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The reality is that there is very little a free nation can do and remain a free nation.

These attacks are so varied and personal to the attacker that there will be no common ground upon which to plant a defense (such as beefing up airort security afer 9/11).

The only tactics that would work would end up hurting Americans and the American sense of security and peace far more than even the worst spurts of terrorism could.

The best we could do as a free nation is to tell people to keep their heads up and to try and find the source of the terror and hit it there. Trying to prevent the attacks at home if it gets that bad will only suceed and assisting the goal of the terrorists far more than it will succeed in heping the populace.

At 10/25/14 04:35 AM, NeonSpider wrote: Why should they? I've already given the reason why they shouldn't is because it unfairly penalizes the nonmarried.

But it's 100% elective! Nobody is being punished! If they want to avail themselves of the benefits, fucking get married. Pay the $20 license fee, have a judge prerform the ceremony for free, and wallow in their new benefits. It's that easy. That does not constitute a big enough barrier to count as penalizing those who are not part of the institution.

Also your pro-marriage benefits argument about family structure and children is weak, because I never mentioned anything about children and, in fact, I am perfectly fine with parents of children having benefits. Where I draw that line is saying marriage itself should confer tax benefits at the expense of everyone else.

So? A small percentage of the people chosong not have have children thus invalidates the benefits of the program? I do agree the lack of children is no reason to deny someone entrance, but the positive environment to raise children is nd always has been a benefit of marrige and one worthy of the government's promotion.

Also, I have pointed out that marrige doesn't always confer benefits. In many cases married people pay more taxes than they would if they were not married.

Basically, I'm saying if someone has children, regardless if they are married, it may make sense for them to receive some sort of tax benefits.

A parent who chooses for to forgo a benefit for their child is not being penalized, they're being a bad parent.

If someone is married but has no children, why in the world should they receive benefits at the expense of literally everyone who isn't married? They shouldn't.

You're right, so we should penalize EVERYONE who is in marriage to get those few people off the system. Oh and taking something away from someone that they had perfectly qualified for IS a penalty, not just a person making the open and informed choice to forgo a benefit.

Also, married parents shouldn't receive more benefits than nonmarried parents. They both need to support their children. Or are you suggesting children of married parents somehow need more money to raise than children of unmarried parents?

In the end if a set of parents were unmarried, they're being bad aprents by putting their own needs above those of their child. Marriage is available for them yet they 100% choose not to take part.

So really we can just remove marriage from the equation entirely and just say give benefits to help children, on an as-needed basis.

No we can't. What about everything else marrige does?

You're going about this issue the wrong way. You're using the Newt Gingrich style of politics: using a small, relatively easily fixable, problem as grounds to trash a program that overall provides benefit just because you have some personal aversion to the program.

If yu hate the tax benefits go after the tax benefits. There's not reason to muck up all of the other legal benefits because you don't like marriage.

Oh, also, I think you need to research what penalize means.

At 10/23/14 11:48 PM, Ceratisa wrote: Considering Ebola is spread through bodily fluid the man power isn't so much the issue, the local populaces lack of understanding/education is.

And manpower presents a way to assist in this.

At 10/23/14 09:56 PM, coderchick94 wrote: Gays should not be able to marry because it's a religious thing.

Actually marriage was first a civil thing, and then a religious thing.

Also, the reason gay marriag has been found legal is because there's no rational basis for the distinction. It is not matter of separation of church and state. It's so legally obvious it cannot even get that far.

At 10/23/14 11:07 AM, morefngdbs wrote: I don't & can't for the life of me get why a legal contract between consenting adults even is an issue ?

I know exactly why. It's because back in a day when church and state weren't so separate, the term marriage which had already applied to the legal marriage, was then applied to private marriage, and here's the problem, was used interchangeably.

This interchangeable use then began the muddle the boundaries in people's minds between what exacty was state marriage and what exactly was private marriage.

This led to a general inability to even know there are two types of marriages, let alone the ability to tell them apart. You can see this on both sides, with the conservative side acting as if it all is religious marriage and thus should be defended as such, and the more liberal saying acting as if it were all religious marriage and should therefore be completely abolished.

The system of private and public marriages is ONLY broken to the extent such private conventions have leaked into public marriage as to restrict people from accessing public marriage with no adequate or functional reasons.

At 10/23/14 10:21 AM, vixuzar wrote: so people actually think that`s gonna stop EBOLA ? at least from spreading for a short while

Ebola is actually a very easy illness to stop, if you have the resources. This is why we have had 8 people with ebola in the US and have had zero people from the general population come down with it.

What the afflicated areas in Africa do not have is resources. They do not have the technology or the medical facilities to adequately handle the disease. They also do not have the manpower to go out to the small communities to counter the waves of misinformation spreading.

A simple injection of 3,000 soldiers could easily make a huge impact in the outbreak, and even has a chance to quickly end it.

At 10/22/14 04:54 PM, NeonSpider wrote: The government has to get their money from somewhere, so a tax benefit to one group equals a penalty to all others.
It is important we carefully select which groups receive benefits because in all cases we are penalizing everyone else.

Why shouldn't marriage be a reason to get a small amount of tax benefits? (the amount is really small, and actually in many cases, it is non-existent. There are many married couples who actually pay MORE taxes because of marriage than they would without it.)

Doesn't marriage provide a benefit to the government by creating stable structures around which families and children are optimally grown? Even though society has shown that families and children can do just fine in familial units other than one with 2 parents, but it has never been denied that two parents in a stable relationsip provides the best chance for children to grow up and become productive adults. Should the government not provide a minor incentive to achieve that noble goal? There are also other benefitsto the government that result from marriage, such as an increase in the purchasing power of larger items, such as houses that result from the combination of two incomes.

It also confers hospital visitation rights. One should be able to confer those rights onto anyone they wish, whether they're related to them or not. A nonmarried person is thus denied these rights.

This arguent does have a point, and could make up its own thread.

However, you are willing to scrap everything else that marriage does becuase you don't like two portions of it, even though they do arguably have their own stand alone validity? The property rights, the child custody presumption, the addition to family, the legal authority rights, and so on and so forth. Why should we scrap these? I mean, we could do all of these in lieu of a marriage, but why waste time and effort when we already have the whole shabang in a neat and tidy package, ready to go?

At 10/22/14 12:27 AM, NeonSpider wrote: There is only supposed "contradiction" because you are strawmanning aka putting words in other people's mouths.

I think my comment flew about 1,000 mles over your head... You're too busy trying to argue your full point to realize that you in fact did contradict yourself in that one sentence.

Yes. Literally everyone should have the same rights. Either grant them to all or grant them to none. Someone in a relationship or a marriage should not have more rights than someone who isn't.

Again, if these benefits require a couple, as they do (see property and child rights) WHEN should a couple be eligible? The moment they have mutual attraction (or such attraction is feigned)? Or should it be when the couple deems they are ready to make a commitment and then elects to get the benefits.

No it's not. The huge difference is, if we're going with your theater example, is that for those who choose not to enter the theater they are also charged an additional penalty for not entering. "Oh but they could have entered".

Who is penalized? Or are you saying the lack of a benefit conferred is a punishment? In other words, the movie analogy was right because those people were punished by not going to see a movie they could very well have easily gone to see had they just friggin elected to do so?

You either must show me a benefit of marriage that actively takes from the nonmarried, or you must show me how something becomes a penalty when a person who has an indefinite amount of time to elect in and little to no transaction costs to elect in simply chooses not to elect in. If you can't show me these, you have to explaon exactly how, nd in detail how such thing actually penalizes nonmarried.

That is most certainly not the case and you are being misleading to imply that it is. When I said a pact, I clearly stated a pact between two people, not a pact where the government also takes rights away from people who did not voluntarily enter into said pact to thus grant them onto those two people at the expense of others.

Now you are putting words into your own mouth after the fact. Words that you could have elected to say, but chose not to. Now you are feeling the sting of your decision to not elect to do something, and now are trying to blame others for it. Mayhaps this be the crux of your entire argument? (yes, now I am just poking you. You clearly did not understand my contradiction comment I posted earlier and are feebily trying to dig yourself out of the hole.)

So, let's start agian more or less clean slate. Answer these two paired questions:
- What do you think marriage actually confers, legally, upon those who enter in to it?
- How do each of these things penalize anyone who is not married?

At 10/22/14 01:12 AM, Korriken wrote: Of course, that would just be barbaric to do such a thing.

Even your barbaric options are fairly nice compared to much of history.

At 10/21/14 07:09 PM, NeonSpider wrote:

At 10/21/14 03:48 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

No contradiction at all, in fact. The only contradiction would be if you incorrectly interpreted "legal pact" to be a marriage pact. Nowhere did I say that it was. It could be a legal pact for rented property or anything else. Thanks for putting words in my mouth though.

You do realize that the definition of a legal pact is a pact that the government has the power to enforce, right? Now do you see the contradiction?

Also marriage, as it is, very much grants people additional rights other than the right to be married! Do you not understand this? They get visitation rights nonmarrieds are not privileged to. They get tax benefits nonmarrieds are not privileged to. And so forth. People entering into voluntary pacts would not be privy to such exclusive rights at the expense of all others.

And when should these benefits be granted? To anyone who has any relationship even of the most fleeting period? Or should it be granted to those who enter into a relationshp and so decide their relationship is worthy enough to ask for those benefits (i.e. getting legally married)?

So, no, in conclusion, it would not "be exactly the same as it is now". It would take extra benefits away from married people and level the playing field for all. For it is unfair that married people gain additional rights. Either everyone should have those rights or no one should have them.

The playing field IS level for all (not ALL all, but all who are currently eligine, which is the crux of this whole gay marriage debate). All of those who wish to have the benefit can apply for it and get it, with no questions asked. You're saying that a free movie shown indefinitely in an infinitely big theater is excluding people because those people chose not to go see it.

Now, if a certain group of people were kept from being able to enter this benefit granting institution, you'd have a problem, as we do now. Again, the crux of the whole gay marriage argument.

Also, love how you erroneously state something is "dumb" or "irrational" merely because it doesn't agree with your own thinking. You would in fact be erroneously assuming your logic is flawless when I can guarantee you it isn't. Plus you have to resort to putting words in other people's mouths and reinterpreting what they said to be completely different from what they actually did say.

I say it, because I have heard it hundreds of times and it ignores massive problems staring it in the face, and yet those purporting it act as if it were a flawless idea. It's not. Frankly, It's counterproductive and shows a complete and utter lack of understand about how and why things work both functionally and legally. A wrong argument is one that is valid but wrong. A dumb argument is one that is wrong on so many obvious levels yet has no clue that it is.

Oh, and not understanding a response does not equal that person putting words in your mouth, especially when the only words they use are your own.

At 10/21/14 04:46 AM, NeonSpider wrote: I say we just do away with marriage rights altogether. I certainly don't see why married people should have more rights than unmarried people, regardless of orientation. Remove marriage as a legal institution completely and replace it with absolutely nothing.

I hate this response. It's dumb, irrational, mixes up the meanings of words (granted two meanings of the same word), and ignores any sense of reality.

I do find these responses funny as they propose a system that is exactly like... wait for it... what we have now.

If people want to make individual legal pacts with others, they can do that on their own terms, but the government should have no part in enforcing anything which deprives some people of rights in favor of others.

First off, Do you not recognize the contradiction you just stated? A legal pact that the government has no part in enforcing? What exactly do you think the word legal means?

If you want a big traditional wedding in a big fancy church, go do it. If you'd rather marry on a boat out on the ocean, have fun. If you'd rather bond with someone out in the middle of the woods in some kind of nature ceremony but prefer not to attach labels to it, enjoy. But in no cases should additional legal rights be granted nor deprived.

That is one meaning of marriage

Your "legal pact" is the other. You can do one without the other. In fact, that's what gay people have been doing, getting ceremonially married and not having the legal pact.

Of course it's a big mess and everyone seems to want only what benefits them even if to the exclusion of others. So let's just give everyone the same rules and be done with it.

Marriage is a benefit to the exclusion of others the same way a contract for mutual benefit is to the exclusion of all who do not enter into the contract. Would you say a driver's license is a benefit that creates an exclusion to all others? A marriage license is no different. Just follow certain terms and get related benefits. Anyone can enter into it, so the choice to not enter into it is not an exclusion, but a choice. How gay marriage fits in is that the sort of qualification that only allows heterosexual legal marriages is deemed to be an improper qualification for the government to make.

In proposing this idea, you make the same mental farting sound that those who oppose legal gay marriage do. By ignoring or being ignorant of the fact that there iare two types of marriages in the US (and the world) you completely miss how well it already works. I would say that the fact legal marriage and private marriage are both called marriage does make it confusing though.

At 10/20/14 07:03 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: You're right. Federal trademarks allowing people to sell a product and provide for their family and employee's families are Orwellian in nature. You shouldn't need permission from the government to scrape out a livelihood.

Trademark's don't exist to allow people to scrape out a livelihood. You can sell stuff without a trademark if you wish. In fact, not having a trademark is more akin to a free economy. A trademark is something that allows the government to step in and grant you a monopoly for the mark.

But that's not the point here. The point of my post was merely to show you the irony of claiming federal overreach when the federal government is NOT doing something.

At 10/20/14 04:00 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: The government is flexing it's muscles and testing what it can get away with. They told the Redskins "jump", and they said "no thanks" to which they faced federal wrath for their dissension. Period.
And this is just the kind of thing big government fetishists cream their pants over, when a company is laid low by big brother.

You have NO idea how wrong your post is.

The only thing the Federal Government has done is remove the trademark protection. Now, let's ignore the obvious problem for a second. So, Here, al the government did is follow an old rule stating that no mark based in animus toward a protected class or which is discriminatory toward that class. You can debate whether or not the term fits these qualifications until the cows come home, but it won't matter. The government, has decided to err on the side of caution and chose to go with the sizeable group of people who say it is a slur.

The pbvious problem with your whole "THE GOVERNMENT DENYING A TRADEMARK IS FEDERAL OVERRECHING!" statement is that it lack the most rudimentry understanding of what a trademark is. A trademark is a Federal creation, meant to grant the party the right to use the federal government to keep others from using their mark. In fact, if freedom from government were truly your goal, you'd be applauding the government for releasing the Redskins' trademark from their grasp.

The theory is largely true. The World has changed.

Dramatic increases in luxury and a level globalization almost nonexistant previously have lowered the amount and range of armed conflict.

It has been 70 years since the most developed nations have been at direct war with each other. Before that time, these countries were at near constant conflicts, with pretty much two of them fighting each other at any given time.

There have been a good deal of brushfire wars and proxy wars in the past 70 years, but over all these are heavily localized, and non eof them have taken place in a developed nation (unless you consider 1980s Iraq to have just become close to developed.) Also, the scale of these conflicts, with a couple exceptions, has been very small.

Lastly, I would point to the outrage at ISIS as perhaps the most telling arugment that the World is more peaceful. The World looks at ISIS with such disgust and ire, why? Because we haven't seen anything like ISIS in a long time. It was not too long ago that many countries, even the more developed ones, performed many of the acts that we call disgusting when ISIS does them.

At 10/17/14 09:45 PM, frigi wrote: I dont like this idea because I just know they wont be given the right suits, or something will botch it up, or some soldiers will mess up and not wear the suits right or not wear some parts right or at all and somehow get infected, and soon getting others infected.

I really doubt the soldiers will be coming into much contact with infected people. Chances are they will be used more for logistics and refugee assistances than anything else. If they must come into contact with infected people, my hope is that the military will have a small hand picked group who will do most of the contact, therefore the soldiers in contact will be more likely to follow the same procedure evry time and less likely to be infected.

At 10/17/14 10:39 PM, frigi wrote: How likely are you to survive if you contract Ebola? If you live in a developed nation like America and you are healthy are you pretty certain to survive Ebola?

I don't think we're sure just yet. The health professionals are confident that our medical infrastructure can significantly raise the survival rate, but we just don't have any finished test cases.

The folks who were borught into the US give reason to be confident as they all have lived I don't count Duncan as he had zero health care until it was quite late in the progression of the illness.

The two nurses in Dallas are two of the three first people to contract the disease while under a modern healthcare regime. If the two Americans and the Spaniard surive, while we won't be able to say too much definitively based on such a small sample size, we could be much more confident that Ebola is a very treatable disease, so long as it's properly treated.

I would dispute his lack of medical experience makes him bad for the job.

A Czar position is much different than an expert position. A Czar position is usual 3 parts management, 2 parts PR, and 1 part knowing what your subject is all about. Czars aren't down in the field or even managing those in the field. They are the big picture folks, and deal moreso with the allocation of time, resources, and publicity than with the actual on the ground decisions.

So, if you're going to poke at a lack of qualification, I'd go after his lack of large scale management experience.

I'm pretty sure this'll just be a fancy desk job for Klain. I mean, unless Dallas refuses to get their shit together (the more I hear, the more I facepalm) this ebola "crisis" will blow over. But, god dammit, Texas, y'all already spearheaded the bad acts that led to two of the three most recent recessions, and now you're trying to reckless your way into a US ebola outbreak? Shit. Get it together, son.

At 10/17/14 09:38 AM, cga-999 wrote: Exactly! Don't make the debt bigger, right?

The exact size of our debt to China is irrelevant, so long as it's large. That way, we can hook our economic involvement in China to them not calling it in. In short, we've got the best poison pill to them calling the debt in, and by doing so have essentially rendered the debt impossible for China to do anything with. It's little more than a promise laden with heavy dead weight.

At 10/17/14 01:51 AM, cga-999 wrote: I have a plain and simple solution for our huge debt. Stop taking from China!!!

Why? Our debt to China is huge leverage for us in US-China relations.

At 10/16/14 11:50 PM, cga-999 wrote: Speaking of vandalism, does anyone agree that vandalism is overreacted about? If it harms personal property, then it is more serious, but is putting graffiti on an abandoned building that won't be used that bad?

All property is owned by someone. Also, the crime of vandalism (and its related crimes, like criminal mischief) is only predicated upon to commission of an act of vandalism. The lack of any loss of value or the lack of value to anything destroyed is relevant. Damage only becomes relevant when scaling up the ladder to the more severe levels of vandalism (e.g. criminal mischief 2 and 1, from criminal mischief 3).

If these were civil suits, the lack of value would be a major part of the case. That's not how it works with criminal vandalism cases.

Think of it in the same way as you would battery. If you punch someone, the lack of pain or injury is immaterial. You still punched them, thus committing battery.

At 10/16/14 11:46 PM, cga-999 wrote: Here's my impression of the American troops. " Oh, ya. We can just shoot ebola with guns and everything will be fine, right?"

Oi. It's not about shooting ebola. It's about providing man power skilled in disaster assistance to help assist doctors and government personal seeking to find and treat all afflicted people.

At 10/16/14 11:35 PM, SadisticMonkey wrote: WHAT DO YOU THINK?

You don't seriously believe this garbage, do you?

At 10/16/14 10:31 PM, Th-e wrote: The purpose of the travel ban is to protect America from being hit by Ebola outbreaks. If we allow infected or vulnerable people to board these planes, we run the risk of outbreak. As for the travel bans, it is a ban for all except essential personnel, aka those who are working to deal with the outbreak on African soil. So we still have people working to combat the disease and prevent it from spreading further. I believe that includes preventing people from fleeing the country.

I'm not sure you understood what I said. My point was that people from Ebola ravaged countries WILL enter the US regardless of whether we close flights or not. So, if the reality is they'll enter either way, the best option is for them to enter when we know where they're actually coming from. If we treat all who entier from the afflicated areas as possible carriers, we can monitor them and close off any problems as quick as possible. If we shut flights from Liberia and a huge chunk of Ebola-ers go the Mali and fly from Timbuktu into the US, we will not know to monitor them until a problem occurs, and by then it may be too late. It's the football equivalent of never letting your man get behind you. Sure, they get the first down if in front of you, but at least they won't rip off a 70 yard TD.

And the way we are currently handling things in the U.S. with the (lack of) protocol, there are further reasons to restrict travel from those areas.

Our protocal is pretty damn good for a handful of possible infectees. The Dallas issues shows several things. It shows that hubris exists in spades at many Medical centers. It shows that if the shit hit the fan, we will have trouble at the smaller and less advanced medical centers. It shows that, no matter how well you prepare for things, Texas can always find a way to fuck things up. What it does NOT show is a problem with the CDC protocols. I'd also like to add that the best way to learn something is to majorly fuck it up. It may actually benefit the shit out of us tht Dallas took a shit all over themselves so early. Because Dallas gang raped the pooch the rest of the hospitals have had to look at their own shit and get it together.

By the way, it seems that a Firestone business located in Liberia, one of the worst hit areas, is doing a lot better job with the Ebola crisis than our government or the UN!

How exactly is our government not handling this properly? Last I checked, we've had 8 infected people in the US and not a single outbreak among the general population. If those 8 went into an African nation, they'd have an outbreak in serious condition by now. Sounds like we've got it pretty much together.

At 10/16/14 09:26 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: Okay, this is a simple question. Public nuisance and criminal mischief. When do you become a nuisance and when does mischief become criminal, in the law's eye?

asking this for no particular reason

Criminal mischief, at least in my jurisdiction, is a fancy term for vandalism.

I think the threshold for nuisances is when an act goes from being relatively harmless and benign to representative a form of harm (in many different methods) to the community.

At 10/16/14 07:08 PM, morefngdbs wrote: A lot different rule.

Well, before I try to process what at first glance appears to be legal gibberish (yes, as an attorney, I still can say that), let me ask one thing.

Are there other business entity options in Canada?

I mean, here in the US we have:
Sole proprietor
GP - General partnership
LP - Limited Partnership
LLP - Limited Liability Partnership
LLLP Limited Liability Limited Partnership
PC - Professional service corporation
LLC - Limited Liability Company
S Corp - Corporation with special tax election
C Corp - Standard Corporation

All have different liability structures, different management structures, different levels of ownership transferability, and different tax consequences.

From first glance (a VERY cursory read) of your post it almost sound slike Canada has Sole Proprietorship or corporation and nothing else. Possible seeing the US only had Sole, GP, and Corp even just 100 or so years ago.

At 10/16/14 03:43 PM, Iron-Hampster wrote: The democrats have run the 10 cities with the highest poverty rates for decades, and 4/5 of the worst cities for police brutality (including first and second place), and 9/10 of the worst cities for crime rates (the exception being Rockford, run by an independent).

Chicken/egg (though this can be proven, but with a hell of a lot more work than I am willing to expend.) Anyone have a sociology thesis idea they need?

Did these locales become dangerous because they had Democrats at the helm, or did they elec Democrats to the helm BECAUSE they had the problems resulting to them being dangerous?

Man, I could totally write a 500 page paper on this. Not like I want to.

Let's also not forget that the longer ebola exists in humans the higher the chance ebola will mutate to become an airborne illness. The chance may be extremely low, but saying "Who cares if Africans die" is potentially playing with a world ending fire.

At 10/16/14 01:44 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Fine, then ban Liberians and whoever else is from a high-risk country entering America full-stop.

BAD IDEA. The best way to contain the spread of a disease is to know as much about it and its spread s possible. By shutting down the flights, we force them to make drastic measures, which mean undetected travel to other nations. The would mean that not only does West Africa start having a massive outbreak that could tentacle to America, but Southwest and North Africa have it as well. In this case there will be hundreds of flights into the US from countries that have the infection present long before we ever know the infection is present there. That means we could have numerous infected people enter the US and do so 100% UNKOWN.

At least, right now, we know everyone who is entering on these flights and we can chec them at the border and monitor them.

Of course, progressives care more about africans being able to come to america than they are about americans not getting ebola so of course sensible policy cannot be expected.

Just like how the conservatives want to knee jerk, fuck all to the consequences? Fear rarely makes good policy and rarely has positive consequences.

At 10/16/14 12:05 PM, coderchick94 wrote: I think the main problem is the involvement parents.

Exactly, and not so much.

You are both right and wrong here. It is very true that the biggest problem with American education today is the dearth of interested students. This starts at home. However, I have never trusted those statistics claiming the US is 20th in this and 30th in that. Many of the countries above us cook the books like a Texas accountant.

One of the major resons we end up so low on those lists is because we are perhaps the most egalitarian country in the world when it comes to education. We let our shit sit in class along side our gold (sorry for the terms, just a metaphor) in some cases all the way until college. That just does not happen elsewhere. The underperformers in many countries are segregated and hidden under the rug in vocational schools. When it comes to "let's compare our skills" time, these countries act as if the vocational students don't exist and never include them into the final calculus. We, on the other hand, include our remedial students with our overachievers. Our end result ends up being a lower number, but a representative of our whole system. Most of the European and asian numbers are higher, but are only representative of the higher end students. I mean, if we only took our top 25-33% of students and tested them, we'd be top 5 in every category (optimism!). Yet other countries do it and mock us based on the result. There's a reason our colleges are considered the best and the most difficult in the world. If our students were really 20th or 30th in academics, our college could not function at the level and intensity they do now.

I digress. Back to the parents. I have routinely stated that the KEY thing that makes a students great is the parent(s). The parents really only have to do two things (though there are many mroe things they can do) to create a good student: Teach the child to prize learning, and expect something of them when it's all over. The common denoinator among most lower end students is that they don't care about learning, and there is no end game. When you're expected to achieve, you're more likely to posture and position yourself in a manner that leads to achievement. This is why I say the whole "private schools are inherently better" notion is a total crock. The reason private schools tend to do better is because the families that put their children into private school are both wealthier and care more. Their wealth means that the bar for the child is set high, in that the child is expected to equal or surpass the parents' achievement. The expense of private school means that most of the families are highly educated. Add to that the fact that the family is paying the price of a new car every year (in most cases, with the cheaper end being half a new car) per student to send them to the school. That expense of money indicates an importance of schooling held by the family (though I know this is not always the case).

I would dispute the need for two parents, though. I know many people who had one parent who set them up to be a great student. Two working parents is a bonus as the extra income can provide a higher degree of stability, which always helps.

At 10/15/14 03:47 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: eliminate the debt by deploying military personal to eliminate hate groups

And I said no to that.

Talks about the debt are really just a good springboard to talk about where money actually should be spent, with some ideas being good and others not so much. The debt itself is really jus a bogeyman. It's existed in massive form sinc ebefore I was born and aside from one scare that immediately went away has had ZERO effect on the economy (except by convincing stupid people to go for austerity measures which have been proven to not help revenue whilst visibly hurting the economy).

At 10/14/14 06:56 PM, Organguy41 wrote: There was a child in my condominium that got 3 days O.S.S. for defending himself when another kid started swinging at him. That's just one of the examples of how zero tolerance is slowly destroying our schools.

Personally, I believe outside school suspension is counter productive. It's like rewarding students for bad behavior, and it hurts their eduction. Detention is a much better form of punishment, and it can even be converted into extra class time as well.

You obviously do not live in a poor community. There aren't enough jobs to go around in many impoverished communities so how can someone survive when Food Stamps do not go far enough(or get cut in some states)?

There are very few poor communities that are communities too small to have a load of minimum wage jobs. So, I don't buy that argument at all. Sure, there is a serious lack of good jobs, but not having a good job is no excuse to neglect one's family and responsibilities.

And that is partially why gang crime has exploded here since the gov't shutdown. Most of these kids come from broken homes that do not receive enough in food stamps and other assistance so they have to provide for themselves. Again, not enough jobs to go around.

Again, I don't buy it. There are cases of extremely poor families that instill the respect for and love of learning in their children. I do understand that many extremely poor people see college and education as completely out of reach. However, money is not a requirement to be a good parent and a good teacher at home.

and again, there are places where there just aren't enough jobs to go around. Look at Detroit for example, Detroit built its economy on the auto industry and look how that panned out. When you have an unemployment rate over 15%, you're going to have people steal to survive. When people are unhireable because they couldn't finish school or because they have tons of tattoos in the wrong spots, they're going to have to beg, borrow, or steal to get by. Just a simple intolerable fact of life.

Sure, there may be few jobs that pay more than $12/hr to go around. If a family really wanted to survive they could do it with lower jobs that are easily available. Is it fair? No. However, life being unfair is no excuse.