Trump 2017: Year Zero

[Jinsai]

This sums up the last several months for me though. Dems and Repubs are having to eat the consequences of their partisan blindness toward expanding govt power and infringing on rights.

This is the point @kleiner352 was making that you dismissed though... If the libertarians ever had a REAL shot at the highest office, they would become part of one side versus the other. They aren't, so the sideline sniping is a little wearisome. When it comes down to who holds power, it's always a struggle between two parties, and partisan affiliation, be it imagined or projected or whatever, is inevitable in that real-world situation.

For now, the libertarians enjoy the "fuck you all!" stance.

[implanted_microchip]

It's not just the sideline sniping, but it's the smug and utterly holier-than-thou cunty presence that comes with it that is so goddamned exhausting to read and try and mine the actual statements of merit out of.

And oh, yeah, sure; Rand Paul was clearly standing for LIBERTY when he voted yes on Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, a woman who bought her way into the federal government. Nothing says liberty to me like abolishing public schools and disenfranchising the rights of disabled children unfortunate enough to be born in the wrong state where their rights aren't protected.

Get the fuck over yourself and your self-adoring ideology. No one is impressed but you. You're not some "moral higher being," you're an asshole condescendinfg to everyone on the internet while doing utterly nothing to help anybody in an era of authoriarian propaganda. But then again I'm an asshole arguing with that asshole so I guess I'm the bigger loser here.

[Jinsai]

Anything is possible. But even the libertarian leaning politicians in power have been pretty immune to this. They have consistently held up liberty and slammed both parties who go against it. (Obviously, only within the realm of the areas the lean libertarian). A focus on liberty is a different type of politics than the heavily partisan crap that comes out of the always morphing (for the vote and money) Repubs and Dems.

Even the libertarians are split on whether or not to tell Gary Johnson to go fuck himself for being completely unqualified for the presidency... Come on. You have to admit that you enjoy not having to eat crow while you lord over people who do.

[Louie_Cypher]

that CNN conference was so full of bullshit I thought I was I in Modesto again, with the vote no one likes you it's not a fine tuned machine it's a pinto
-louie

[hellospaceboy]

And oh, yeah, sure; Rand Paul was clearly standing for LIBERTY when he voted yes on Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education,

Oh, and don't forget his recent "makes no sense for a Republican to investigate a fellow Republican" stance on justice and liberty. I mean, fuck you, Rand, yes, it would make perfect sense to investigate, because you should put your fuckin' country first!

I might be naive, but I was actually shocked when this came out. I always liked the Libertarian ideals, as a liberal I think it overlaps a great deal when it comes to personal liberties and allowing our citizens to pursuit their happiness. But the reality is, the few schmucks who represent Libertarians within the Republican party are just the same as any other Republican.

[Louie_Cypher]

why is it whenever he speaks I hear the lyric's to tool's swamp
-louie

[Jinsai]

waaaah my progressive ideals don't match THEREFORE ITS NOT LIBERTY

lol ok

What the fuck? The topic there was the appointment and approval of Betsy DeVos. You're going to need to do more than mockingly condescend to someone if you're going to actually imply that there was a single good reason to approve of her appointment.

[joplinpicasso]

What the fuck? The topic there was the appointment and approval of Betsy DeVos. You're going to need to do more than mockingly condescend to someone if you're going to actually imply that there was a single good reason to approve of her appointment.

Yeah, but come on, that wouldn't be edgy enough.

[Khrz]

"Go fuck yourself" is "Free love".

[implanted_microchip]

By just about all methods of measurement, if you allow individuals MORE control over their lives (like where and how they send their kids to school) that is the definition of MORE liberty.

Okay motherfucker, I can guarantee you that the majority of this board would have never been able to go to any school at all if public education did not exist. You sound like Ted Cruz talking about health care. You clearly do not feel that something as basic as an education is a guaranteed right, otherwise you'd see the insanity in this bullshit. Utterly NOBODY has ever said that public education is perfect, but that doesn't mean we'd be better off with absolutely nothing at all for those who can't afford a private one.

If you would like to send your child to a private school, and you have the money and the means to afford it, NO ONE IS SAYING THAT YOU CAN'T DO THAT. What you're suggesting is to strip away options for those who couldn't afford it -- which, gee, sounds a lot like removing choice, huh? And if you're going to say "It should be up to the states!!!" then please go look at what Louisiana has done and tell me that that's fair to kids across the country to leave it up to total geographical chance as to whether or not they get the same opportunities somebody else in the country does.

[sick among the pure]

This just confirms my original reply about you having no care or understanding of liberty.

Also, have you ever heard of vouchers? Or maybe any of the other routes of handing this?

What did everyone do before 1980? The Department of Education hasn't been around very long and you act like public schools would just vanish without it. You don't even seem to know what the DoE actually does.

As the son of a teacher, I have to say, you are a complete fuckwit.

[allegro]

The vouchers don't pay for 100% of tuition and it leaves parents having to make up the difference. And MANY parents can't do that.

Rand Paul is a Marie Antoinette. He knows NOTHING about the poor or middle class.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowle...ts?context=amp

I think choice is important, but some kind of funding must come from the Feds. It's more important now than in 1980 (much more poverty now).

[allegro]

There are many proposals for how to change things. Some involve vouchers that DO cover enough.


Why does it HAVE to come from feds? Why not state?

It already DOES come from the State to a certain extent, but look at Chicago, for instance. Chicago is fucking broke, it always HAS been broke with pension debts and shit, there are a SHIT TON of kids in Chicago with parents who could never afford to pay for school, the public schools in many of these neighborhoods are for shit, the CPS system is for shit, no matter how many people try to make excuses for it, and if it wasn't for FED money, it'd be even worse.

And the OTHER cities in the State are already paying a lot of money in property taxes to pay for students in their own district, but Chicago keeps getting more and more money from the State for its school debt, which means WE ARE ALL PAYING FOR CITY OF CHICAGO SCHOOL CHILDREN and I'm already paying 85% of my property tax bill to schools in MY OWN CITY. So my property taxes keep going up and up, the sales taxes keep going up and up, due to each CITY controlling its own education budget (not the State) and the CPS completely mismanaging its system and paying people at the top in the Union $300,000 per year just to fight for more tax dollars.

States don't really control city public school spending; SCHOOL DISTRICTS do that. And the rich school districts like New Trier here in Illinois have a majority of kids who graduate and go on to Ivy League colleges. And poverty areas have bigger dropout rates and kids have educations that are barely above the minimum and if they don't succeed, they get no Fed money. And teaching kids isn't ONLY about teachers, it's about parental involvement, etc. And there is a huge disconnect between schools and parents in a lot of these areas, I've talked with teachers and school administrators who say "well, we sent home a NOTE" (telling the parents that Jimmy wasn't doing well in school or needed $300 for the lunch program or could apply for assistance) etc. A NOTE? Does your kid ever have to be in charge of delivering a NOTE? Most kids can't figure out how to pick out their clothes each day and would forget to put on their pants, but they have to be in charge of a "note." And I asked, "did anybody call the parents at home?" Oh, no we don't do that. So when these students perhaps end up in community college with my friend the professor, she says omg it's amazing how most of these kids even graduated; the reading level is sub-par, everything is sub-par, Asian countries are KICKING OUR ASSES with education, our system sucks. And it's not the teachers' fault, it's the whole fucking system, and the DofE was created to PREVENT that, to have a standard of excellence, so that kids in Louisiana aren't learning solely about Adam, Eve, a fucking Ark that never really existed, and that evolution is Teh Evil. The DofE needs to be run by somebody who KNOWS the public school system, provides head start programs, provides additional assistance to kids in poor or middle areas, etc.

My Psych professor was involved with a group called MATT: Michigan Association for the Academically Talented. And I'll never forget his words:

"There is nothing more undemocratic than a democratic education system."

When your PROPERTY TAXES dictate whether or not your kid is gonna get a shit education, that's just not acceptable in this country.

And it's up to a NATION to fix that, not school districts, teachers' unions, state budgets, etc.

The Dems and Republicans have been fighting over a state budget in Illinois for almost TWO FUCKING YEARS. Which means that NO state money is going toward schools, NO state money is going toward college grants, NO state money is going toward special ed programs, NO state money is going toward caregivers for disabled kids, NO state money is going toward any of this stuff. And the kids are suffering while politicians in Springfield argue over shit that has nothing to do with them; the kids have to continue on, they can't sit and wait for years and years for the state to get its shit together.

Gang members in Chicago are a direct result of the lack of education, the lack of tech school funding, the lack of direction in this State.

[sick among the pure]

love it.
We go from "libertarians would get corrupted as soon as they got power" ... to being unable to back that up and instead choosing "but my federal department of education!" and being unable to address any points with anything beyond "lol ur dumb"

**progressives**

For one, lumping everyone in this topic who points out your continual bullshit as "progressives" is only taking what credibility you otherwise would have had and throwing it out the window into a pile of meme-loving pseudo-intellectual fucks. That aside, you've proven time and again there is no point in engaging your "points" beyond the language you understand, hence the "you're a complete fuckwit". If you, at any point in the last almost year's worth of political discussion on these forums, had ever actually taken to a discussion of topics, that would be different. But as I've had to explain before, coming in here and simply facepalming the shit too stupid to waste my time trying to discuss is a very valid response. You don't like it? Then don't be a complete fuckwit, and you won't get called on it at every turn.

You want the population of this country to be even less educated? Gut public schools even more than they already have been.

I would really appreciate if the people who run this country and work side by side with me daily are fucking educated.

[allegro]

Bravo, John McCain. Keep at it.

[Mantra]

By just about all methods of measurement, if you allow individuals MORE control over their lives (like where and how they send their kids to school) that is the definition of MORE liberty.

I work in higher ed, and every day I work with students who come from public schools, private schools, charter schools, home school, etc.

And I gotta be honest, I'm not particularly blown away with what I've seen from most private school kids. The way people talk about private school, you'd expect these kids to be really advanced and brilliant, but they're mostly not. Once in a great while, I encounter someone who lives up to that stereotype. But by and large, most of them are indistinguishable from our public school kids, at least in terms of their level of intellect. And you'd be shocked how often I work with private school kids who are dumber than shit. It's a normal, regular thing.

On Monday, I encountered this 19 year old guy who went to a local private school, a school that costs around $25,000 a year. He can barely compose a sentence. He struggles with basic punctuation. And it's not like he has a disability. He's a perfectly capable guy, but he got a garbage education. I don't know if it was always like this, but I see this type of thing more and more these days. What I've learned is that a lot of these private schools are not willing to push their kids, because after all, private schools are a business first and foremost. If they're too hard on the students or if they upset the parents, they risk losing a customer. That expensive tuition comes with strings attached. When parents fork over 25 grand a year, they don't want to see their kid getting an F. People complain about grade inflation, but nowhere has worse grade inflation than in private education. I see kids all the time who got straight As in their private high school, and yet they're barely literate.

So in my opinion, a whole bunch of these private schools are basically just expensive degree mills. They're not paying for education in the true sense of the word; they're paying for the diploma. For me, these experiences have demolished any argument in defense of private schools, and I've begun to feel that Finland has the right idea in completely banning private education all together. The argument behind private education is that parents should have the right to give their kid a higher quality of education, but the truth is that private education has nothing to do with QUALITY of education and everything to do with CLASS and CULTURE. The kid I worked with on Monday is every bit as under-prepared as any kid from the inner city, but he's been socialized very differently. And that's really what it's all about for these families. It's a form of racial, political and cultural segregation disguised as a preference for "quality." It's the educational equivalent of gated communities.

We already live in a society that's becoming increasingly fragmented and polarized, and widespread privatization of schools would only make things worse in that regard. It's a form of regressive tribalism. "My faction verses your faction, I'm gonna raise my kids far away from you." It's not the right path.

[theimage13]

When your PROPERTY TAXES dictate whether or not your kid is gonna get a shit education, that's just not acceptable in this country.

Bingo. Where I grew up, people bought their houses based solely on where they wanted their kids to go to school. Our city school district is absolute shit. Everyone is grossly underpaid, resources are desperately lacking, and last I checked, the graduation rate was below 60%.

You could buy a house at the very edge of one particular suburb...say a smallish, maybe 1,200 square foot place, with hardly any yard, and pay over $6k a year in taxes. Or you could move literally the next street over, buy a house twice the size with a nice little plot of land for less money, AND your tax bill would be under $2k a year. Except now your kid has just gone from one of the highest rated school districts in the state to a crumbling building where there are cops parked outside all day long to handle fights.

So at home, the poorest families receive the worst education, making it harder for them to get better jobs, making it harder for them to get out of poverty, making it harder for the next generation to get a better education, and so it repeats again and again.

[Louie_Cypher]

-louie

[implanted_microchip]

Worth noting that a lot of private schools are also highly religious, and while I have many friends that attended faith-based private schools and came out pretty fine, a lot of those institutions have extremely poor science curricula and in general filtered all history that they could through their set of beliefs. Now it's easy to say, "If that's what their parent wants then it's their choice! L1b3rty b1tch!" but here's the thing -- there are a lot of regions where that's it as far as private education goes. It is not the magical, flawless fix that people like to pretend it is, and it opens up its own whole host of problems.

Also keep in mind we're all now arguing with the same guy who down-talked literally all of us for suggesting that Russia might have been involved in the DNC leaks, acting like we were all total fucking idiots for thinking that it could have happened and arguing with us every step of the way, only for him to be proven completely and utterly wrong about it and yet not take a single moment to show the smallest sense of humility around it, instead adopting Trump's attitude of "But why should it matter?!?????" You're not going to get a conversation out of him that doesn't involve him being a smug and self-inflated cuntballoon.

While we were all trying to explain to someone why federally-funded public ed. is important in a country where states like Alabama exist, there was a leak from the White House that suggested an attempt to mobilize the National Guard to round up undocumented immigrants in this nation:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nati...KNJ/story.html

I'm of the opinion that they might be intentionally writing fake memos in an attempt to nail down who is leaking the info from the White House, but even if this is a totally bullshit thing made for that purpose, it still reveals a whole hell of a lot about how poorly this admin. is functioning.

[Jinsai]

Worth noting that a lot of private schools are also highly religious, and while I have many friends that attended faith-based private schools and came out pretty fine, a lot of those institutions have extremely poor science curricula and in general filtered all history that they could through their set of beliefs.

Yep... I went to private religious grade and high school. High school was even stupider because it was one of those single-sex institutions... I think my education was, for the most part, pretty decent. That doesn't mean that I didn't have to go to religion classes, and go through an incredibly weird sex-ed class that was euphemistically titled "Theology 2."

Nothing will turn you into an atheist faster than being a teen sitting in a room full of guys, listening to a priest uncomfortably tackle the topic of masturbation, and try to frame the whole thing as an issue related to religious morality.
/shudder

edit: lol, Trump wants to hear from YOU https://gop.com/mainstream-media-accountability-survey/

[Louie_Cypher]

it all goes back to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology
-louie

[Jinsai]

it all goes back to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology
-louie

Some day...
some day...
some day...
Dominion
Some say prayers I say mine...

A lighthouse in the middle of Prussia
A white house in a red square...

Mother Russia
Mother Russia
Mother Russia rain down, down, down

[marodi]

edit: lol, Trump wants to hear from YOU https://gop.com/mainstream-media-accountability-survey/

Well, he did hear from me. By the way, I now live in Stoneham, Oxford County, Maine.

[theimage13]

edit: lol, Trump wants to hear from YOU https://gop.com/mainstream-media-accountability-survey/

This survey needs to go viral, so it can get slammed by responses from people who don't believe that CNN, WSJ, etc are "fake news" and the site will be forced to just go "erm...uh...we never tallied the results".

[Khrz]

Jesus, that level of butthurt, coming from such institutions, it's embarrassing

[Deepvoid]

I wouldn't be surprised if John Bolton ends up replacing Flynn.

[Jinsai]

I wouldn't be surprised if John Bolton ends up replacing Flynn.

Or Michael Bolton, at this point... can't have anyone who is actually qualified heading any of these appointments...

[allegro]

@Mantra - private doesn't automatically translate to good. There are certainly some private schools that are much better than the public routes though. The entire goal of something like a voucher system is an increase in individual choice. Increased consumer choice usually does translate toward better results in any market, but schooling quality has a lot to do with parents too.

This article is interesting.

re Louisiana, etc., this is what I said:

"and the DofE was created to PREVENT that, to have a standard of excellence, so that kids in Louisiana aren't learning solely about Adam, Eve, a fucking Ark that never really existed, and that evolution is Teh Evil.'

Per Wiki:

"The primary functions of the Department of Education are to 'establish policy for, administer and coordinate most federal assistance to education, collect data on US schools, and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights. The Department's mission is: to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access."

See the Equal Educational Opportunity Act of 1974.

"We must break the monopoly of the education establishment over public schools and introduce competitive market forces into the system to improve its performance. I support public schools. But today the difference between the performance of public and private schools in America is shocking. Public high school seniors who took the Scholastic Aptitude Test scored significantly lower than the private school seniors who did so. Many public schools are top-heavy, spending excessively on bloated administrative bureaucracies concerned more about maintaining their monopoly on public funds than about improving their performance. As The Economist reported, "New York's public-sector schools employ 10 times as many administrators per pupil as private schools do." Private schools ultimately must satisfy their customers--parents & students--by providing effective educational services. In this competitive environment, they must continuously strive to upgrade their programs or risk going out of business."
Source: Seize the Moment, by Richard Nixon, p.283 , Jan 15, 1992

"Teachers will earn more respect if they begin to focus more on teaching and less on theory and politics. Teacher unions pass resolutions against funding for the contras, investigate the political and cultural content of books & TV programming, and lobby tirelessly for higher salaries & benefits. As was the case even back when I attended Whittier College 55 years ago, the excruciatingly boring courses offered to education majors still emphasize HOW to teach rather than WHAT to teach. Many teachers still worry more about their students' feelings and cultural awareness than whether they can read, write, add, or think.
Teachers have to get back to the basics--a tougher curriculum, more time in the classroom for each student, and raises for teachers based on performance as well as seniority. Without these and other measures, such as parental choice, our young people will fall so far behind that we will run the risk of entering the next century as a nation of semi-literates in a world of PhDs."
Source: In The Arena, by Richard Nixon, p.112-113 , Jul 2, 1990

[Deepvoid]

Trump got duped by some fake news from Fox regarding Sweden.

http://www.dn.se/kultur-noje/nyheter...r-is-a-madman/

[Louie_Cypher]

was just reading something that stated there is no effective way to measure if a boarder wall works or not, which is like all of Trumps campaign promises, how do you measure great?
-Louie