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January 18, 2017 06:33 AM UTC

Wednesday Open Thread

  • 41 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

“Ignorance and weakness is not an impediment to survival. Arrogance is.”

–Cixin Liu

Comments

41 thoughts on “Wednesday Open Thread

    1. Hey, it's a rough world.  How can they possibly sell any kind of access when they've been savagely underbid by a President-elect who kneels before Putin for the price of a couple of Russian hookers?  He's like the Crazy Eddie of political submission. "Come on down….I'll be a facist's puppet for less than the change in your couch cushions!!!"

      Gotta be competitive, Comrade. 

      1. Da!  Is official news source of Andrei Carnegeski.

         Long  Live our Glorious Leader with Luxurious Flowing Natural Hair and Hands Larger than Average! 

    2. So AC has been instructed by his minders to keep focused on the Clintons so as to distract from the massive conflicts of Trump and his Incompetent and Ignorant cadre of Billionaires who will soon be tearing down our national government.

      We should concentrate on the Clintons now because they are completely removed from government, yet are somehow still a threat. Is that right, AC?

      At the same time, Trump is proving beyond a doubt that getting rich doesn't take the smarts of a genius – like the rich would have us believe – and that maybe it's just dumb luck after all.

      1. Yep, now that we are about to install a Carnival Barker/Con Man into the White House with his band of Carnie Midway Hucksters, the last thing AC and his Troll brethren want is for us to unify against their plans to trash and plunder America.

      2. Deng Xiaoping once said that to get rich is glorious. Nothing wrong with that, except for redistributionist activists of the far left. 

  1. This email just in from the Trump/Pence campaign……

    Want a front row seat to witness history? Cancel your Friday plans.

    In just 3 days, the nation will be watching as Donald J. Trump is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States. Together, we started a movement that is going to Make America Great Again! This is your last chance to be a part of this historic day.

    Contribute $3 or more to be automatically entered to win a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Washington, D.C. for inauguration this weekend.

    You don’t want to miss out on this. Enter now before it is too late.

    See you there!

    Team TRUMP

    P.S. This is your last chance to enter to win a trip to Washington D.C. this Friday to witness history as President-elect Donald J. Trump is sworn in as our 45th president. And remember, we’ll cover your airfare and hotel, so contribute $3 or more to enter before it’s too late.
     

     

    ENTER NOW

    Requiring a contribution to be entered into a contest to win something of value (in this case airfare, hotel, etc.) is a lottery and, unless permitted by law, is illegal. Wonder if this rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" ?

    I can see the headlines now.  "President Trump Impeached – Ran Illegal Lottery"

     

     

     

  2. oh boy, here's my Most Bestest Senator in action at the Devos (Amway) confirmation hearing.

    RedState says she schooled him.

     

     

     

    I can only hope he didn't ask the Billionaire anti-public education demagogue about student loan refis rates.

    1. Bennet stuck to his question: What have you learned from the last 20 years of school reform in Michigan? (specifically about public schools and charter schools)

      She didn't answer the question, nor his second question: What went wrong there (in Detroit) that's going to go right in cities all across America as a result of your philosophy about how we're going to move the country forward?

        She stuck to her talking points and made a speech.

      I give Bennet , and the other senators who questioned Devos,props for trying unsuccessfully to pin Devos down on how she thinks "all charter, no public" will improve education. And fricking corporate clown Education chair Lamar Alexander breezed her confirmation through the committee, and the Senate will vote on her confirmation next week. Please call , write, or visit your Senator to say, OH HECK NO. Devos cannot be in charge of my kid/ grandkid/neighbor/future taxpayers who will fund my retirement/s education.

      1. Well, she did know enough to say, accurately, that charter schools are public schools.  Your denial of that fact goes a long way to undercut your argument

        .Charter schools kept my grandkids in DPS, though my granddaughter is now at east.

        1. Nope.  Once again you are distorting my arguments. I accept the generally understood definition:

          Simply put, a charter school is a non-religious public school operating under a contract, or “charter,” that governs its operation.

          It's not the definition we disagree on, but the merits of channeling substantial sums of public education funding into unproven charters, which may only exist to make some entrepeneur or hedge fund manager a tidy profit.

          I don't feel like looking up that particular thread at the moment, but I think that I showed how charter schools can have private as well as public funding (which they can, and certainly Devos' sponsored schools do), can pick and choose the students they accept, and are even abusive in this practice by enrolling special education students early, then "dumping " them back into public schools after the Oct 1 enrollment deadline passes. "Difficult" kids get passed back into the public schools pool, because charters don't have to take them.

          Teacher salaries, curricula, educational standards, and accountability or lack thereof also vary widely.

          But the main difference is in motivation: public schools are run as part of the "commons". Public education is a right, not a privilege. For those who can afford to drive across town every day, fill out lengthy applications, pass screenings, and fit the profile that the charter school wants, then charter schools may be a good fit. I've known some decent ones, including in Denver. I'm glad your grandkids found their right spot.

          Charter schools can be run as a profit-making enterprise. And they can be extremely profitable without necessarily educating kids any better than public schools. Certainly, Detroit does not show comparative gains by charters relative to public.

          It's the difference between the USA and many of the third world countries; they educate kids up to basic literacy, about 8th grade level. After that, the parents pay for education. 

          I could go on, but am really not up for an epic Vger battle where you escalate your battle with increasingly distorted positions I didn't take and won't defend. But that's where I stand on the issue of charter schools.

           

          1. Just above you claim devos's philosophy is "all charter, no public" and ask how that will improve education.  The rules of language and logic mean you believe "charter" and "public" to be totally exclusive all wet, no dry, all black no white , all charter, no public.   So the long and bitter argument is between left wing ideologue mj who believes all charter means no public and more conventionally liberal mj who admits that some charter schools are public schools while adding that they are forged in the fires of hell.

            Wake me when you pick a winner.

            1. DeVos would divert education funds from regular public schools, to chartered, possibly for.profit, probably Christian charter schools. These are her stated policy positions. Your quarrel over language and "public vs.  charter" is with her, not with me.

              Enjoy arguing with yourself and your straw men, or women. Nighty nite.

               

                1. The education expert speaks. From whence cometh this fount of wisdom, O Pyrus? How many years as an educator,  in schools, on PTAs, on school boards, with your kids/grandkids, neighbor kids, or ???

                  Or did you simply pull out that well-worn bugbear "teacher's union" from under the bed, hated by all red-blooded right wingers everywhere?

                  DeVos is unqualified, plain and simple. Like you, She has no educational experience, cannot even articulate the basic principles of education law, or how success can be judged. The Detroit charter schools she champions are not successful in educating kids; their scores are dismal, lower even then the non-charter public schools of poverty she so despises. Undeterred, her family lobbied hard to include evangelical Christian schools into the charter school pools. She has no record of success to stand on;

                  Largely as a result of the DeVos’ lobbying, Michigan tolerates more low-performing charter schools than just about any other state. And it lacks any effective mechanism for shutting down, or even improving, failing charters.

                  We’re a laughingstock in national education circles, and a pariah among reputable charter school operators, who have not opened schools in Detroit because of the wild West nature of the educational landscape here.

                  In Michigan, just about anyone can open a charter school if they can raise the money. That’s not so in most other states, where proven track records are required.

                2. Wow.

                  Pinko Commie Socialist Liberals are the ones concerned with profit?

                  How do you function at such a comical level of cognitive dissonance? 

                  I’m actually in favor of charter schools, (both of my sons were mostly home-schooled via online programs, then graduated at a local public school with their friends) as I am just not fond of the public school system as a whole in this state. The system is bloated, top-heavy, and focused more on churning out compliant worker drones than actual students. I feel for the good teachers, but a lot of teachers are part of the problem.

                  1. Cro-Magnon, your satisfaction with charter schools is a clear and present danger to the teachers union. You must not speak of it again, or the Pols will think you a troll, or maybe worse, call you a bunch of names. 

                    1. Yeah, no.  Nice try.

                      Still not going over to the dark side.

                      You can keep Putin's lap all to yourself. 

                      That's the thing about Americans, we don't actually have to be single-minded.  One has to make a choice to be as intellectually and ideologically limited as you are.

                    2. Like you, Cormy, I vote for school issues/  They say you don't solve problems by throwing money at them.  Well, I've learned that throwing poverty at them doesn't work either.

                  2. "the system is bloated, top-heavy,………"  Another reason why my 'no' vote against the monster tax increase proposed for JeffCo schools this past election was a good vote.

                    Actually, Prune, I don’t have a big problem with charter schools as long as they are appropriately managed and supervised; and they aren’t used to funnel public tax dollars to sectarian religious schools.

                    1. I still vote for school funding, because if I don't, we both know who really suffers.  And I'm a walking contradiction, anyway.

  3. Not just George Orwell, but Philip K. Dick too would recognize today's GOP quite easily:

    In Philip K. Dick’s 1962 alternative-history novel, “The Man in the High Castle,” a single, terrifyingly plausible shift in history has produced a profoundly transformed world. In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is assassinated at a rally in Florida, setting off a chain of disastrous events: after Republicans take power and reverse the New Deal, the U.S. neither recovers from the Great Depression nor enters the Second World War. Decades later, the world is ruled by fascist powers. What had been the United States is now divided between an eastern Nazi-ruled “American Reich” and a West Coast partially occupied by the Japanese empire. Like many works of counterfactual history, this nightmarish fictional world provokes a sense of relief mixed with horror: it didn’t happen here, but it all too easily could have.

    .

    These story lines invite the same question that Americans have asked often in the past two months: Is empathy really what is needed? In another year, the show’s insistence on humanizing fascists might have seemed like a provocative choice—an effort, like Arendt’s, to understand how normal people can find it in themselves to commit the worst atrocities. In 2017, however—when it is more urgent than ever to distinguish right from wrong, real news from fake, and differences of political opinion from the dangerous undermining of democracy—it feels instead like a pernicious cynicism.

    http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/philip-k-dicks-intellectual-vision-for-living-in-a-fascist-america

    Just the dystopian universe Republicans like AC feel most at home in.

     

  4. At least comedians (pros and amateurs) will enjoy the next 4 years:

    1. Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump  6h6 hours ago

      Writing my inaugural address at the Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago, three weeks ago. Looking forward to Friday. #Inauguration

      Tony PosnanskiVerified account‏@tonyposnanski

    @realDonaldTrump Will it start with "Four Russian Whores And Seven Hacks Ago"…

     

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-gets-trolled-after-tweeting-photo-of-himself-writing-inauguration-speech_us_587fcbede4b02c1837e94d60

     

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