9:02: If your lawyer is sleeping, better give ‘im a nudge, everybody look alive ’cause here come the judge(s)!
9:03: Condy Rice looks nice. Hey, you know what this needs? Joan and Melissa Rivers offering fashion commentary on the carpet.
9:06: Red is a power color. Interesting, the women dressed in bright red outfits. They pop out at you in the group shots.
9:07: I think when Bush enters, he should be proceeded by a guy playing “Hail the Chief” on a kazoo. That would entertain me. And when he gets up to the podium, he should just toss aside the prepared text, step forward and shout, “You wanna piece of me?! C’mon!”
9:09: He’s wearing a blue tie. Blue=Democrats. Conciliatory?
9:10: It’d be cool if he kept shaking hands and then kept right on going out the far door, leaving everyone standing there going, “Wait? Huh?”
9:11; Still clapping. I wonder how long the ovation would be if his approval rating weren’t in the low 30s.
9:13: Nice touch, acknowledging “Madame Speaker.”
9:16: “Each of us is guided by his own convictions.” Including the criminal convictionst that plagued the GOP.
9:16: Oh, NOW he wants cross-aisle governing.
9:17: Yes, wages are rising…thanks to the Democrats raising minimum wage. 41 straight months of job increase? Can anyone back that up?
9:19: Yeah. Earmarks. That’s certainly something that presents a major concern to Americans.
9:22: Oh, geez, here we go with school vouchers again.
9:23: The quality of education, and the fiasco that has been “No child left behind,” isn’t exactly something I’d boast about.
9:24 Stony silence for the health care plan.
9:25: Ooooooo, that was embarrassing. Lots of people sitting on their hands for the health tax break plan. Could it be that they perceive it as, ultimately, a means of getting big business off the hook for health benefits while not at all guaranteeing that everyone can get health insurance?
9:26: Okay, good point about malpractice junk law suits. That’s just out of control.
9:29: Yes, we are too dependent on foreign oil. But “clean safe nuclear power” is a bit of an oxymoron.
9:31: And we’re going to reduce gasoline usage in the US how, exactly?
9:32: If we want to decrease gas usage, keeping the price of gas DOWN is the wrong way to go. You want to keep it high so that people will be motivated to use less gas.
9:35: Yes, by taking the war to the enemy, we can win the war on terror, just as we’ve won the war on crime and poverty and drugs and…
9:34: Okay, who had 9:34 in the 9/11 pool?
9:38: Terror terror terror terror
9:39: Who had 9:39 in the Iran pool?
9:40: in the six years since we were attacked? I thought it was five years?
9:41: If a fraction of the money spent on the war had been spent on education, the country would be in a lot better shape.
9:41: Terror terror terror terror terror terror terror
9:42: Was McCain asleep or taking notes?
9:43: Terror terror terror terror terror terror terror terror terror terror terror terror terror
9:44: Of course, we wouldn’t even have to be thinking about breaking promises and leaveing friends if he hadn’t gotten us into the war in the first place.
9:45: Does he realize there’s a whole bunch of country outside of Baghdad?
9:47: Baghdad is NEVER going to be secure. He msut know that. It almost sounds as if he’s setting up framework for going into Iran.
9:50: No, they didn’t vote for failure, they voted for a military incursion that was intended to findd WMDs, based upon falsified information fed them by Bush.
9:54: Finally moved away from terror.
9:55: interesting that the SC justices don’t stand, not even for combating Malaria.
9:57: Plug a basketball player success story. There’s a slam dunk.
9:58: I think it would be funny if there was an orchestra who played him off if he went on too long.
9:59: The annual parade of people continues.
9:59: Yeah, okay, the subway car guy. That was one dámņëd heroic thing he did.
10:01: The depressing thing is that if this decorated Sergeant were a democrat running for President, there would be a GOP disinformation campaign organized to assert that he didn’t actually earn his medals.
10:02: Jon Stewart called it. He said the country would be blessed by God, and that Bush would say the country was “strong.”
Overall a very low key, sedate, even borderline somnambulant presentation.
• 
Posted by Rob Brown
No, they yank US money from any program that states or implies that abortion could ever be right or good or justifiable. (Here in the States, too.)
Employment has been growing for 41 months. But it’s been mostly part-time and low-wage jobs, so real income has been basically stagnant.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?ln (the real income data is elsewhere on the site).
If you play around with the numbers a bit, you can also pull out some fun stuff. For example, wages have actually been falling, but by adding in investment income and capital gains (significant for only about 3% or 4% of people, much due to recent real estate flippings) the gov’t figures appear to bring the average wage up (this new accounting twist was introduced – I’m sure you’ll be shocked – about 47 months ago, IIRC).
If you account for the faster-than-inflation rise of medical costs, it’s even less rosy.
Also, it is possible to build safe nuclear reactors, though I seriously doubt the W Gang could manage it. For example, the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) was actually designed to be fueled by and so use up the waste that has been produced by traditional nuclear reactors. Any remaining waste has a maximum hazardous life (not half-life) of about 300 years, instead of the 25,000+ we currently tangle with.
“Misplaced” fuel from the IFR can’t be used to build bombs. It also uses passive cooling, i.e. if it starts to overheat, the expansion of the fuel shuts down the reactor automatically – no mechanical safety devices needed.
One was built by Argonne national lab, but it was cancelled because a lot of politically influential people confused it with a breeder reactor, which it is not. Had a couple of friends who worked on this beasty. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor if you’re interested. Hopefully the designs are still kicking around.
I’m told pebble-bed reactors have similar advantages, but don’t know much about them.
Am I the only one who heard “A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps” and immediately thought “Nightwatch”?
The main advantage of a pebble bed is that the fuel is encapsulated, so a critical mass is so unlikely that you might as well call it impossible. It also has passive cooling, IIRC.
“Sounds like I made a good decision to re-watch 2010 on the DVD player tonight.”
Thinking about it, the end of that movie didn’t make much sense. What life form could survive a sun suddenly popping so close by? Wouldn’t the Monolith alien(s) have been sterilizing the planet they were enjoining us to leave alone? Any-one else smell cover-up?
I should have just watched a movie.
Beyond Iraq, I just want to take a ball bat to him everytime he claims that he sees the need to deal with the budget problems THAT HE AND THE R’S CAUSED IN THE LAST SIXS YEARS in every bit he’s done since the November elections.
It’s like with all the businesses that he flushed down the çráppër and then had to have Daddy and his rich pals rescue him.
“Hey, I really screwed this up. Now, fix it for me.”
It’s been a while since I posted any comments in here as I usually have nothing to add to the discussions by the time I get to them. Here are a few things I noticed:
Even if jobs did increase by 7.2 million over the last 41 months, most of these jobs are minimum wage ones while most jobs that were lost to outsourcing and other factors over this period were union jobs, middle management positions, or better. Besides, just to keep up with the natural population growth over this time 4.5 million jobs were needed (it’s estimated that a minimum of 110,000 new jobs are needed every month), so the true “unemployment reduction” was only 2.7 million over 41 months (less than 66,000 a month).
The proposed Health Tax Break would never even come close to solving the problem. The fact is that many people would not use this money to get insurance, some would use it to pay other debt that they already have while others still would just splurge it on things like HDTVs or whatever; let’s face it, a huge chunk of the population has as much trouble as the government when it comes to controlling their spending. And of course, that’s not even mentioning the fact that many families do not have a high enough income to benefit from the tax break; the poorest among us (exactly those most in need of comprehensive insurance) don’t even make enough money to pay taxes.
Bush told us to remember that patients and doctors are the ones best qualified to make decisions about treatment, but I didn’t hear him call for any legislation that would put said decisions in heir hands and away from HMOs and other insurers.
One of the fastest and best ways to reduce gas usage is to impose high taxes on SUVs and other gas guzzlers. Not just at the time of purchase, but also on an annual basis, to discourage those who already own one to switch cars. This is a better solution than taxing gasoline itself, which would hit poorer people the hardest.
Even if Congress approved the increase of military personnel requested (92,500 over 5 years, I think), I don’t see how this could be achieved. Recruiters are already having so much trouble filling in their current quotas that they have been consistently lowering their standards the last few years; at this point I imagine that they’d even take a pre-super soldier Steve Rogers. Hëll, how long do you think it will be before they start going to prisons and offering to commute sentences in exchange for signing up?
I won’t go into Iraq here, I don’t think there’s anything new to add to this while all we hear is just more of the same old rhetoric. In any case, nothing that wasn’t already said in this board before.
As always, very engaging topics and discussions here on PAD’s blog, keep it up everyone!
Raphy
Just tried to post but forgot to sign in with Typekey first, here’s my post again. PAD, please ignore the copy of this waiting in the approval queue. Thanks, and sorry about that.
It’s been a while since I posted any comments in here as I usually have nothing to add to the discussions by the time I get to them. A few things I noticed:
Even if jobs did increase by 7.2 million over the last 41 months, most of these jobs are minimum wage ones while most jobs that were lost to outsourcing and other factors over this period were union jobs, middle management positions, or better. Besides, just to keep up with the natural population growth over this time 4.5 million jobs were needed (it’s estimated that a minimum of 110,000 new jobs are needed every month), so the true “unemployment reduction” was only 2.7 million over 41 months (less than 66,000 a month).
The proposed Health Tax Break would never even come close to solving the problem. The fact is that many people would not use this money to get insurance, some would use it to pay other debt that they already have while others still would just splurge it on things like HDTVs or whatever; let’s face it, a huge chunk of the population has as much trouble as the government when it comes to controlling their spending. And of course, that’s not even mentioning the fact that many families do not have a high enough income to benefit from the tax break; the poorest among us (exactly those most in need of comprehensive insurance) don’t even make enough money to pay taxes.
Bush told us to remember that patients and doctors are the ones best qualified to make decisions about treatment, but I didn’t hear him call for any legislation that would put said decisions in heir hands and away from HMOs and other insurers.
One of the fastest and best ways to reduce gas usage is to impose high taxes on SUVs and other gas guzzlers. Not just at the time of purchase, but also on an annual basis, to discourage those who already own one to switch cars. This is a better solution than taxing gasoline itself, which would hit poorer people the hardest.
Even if Congress approved the increase of military personnel requested (92,500 over 5 years, I think), I don’t see how this could be achieved. Recruiters are already having so much trouble filling in their current quotas that they have been consistently lowering their standards the last few years; at this point I imagine that they’d even take a pre-super soldier Steve Rogers. Hëll, how long do you think it will be before they start going to prisons and offering to commute sentences in exchange for signing up?
I won’t go into Iraq here, I don’t think there’s anything new to add to this while all we hear is just more of the same old rhetoric. In any case, nothing that wasn’t already said in this board before.
As always, very engaging topics and discussions here on PAD’s blog, keep it up everyone!
Raphy
Just out of interest, why is Bush still in charge? Many governments — including the one here in Canada — have the ability to oust a poor (or unpopular, or both in your case) leader in a non-confidence vote (according to some sources, we may be doing so with our Prime Minister in March). If the Democrats have control of both main houses why do they allow him to continue destroying your quality of life at home and ruining the reputation of your country abroad? I’m assuming I’m missing something.
You know, Raphael’s post made me remember an idea that I had a while back. Everybody’s talking about the hybrid cars as The Wave Of The Future or whatever. Now, there’s a crapload of non-hybrid petrol-suckers out there. Why doesn’t someone come out with a hybridization kit for THOSE cars? (If I was a mechanic, I know I’d be working on that, those designs would be like a map to a gold mine.) Now, if someone HAS in fact come out with this thing, well, good for you, and where do I get one?
I have to say Children of Men was a very good film–a much better way to spend a couple of hours than listening to Dubya.
I just finished watching the video of Webb’s response. He did a good job, and *gasp* he gave a plan for what we should do in Iraq.
Unfortunately, barely anybody is going to see this as Bush’s own blabbing dominates the headlines.
I didn’t even bother. I watched a rerun of Eureka on Skiffy, followed by Doctor Who on the Beeb. Far and away more entertaining.
Besides, with my high blood pressure, if I had watched that lying, idiotic, despicable HWOON DAHN(sorry for yelling), my head might have exploded, and how do you explain that to the one you love?
Yi-qi shen-hu-xi. Deep breath taken.
This guy has got to go. What he’s done since taking office would have gotten anybody else impeached or shot. He’s a xiong-meng de kuang-ren, and he needs to be removed from power before he gets us all killed.
Go hwong-tong. I’m preaching to the choir here. Going back to bed.
Miles
Not a very memorable speech, all in all. Mostly I just found it depressing that I live in a nation where someone is apparently able to do more good as a pro basketball player than as a doctor.
Also, Bush got me thinking about something. Would a civil war in Iraq really be that bad for the world? If the minority Sunni are backed by terrorists and Saddam’s supporters, why not just let the majority (and Iranian backed) Shia do the US’s dirty work? It seems to me that the worst case outcome may simply be a stable Iraq that’s a client state of Iran.
Not exactly the end of the world.
Peter. Run for President.
SERIOUSLY.
Posted by Marc Grant
Unfortuinately, here we are stuck with the moron until his term is up unless he actually does something that gives Congress an excuse to impeach him, try him, and remove him from office.
And if the Republicans couldn’t manage to get Clinton. W is probably safe.
You know, I keep being reminded of Don Imus’ brother, Fred Imus, who often calls in to Don’s radio show to ask about a guest or Don himself
“Where’s the energy?”
After said guest or host has given a somewhat lackluster, low-emotion and low-enthusiam performance.
Then again, “performance” seems to be so much of what politics has become–if it weren’t always so.
[Oh great, people-props. Can those be stopped?]
— Ken from Chicago
“9:34: Okay, who had 9:34 in the 9/11 pool?”
Hee! Thank you. Before I read this I was irate. Now I can laugh about it.
“I forget where I heard this and I’d be grateful if somebody could provide a source, but IIRC the programs and things Bush has supported for fighitng AIDS have not given out condoms or condoned their use, because, y’know, they’re supposedly BAD. Can anybody confirm or deny this?”
I don’t think I have the links to news in English, but I read about it too. Specifically when there was a bit of tension between US and Brazilian governments, because Bush’s people were cutting any aid to foreign AIDS relief programs that encouraged condoms, and Brazil’s program is all about condoms and sexual education.
It stuck on my memory because Brazil has one of the best records on fighting AIDS of all the third nation countries, and it said too that countries that tried Bush’s way (the Religious Right’s way that the only way to fight AIDS is to encourage sexual abstinence and never mention condons), that those countries had a big explosion in AIDS’ cases.
So there was a lot of angry shouting here in Brazil. And a big discussion about how people with religious agendas were messing with medical matters and making things catastrophically worse.
But alas, the news were in Portuguese, and one or two years ago, I don’t think I have the links.
Had to work tonight, but it sounds like I didn’t miss much.
Ah, who am I kidding? Even if I had been home, and even if I had some inclination to watch Shrub’s speech, I’d lose my remote privileges (and quite possibly the use of my arm) if I tried to intentionally put Bush on our TV.
-Rex Hondo-
One thing that stuck in my mind last night when he mentioned about immigration reform he said:
“..so when can assimilate our new arrivals.”
My God, Dubya’s a Borg!!!
———
‘9:32: If we want to decrease gas usage, keeping the price of gas DOWN is the wrong way to go. You want to keep it high so that people will be motivated to use less gas.’
———
It’s
been said before – that wont work. That’s only good for lining the pockets of business in the short-term. It’s far more likely people will steal and/or accept a price increase. If someone wants to spearhead a revolution and prevent knee chaffing, an alternate power source needs to be found…
On the recruiting in prisons, lady called in to Air America and said her son was offered a deal to sign up and have time served for his drugs charges.
“Okay, good point about malpractice junk law suits. That’s just out of control.”
The vast majority (and probably all) of truly junk malpractice cases are thrown out of court by judges, before ever going to trial, based on their merits, or lack thereof.
“IIRC, “malpractice junk law suits” is among the least important factors contributing to soaring health costs. Can someone confirm?””
The biggest factor is profit. As in, the profits raked in by the CEOs and stockholders in the health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and for-profit hospitals whose utlimate priority is not the health of their patients, but the bottom line. Also, in the insurance industry alone, administrative costs alone account for upwards of 33% of the monthly premiums.
Wildcat
The main advantage of a pebble bed is that the fuel is encapsulated, so a critical mass is so unlikely that you might as well call it impossible. It also has passive cooling, IIRC.
So it IS possible for conventional nuclear power plants to reach critical mass? I’d always been told that this couldn’t happen.
>It almost sounds as if he’s setting up framework for going into Iran.
Headline in Ottawa (Canada)’s major daily this morning: North Korea is believed to be sharing bomb-making information with Iran. If Shrub & Co think this is so, well …
> Why is it okay for the rich to sue the poor, but not the poor suing the rich?
Because the rich generally do it out of self-interest. The poor ocasionally do it for the greater good. Can’t have that. Sets a bad precedent, don’t you know.
>I just found it depressing that I live in a nation where someone is apparently able to do more good as a pro basketball player than as a doctor.
If it helps, it’s pretty much the same here in Canada and, I daresay, in many countries.
> My God, Dubya’s a Borg!!!
Can’t be. They learn from their mistakes. Politicians generally can’t.
“IIRC, “malpractice junk law suits” is among the least important factors contributing to soaring health costs. Can someone confirm?”
I actually wasn’t thinking about it in terms of medical costs. I was thinking about it in regards to the constant fear of malpractice serving to deter qualified people from becoming doctors, or prompting them to stay away from certain high-risk specialities. Case in point: The doctor who delivered Caroline is getting out of obstetrics. Why? Because it’s one of the highest risk lines of work when it comes to malpractice. Between the high cost of the malpractice insurance and the constant threat that griefstricken parents will go after the doctor even if there wasn’t a thing he could have done to save the child, he decided simply to focus on the far-less-risky avenue of gynecology. Which is a shame since he’s a great obstetrician. Just what we need in this country: A disincentive for quality doctors to practice.
PAD
Did anyone else notice that the only time Ðìçk Cheney cracked a smile was when Bush was talking about America’s dependence on foreign oil? That got a little smirk from him.
Bush as a Borg reminds me of a e-mail a friend sent me, All I Need to Know About the World I Learned From Star Trek. The Klingons were the Russians, the Japanese the Vulcans, the Chinese were the Romulans and the USA was the Federation. The Republicans were the Borg … heartless, ruthless automatons that want to completely dominate your thinking and life.
I was grateful about one thing in Bush’s speech … when talking about Africa and AIDS, he quoted a saying “To whom much is given, much is required”. Sounds like a good reason for a progressive income tax to me .. and I can quote that from a REPUBLICAN!
Marc Grant: Many governments — including the one here in Canada — have the ability to oust a poor (or unpopular, or both in your case) leader in a non-confidence vote (according to some sources, we may be doing so with our Prime Minister in March).
That’s because the US doesn’t have a parliamentary system of government. The president can only be removed for “high crimes and misdemeanors” (or for lying about a bløwjøb) through impeachment, which is a two-step process. First, the House of Representatives has to vote to impeach the president, then they actually have a sort of trial with the Senate acting as the jury. A two-thirds vote in the Senate is needed to remove the president, meaning the democrats would need 67 seats to guarantee removal. They only have 51, so they’d have to somehow convince 16 republicans that Bush needs to go. Actually, it would probably be 17, since Lieberman would be too busy composing love letters to Bush to vote for removal.
Bill Mulligan: So it IS possible for conventional nuclear power plants to reach critical mass? I’d always been told that this couldn’t happen.
Technically, “critical mass” just means sufficient mass to have a sustainable fission reaction, so all reactors by definition reach critical mass. What is not possible for conventional nuclear reactors is for them to explode in the manner of a nuclear bomb. The U-235 enrichment just isn’t high enough. What is a risk, particularly in very poorly designed, older reactors like those that were used at Chernobyl, is a meltdown. This where the reactor core heats up to the point where it starts to melt and may fall down into the pool of coolant water underneath it, resulting in a steam explosion. This is what happened in Chernobyl. Three Mile Island, in contrast, only experienced a partial meltdown and avoided such a disaster through better design and containment.
Both reactors had an active cooling system that required a technician to flip the right switch (think of Homer Simpson going “eeny-meeny-miny-moe”) in order to prevent overheating. The more modern reactors have passive cooling systems that
kick in automatically to prevent overheating.
I had a great workout last night. Did I miss anything important on the Chimpy McFlightsuit puppet show?
“The doctor who delivered Caroline is getting out of obstetrics. Why? Because it’s one of the highest risk lines of work when it comes to malpractice. Between the high cost of the malpractice insurance and the constant threat that griefstricken parents will go after the doctor even if there wasn’t a thing he could have done to save the child, he decided simply to focus on the far-less-risky avenue of gynecology. Which is a shame since he’s a great obstetrician. Just what we need in this country: A disincentive for quality doctors to practice.”
On a similar note, the doc who delivered my 2 sons office now only does obgyn 1 day a week. To maintain a profit, and cover the insurance for obstetrics they now do plastic surgery the other 4 days of the week.
JAC
It’s a good thing this isn’t a science thread.
I actually wasn’t thinking about it in terms of medical costs. I was thinking about it in regards to the constant fear of malpractice serving to deter qualified people from becoming doctors, or prompting them to stay away from certain high-risk specialities. Case in point: The doctor who delivered Caroline is getting out of obstetrics. Why? Because it’s one of the highest risk lines of work when it comes to malpractice. Between the high cost of the malpractice insurance and the constant threat that griefstricken parents will go after the doctor even if there wasn’t a thing he could have done to save the child, he decided simply to focus on the far-less-risky avenue of gynecology. Which is a shame since he’s a great obstetrician. Just what we need in this country: A disincentive for quality doctors to practice.
Does anyone know how often obstetricians actually do get hit with junk lawsuits? I’ve been given to believe that the cost of malpractice insurance for obstetretics is way out of proportion to the amount actually paid out annually.
Thanks Craig. I’ve always said my house should be a reality show, especially when I sucked so bad on the Jeopardy online quiz last night. Then I watched a tivoed Heroes. I could do worse.
Does anyone know how often obstetricians actually do get hit with junk lawsuits? I’ve been given to believe that the cost of malpractice insurance for obstetretics is way out of proportion to the amount actually paid out annually.
That’s a good question. I’d like to know the answer myself. What does seem pretty clear is that lawsuits against ob-gyns seems to be out of proportion to their numbers:
An August 1999 report by the Risk Management Foundation of the Harvard Medical Institutions found that although ob-gyns made up only 5% of physicians covered under their insurance plan, they generated 14% of all claims and accounted for 23% of the plan’s losses.
I suppose one could argue that somehow ob-gyns are more incometant than other doctors but my experience has not shown that to be the case at all. An estimated 3-5% of all births involve some kind of birth defect but most people think the number is far lower and if something goes wrong somebody has to take the blame.
The dread that so many good doctors I know of live under, that their reputations could be ruined at any time through no fault of their own, has really dampened their love for a calling that should have the best people. An awful lot of doctors I’ve known have been rather discouraging to the idea of their kids going into the field. That’s a bad sign.
Concerns about liability isn’t just limited to practicing physicians. When I was working in a biomedical research lab, the team working on an artificial heart project were stalled when the only company that made a key polymer pulled out of the business over the fear of being sued by patients.
We live in a society where lawyers were launching a class action suit against the makers of Norplant even though there hadn’t been a single case of a woman being injured by the silicone in the product.
Billy S. was right. Let’s kill all the lawyers.
funny, the people who weren’t in NYC are the ones who like to spring the phrase “9/11” the most. Had you been there like I was, you would not play so fast and loose with the terror flagging.
we live in a true Demockracy.
GWB doesn’t represent the majority of America. He represents the billion-dollar oil profiteers, ADM, Halliburton et al. Had he his ear to the ground seven years ago, and not on vacation for one-third of his first year in office, 9-11 could have been prevented. nuff said.
Peter, can’t you make spin up the FTL drive and make that countdown clock go faster???
I’m late to the thread again, but not much was discussed about the Democratic response.
How many people heard Senator Jim Webb’s response where he talked about his family’s three generations of military service and his ideas for Iraq? What did you think?
(This means you: Bill Myers, Bill Mulligan, Mike, Luigi, Den, Buffy, Sissy, Mr.French and of corse, PAD…)
–Captain Naraht
(an Official Cutsy Moniker)
P.S. For the record my real name is Raymond Will. A 37 year old married guy from NH. Favorite color: Royal Blue. Turn-ons: cats, sci-fi, and Municipal Land Use Regulation. Turn-offs: Lifetime movies, losing money in vending machines, and people who construct straw-men arguements. See also: guest blogs at NHInsider.com
Didn’t hear it, Ray. Sorry. But for a list of my turn-ons and turn-offs (well, my turn-ons, at least), check out my MySpace page. 🙂
Both Peter and Luigi Novi briefly mentioned School Vouchers above, the subject just popped into my head because of something else I was reading and I’d like to give my two cents on the issue.
Regardless of how one may ideologically feel about it, I think that the problem is that it just wouldn’t work. For vouchers to actually improve education for all and not just for a lucky few, they’d have to be given to all the students of failing schools. Setting aside the logistical and political nightmare that would be deciding the qualifying cutoff line for schools and the actual implementing of it, private schools would be neither able nor willing to handle all those new students. Two of the main reasons why many private schools do a better job than many public ones are that they don’t have to deal with overcrowding of their classrooms, and that they have the option of being selective about whom they take in (from what I understand, some of them are harder to get in than Ivy League colleges); if a student is disruptive or, even worse, dangerous the school can suspend and even expel said student without having to jump through scores of bureaucratic hoops. So the way I see it, logically there are three main possible outcomes from widespread school vouchers:
1 – A large number of students with vouchers would be unable to find a private school willing to take them in, leaving them where they started, except that now their public schools would have even less money and support.
2 – Many fly-by-night private schools would pop-up to take advantage of the increased demand, except that most of them would probably be no better, and possibly worse, than public schools when it comes to actually teaching students.
3 – If the government tried to fix/prevent issues 1 and 2 by passing laws requiring private schools to take all applicants with vouchers and heavily regulating their operations, then those schools would face the same problems of overcrowding and bureaucracy that public schools have. In fact they’d become new public schools themselves.
Vouchers aren’t the answer, the best way to improve the quality of public schools is to make well though-out investments in their facilities and equipment, significantly raise the salaries and autonomy of teachers in order to better attract and retain qualified and highly motivated people to the profession, do away with the idea of making funding strictly conditional to performance which invariably leads to schools wasting huge chunks of time coaching students on how to take the exams instead of actually teaching them and, most important of all, actually make efforts to get parents involved in their kids’ education; many studies have shown that both individual students as well as schools as a whole do better when parents are a part of the process.
That’s all I can think of right now. I’m curious to hear what anyone else has to say, especially the few teachers that I know read this.
Raphy
I didn’t watch the dem response either since I skipped the entire SOTU speech.
>Billy S. was right. Let’s kill all the lawyers.
Start with the judges. If they weren’t so willing to proceed with obviously frivolous lawsuits to begin with, the problem would likely go away on its own, especially if they fined the frivolous complainants (and their lawyers) for wasting the court’s time.
School vouchers and No Child Left Behind, or, as my in-laws, both teachers, call it “No Idiot Left Behind.”
The problem with both of these programs is that it assumes that the schools are to blame for kids failing to meet the goals we think they should be meeting. In some cases, this is entirely true…poor teachers will produce fewer good students. But it ignores one key thought…some kids just don’t want to learn. Some kids don’t learn as well or as fast as others. Some kids don’t care about particular subjects, and never will. And some kids just don’t care about going to college enough to put in the work needed to get good grades.
Public education is like the Draft. Everyone must do their service, or some equivilent. Everyone. What happens when you force everyone to do something…performance drops because you have people unwilling to do what they’re told.
As a society, we have to decide what we want to do about education. If we want to make it a government, social responsibility, we need to be willing to assign the necessary funds to do so. And we have to be willing to accept that not everyone needs or wants to go to college, and for those, education should focus more on basic functional skills and trade skills.
We tell our children to work hard and they’ll succeed in life. Yet all around them are examples of people that maybe don’t work so hard, yet they have good paying jobs, and seem to be able to succeed despite not working, or being inept, or even failing (I’m looking at you, Bush Administration). Maybe if we had an education system that wasn’t afraid of failing kids that fail to perform, that would shunt those without the ability or desire to learn more into more productive training venues, we’d all be better off.
This year was hilarious. Did you see Hillary? She looked like she wanted to use his blood as ketchup on her dinner table! Every time they cut to her she was mentally shooting DAGGERS!
I seriously think we need to contact the E! channel w/ your fashion suggestion.
-Look forward to next year!
unless he actually does something that gives Congress an excuse to impeach him, try him, and remove him from office.
You mean he hasn’t??
===================
And if the Republicans couldn’t manage to get Clinton. W is probably safe
I hope you’re not being serious. This is saying that getting a bløwjøb is worse than getting 3000+ soldiers killed.
Just out of interest, why is Bush still in charge? Many governments — including the one here in Canada — have the ability to oust a poor (or unpopular, or both in your case) leader in a non-confidence vote (according to some sources, we may be doing so with our Prime Minister in March). If the Democrats have control of both main houses why do they allow him to continue destroying your quality of life at home and ruining the reputation of your country abroad? I’m assuming I’m missing something.
Unfortuinately, here we are stuck with the moron until his term is up unless he actually does something that gives Congress an excuse to impeach him, try him, and remove him from office.
And if the Republicans couldn’t manage to get Clinton. W is probably safe.
The criteria for impeachment of the President is “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
So first, enough people have to agree on whether his actions to date constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Excellent point.
Thank you, Michael.
Here’s a great double-shot:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/01/24/a-tale-of-two-pictures/
You can almost see Condi trying to telepathetically melt Pelosi’s brain.
Webb implied we could negotiate with the Syrians and Iranians, as suggested by the Iraq Study Group. Their withdrawal plan is useless to Bush, because the pretense that we aren’t cutting and running has been dismissed by the rightwing as the “Iraq Surrender Group” — which sank any option of this administration taking the plan seriously. If the democrats can still use the plan to somehow get us out of there, good for them.
For the shorter time the opposition takes to rebut after the SOTU, their response is often shrill and disjointed — an unflattering showing of the opposition leadership. I was surprised a coherent and incisive response was given a higher priority this time.
Marc Grant,
In addition to what others have said about impeachment, trial and conviction as a means to remove a president from office, a president can also be removed under article 4 of the 25th Amendment. Article 4 states: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President in unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”
It goes on to say that the president can resume office if he transmits a written declaration that no inability exists, _unless_ the vice president and a majority of “principal officers of the executive department (i.e. cabinet members), or “other such body” states in writing within four days to both the president pro tempore of the senate and the speaker of the House that the president is unable to discharge his powers or duties. If this happens, Congress would decide the issue with a two-thirds vote of both houses.
This scenario for removing the president, seen in season 2 of _24_ and considered as an option in the movie _Air Force One_, would never happen in the Bush Administration. Cheney’d never be party to such an action.
But it is, in theory, another way, other than impeachment, trial and conviction that Bush (or any president) could be removed before his term ends.
For the record, article 3 addresses the issue of the president _himself_ stating that he is unable to discharge his duties. In that case, he issues a written statement to the president pro tempore of the senate and the speaker of the house, and the vice president becomes acting president. The president would then resume office when he writes a declaration stating that he is now able to do so (presumably if there are questions about this, the aspect of section 4 that deals with the challenge would go into effect; that isn’t addressed in section 3 at all).
A fictional example that addressed section 3 occured in _The West Wing_ (I’m not sure about the season) where President Bartlett stepped down temporarily when his daughter had been kidnapped.
As to the State of the Union itself, I didn’t watch it. I had more important things to do.
Rick
I thought he did a great job. If I could change one thing, I would have had him spell out exactly what he wanted to do with Iraq. The main criticism of the right lately has been “the Democrats don’t have any plan for Iraq,” and I’d like it if they were unable to truthfully say that anymore.
This scenario for removing the president, seen in season 2 of _24_ …
I *thought* it sounded familiar…