We got new unemployment numbers, debates coming up, and who knows what kind of scandals to come from the White House. Have at it!
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Blogs For Victory 
Right on, right on!! Marco Rubio for POTUS 2020!!
If the President led the charge to reduce the country’s unsustainable debt in mid 2011 rather than punt the enterprise to a “Super Committee,” asserted Rubio, we’d already be on a pathway toward economic growth and prosperity. “Unfortunately, the first three years of your presidency have been a profile in leadership failure.”
The letter concludes: “America deserves leaders who will stand front and center, level with the American people about our challenges and offer real solutions to solve them. Instead of simply asking for another debt ceiling increase, I urge you to come forward with a real plan to tackle our debt in 2012.”
Click to access 1.6.12%20-%20Obama%20Debt%20Ceiling%20Letter%20-%20FINAL.pdf
Potential scandal for the GOP – Santorum might have won Iowa.
http://www.kcci.com/r/30144582/detail.html#ixzz1idUftgoh
Romney just needs to continue his campaign against Obama. The nomination has been taken care of by the party. I think he should pick Santorum or Bachmann as his running mate to get the base fired up and to the polls.
polls=polling booths
The VP candidate is going to fire up the base? I don’t think so. Picking Santorum or Bachman might get him a few votes but won’t be a deal maker. That is something I would be willing to bet the farm on.
If anything it would be seen as a pander and rightly so. Lets wait and see til after the Florida primary before the doom and gloom show it’s ugly head. At least as far as Romney Mitt is concerned.
If a repub was potus these are the numbers the media would be screaming about.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/real-jobless-rate-114-realistic-labor-force-participation-rate
Maybe the national repub party can take some kind of advantage on this?
Some mixed news in the new BLS unemployment numbers.
While the official unemployment rate ticked down .1%, the civilian workforce participation rate remained unchanged at 64.0, one tenth of a point above the 30-year low set in July.
Spook
If Obama and the congress agreed to give you (or similar private employers) a million dollars per year to hire 5 people with salaries and benefits totaling 500,000 I imagine there would be a lot of takers. If the government ran up deficits until PRIVATE employers had employed everyone looking for work the politicians could achieve a small unemployment number.
That scenario is artificial of course, but the money in the housing and tech bubble was arguably artificial too. The question is how should we adjust e.g. the unemployment numbers under Clinton and Bush in light of the artificial bubbles?
That scenario is artificial of course
Artificial? Gee, d’ya think?
Did you just make up the numbers, or have you seen something that indicates that Obama would give employers $1 million to hire 5 people with salaries and benefits totaling $500,000? That seems like a paltry amount given that the $900 billion stimulus resulted in 3 million jobs, or $300,000/job. Sorry, I wouldn’t be one of “the takers”.
Spook
Maybe Obama’s team reads B4V and you can be expecting a call shortly! You can however imagine a scenario where official unemployment is kept artificially low by government handling (like in USSR).
The question remains though. Do you think the government money propping up the housing bubble artificially kept official unemployment low and how should we view those low numbers in retrospect?
If we refuse to use official unemployment as the metric, rightly or wrongly, we become partisan by picking the “REAL” picture. Gingrich and Clinton both take credit for balancing the budget. A completely different view can be put forth however:
“The budget ended up balancing faster than either party expected simply because economic growth was so strong,” said Chris Edwards, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute. “I don’t think either party had much to do with that.”
The question remains though. Do you think the government money propping up the housing bubble artificially kept official unemployment low and how should we view those low numbers in retrospect?
Probably the same way we should view the current numbers that are being kept artificially low by continually removing long-term unemployed from the work force. Still, the approximately 6% average under Bush is a whole lot better than the 9% under Obama.
Spook
What was the average for Reagan’s first 3 years? Probably about 8-9%.
Gingrich and Clinton both take credit for balancing the budget.
Yes, but one of the was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, where spending bills originate, and one was the President, who has no real control over spending.
One was the Speaker of the House of Representatives during a time when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate, where legislation was passed and sent to the White House to be signed (or, as in the case of welfare reform, repeatedly vetoed) and one was the President, whose only participation in the process was to sign or veto bills.
Stool,
The tech “bubble” was minor compared to the housing debacle, and had far less ripple effect throughout the economy, which resulted in a mild recession compared to the near collapse of the economy that the housing crisis nearly brought. And the housing crisis could have been much less of a disaster had Congress heeded Bush’s warnings in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, & 2006. That being said, Bush had a 6% unemployment rate in 2003, which wasn’t created by the bubble
Ama
dont forget 911 that almost crashed the US financially, and W still has better numbers than numbnuts O
Great point. And let’s also not forget Katrina which wiped out a major city shutting down refineries and ports.
As recently as his 60 Minutes interview last month, Obama has continued to insist that his policies have saved or created 3 million jobs. During this 3 years in office, the U.S. population has increased by a little over 6 million. Give the .64 workforce participation rate that Retired Spook notes above, we would have had to have at least 3.84 million NEW JOBS just to keep up with population growth. I’ve never heard the President distinguish how many of his 3 million were new jobs and how many were “saved” jobs, but it appears to me that we’re headed in the wrong direction.
LOL
an E mail I got……
I am really concerned about North Korea’s appointment of the “dear leader”, Kim Jung Ill’s youngest son to be the new leader of North Korea– a nuclear power!
After all, Kim Jung Un (pronounced Kim’s young-Un?) had NO military experience whatsoever before daddy made him a four-star general in the military. This is a snot-nose twerp who has never accomplished anything in his life that would even come close to military leadership: he hasn’t even so much as led a cub scout troop, coached a sports team or commanded a military platoon… …So, setting that aside, next they make him the “beloved leader” of the country. Terrific!!!
Oh, crap! I’m sorry. BUT I just remembered that we did the same thing here. We took a community organizer who has never worn a uniform and made him Commander-in-Chief; a guy who has never led anything more than an ACORN demonstration and made him the leader of this country. I guess we are as dumb as North Korea. I’m sorry I brought it up, never mind.
Neoconehead
Which of the candidates have military experience?
RUBIO TO OBAMA: YOU’RE TURNING AMERICA INTO ‘DEADBEAT NATION’
REALLY???
you mean a never was doper, back seat smoker, community AA agitator racist, cult member fron THE most corrupt party and city ever?
how could that be????
OH wait…….47% of the country pays NO federal income tax
Ahhhhhhh the plantation “votes” for dear leader.
baldork
Perry for one
barstool posted this on the earlier thread:
President plans to cut half a million troops and says US can’t afford to wage two wars at once
barstool, could you, or any other liberal tell me the difference between laying off soldiers vs laying off policemen or teachers? Why do liberals scream from the mountaintops if a teachers job is threatened, but remain silent when threatening military jobs?
HAAAAAAPY BIRTHDAY TOOOOO MEEEEEEEE
thank you, thank you verrrrry muuch!
Can anyone join in this birthday caterwallin’? I’ll sing harmony, you sing lead.
Happy Birthday Neocon!!!
Just replace President with you name. 🙂
jer
ROTFL
count
good job 🙂
cluster
shhhhh
dont make the boy’s head explode with those kind of facts.
Happy 50th birthday Neocondolences.
@clueless
No difference, in fact where I live the number of teachers and police are being reduced. If the government can’t afford to keep the status quo it reduces the costs.
I haven’t had a raise in 5 years and my department has shrunk by 1/3. That means fewer advanced classes, larger class sizes, students plans delayed. I complain about millions spent on athletics but that is what the electorate want.
I should add that I believe the young men and women in our military are a vital resource for future economic growth. Taking potential entrepreneurs, willing to take risks, out of the market where they could be innovating and making them security guards for the world is a poor use of resources.
In would add the same for many positions in the police. I am for legalization of drugs which would move bright people out of a purity realm (drug interdiction) and into a business realm. It would also kill the profitsnof the drug lords from Afghanistan to Mexico.
“ Taking potential entrepreneurs, willing to take risks, out of the market where they could be innovating and making them security guards for the world is a poor use of resources. ” Putting aside the incredibly insulting nature of that statement, you must have missed the whole volunteer military thing. No one is “taking” potential anything; they are volunteering for a large number of reasons.
Well, I did see a Go Army van cruising the parking lot and several students disappeared when they got close. Then there was that Marine in full dress blues walking across campus, stopping students and telling them he was looking for a “few good men” but that might be an exception.
Also interesting, following your logic, if we decriminalize drugs we would not be “taking” bright people and forcing them to become police officers when we could be taking them to run a cop-for-hire police force (“business realm)? That’s a really interesting idea; wonder what Milton would make of that entrepreneurial notion?
Then there was that Marine in full dress blues walking across campus, stopping students and telling them he was looking for a “few good men”
I am not sure he was wanting to recruit them into the military though – lol
No one is “taking” potential anything; they are volunteering for a large number of reasons.- Cant
Everyday I see technical, hands-on type young people who in advanced math courses who would be better served if trade schools still existed to hone their abilities. One can say they have ‘volunteered’ to try their hands at theoretical engineering for a number of reasons.
In the same way, as manufacturing and other steady jobs have been exported one can say that many in the military have “volunteered” vs. facing underemployment. In both cases it is a waste of a precious resource, one the skilled but not mathematically talented person who drops out of building things entirely and the other a hard working person using his time for marginal results.
As for the role of US soldiers as security guards being insulting, you are correct. These are people brought up to believe they are defending freedom, wind up killed so that one mid-East group of crazies can be replaced by another. The Iraq war was a complete waste of precious lives and achieved nothing. The better part of the war in Afghanistan the same. We should have just killed the bad guys and left instead of worrying ourselves about poppy plants and building new schools.
Currently there are a number or extremely intelligent people working on how to stop drugs from entering the country, how to defeat cartels, etc. We also have not so bright people who sent guns to the Mexican drug cartels. The former are people who could be better used producing valuable products. The latter should be fired.
“ Everyday I see …”
Inductive reasoning, worthless to this discussion.
“ one can say that many in the military have “volunteered” vs. facing underemployment.”
Well, “one” could say that but it wouldn’t be true (as if that little inconvenience has ever deterred you.)
“ As for the role of US soldiers as security guards being insulting, you are correct.”
Had I said any such thing I would what we call the opposite of correct; or “Bardolf”
“ Currently there are a number or extremely intelligent people working on how to stop drugs from entering the country, how to defeat cartels, etc. . “
Currently, there appear to be no intelligent people working on your computer.
Nothing wrong with inductive reasoning.
You reason in vagaries like “volunteering for a large number of reasons.” pretending that maybe people are volunteering to get inexpensive camouflage pants. You’re a smart guy like John Winger in Stripes. Who knows, maybe people are volunteering for weight loss like Ox.
What in particular was “insulting” about my statements, only the shadow can know since the Count is silent. I’m betting your military service didn’t involve a lot of actual combat. Did you film it like John Kerrey?
Hey, Master Historian, Al Gore was the photographer, Kerry got 3 Purple Hearts without bleeding; if you’re going to try an insult at least get the context correct.
And once again dolf admits that his reference point is another silly Hollywood movie.
He does love to remind us of the breadth and depth of his political acumen, doesn’t he?
Cluster,
Now you know the military is made up entirely of poor inner-city kids with no skills, and no hope that had to go fight in the white-man’s wars just to earn a few bucks and maybe earn an education with the GI Bill.
Military vote for Republicans; inner-city government dependents vote dimocrat. Better they should be in their dimocrat-controlled ghetto where the dimocrats can count on getting their votes.
Who says Obama can’t plan ahead? /sarc
Once again Count, you are a step ahead. I hadn’t thought of that brilliant strategy.
Happy Birthday neocon!!
Why is Ron Paul the preferred candidate among active military?
Uh … he’s a Republican?
Oh come one, now; that’s an easy one. Police and firefighters are most unionized and soldiers aren’t. Plus Libs hate the military.
Police and firefighters don’t have cabinet level personnel acting on their behalf. They don’t spend millions of dollars on ammunition so France can have cheap oil. They put out fires of people who appreciate their work.
In 1900 there was a Department of War and a New York Police Department. Today there is still a NYPD but the Department of War has become a Department of Defense though actual defense of the homeland is in the hands of the DHS.
Now who can argue with that? I think we’re all in debt to Gabby Bardolf for stating what needed to be said. I am particularly glad that these lovely children are here today to hear that speech. Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed the courage little seen in this day and age.
Having never once touched upon the subject of the J.R.’s thoughts while at the same time stating nothing of particular value in a most powerful and moving manner.
Tip o’the Hat to ‘dolphie old boy! Hat’s Off men ~ HAT’S OFF!!
Police and firefighters don’t have cabinet level personnel acting on their behalf.
Dept. of Labor?
They put out fires of people who appreciate their work.
You don;t think the work of the military is appreciated? And since when did putting out house fires become more important than protecting our freedoms, our culture and our country?
‘dolf,
You know, you should keep that capital “B” thing going, Improves your image as an academician in one of the less worthwhile endeavors at the Percy L. Beezer School of Yoyo Repair and Cowbell Tuning.
These (the military) are people brought up to believe they are defending freedom…
Silly bunnies, buying into that “defending freedom, serving their nation” crap, eh, dolf? Who needs ’em, eh, dolf?
I have been noting recently how the PL trolls here, no matter how they try to hide their true ideology (knowing it simply cannot be defended) end up expressing it anyway, one way or the other.
In this case, dolf’s sneering dismissal of our military does an excellent job of illustrating much about him that is usually just hinted at in his odd, vague snarls at this that and the other.
Yeah, like I would sleep well knowing that an effete snob like dolf was “defending freedom”. Hell, he can’t even defend a political philosophy, though he did once mount a rather spirited defense of drinking zinfandel with brie.
Hell, he can’t even defend a political philosophy, though he did once mount a rather spirited defense of drinking zinfandel with brie
Liberals can never defend the poor results of their political philosophy, but that has never stopped them from believing that they are 100% correct. To a liberal, intent trumps results.
dolphie frets about soldiers getting killed, but then the closest HE lets himself get to danger is the risk of choking on candied fruit in a rosca de reyes on January 6.
I guess there is nothing really wrong with being a wimp, but to be a wimp who ridicules those who are not is really creepy.
matt-neo
is it really your birfday?
if so….congrats you made it another year….
teehee
nanu nanu dork
yeah beat the grim reaper out of another one….WHEW!!
So Neo is 50? Is that a guess or a fact? I sure hope it’s a fact because it would put his entire narrative about being a Vietnam Vet to be a lie. Not many prepubescents in the military. Unless they live in, oh I don’t know, Kenya maybe. Or Somalia.
Where was the President born Neo? You’re the expert.
Nooooo, noooo….Neo is gettin’ up there close to 70.
He’s retired from the Marines, but he still works, ain’t that right, Neo?
Hmmmmmm
Jer
but he still works, ain’t that right, Neo?
yes every day,
the Princess is high a maintenance woman………
That explains the hostility. A hallmark of Alzheimers. That and relying on unfounded sources to prove absurd contentions. See video below. Yep! That settles it. Call Orly Tatiz Jimmy Olsen. You finally proved it.
bmitch
so what is your reason?
Oh yeah that little <85 IQ and the short bus
bmithc
well I hate to bust your bubble, but NO Ce-gar but nice try. 66
“Where was the President born Neo? You’re the expert.”
I just go to the source for my facts
Bmitch
tell it to these people Moron
Not as lean,
Not as mean,
But still a Marine!!
Hoorah!! And Semper Fidelis to all our Marines, past, present and future!!!
Well careful with that “CLOSE” and the 70 word…….LOL
66 is still a LONG way away from 70……(thats my story and im sticking to it 🙂 )
OOH RAH, Semper Fi, DO or DIE!!!
I figured you and I were about the same age. I’ll be 67 in a week and a half. From one old fart to another — HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Spook
Thanks, LOL
I will wish you a pre, HAPPY BIRTHDAY! 🙂 🙂 🙂
question for the count……..
with all the GOP candidates up and down et,c why have you chosen mitt as your fav.
He may well end up on top and I am looking for reasons to support him if he is the man?
GOP
are you listening????
Happy birthday to both neo and spook. Mine was the middle of December—–looks like the advent of spring got our parents kind of frisky, eh?
neo, I can find lots of reasons to support Romney if he is the nominee, though he is not my ideal candidate.
I think a summary of my opinion is that he clearly has the ability to do a lot, but the question seems to be his ideology. To that, all I can say is, if he gets ‘hired’ by conservatives then his job is to govern as a conservative.
In MA, he was ‘hired’ by liberals, so he had to govern as at least moderately liberal.
Kyle Orton played just as hard (or, as many of us think, harder) to beat the Broncos as he ever did to help them win, because that is his new job.
I think we need to realize that no matter which Republican is elected, our job is not over—-every one of those in the running will need ongoing support and occasionally a boot in the rear to keep him reminded of the conservative coalition that put him in office and of his need to keep the Constitution in the forefront of every decision he might make. And it is a fact of life that some of our potential candidates might need a little more prodding than others.
with all the GOP candidates up and down et,c why have you chosen mitt as your fav.
The Count and I are on the same page on Romney. Actually, Romney was my first choice in 2008. One of the reasons the country is in the economic shape we’re in is that only 8% of Obama’s cabinet and cabinet-level staff have private sector experience. By comparison, Jimmuh Carter held the previous record at 32%. I’m betting that a President Romney will have at least as many people around him who have been outside the ivory tower as Carter, probably a lot more.
It’s time to apply sound business and economic principles to the economy and quit experimenting around with OPM and theories that have never been successful outside the sterile atmosphere of a classroom. I believe Romney is the candidate who most has the ability and background to do that.
And the greatest thing about our system of government is that, if he doesn’t perform to our satisfaction, we can fire him in only 4 years.
Why would Obama be giving waivers to those he cares about the most!!! Don’t they understand how Obamacare will bring down costs and help everyone!
Labor unions continued to receive the overwhelming majority of waivers from the president’s health care reform law since the Obama administration tightened application rules last summer.
Question: is a mandate that just applies to certain subsets of our society constitutional? I thought we were all suppose to be equal.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/01/06/labor-unions-primary-recipients-of-obamacare-waivers/#ixzz1inAuLCTM
And it appears Count will have an additional dilemma on his hands as well because Governor “Moonbeam” Brown (as all good Dimmi-crats) knows that taxing is the way to prosperity.
Moonbeam states “The proposed 2012 budget would slash $5.2 billion in public school funding if voters reject the tax increases Brown is trying to put on the November ballot. This would include about $200 million in cuts each to the University of California and the Cal State University systems and $4.8 billion to K-12 education and community colleges.”
And after all it is for the childrens and all but as Sister Toldjah points out “under Proposition 98, passed in 1988, funds for K-12 education in California must increase every year; it’s required by the state constitution. As you’ll see in the summary charts for the budget, Brown’s budget includes a $4.8 billion increase in K-12 funding. Look familiar? It should; that’s the same amount cited as a “slash” in funding in the above quote. In other words, the “cut in education funding” is really the elimination of a proposed increase, not a genuine cut at all.”
Elimination of an increase = tax cut — only in the mind of a Democrat.
h/t Sister Toldjah
http://sistertoldjah.com/
California: Governor Brown thinks we’re stupid
db, thank you for the reminder that to a Liberal, reducing the rate of increase can be, and usually is, recast as a “cut”.
Cluster,
That’s a great point. When oral arguments are heard by the S.C. this spring on ObamaCare, it will be interesting to see if the equal protection clause is part of the argument. The Indiana Attorney General (we are one of the 26 states who are co-plaintiffs) was the guest speaker at a breakfast that my wife and I attended this morning. Much of his talk and subsequent Q & A was related to ObamaCare. I wish I would have thought to ask about the equal protection aspect.
get ready for Hitlery
Georgia case could determine whether Obama’s name may be placed on ANY 2012 state ballot!
Irion’s action has nothing whatever to do with the validity of the birth certificate Obama’s minions posted online last year. And the attorney doesn’t care whether Obama was born in Hawaii or not.
“The only fact relevant to this case,” says Irion, “is the fact that the defendant’s father was not a U.S. citizen.” It is Irion’s contention that as Obama’s father was not born in the US and was never a citizen, Obama himself cannot meet the Constitutional standard requiring that a president be “natural born.” (1)
Irion cites an 1875 Supreme Court ruling in which the court stated:
The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. (3)
If Irion is successful in obtaining an injunction preventing the Democrat Party from certifying Obama on the Georgia ballot, it will also act to prevent his Party certification and therefore appearance on ANY state ballot nationwide. (2)
Obama has spent a million bucks in legal fees to keep his personal history from the American public. Maybe this will be the one that gets him.
neo, for a long time I dismissed vague references to Obama being disqualified because his father was a British citizen as petty carping and downright silly. But then you and tiredoflibbs, I think, linked some references that I read, went back and read again, and found very compelling if not conclusive.
I felt that no court would hear the argument because of the intense reaction that would invariably occur, but then conservatives started to talk about Rubio, and even Jindal, as presidential possibles, and I realized that this is not an issue that is going to go away.
I think the world of both Rubio and Jindal, and would hate to see either of them eliminated from the possibility of serving as president. But I would hate even more to have people who made the not-a-natural-born-citizen argument being used to condemn conservatives as hypocrites if we were to suddenly forget about the earlier claims and support a candidate whose fathers were not citizens when they were born.
And I would hate even more to have a strong campaign derailed by having this come up later. We all know the Left, liking to have things both ways, would not hesitate to bring it up once their guy is out of office and it becomes a Right-oriented issue.
I have been arguing for quite some time that we need to have this matter resolved, and I have felt that the best way to do it would be for Rubio and Jindal to appeal to whatever tribunal would have authority to make a decision on this matter to settle it, once and for all.
I thought the tribunal should be the Supreme Court but wiser minds pointed out to me that the Court is there to review lower court rulings, and that there is no mechanism for anyone to just go the Court and say “Hey, what do you guys think of this?”
As for a lower court ruling, courts seem to be set up to deal with adversarial and competing claims—-one side says yes, one side says no, and the court rules yea or nay. Again, I don’t know of there is a way to ask a court for a ruling without filing a suit against someone.
Congress? I don’t know. I know that Congress held hearings to determine McCain’s natural-born-citizen claim. Is this the proper venue? Is Congress given the authority to interpret the Constitution?
So, though I thought having conservatives working to vet their own people before putting them up for office would create less hysteria than trying to vet someone who had slipped into office without this kind of examination, perhaps the only way to resolve the problem IS to use Obama as the subject of the discussion and subsequent ruling.
Here’s a bit of good news, or bad news depending on your POV:
matt zona
to your un ideal romney point
backing up your clearly milk post toastie support
they’re gonna drop chris christie in as vp
that should make you happier?
Will there be a debate thread? And speaking of – was it just me? Or is Diane Sawyer, and many of the questions she asked, a complete embarrassment? And tell me exactly how relevant the contraception question was. Romney handled it very well – belittiling Stephanoplolus while dismissing the question.
All in all, the debate last night solidified my support for Romney. Paul is a complete loon, Huntsman reminds me a creepy, effeminate uncle, Perry is still one case short of full clip, and Santorum doesn’t have the economic acumen I want in our next President. I could support Gingrich if he gets the nod, but it’s Romney for me.
Cluster,
I think Romney has run a really smart campaign so far. It was pretty clear from the start that he had a certain amount of base support, and that literally every other candidate was going to be vetted to see if there was a legitimate anti-Romney. Romney just sat back, defended his record and his principles and let each of the anti-Romneys implode one by one (with a little help from super-pacs and the media). So far, at least, Romney hasn’t made any serious mistakes, other than the stupid $10,000 bet with Perry. There is no other candidate with his business acumen, something that will be an essential ingredient in the next president if we’re every going to undo the damage that the current occupant of the White House has done.
We were out late and didn’t get to watch last night’s debate, and then we slept in obscenely late this morning and missed almost all of this morning’s debate. I’ll start a debate open thread so those who sacrificed and watch the debate instead of the NFL playoffs can comment.
Diane Sawyer is always an embarrassment. I can’t stand to watch the woman. She is so clumsy in the way she telegraphs her biases.
Speaking to a Lib, she will ask the most inane, softball questions with eyes very wide, smile even wider, and chirp like an overjoyed baby bird, nodding and grinning maniacally at every syllable the Lib pronounces.
Give her a topic that leans more to the Right, especially with a conservative being questioned,and it is a completely different story. Her head droops, her voice becomes not only somber but her cadence slows and each word oozes out, she hesitates ponderously before uttering tip-off words like “controversial”, and her forehead furrows to Klingon-like distortion. Her head swings dolefully back and forth as she kind-of-listens to the response, and her replies are always argumentative, beginning with “But….”
If she has a brain, she hides it well, but she doesn’t even bother to try to hide or disguise her blatant bias.
LOL, Amazona — you have absoluted nailed DS. As I read your description, I kept nodding and chuckling, especially at this part: “and her forehead furrows to Klingon-like distortion”.
A moment of conservative courage. Thank you Newt:
Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won’t give in to secular bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration in a key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration? The bigotry question goes both ways, and there’s a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side, and none of it gets covered by the liberal media.
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2012/01/07/gingrich-calls-out-medias-liberal-bias-gay-rights#ixzz1isFiJUQZ
I now know the problem with the last couple of debates – the moderators. Watching Gregory ask questions this morning on the MSNBC debate, it’s clear that we need smarter, less biased moderators. Gregory, Sawyer and Stephonopolous don’t qualify
Latest question on the MSNBC debate: Is Obama a good guy and a patriot?
Really? Is this a debate for student body president? Or POTUS? Is it possible to ask more intelligent, relevant questions?
Sununu is currently schooling Matthews and the other morons on MSNBC.
Today in History — January 8th edition
1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson declares a “War on Poverty” in the United States. It appears, 48 years later, that “poverty” is still winning.
2002 – President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act. This translates as the “Make Every Child Mediocre while we burden everyone’s future a gazillion dollars” act.
Progressive Johnson and Progressive-Lite GW Bush are two sides of the same coin that make me push even harder to get true Constitutional Conservatives elected at all levels of government. It is going to take generations to repair the damage the Progressives have done.
h/t Mostly Cajun
db, not to argue or defend W, but I thought that NCLB was just a poorly thought-out but well-meaning effort to make sure that even children in marginal schools would be guaranteed the same basic skills as those taught in better schools.
Yes, it was fraught with Unintended Consequences, primarily the inability to overcome teacher resistance as many teachers stopped teaching a rounded curriculum and merely “taught to the test”, while loudly advertising that this was the only reasonable response to the law and therefore proof that they should not be held accountable for results.
I never understood the claim that NCLB was “never funded”. That statement always seemed to me to be an admission that teachers expected to be paid more to actually TEACH.
And it seems to me that your allegation of it leading to dragging down the better students to a level of mediocrity might be the same result of the same reaction by teachers—of dropping a good curriculum to concentrate merely on what is expected to be in the test.
I agree that Bush was a squishy conservative, more so as time went on, but I don’t understand how the INTENT of NCLB was “..“Make Every Child Mediocre while we burden everyone’s future a gazillion dollars” I don’t get either half of that statement.
Can you explain?
Well, I should have added the cost of the Medicare Part D to the equation as well but I have included a link (below, from 2007) to one of the many articles that I had read over the years. From my experience and understanding (which could be faulty) also falls under the laws on unintended consequences. Administrative consequences that trickled down to the subject matter “taught.”
When I went to school, K-12 (public) and got my first Bachelors, we were taught to think for ourselves and how to learn–not even close to what I would term indoctrination of today (and that includes my latest 2 degrees in 2009, 2011) that is prevalent. Add the outlook I get from quite a few friends that are teachers that are handed materials to teach to rather than educate the students and the liberal believe of groups outweighing the individual. Accelerated and remedial classes were lost to teaching everyone to pass the test as a group because administrators needed to be in the good graces of the Federal government for their handouts and whatever other scraps they could garner from the table of bureaucracy–one that should never have existed.
I am a firm believer that education should be a local, or State at the most, matter where Federal and/or State guidelines can be issued but everything should be resolved between the parents, teachers, and local school boards just as it should be between doctors and patients and not decided by some third-party payer. Nevertheless, estimates are only in the millions and billions of additional costs which in today’s terms is a “rounding error” and even though I have no children in or out of the system–this is where I am fighting to return to a true educational platform because we will need folks that can think for themselves and not just what the Federal Masters tell them in order to salvage this country. Once indoctrinated onto the Federal plantation–the cost is surmountable.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/03/the-administrative-burden-of-no-child-left-behind
surmountable should have been insurmountable and I fully agree with your statement
“…but I thought that NCLB was just a poorly thought-out but well-meaning effort to make sure that even children in marginal schools would be guaranteed the same basic skills as those taught in better schools.”
I guess that I look at schools as buildings with interchangeable parts like teachers, equipment, and the ability to make every school not only equal but exceptional once we can get control out of the hands of the Federal bureaucracy and back into the hands of those who actually care like teachers–the good ones anyway.