcare laws mandate they be treated as children until 26...
Life is full of wonderful, horrifying, and enlightening experiences even within an 18 year span!
Few of those have anything to improve one's ability to govern a country.
I find it completely absurd to argue that those who are eighteen should not be able to vote.
Well, it may or may not be a good idea, but it certainly is not "absurd". In fact, that's how this nation lived until the 26th Amendment (1971). How old were you then?
No, Obama is an Illiberal Democrat through and through. But such people — yourself included — are famous for inability to recognize each other — so far are their deeds from their proclaimed ideals.
On the Democratic side, the argument is that a healthy nation is a better nation, and it is worth a very significant cost to achieve that. Argue that it isn't.
It is very easy to argue, actually. By demonstrating, what "healthy nation" means in the Democratic speak. It is not, where fewer people are sick — it is one, where everyone has health-insurance. Now, that I've rephrased their point closer to reality: "A nation, where everybody has a health-insurance is a better nation," — it is slightly less unassailable.
But they don't mean even that. As Obama and his kept saying, if he had a choice, he'd have a single-payer health-system — and that is very easy to attack. Especially for people like myself, who grew-up in such a "worker's paradise"...
And the more cynical among us (and you can't be too cynical discussing the government's intentions) would argue, that Obamacare was designed to fail to make the single-payer system more palatable to the tired electorate.
The whole point of the MediaMatters' article was that Wisconsin's 8th-graders are better than the national average. In their zeal to attack Wisconsin's union-busting governor, they publicized the inconvenient truth about the whole nation...
And I was talking about the national average — using the uber-Illiberal site as citation was just my way of teasing the readers like yourself.
That is a very different picture than the one you tried to paint.
What I said remains perfectly true — however much you spin it: only 30% of 8th graders nationwide are proficient in reading. I neither said, nor implied, that the rest are unable to tell $10 bill from a $100.
But, for four times the cost, I would've expected everybody to be proficient readers... And so would you if you didn't feel compelled to defend the indefensible.
Are you kidding me, eighteen is too young to vote?
Yes, it is. 18 year-olds lack sufficient life-experience to make informed decisions.
Is twenty one too young to drink?
No, you can start drinking at 14 for all I care — whatever your parents believe. That decision would affect only you. Your voting, on contrast, affects everybody.
Maybe kids should be older before they enroll in the military too.
Again, the decision to enlist affects only the enlistee. The decision to vote for a cool candidate with zero experience running anything into the top executive post in the country is ruining the entire country.
Or wait - surely there would be no competency test and the age shall be arbitrary!
In my ideal world, you'd have to satisfy the following requirements before being allowed to participate in a poll (in addition to age):
Be able to solve a randomly-generated quadratic equation.
Be able to quote one of the Bill of Rights Amendments of your choice.
Not be a recipient of public charity (foodstamps, subsidized housing or healthcare plan, Welfare, etc.) for at least 90 days before the poll date.
You should stop saying and repeating stupid things.
Ah, an ad-hominem. It takes me back — to when I was 18...
Books, supplies, land, fuel, maintenance have ALL risen faster then inflation.
Four times faster?
If you actually care, learn about CPI. relative privce changes. and 'all item' inflation
The meanings of "inflation" may be different, but they are all correlated. Consumer price index may be changing different from that of a school, but it they are still tightly related... It is ridiculous to suggest — as you are doing — that one index increase 4-fold without a comparable (even if not equal) increase of the other.
Or, alternatively, FB realized, what horrible damage they've done to the country by inadvertently helping an incompetent nincompoop become President and, as a mea culpa, are shutting down the profitable feature.
Republicans wouldn't have benefited from it as much (if at all), because they aren't as trusting of shiny "social media" to begin with...
The Libertarian philosophy is the most self-consistent of all available. It requires the fewest "common-sense" exceptions to be practical.
reality-denying assumptions
I could've asked for citations, but let's not continue down this off-topic road — on which you and an AC ventured unprovoked, for such is your fear and loathing of the Libertarianism gaining its well-deserved popularity and strength.
Then get off your ass and start a parents union, or a voters union.
It is an uphill battle. Teacher's unions — as well as all other trade-unions — have the official support of the law.
A unionized workplace — private or governmental alike — can only hire union-members. This makes unions a monopoly, that ought to be illegal under the anti-trust laws, but aren't...
That's true for any union in general. In addition to that, teachers are uniquely positioned to place their points of view into the young minds. Though most tend to wise up as they gain life-experience, with the voting age set to the ridiculously low 18, those youngsters are a powerful and energetic — though largely clueless — voting block. And, to be sure, "educators" are now making noises towards lowering it even further.
So, yes, any corruption can — in theory — be dislodged. But it is not always easy in practice... I for one am doing, what I can, right here and now typing this...
You are quite right to curse. The per-pupil spending has quadrupled since 1960ies (inflation-adjusted). And that's just national average. The locales with high population density — where you'd expect economies of scale to provide for lower per-pupil costs — actually pay even more. But the quality of education has remained level at best — 70% of 8th-graders can't be said to read proficiently!
No one in their right mind would willingly pay 4 times more for the same bad (and worsening) service, if they had a choice. Thus, it is not surprising, the teachers' unions have made ensuring, you have no other choice, one of their top priorities.
The tools were good enough for daddy, they should be good enough for the kid...
And I did try eclipse and other modern wonders — and have gone back with disgust. Disgust mild, but sufficient to want to wash hands — the shiny new shells smelled of mice, if you know, what I mean.
The researchers found an early 20th century atlas that depicted the structure, now known as the vertical occipital fasciculus. But the last time that atlas had been checked out was 1912
Ahh, those inquisitive — and well-funded — scientists... The following fortune-cookie came with BSD decades ago:
Westheimer's Discovery: A couple of months in the laboratory can
frequently save a couple of hours in the library.
Ok, this is beyond dubious- it's patently bullshit. Though I agree with you it's the fairest and best way.
Self-contradiction detected...
As to the rest of your post, without pretty major patent law reform, or some other way to encourage the market to drive prices down
Competition is the way to drive prices down...
Oh, I don't know, allow import of foreign drugs without going through the Pharma Cartels
What are you going to import? What the "cartels" are selling abroad? That's reimport. Something invented abroad? We already import those things — but our government, in its wisdom, insists on requiring an approval before allowing such imports...
The price controls are just an attempt at controlling the already granted and abused monopoly.
The only "monopoly" currently in existence is the temporary one — rewarding inventors with the exclusive rights to sell their inventions for a limited time. Such reward of inventions seems perfectly fine with me — if you don't like it, you don't have to buy these new drugs and you will not be any worse off than if the system didn't exist at all and the drugs in question, instead of costing too much, simply have not been invented...
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't say so.
Strawman much?
I don't usually moderate AC-posts for it does nothing to the authors' karma, but I would've done than had I had any points to spend.
I don't, so here it goes: thank you, sir, for raising awareness and letting the healing begin!
Indeed. So much so, arguing with your kind has become more like shooting fish in a barrel. Too easy.
I would've gone to a place like DailyKos or HaffPo to hunt you in your natural environment — with some equivalent of bright orange sign sport-hunters wear to make it harder for themselves — but those places tend to ban KKKonservatives under the bogus accusation of "trolling". So, here we are...
Please, don't hate.
To me? No, not to me — I was referring to the meaning OP attached to the word. When Illiberals declare something "unacceptable", their next move is to try to make it illegal...
Yes, the plan drafted by him years earlier — but it was Obama's execution, and his failure to make corrections when new developments made it obvious, the plan's original projections were too optimistic. Face it, Obama wanted to do it for political reasons — to look better...
Hah! You lie, but that's a good example, thank you! USSR invaded Afghanistain in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was is office — another example of a weak "it is all America's fault" excuse for a President. But even he imposed sanctions against USSR. And the whole world boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Reagan assumed Presidency in 1981, with the invasion over a year-old, and proceeded to arm Russia's opponents in Afghanistan. He did not lift Carter-era sanctions — he expanded them. Obama, on the other hand, would not send Ukraine anything lethal, and even to get him to agree to supply blankets and body-armor took some arm-twisting and was delayed by months.
Yes, which is an embarrassment for Obama. To reduce the embarrassment, he is doing two things both of which are far worse: 1) he is releasing the current detainees — including bona-fide enemies of the US; 2) he vastly expanded the drone strikes "started by Bush". Bush used air-strikes to kill enemies, who could not be detained. Obama is using against all — such is his reluctance to increase the number of inconvenient detainees, he prefers to lose the intelligence value of interrogating them. That the remotely-killed people have no chance of clearing up any confusion makes Obama's policy even more immoral.
Nonsense. You have no leg to stand on in this argument — the extrajudicial killing of bin Laden (ordered by Obama) defeats your point by itself... That you chose to ignore the earlier-raised point of Obama taking the drone-strikes to the whole new level, and his order to kill rather the detain bin Laden, shows your dishonesty.
On top of that you got Reagan's reaction to USSR's invasion exactly backwards, which demonstrates the level of ignorance so deep, I'm unlikely to respond again...
"Acceptable"? Was the First Amendment declared null and void, while I was sleeping? What do you mean by "acceptable", mister thought-policeman?
If burning American flag, calling for killing of the sitting President, or publicly defecating on a police car is acceptable, having a book with a hare-brained bimbo as one of the characters certainly is too.
I have a daughter like that myself.
She does not "teach" anybody to be like that — she just shows, such people exist. From what few Barbie-books I've seen (we seem to prefer the Berenstain Bears here, and Dora the Explorer is as boring as most government-sponsored things tend to be), I can not conclude, the books portray the character as the (or even a) role-model. In other words, whatever she is doing is not meant for the girls to emulate necessarily...
Some will, no doubt, and there is no helping that — some people think orcs of Mordor are cool... For another example, the adorable Vinnie the Pooh is not a good role model either.
True that, yes...
Tell me, that it is not... I dare you...
Now, maybe, the book should not be encouraging yet another generation of girls to act like that — but real-life it is nonetheless.
Please, don't hate.
Thankfully, the vast majority of America's 18-year olds do not witness either of those things.
But what if they did? That'd only given them half of the story, making them fall for a smooth-talking politician promising to raise the minimum wage and to provide a respectful husband for every single mother. Both promises would be idiotic, of course, but one of them is continuously being made nonetheless...
You asked me, whether I'd suggest a change of drinking laws. Your question made my opinion relevant...
Those people — the military commanders — have decided, who they want to see enlisting. Indeed, it may affect them, but I am not qualified to question their judgement on enlistees. The soldiers' lack of life experience — their officers will be making most of the decisions anyway — may be compensated for by their energy and health, for example.
But there is no possible upside to expanding franchise to youngsters.
And today healthcare laws mandate they be treated as children until 26...
Few of those have anything to improve one's ability to govern a country.
Well, it may or may not be a good idea, but it certainly is not "absurd". In fact, that's how this nation lived until the 26th Amendment (1971). How old were you then?
Nuclear power is bad. Exporting radioactive materials to a different country is worse — and a different celestial body is outright horrible.
Solar, on the other hand, is clean and wonderful...
Why can't we here in the US be more like the sophisticated Europe?
Please, don't hate.
Oh, no you don't... You keep him. A Republican would not have withdrawn all troops from Iraq — allowing ISIS to bloom and necessitating a painful return.
A Republican would not have encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine by lifting all sanctions imposed over a similar invasion into Georgia.
A Republican would've continued to detain terrorist suspects — in Guantanamo or elsewhere — rather then order extrajudicial killings — most infamously one of Osama bin Laden himself.
No, Obama is an Illiberal Democrat through and through. But such people — yourself included — are famous for inability to recognize each other — so far are their deeds from their proclaimed ideals.
It is very easy to argue, actually. By demonstrating, what "healthy nation" means in the Democratic speak. It is not, where fewer people are sick — it is one, where everyone has health-insurance. Now, that I've rephrased their point closer to reality: "A nation, where everybody has a health-insurance is a better nation," — it is slightly less unassailable.
But they don't mean even that. As Obama and his kept saying, if he had a choice, he'd have a single-payer health-system — and that is very easy to attack. Especially for people like myself, who grew-up in such a "worker's paradise"...
And the more cynical among us (and you can't be too cynical discussing the government's intentions) would argue, that Obamacare was designed to fail to make the single-payer system more palatable to the tired electorate.
Remind me again, who do we have in the White House — a RethugliKKKan or a Libertardian?
The whole point of the MediaMatters' article was that Wisconsin's 8th-graders are better than the national average. In their zeal to attack Wisconsin's union-busting governor, they publicized the inconvenient truth about the whole nation...
And I was talking about the national average — using the uber-Illiberal site as citation was just my way of teasing the readers like yourself.
What I said remains perfectly true — however much you spin it: only 30% of 8th graders nationwide are proficient in reading. I neither said, nor implied, that the rest are unable to tell $10 bill from a $100.
But, for four times the cost, I would've expected everybody to be proficient readers... And so would you if you didn't feel compelled to defend the indefensible.
Yes, it is. 18 year-olds lack sufficient life-experience to make informed decisions.
No, you can start drinking at 14 for all I care — whatever your parents believe. That decision would affect only you. Your voting, on contrast, affects everybody.
Again, the decision to enlist affects only the enlistee. The decision to vote for a cool candidate with zero experience running anything into the top executive post in the country is ruining the entire country.
In my ideal world, you'd have to satisfy the following requirements before being allowed to participate in a poll (in addition to age):
Ah, an ad-hominem. It takes me back — to when I was 18...
Four times faster?
The meanings of "inflation" may be different, but they are all correlated. Consumer price index may be changing different from that of a school, but it they are still tightly related... It is ridiculous to suggest — as you are doing — that one index increase 4-fold without a comparable (even if not equal) increase of the other.
Your response is thus meaningless...
Or, alternatively, FB realized, what horrible damage they've done to the country by inadvertently helping an incompetent nincompoop become President and, as a mea culpa, are shutting down the profitable feature.
Republicans wouldn't have benefited from it as much (if at all), because they aren't as trusting of shiny "social media" to begin with...
I could've asked for citations, but let's not continue down this off-topic road — on which you and an AC ventured unprovoked, for such is your fear and loathing of the Libertarianism gaining its well-deserved popularity and strength.
Statists gonna state.
It is an uphill battle. Teacher's unions — as well as all other trade-unions — have the official support of the law.
A unionized workplace — private or governmental alike — can only hire union-members. This makes unions a monopoly, that ought to be illegal under the anti-trust laws, but aren't...
That's true for any union in general. In addition to that, teachers are uniquely positioned to place their points of view into the young minds. Though most tend to wise up as they gain life-experience, with the voting age set to the ridiculously low 18, those youngsters are a powerful and energetic — though largely clueless — voting block. And, to be sure, "educators" are now making noises towards lowering it even further.
So, yes, any corruption can — in theory — be dislodged. But it is not always easy in practice... I for one am doing, what I can, right here and now typing this...
You are quite right to curse. The per-pupil spending has quadrupled since 1960ies (inflation-adjusted). And that's just national average. The locales with high population density — where you'd expect economies of scale to provide for lower per-pupil costs — actually pay even more. But the quality of education has remained level at best — 70% of 8th-graders can't be said to read proficiently!
No one in their right mind would willingly pay 4 times more for the same bad (and worsening) service, if they had a choice. Thus, it is not surprising, the teachers' unions have made ensuring, you have no other choice, one of their top priorities.
Sounds like the most crucial parts were stripped out to get the President's pre-approval. What party is Obama from, again?
Good to see Illiberals target libertarians on a regular basis now... Only 10 years ago or so, we were simply dismissed with mild amusement.
There is hope for America yet.
The tools were good enough for daddy, they should be good enough for the kid...
And I did try eclipse and other modern wonders — and have gone back with disgust. Disgust mild, but sufficient to want to wash hands — the shiny new shells smelled of mice, if you know, what I mean.
Ahh, those inquisitive — and well-funded — scientists... The following fortune-cookie came with BSD decades ago:
Self-contradiction detected...
Competition is the way to drive prices down...
What are you going to import? What the "cartels" are selling abroad? That's reimport. Something invented abroad? We already import those things — but our government, in its wisdom, insists on requiring an approval before allowing such imports...
The only "monopoly" currently in existence is the temporary one — rewarding inventors with the exclusive rights to sell their inventions for a limited time. Such reward of inventions seems perfectly fine with me — if you don't like it, you don't have to buy these new drugs and you will not be any worse off than if the system didn't exist at all and the drugs in question, instead of costing too much, simply have not been invented...