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Huh? Not really. He could have just ignored them altogether.

But, did you really want Bush to pay more attention to the children of the nation? Just think of the things that could have went wrong.....

He did pay attention. The fact you don't know that is a as shocking as it is ill informed.

Clinton did as well.

I've yet to see what Obama has done except kowtow to the teacher's unions.

I was really just stretching for a Bush joke. I realize he paid attention to the kids.

It was a stretch, bad one at that. I feel so ashamed.

The Green Git wrote:What amazes me is how quickly the Liberal Left does a 180 on this gak and then pretends like no one will notice. You can't protest one President doing this and then act surprised and shocked and outraged when your side does it and someone else protests.

Oh wait... I forgot only the Left can be genuinely outraged. Not us "Astroturf" types. Well someone better tell the GOP where to send my f*cking check because I didn't get one. I'm mad as hell about the TRILLION dollar spending binge PresBO went on and it's because he's picking my pocket and running the country into financial ruin and no other reason.

The budget deficit was already exploding under Bush. It blew up under Reagan, too. Where was the outrage from the right then? We can start listing issue after issue in which both sides have been complete hypocrites, if you want to play that game.

It's all caveman partisan politics. We am good, they am bad. It doesn't matter *what* the other side is doing...if they're doing it, it must be bad. Because they am bad.

But simplistic as that mindset is, I can respect someone who's honest about it...someone who says "look, I'm a Republican, and I just don't like having a Democrat in the White House." Okay, fine. That is what it is. What bugs me is when those on either side act as though their opposition to the other side is something that's been carefully considered over time. The citizens who vote Dem never really wanted to give Bush a chance, just as the citizens who vote GOP never wanted to give Clinton or Obama a chance. It was hate at the first opportunity.

And that, unfortunately, is the state of our nation. Respect for our elected officials and actual political discourse are long gone. Except if you're talking about discourse *among* our elected officials. They actually talk. We hold signs, scream at each other from across the street and slap bumper stickers on our cars designed to pi$$ the other side off. Most of the country's been reduced to two large, boorish cheering sections that would be thrown out of most sporting events. Good god, our citizens call each other "Nazi", just because they're on the other side. Friggin' NAZI. It makes me want to projectile vomit over all of them.

This is why I have no party affiliation and haven't pursued a job in DC despite opportunities.

/rant off

Frazz wrote:Frankly both sides do that blindingly well

You know we needed a change of pace... who knew how the pace would... OMFGWTF!!! RUN AWAY!!! NOT MY LEGS!!! NOOOOOOOO....

The Green Git wrote:
What amazes me is how quickly the Liberal Left does a 180 on this gak and then pretends like no one will notice. You can't protest one President doing this and then act surprised and shocked and outraged when your side does it and someone else protests.

20 years is 'quickly'? Why do you insist on seeing this as a matter of sides?

The Green Git wrote:
Oh wait... I forgot only the Left can be genuinely outraged. Not us "Astroturf" types. Well someone better tell the GOP where to send my f*cking check because I didn't get one. I'm mad as hell about the TRILLION dollar spending binge PresBO went on and it's because he's picking my pocket and running the country into financial ruin and no other reason.

So the left is a side, but you're an independently thinking, legitimately outraged, individual? Come on dude, listen to your own advice.

dogma wrote:20 years is 'quickly'? Why do you insist on seeing this as a matter of sides?

I'm going to go with "because it is easier" for $200 Alex.

Wrexasaur wrote:You know that feeling you get when you find an opening for a nice solid kick in a fight? Yeah, the one where you know they are just going to drop down and pray?

Fateweaver just gave me one, albeit one that he would have to tie himself up in hypocrisy to get out of... I can smell it...

I think the situation our country is in speaks for itself quite frankly, and the level of public education is... erm, VERY low quality. The math is 2+2, you finish this problem...

Hmm, I think I'm missing the intended joke here Wrex. If you are a teen I mean no offense. As I stated already, going by how teens act today, in my experience, I have to wonder what the president 20 years down the road will be like (assuming we get ones running that are 32-35 years old).

From what I've witnessed in the last 20 years 13-16 year olds are a lot more misguided and naive and, frankly stupid, than when I was a teen/preteen but I blame that on education system, parenting and society in general. We, as a nation, allow the stupid to move forward in life. That "No student left behind" bs is what has made our country one of the lowest scoring in the world when it comes to placement tests. Granted, you cannot teach common sense but a book smart person with no common sense is a lot more productive and better off than a person with no common sense and no book smarts.

Again, no offense to teens/preteens as I'm sure there is at least ONE that stands above the rest of the teens in society today but from my experience in dealing with them and the experiences of other adults who were my age when I was a teen it really doesn't look too hopeful for this country 20 years from now.

People have been saying the same things about the generation coming after them for thousands of years, though.

Some Greek guy was complaining that the youth of today was lazy, ignorant, morally bankrupt, not interested in anything but games and screwing around, etc.

I'd guess a lot of it is a matter of perception.

Orkeosaurus wrote:People have been saying the same things about the generation coming after them for thousands of years, though.

Some Greek guy was complaining that the youth of today was lazy, ignorant, morally bankrupt, not interested in anything but games and screwing around, etc.

I'd guess a lot of it is a matter of perception.

Flip it. The ancient greek guy was saying the youth of today are paying to much attention to the future, and NOT screwing around and doing things besides games.

Orkeosaurus wrote:People have been saying the same things about the generation coming after them for thousands of years, though.

That doesn't mean they are always wrong either. Some generations are not as up to par as others. Mine likes Thundercats action figures and Voltron DVD sets.

Frazzled wrote:
Flip it. The ancient greek guy was saying the youth of today are paying to much attention to the future, and NOT screwing around and doing things besides games.

r you srs?

Thundercats ThunderCats THUNDERCAST HOOOO!!!

I blame cartoons for idiocy in youth. Watch Noggin' network for 10 minutes sometime and you will see what I mean.

It's for preschoolers but egads, I seriously think most of the shows on Noggin are too pc, too idiotic and too bland even for a 3 year old. Ugh.

dogma wrote:
I don't know why you have it in your head that I think anyone who disagrees with Obama is racist. You're arguing a strawman because that's nothing akin to what I've said here.

I am not accusing you of making this claim, but you cannot deny that more people who disagree with Obama have been labeled racist than deserve it. It just seemed in the way that you were arguing that the majority of people who have a disapproval of Obama are racist, and that is what drove my argument, sorry for the confusion.

dogma wrote:
That's why he was so popular with college kids, he used the academic tactic of rejecting the original liberal/conservative debate altogether. Though I don't think he really painted himself as a moderate. He spit a conciliatory game, which isn't necessarily the same thing as political moderation.

He claimed to reject that age old debate, but lets be honest he never really did. I personally never thought he could be considered a moderate in anything he said, but that is the way he came across, something the media had no small hand in.

dogma wrote:
The thing is, people who say nutty things start to sound a whole lot more credible when they can use kernels of truth, and a general dislike of the Federal Government, to amplify the significance of an issue. The whole 'death panels' thing is a good example.

But that doesn't mean that they are racist, which is the point I was making. Sure people say nutty things, even some mainstream people do. And yes, people are sometimes taken in by those nutty messages, but none are accepted by the general public if they are driven by racism. That is simply the point I was trying to make.

dogma wrote:
It does speak to the poor nature of the critique from congressional dominance; especially given that the Democrats tend to operate as a contiguous political party in only a tenuous sense. The Republicans too, as of late anyway.

Are you saying that the criticism of the dysfunction of the Federal government is that poor, or are you saying that the coherence of the government is poor? And no disagreement about the nature of the Democratic party...

dogma wrote:
To a man, I have heard that from every professor I have ever broached the subject with.

This leads in three directions:
1) Academic freedom is largely an illusion, which no one truly understands how to judge.
2) Academic freedom is alive and well, with plenty of defenders proffering their own take on it.
3) Freedom has come to mean 'unchallenged'

I don't agree with the first one, and the third one is right out in my book, but the second I will take. Undoubtedly there are varying degrees of Academic freedom, and I am quickly finding that out. I am not going to lie, I was incredibly spoiled at Baylor because of the access I had to professors who were willing to discuss and debate an idea, and even more than that I had a group of friends who were all willing to debate just about anything that crossed our minds. Everything from my support of Constitutional monarchy, to someone else's support of the Crusades, etc.

dogma wrote:
That's partially a function of specialization. Sure, most schools have history departments, but most of them aren't very good. They're there because they possess some kind of land-grant mandate, or the administration feels that any respectable school should possess a history department.

Truth be told, I feel that the educational system is over-specialized in many ways. It turns out very competent vertical thinkers, but very poor horizontal ones. That said, I'm not sure how to fix it. Generalization costs money, and uni is already ungodly pricey.

Agreed all the way around. My pursuit of graduate studies has very quickly taught me this: inferiority and mediocrity among history departments is the norm around the country...a truly saddening affair. Most of my friends from home who studied history in college don't even know how to use a primary source....most discouraging.

dogma wrote:
To be honest, its usually not a good idea to critique the positions of your professor unless you're ready for a fight. He almost certainly knows the material better than his students, and will defend it. It is his livelihood after all.

Inevitably a lot of this simply comes down to human nature. You're not always going to agree with your professor, and he isn't always going to agree with you. This will affect the grades you get, though hopefully not much (the alternative is grade inflation, which is almost as bad as biased instruction). Besides, if grades are really that important to you, just parrot something for the prof. and collect your views in private. No one's going to care what you wrote in undergrad anyway.

That was the nice thing about Baylor, I argued with several professors all the time, even in their offices after class, and I never felt that I got a grade that I didn't deserve. I will admit that I was terribly cavalier about my career as a student, which of course hurt my grades, but I felt like I was cheated out of something. Sometimes I felt like I had been given too much grace. Again, this may just be because the department at our school just had that right set of professors who had high standards of personal ethics.

dogma wrote:
Blame is part of the corrective process in American politics.

That doesn't justify it being blamed on those out of power.

Fateweaver wrote:Hmm, I think I'm missing the intended joke here Wrex. If you are a teen I mean no offense. As I stated already, going by how teens act today, in my experience, I have to wonder what the president 20 years down the road will be like (assuming we get ones running that are 32-35 years old).

From what I've witnessed in the last 20 years 13-16 year olds are a lot more misguided and naive and, frankly stupid, than when I was a teen/preteen but I blame that on education system, parenting and society in general. We, as a nation, allow the stupid to move forward in life. That "No student left behind" bs is what has made our country one of the lowest scoring in the world when it comes to placement tests. Granted, you cannot teach common sense but a book smart person with no common sense is a lot more productive and better off than a person with no common sense and no book smarts.

Again, no offense to teens/preteens as I'm sure there is at least ONE that stands above the rest of the teens in society today but from my experience in dealing with them and the experiences of other adults who were my age when I was a teen it really doesn't look too hopeful for this country 20 years from now.

I have no doubts that you mean no offense... but saying no offense... but I have to punch you in the face is... well you fill in the blank.

Kids are not stupid, they may be quite immature, but by who's standards? Yours I would surmise in terms of the statements you have made, which is entirely valid being based on your own experiences. I would argue in a totally different manner to much the same conclusions, which would obviously include a serious look at education and youth activities in this country. Kids are much much MUCH MUCH smarter that adults would ever even begin to imagine nowadays, especially when you factor in the drastic cultural changes in the country over my life time alone; beyond which would be a bit silly to try and comprehend.

Kids are much more interactive with their surroundings now, and because of this (not to say it did not happen before) there is an upsurge of extremely intense competition that I gladly count myself out of. In all fields you will find the best of the best of the very best emerging now after years of training and no where to find serious application for this effort. Them's the breaks, and they are made for slamming, so I see no reason besides apathy that most do not rise up and take a creative approach to an otherwise *insert etc... here* world.

Up is up and down is down, but at some point you are going to be pooping your pants... at which point, GTFO MY GODDAM LAWN!!!

Fateweaver wrote:I blame cartoons for idiocy in youth. Watch Noggin' network for 10 minutes sometime and you will see what I mean.

It's for preschoolers but egads, I seriously think most of the shows on Noggin are too pc, too idiotic and too bland even for a 3 year old. Ugh.

WHAO WHAO buddy... you may have a point... hmmmm...

Yes the age of stuff that made any damn sense is long since gone, by my standards the 0's (or w/e) are a huge negative mark on at least part of the media at large. Stupid stuff is stupid, I thought that Barney taught that or something, or Teletubbies or w/e.

JEB_Stuart wrote:I am not accusing you of making this claim, but you cannot deny that more people who disagree with Obama have been labeled racist than deserve it. It just seemed in the way that you were arguing that the majority of people who have a disapproval of Obama are racist, and that is what drove my argument, sorry for the confusion.

Ah, ok. I actually agree with you on the ubiquity of racism as a critique.

JEB_Stuart wrote:
He claimed to reject that age old debate, but lets be honest he never really did. I personally never thought he could be considered a moderate in anything he said, but that is the way he came across, something the media had no small hand in.

It also helps that the two dominant voices leading into the campaign were the extreme wings of the left and right. Its easy to be a moderate when the whole spectrum is open to you.

JEB_Stuart wrote:
But that doesn't mean that they are racist, which is the point I was making. Sure people say nutty things, even some mainstream people do. And yes, people are sometimes taken in by those nutty messages, but none are accepted by the general public if they are driven by racism. That is simply the point I was trying to make.

Yeah, I agree. We seem to have been making the same point (possibility as opposed to probability) in opposite directions.

JEB_Stuart wrote:
Are you saying that the criticism of the dysfunction of the Federal government is that poor, or are you saying that the coherence of the government is poor? And no disagreement about the nature of the Democratic party...

I'm saying two things. First, that Democratic congressional dominance is often overestimated due to the preponderance of the notion that they held a filibuster proof majority (technically they held that for 3 months, if you count Lieberman, but really they never had it due to Kennedy's health and Franken's seating issues). Second, that its fairly common to overestimate the actual coherence of either party when it comes to actually passing legislation (however, both of them are fairly coherent when it comes to opposing legislation).

JEB_Stuart wrote:
I don't agree with the first one, and the third one is right out in my book, but the second I will take. Undoubtedly there are varying degrees of Academic freedom, and I am quickly finding that out. I am not going to lie, I was incredibly spoiled at Baylor because of the access I had to professors who were willing to discuss and debate an idea, and even more than that I had a group of friends who were all willing to debate just about anything that crossed our minds. Everything from my support of Constitutional monarchy, to someone else's support of the Crusades, etc.

Honestly, my school was about as ideologically narrow as they come, and occasionally I chafed under its overwhelmingly lefitst perspective. However, I never really felt as though I was being indoctrinated. Rather it was my observation that the people with a fully myopic perspective tended to be those that already held to their convictions prior to enrollment. In essence, it wasn't the teaching which was burning out their ability to appreciate diversity, but prior life experience.

JEB_Stuart wrote:
Agreed all the way around. My pursuit of graduate studies has very quickly taught me this: inferiority and mediocrity among history departments is the norm around the country...a truly saddening affair. Most of my friends from home who studied history in college don't even know how to use a primary source....most discouraging.

Political science is just as bad, maybe worse. Likely because theory tends to be an optional component of the major. Everyone seems to know that statistic X indicates state Y, but lacks the philosophical grounding to understand why that is.

JEB_Stuart wrote:
That was the nice thing about Baylor, I argued with several professors all the time, even in their offices after class, and I never felt that I got a grade that I didn't deserve. I will admit that I was terribly cavalier about my career as a student, which of course hurt my grades, but I felt like I was cheated out of something. Sometimes I felt like I had been given too much grace. Again, this may just be because the department at our school just had that right set of professors who had high standards of personal ethics.

Yeah, I was like that with my philosophy profs. Their response was similar to that of your history instructors. Political science was more constricting, but the discipline is narrower, so that isn't necessarily a matter of ethics so much as necessity.

JEB_Stuart wrote:
That doesn't justify it being blamed on those out of power.

No one is ever truly out of power in an open democracy. That's what accountability is all about.

Wrexasaur wrote:

Fateweaver wrote:Hmm, I think I'm missing the intended joke here Wrex. If you are a teen I mean no offense. As I stated already, going by how teens act today, in my experience, I have to wonder what the president 20 years down the road will be like (assuming we get ones running that are 32-35 years old).

From what I've witnessed in the last 20 years 13-16 year olds are a lot more misguided and naive and, frankly stupid, than when I was a teen/preteen but I blame that on education system, parenting and society in general. We, as a nation, allow the stupid to move forward in life. That "No student left behind" bs is what has made our country one of the lowest scoring in the world when it comes to placement tests. Granted, you cannot teach common sense but a book smart person with no common sense is a lot more productive and better off than a person with no common sense and no book smarts.

Again, no offense to teens/preteens as I'm sure there is at least ONE that stands above the rest of the teens in society today but from my experience in dealing with them and the experiences of other adults who were my age when I was a teen it really doesn't look too hopeful for this country 20 years from now.

I have no doubts that you mean no offense... but saying no offense... but I have to punch you in the face is... well you fill in the blank.

Kids are not stupid, they may be quite immature, but by who's standards? Yours I would surmise in terms of the statements you have made, which is entirely valid being based on your own experiences. I would argue in a totally different manner to much the same conclusions, which would obviously include a serious look at education and youth activities in this country. Kids are much much MUCH MUCH smarter that adults would ever even begin to imagine nowadays, especially when you factor in the drastic cultural changes in the country over my life time alone; beyond which would be a bit silly to try and comprehend.

Kids are much more interactive with their surroundings now, and because of this (not to say it did not happen before) there is an upsurge of extremely intense competition that I gladly count myself out of. In all fields you will find the best of the best of the very best emerging now after years of training and no where to find serious application for this effort. Them's the breaks, and they are made for slamming, so I see no reason besides apathy that most do not rise up and take a creative approach to an otherwise *insert etc... here* world.

Up is up and down is down, but at some point you are going to be pooping your pants... at which point, GTFO MY GODDAM LAWN!!!

I guess it varies by region or even town to town. Most youth in my hometown are more worried about getting high and drunk and laid (and I still am talking the 12-15 year olds) than being productive and whatnot. We have a fairly high drop out rate in my cities schools.

Fateweaver wrote:I blame cartoons for idiocy in youth. Watch Noggin' network for 10 minutes sometime and you will see what I mean.

It's for preschoolers but egads, I seriously think most of the shows on Noggin are too pc, too idiotic and too bland even for a 3 year old. Ugh.

WHAO WHAO buddy... you may have a point... hmmmm...

Yes the age of stuff that made any damn sense is long since gone, by my standards the 0's (or w/e) are a huge negative mark on at least part of the media at large. Stupid stuff is stupid, I thought that Barney taught that or something, or Teletubbies or w/e.

Barney has nothing on shows like Dora the Explorer or Yo Gabba Gabba. The latter one especially just makes me shake my head at the nonsense of it all.

So many things to touch on:

Parents censoring the speech of someone they don't agree with is bad parenting. Discussing the right and wrong involved however *is* good parenting. Case in point: How much abuse has Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn suffered in the hopes of 'protecting children' from language? By exposing people to differing thought they are strengthened.

The need to 'vet' the speech of the President of the United States is a spectacular show of misdirected concern and inconsistent parenting. This is one of the people scrutinized in more detail than sports stars, and less likely to be shown favorably. There is no precedent that a President would say something inherently offensive (If you want to deal with the special olympics crack, remember it *was* funny.) or to stir students to revolt. Well.

Stay in school. Study hard. Take personal responsibility. The whole speech was the same bloody thing parents *want* their kids to hear. Best of all, they heard it from a successful black man. But like Bill Cosby, they didn't like the message: "Take responsibility for what you do". At least Obama didn't rub it as hard in everyone's face that failure is often our own fault.

Love the man or hate him, he is an excellent orator (Please! Someone godwin!). Watching him speaking makes one think if only for a moment. Better still, his consistency carried from his inauguration, through this, to his speech last night.

The man is consistent. We could do worse.

Depending on their age, children lack developed cognitive reasoning structures, however by teenage what they mostly lack is experience (and advanced intellectual tools.) They seem so naive because they are.

They are particularly ignorant of history. Most people are ignorant even of recent history if it happened before they hit their mid-late teens. That's why surveys of the best running back of all time, or the best action movie, are always biased towards newer examples.

Oldgrue wrote:he is an excellent orator

You mean like Adolf Hitler?

Orkeosaurus wrote:You mean like...

Invitation to godwin is normally considered rhetorical.

It's not my fault they keep changing the rules!

gorgon wrote:The budget deficit was already exploding under Bush. It blew up under Reagan, too. Where was the outrage from the right then? We can start listing issue after issue in which both sides have been complete hypocrites, if you want to play that game.

Thing is there was and is a lot of outrage among Conservatives about the Bush spending. I know lots of folks that are still pissed off about the Bank bailouts that started in the Bush administration. Both parties are spending money like drunken sailors. Don't misconstrue opposition to out of control Fed spending as partisan politics.

dogma wrote:

The Green Git wrote:
What amazes me is how quickly the Liberal Left does a 180 on this gak and then pretends like no one will notice. You can't protest one President doing this and then act surprised and shocked and outraged when your side does it and someone else protests.

20 years is 'quickly'? Why do you insist on seeing this as a matter of sides?

It was only 15 years... and if you are as old as me that *IS* quick

It's not a matter of sides... it's a matter of Left wingers being incredibly hypocritical. When *they* protest, it's genuine outrage. When someone protests *them* it's manufactured and insincere. Puh-lease.

dogma wrote:

The Green Git wrote:
Oh wait... I forgot only the Left can be genuinely outraged. Not us "Astroturf" types. Well someone better tell the GOP where to send my f*cking check because I didn't get one. I'm mad as hell about the TRILLION dollar spending binge PresBO went on and it's because he's picking my pocket and running the country into financial ruin and no other reason.

So the left is a side, but you're an independently thinking, legitimately outraged, individual? Come on dude, listen to your own advice.

Stop trying to put words in my mouth. You are the person making this about sides dogma. I just said I didn't like the way PresBO was spending my money and called the Lefties hypocrites for doing the same thing they pretended to be outraged about when the shoe was on the other foot.

Yes... I'm an independent. And I'm outraged at both the Left and the Right. Just because I didn't drink the Koolaid for The Messiah™ doesn't mean I liked the RINO alternative. It IS possible for someone to oppose Democrats based on their actions and not their political affiliation. As I posted above, I'm mad at Obama and Princess Pelosi for raping our Treasury, not because they are Dems.

I normally don't care for Pat Buchanan, and I disagree with some of his points on this article, but I found it to pretty good overall, and I appreciate many of the points he raises.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=109478

Thing is there was and is a lot of outrage among Conservatives about the Bush spending. I know lots of folks that are still pissed off about the Bank bailouts that started in the Bush administration. Both parties are spending money like drunken sailors. Don't misconstrue opposition to out of control Fed spending as partisan politics.

Those same people don't understand the implications of a system wide banking and credit collapse. If they think having to pay slightly higher taxes for dubious reasoning is bad, maybe they should quit their jobs and have to pay six times current prices for food at the same time to simulate the effect of a financial collapse on their budget.

These people are also called idiots.

Yes... I'm an independent. And I'm outraged at both the Left and the Right. Just because I didn't drink the Koolaid for The Messiah™ doesn't mean I liked the RINO alternative. It IS possible for someone to oppose Democrats based on their actions and not their political affiliation. As I posted above, I'm mad at Obama and Princess Pelosi for raping our Treasury, not because they are Dems.

Depending on how you look at non-american stimulus spending it would appear to be somewhat successful, with most of the major nations participating in heavier recovery plans recovering well ahead of the global curve. The local housing market and financial vectors look to be turning around, albeit slowly, as well. While its always difficult and contentious to claim that stimulus spending is the cause (outside of japan, where its fairly obviously the culprit) America, as the purveyor of the global collapse is actually poised to recover sooner than most of the rest of the world.

Comparing the loss in revenue due to the spending on stimulus (which can and can not be discounted entirely, depending on how well it remains within system and actually recovers wealth) and the loss of revenue due to a more prolonged collapse (again contentious, as causality is really hard to prove) and you, if the stimulus card is played right, have a wash. The only thing saved is time (hence stimulating recovery rather than causing it).


As for treasury raping, well every person has claimed that in every presidency in the history of this nation. Deficit spending is a reality of a consumer economy, and is the reality of many of our peers. If kept under control (which would require tighter controls on fairness of trade, the bush doctrine for globalization was basically to cast a blind eye to us getting raped globally in trade negations because any trade is good trade) then it could continue indefinitely, inflating with our gross growth in real wealth and consumption. The realities of globalization mean that we can't go back to an industrial economy. We have almost no advantage at all when compared to lower wage foreign work, and to simply lower wages would do little other than cause us to lose real wealth per capita. You don't want to even the playing field by casting yourself down, it just means you're in a worse place then where you started. As an economy we need to play to our advantages, which are our vast natural resources, and our high levels of education. We've already tapped the resources to the required level, now we just need to stop the death of our higher and lower education systems (which are dying through vastly inflated costs, which are growing well beyond inflation).




As for the topic at hand, both sides are childish idiots, as is the american populace. You all bicker too damn much about so very little, its mind numbing and enraging at the same time. I'll go back to lurking now.

The Green Git wrote:
It's not a matter of sides... it's a matter of Left wingers being incredibly hypocritical.

You can't say that it isn't a matter of sides, and then mention the 'left' as a contiguous body. Hypocrisy doesn't apply to groups without extensive corroboration.

The Green Git wrote:
When *they* protest, it's genuine outrage. When someone protests *them* it's manufactured and insincere. Puh-lease.

This is also a claim frequently utilized by members of the right. Recall the matter surrounding ACORN and other GOTV operations.

The Green Git wrote:
Stop trying to put words in my mouth. You are the person making this about sides dogma. I just said I didn't like the way PresBO was spending my money and called the Lefties hypocrites for doing the same thing they pretended to be outraged about when the shoe was on the other foot.

No, you are. That's what happens when you say things like 'left-wingers' as though something said by one leftist reflects on the comments of another leftist. I am putting words in your mouth, but only because you're dancing around the point you want to make.

The Green Git wrote:
Yes... I'm an independent. And I'm outraged at both the Left and the Right. Just because I didn't drink the Koolaid for The Messiah™ doesn't mean I liked the RINO alternative. It IS possible for someone to oppose Democrats based on their actions and not their political affiliation. As I posted above, I'm mad at Obama and Princess Pelosi for raping our Treasury, not because they are Dems.

Being politically independent has no bearing on your ability to think independently. You're talking past the thrust of my comment.

Oldgrue wrote:So many things to touch on:

Parents censoring the speech of someone they don't agree with is bad parenting. Discussing the right and wrong involved however *is* good parenting. Case in point: How much abuse has Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn suffered in the hopes of 'protecting children' from language? By exposing people to differing thought they are strengthened.

The need to 'vet' the speech of the President of the United States is a spectacular show of misdirected concern and inconsistent parenting. This is one of the people scrutinized in more detail than sports stars, and less likely to be shown favorably. There is no precedent that a President would say something inherently offensive (If you want to deal with the special olympics crack, remember it *was* funny.) or to stir students to revolt. Well.

Stay in school. Study hard. Take personal responsibility. The whole speech was the same bloody thing parents *want* their kids to hear. Best of all, they heard it from a successful black man. But like Bill Cosby, they didn't like the message: "Take responsibility for what you do". At least Obama didn't rub it as hard in everyone's face that failure is often our own fault.

Love the man or hate him, he is an excellent orator (Please! Someone godwin!). Watching him speaking makes one think if only for a moment. Better still, his consistency carried from his inauguration, through this, to his speech last night.

The man is consistent. We could do worse.

My only response is bite me. I have the right, indeed the duty, to censor and screen what my children see to an appropriate level and content.
I've stated the issue is nonsense, but the above statement is asinine.

Frazzled wrote:

Oldgrue wrote:So many things to touch on:

Parents censoring the speech of someone they don't agree with is bad parenting. Discussing the right and wrong involved however *is* good parenting. Case in point: How much abuse has Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn suffered in the hopes of 'protecting children' from language? By exposing people to differing thought they are strengthened.

The need to 'vet' the speech of the President of the United States is a spectacular show of misdirected concern and inconsistent parenting. This is one of the people scrutinized in more detail than sports stars, and less likely to be shown favorably. There is no precedent that a President would say something inherently offensive (If you want to deal with the special olympics crack, remember it *was* funny.) or to stir students to revolt. Well.

Stay in school. Study hard. Take personal responsibility. The whole speech was the same bloody thing parents *want* their kids to hear. Best of all, they heard it from a successful black man. But like Bill Cosby, they didn't like the message: "Take responsibility for what you do". At least Obama didn't rub it as hard in everyone's face that failure is often our own fault.

Love the man or hate him, he is an excellent orator (Please! Someone godwin!). Watching him speaking makes one think if only for a moment. Better still, his consistency carried from his inauguration, through this, to his speech last night.

The man is consistent. We could do worse.

My only response is bite me. I have the right, indeed the duty, to censor and screen what my children see to an appropriate level and content.
I've stated the issue is nonsense, but the above statement is asinine.

frazzled amen parents hould have the right to what there kids watch.

Exactly. I'm not for closeting kids, but for age appropriate stuff.

Having said that, I never want my kids around racists, child molestors, or politicians.