Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

[walrus]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

"We" are "they". The government is not an evil assemblage of Bond villains. It's the collective voice of us.)

I agree to a point but how can we change anything when we can't seem to vote an incumbent out of office no matter what they have done or haven't done. The President is forced out, the rest are lifers

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

I agree to a point but how can we change anything when we can't seem to vote an incumbent out of office no matter what they have done or haven't done. The President is forced out, the rest are lifers

Incumbency is far too big an advantage, it's true. That and creepiness like Citizens United are prime areas for reforming the system and making it more democratic.

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

Education is important to a point, and it's generally good for people to know what's going on and some level of factual information, but education is limited, as our modern society shows. We have more information available to us than ever, and efforts left and right to educate the public on all sorts of issues and situations. Yet, I'd argue our decision making is based more than ever on partisanship, petty politics, and personal agendas, regardless of what the facts show would tell an unbiased observer. Education can help, but I don't believe, regardless of how much education was undertaken, that the populace would become meaningfully more engaged and become more reasoned decisionmakers. Bottom line is for the most part they don't want to be. You give someone a choice of sitting at home and watching an NBA game or a recently released DVD, or going to a public meeting on government budgeting and such. The outcome is obvious and not encouraging. Really, there are plenty of ways for the public to educate itself on what the government does (though I'll agree that efforts could be made to make things more clear on what is spent where, etc.). But, the public, for the most part, would rather be entertained than educated.

Information is not education. The former is food; the latter, the ability to digest. While too many people are intellectually lazy and refuse to think, there's nothing we can do about them and they likely fall as noise equally on all sides of an issue. It's up to the people who can think to teach thinking to those in the next generation capable of it.

There is always a struggle between civilization and barbarism. There are times where one or the other is ascendent, but the civilized person's mission is the same in either case -- pass the gift on and do what one can.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

Information is not education. The former is food; the latter, the ability to digest. While too many people are intellectually lazy and refuse to think, there's nothing we can do about them and they likely fall as noise equally on all sides of an issue. It's up to the people who can think to teach thinking to those in the next generation capable of it.

There is always a struggle between civilization and barbarism. There are times where one or the other is ascendent, but the civilized person's mission is the same in either case -- pass the gift on and do what one can.

I think barbarism is ascendant right now. Maybe call it lazy barbarism.

 

[unofan]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

I think barbarism is ascendant right now. Maybe call it lazy barbarism.

What do you have against barbers?

 

[joecct]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

What do you have against barbers?

But if the barber is a Berber, does that give him a free pass??

 

[Kepler]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

I think barbarism is ascendant right now. Maybe call it lazy barbarism.

Maybe, but that's also how it always seems. I'm constantly surprised by how many civilized people I meet. People nearly always exceed my exepctations, when they are situated in personal rather than public settings.

It may be our group personas have become uncivilized. Various acids have eaten away the finish on communal space, and various fads have contributed to people equating being callous to being attractive. There's always an attraction to the violent or a superficial equation of rudeness with truthfulness, and it particularly appeals to the young, and the young now dominate our cultural space because they're really insecure and easy to sell things to.

(Or it's just always been this way: maturity happens between individuals, while bombastic stupidity happens in groups.)

 

[Priceless]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

What do you have against barbers?

A better question is what does he have against elephant kings?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

A better question is what does he have against elephant kings?

I like Babar. My wife introduced me to him last year and we watch an episode every so often. So I'm good with elephant kings!

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

Maybe, but that's also how it always seems. I'm constantly surprised by how many civilized people I meet. People nearly always exceed my exepctations, when they are situated in personal rather than public settings.

It may be our group personas have become uncivilized. Various acids have eaten away the finish on communal space, and various fads have contributed to people equating being callous to being attractive. There's always an attraction to the violent or a superficial equation of rudeness with truthfulness, and it particularly appeals to the young, and the young now dominate our cultural space because they're really insecure and easy to sell things to.

(Or it's just always been this way: maturity happens between individuals, while bombastic stupidity happens in groups.)

I agree that individual people, dealing with them in person, are on average much more reasonable to deal with than either groups or individuals when you deal with them remotely. Maybe we're becoming more ornery as a society because so much of our dealings are now done remotely, via telephone, internet, texting, etc.

 

[unofan]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

Or the situation where you catch an athlete in a small discussion group for class, and he's a decent, intelligent human being. Put the same person in the middle of a group of 12 teammates at a frat party, and he turns into the biggest a-hole ever suffering from "Big Man on Campus" syndrome? That kind of thing?

That pretty much what we're going for? If so, then color me shocked.

 

[Priceless]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

I like Babar. My wife introduced me to him last year and we watch an episode every so often. So I'm good with elephant kings!

A-ha! Babar is French! You like something French! Therefore you hate America!

 

[5mn_Major]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it."

Or the situation where you catch an athlete in a small discussion group for class, and he's a decent, intelligent human being. Put the same person in the middle of a group of 12 teammates at a frat party, and he turns into the biggest a-hole ever suffering from "Big Man on Campus" syndrome? That kind of thing?

That pretty much what we're going for? If so, then color me shocked.

Also a group drives competition. Competition can be good in forcing individuals to improve...and it can be bad by pushing people to become petty and self serving. 'My precious!'

I think barbarism is ascendant right now. Maybe call it lazy barbarism.

Some would claim that its in large part due to the lack of a moral compass. If everyone did well for their fellow man...things might be a bit better. This brought to you by Christmas...

 

[Priceless]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

Some would claim that its in large part due to the lack of a moral compass. If everyone did well for their fellow man...

...That would be Socialism.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

A-ha! Babar is French! You like something French! Therefore you hate America!

I claim ignorance. My wife introduced me to Babar as a childhood TV show she watched in Canada. She didn't tell me it was French in origin! What, should we just call him The Surrender Elephant?

 

[pirate]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

"We" are "they". The government is not an evil assemblage of Bond villains. It's the collective voice of us.

Bob comes closest when he says it may be a bad idea to trust the public to allocate expenditures wisely. This is true, but it's also the central dilemma of a democracy. The solution isn't to hide the details from the voters -- that's just turning away from democracy and back towards aristocracy. "Whatever the immediate gains and losses, the dangers to our safety arising from political suppression are always greater than the dangers to the safety resulting from political freedom. Suppression is always foolish. Freedom is always wise." -- Alexander Meiklejohn

The solution is to educate people so they can make smart decisions. Education here means critical analysis and logic, with some math and science thrown in so, for example, people don't just fall for any poll without asking the obvious questions about sampling, bias, etc. Education means a grounding in history, so people are aware that there are sociological factors like war fever and xenophobia that have repeated again and again through history, warping the public mind temporarily and causing them to forget their political ideals and follow some demagogue's promise of safety through repression.

While everybody will never be at that level of intellect and maturity, huge numbers of people already are: homeowners, parents, small business owners all have to practice every day the sort of logical tradeoffs, critical thinking, and long-term thinking required to run a government. And in fact those are the people who vote. People too lazy to think for themselves are often too lazy to get off the couch on election day (a reason to oppose vote by mail).

The Straussian idea of an inner circle that we could trust to make all the serious decisions failed miserably, both the liberal version during the run-up to the Vietnam War and then the conservative version during the run-up to the Iraq War. Cabals may be informed, may even be on the average smarter, but they suffer from groupthink, get weird really quick, and make terrible decisions. "The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy." -- Al Smith (NOT H. L. Menken, for god's sake -- talk about a bizarre misattribution)

The question is, which came first, the selfish public or the opiate providers?

As for education, who is responsible for that and which direction are we headed? Are we better educated than we were 50 years ago? Percentage wise? I think not.

Does the DOE get more funding or less funding if test scores go down? Does the head of the department get a higher or lower job grade if his budget and staff go up or down?

What was the DOE head, Arne Duncan's response to the info about performance of our 'students' on the Army entrance exam? In any other walk of life, he would be fired. Instead he'll be in front of congress suggesting that a few hundred million dollars and a new director of improved Army test scores department be created. They will kick up some dust, produce worse results than now and then come back for more money. And who is going to vote to not support educating our youth?

 

[Tundra]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

The question is, which came first, the selfish public or the opiate providers?

Who knows? The simplest solution is term-limits (2) for congress and cool-down period (5 years) before running again.

I've to agree about the over use of "we need more resources" excuse by every government agency when they fail miserably.

Education is simple ... either follow Finland model (with the lowest number of class hours) with decentralized education or Japan/Korea model (with the highest number of hours) and highly centralized.

In either case we need to increase the hours teaching math and reading.

I bet if you took our worst students and sent them to China/Japan/Korea or Finland they would come back much improved. Either because they were taught focused method (Finland) or overloaded with enough lesson hours and pace method (Asia).

http://www.oph.fi/english/sources_of_information/pisa/education_and_the_finnish_society

January 2004. In the new distribution of lesson hours the minimum number of lesson hours in mathematics and mother tongue were increased by one and two hours respectively.

The first steps for setting up a new system were taken in education policy decisions between 1964 and 1968. It was then decided that the parallel school system would be replaced by national nine-year basic education.

At the same time responsibility for basic education was given almost exclusively to the providers of education, i.e. in practice to municipalities.

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/bl...end-us-education-anxiety-into-orbit/?cs=44622

This year, students from Shanghai, China, took the test for the first time and basically cleaned up, placing first in reading, math and science. Of the 56 countries represented, U.S. students placed 23rd in science, 17th in reading and 31st in math, in line with where they usually place on this test. Those kinds of results barely make news anymore.

And it's not teacher/student ratio etc... or funding$$$$. you @#$%ing $$$$$ grabbing school board.

 

[Patman]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

There is always a struggle between civilization and barbarism. There are times where one or the other is ascendent, but the civilized person's mission is the same in either case -- pass the gift on and do what one can.

Ironically, I'd agree with you, but I think we'd disagree on whom the barbarians are and what we would identify as civilization.

 

[Patman]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

START ratified 71-26

So... what did we get for it? Is it the same nothing I said it was or are those "lost nukes" going to walk back to their shelves? I think we'll look back on this and wonder what bizarre group-think has taken hold in our highest reaches of governance.

 

[unofan]

Re: Obama XVIII : Now with 100% more Gov't sponsored starvation

So... what did we get for it? Is it the same nothing I said it was or are those "lost nukes" going to walk back to their shelves? I think we'll look back on this and wonder what bizarre group-think has taken hold in our highest reaches of governance.

You really think we'll look back on this in 20 years as anything other than an intermediary step in nuclear arms reduction?