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Belief gets in the way of learning

There's no such thing as a right to violate someone's rights.

You are assuming that people worldwide want individual rights. Could you be wrong??!!

Its a bit like the monty python quote "EVERYONE IS AN INDIVIDUAL!" and then someone in the background sounds off "BUT I'M NOT!".......lol.

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Belief gets in the way of learning

Nobody in their right mind could've endorsed the Patriot Act, but that's beside the point. I mentioned it as a co-/counter-argument to the "| right to violate someone's rights" statement.

Roger that.

Over n' out. :-)

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There's no such thing as a right to violate someone's rights.

You are assuming that people worldwide want individual rights. Could you be wrong??!!

Its a bit like the monty python quote "EVERYONE IS AN INDIVIDUAL!" and then someone in the background sounds off "BUT I'M NOT!".......lol.

I'm assuming no such thing. Clearly the majority of many countries don't want individual rights respected. Iranian theocracy democratically elected is a good example. Historically people vote themselves into murderous oppressive dictatorships often. But hey, a million dead here, a million there. After a while you lose count and isn't so hard to swallow. Those people aren't really up to the task of living free anyway....

As Uncle Joe once said, "the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic."

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Account frozen...

bump

As Uncle Joe once said, "the death of one person is a tragedy, the death of a million is a statistic."

And he died peacefully in bed...

Mussolini, Milosevic and Sadaam should've studied him better.

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oops

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C'mon Octagon (i nearly called you Pentagon by accident - oops). Lets continue our discourse.....

I do want to apologize, because reading over my posts in v14 it sounds like I was discussing education and public assistance programs sliding into obvilion... these systems are badly broken, but slow progress is being made in fits and starts. There are now limits on how long someone can remain on Welfare. I think that the exact mechanisms may need work, but it is a huge improvement over Welfare as the family business for generations. The public education system is at least attracting attention, even if none of the fixes have worked yet.

I find it silly that the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers (the two main unions for public school teachers) run commercials praising the wonderful work they do, when every objective measure demonstrates abyssmal failure compared to other industrialized nations. The union instinct to "protect" its members from any kind of change is one of the biggest obstacles to fixing public education. This is why "school vouchers" are such a hot topic (in a nutshell, it lets a family apply some of the funding that the local public school would have gotten for their child to a private school instead).

These mismanaged programs limit opportunity. The opportunity for "a better life" is the primary motivator to assimilate into a new country. Countries with unassimilated immigrant populations have not only the problems of that number of impoverished people but also lack the social glue to push for difficult but needed adjustments.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Sounds to me like corporate welfare as well...

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Account frozen...

There's no such thing as a right to violate someone's rights.

cPoAuTgRhI OcToAuCgTh!

*cough* Welfareprograms *cough*

They're all the same thing.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

(Received via email... even though I've never voted for her)

Dear Friend:

The health and well-being of our nation’s veterans and active duty military is an important issue to me. I have been working to expand funding for veterans health care services, including mental health, and have led the effort to obtain a better understanding of the current mental health status of our veterans and active duty military.

I am also working to see that our injured California troops who require long-term treatment can be treated closer to home. Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Ranking Member Daniel Inouye (D-HI) have committed to work with me to get the $6.2 million necessary to establish a Comprehensive Combat Casualty Care Center at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.

California and Texas lead the nation in the number of combat amputees returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, yet our state does not have a center to treat troops with these types of injuries. This funding will allow our combat-wounded service members to receive treatment and recover from their wounds closer to their loved ones.

The Navy had announced plans to establish a “West Coast Walter Reed” at San Diego but had not identified the funding necessary to do so. The commitment from Senator Stevens and Senator Inouye will help to make the project a reality.

As planned, the San Diego Center will be able to treat approximately 200 patients a year, including 160 non-amputee patients and 40-50 amputee patients. It will provide treatment for physical injuries, emotional needs, and rehabilitation, and it will help service members return to active duty or transition to civilian life.

Currently, active duty service members who return from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe wounds receive long-term care at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, the Brooks Army Medical Center in Texas, or the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

While I lament that even one more service member would be wounded in combat, I look forward to the opening of this Center and to working with the Navy to ensure that our service members receive the best medical care possible.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

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me@rescam.org

In other words, "Let's keep them out of sight, they're an embarrassment."

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Unbelievable - Hunter's myopic stance on airport is harmful

SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE EDITORIAL

May 11, 2006

San Diego's generations-long struggle to build a new airport has reached a critical turn. Within the next month, the airport commission is expected to recommend, after an exhaustive search, a single site for voters to consider in November.

At this pivotal moment, with a glimmer of genuine progress finally in sight after decades of futility, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, has quietly intervened to sabotage the entire effort. Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.

Without a whisper of warning to the airport commission, Hunter inserted into the 2007 defense authorization bill a sweeping provision that would pre-emptively wipe off the table the three military installations being studied by the airport panel. Without any of these promising sites – Miramar Marine Corps Air Station, Camp Pendleton, North Island Naval Air Station – San Diego would be left with no viable alternatives and condemned to a chronically overburdened airport and eventual economic stagnation.

Hunter's destructive amendment, which is likely to clear the full House today, prohibits the secretary of the Navy from entering into any agreement for shared civilian-military use of any of the three bases. The provision also bluntly stipulates that the Pentagon shall not “convey any real property ... including any airfield ... for the purpose of permitting the use of the property by civil aircraft.”

In other words, the Pentagon would keep every square inch of its sprawling military bases, allowing no encroachment whatsoever by dreaded “civil aircraft,” until the end of time. It is hard to think of a more myopic position – or one more harmful to San Diego's economic future – than what Hunter is pressing the United States Congress to enact into law. His meddling in this crucial matter is a disservice to San Diegans, underscoring the notion that no man is safe when the legislature is in session.

Hunter says he intruded on San Diego's airport search, put in motion by a 2001 state law, because he thinks it is “a distraction the fighting forces don't need in the middle of a war.” With all due respect to the chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, he is underestimating the caliber of America's troops, who are entirely capable of fighting the war in Iraq and Afghanistan even as San Diego looks for a new airport.

We urge airport commissioners to take a 20-year view of the challenge before them, because it will take about that long to establish a new international airport, even if joint use of a military installation is the recommended alternative. Two decades from now, the Pentagon's needs at Miramar or North Island or Camp Pendleton may be dramatically different than they are today. This is a reality that neither Hunter nor shortsighted military commanders have been willing to acknowledge.

The obstinate view that the Pentagon must cling forever and a day to every acre of its expansive holdings in San Diego must not deter the airport authority from meeting its obligation to recommend the best site to replace Lindbergh Field. The panel's task would be much easier without Chairman Hunter's interference.

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me@rescam.org

[quote]C'mon Octagon (i nearly called you Pentagon by accident - oops). Lets continue our discourse.....

I do want to apologize, because reading over my posts in v14 it sounds like I was discussing education and public assistance programs sliding into obvilion...
--<snip>--

It does kind of sound like that LOL... i think the stats also show this. The US education still products some extremely talented people, however it seems as though the 'average' is dropping like a stone (see International Science and Maths competitions). This will in time further drive a wedge between the 'haves and have nots' a generation or two of ignorance.

--<snip>--
This is why "school vouchers" are such a hot topic (in a nutshell, it lets a family apply some of the funding that the local public school would have gotten for their child to a private school instead).

What short of bulls*@t is this?! Offload responsibility to private schools by providing an incentive to leave the public system?!! Which class of families has the $$$ for private schools hmmmmm......

These mismanaged programs limit opportunity. The opportunity for "a better life" is the primary motivator to assimilate into a new country. Countries with unassimilated immigrant populations have not only the problems of that number of impoverished people but also lack the social glue to push for difficult but needed adjustments.

At the lowest common denominator i would agree yes. When the public education regime falters or fails, you will end up with entire generations of ignorance and hence limited prosperity.

In the 1990's the Malaysian Education system decided that "english is not important" and started teaching science and maths in the "local tongue", with major reductions in 'english learning'. The results? An entire generation that can hardly speak english, in fact their english is so broken that you cannot converse with most of 'them' (these guys are in their mid to late 20's now) however when you speak to people in their 30's there is no problem (their English is very strong...!).

Now how can you employ people that cannot read/write or speak english? How to do business!?

They (the Malaysian Government) have since re-instituted English.

Even countries like Thailand where the level of english is shocking (i have travelled there many times) have now instituted agressive english learning programmes as they know the 'global economy' will likely be speaking two major languages in times to come, English and Mandarin.

(i have taken Mandarin classes...LOL...)

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Belief gets in the way of learning

This is why "school vouchers" are such a hot topic (in a nutshell, it lets a family apply some of the funding that the local public school would have gotten for their child to a private school instead).

What short of bulls*@t is this?! Offload responsibility to private schools by providing an incentive to leave the public system?!! Which class of families has the $$$ for private schools hmmmmm......

[size=9]<sarcasm>[/size]

Privatization and outsourcing has worked so well for industry... why not the do the same with the "No Child Left Unapproached by Military Recruiters" system? After all, with this new tax cut that just got passed, the upper 5% will now be able to afford private school just like the upper 1% (but there'll still be separate waterbottles for the Perriers and the Evians)...

[size=9]</sarcasm>[/size]

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--<snip>--
This is why "school vouchers" are such a hot topic (in a nutshell, it lets a family apply some of the funding that the local public school would have gotten for their child to a private school instead).

What short of bulls*@t is this?! Offload responsibility to private schools by providing an incentive to leave the public system?!! Which class of families has the $$$ for private schools hmmmmm......

I know that this is a difficult concept for many in the world. The US has private entities that run many services considered the job of the government elsewhere. Trash collection, hospital administration, telephone service, etc. are all run by private companies in at least part of the country. I think San Francisco still even has private police departments.

The amount of funding per child in the public school system would pay for a fairly nice private school. Not your "ivy league" schools, to be sure, but private enterprise can do a lot more with the same number of $ than the local government can. Even without school vounchers, many middle-class families pay for a public education that their child did not receive then pay a completely separate tuition to send that child to a religious school.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

That's right. Perhaps in european countries private schools are prohibitively expensive for all but the wealthy but quality private education is affordable to most middle or even lower middle class families in the States. Not to mention the fact that there are a fair amount of private schools that offer scholarships (partial or full) and/or adjust the tuition based on the families' ability to pay. Personally, I'd prefer to see all education privatized and eliminate public schools entirely. I advocate this for several reasons. One of those is that public schools are abysmally inadequate and getting worse. The unions are out of control. It wasn't long ago that one of the head (THE head?) teacher's union officials said something to the effect that 'It's not the unions job to educate children, it's our job to protect our jobs no matter what'. That's not an exact quote, but you get the idea. In fact, the actual quote might even be worse than that.....

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Founder of BOINC team Objectivists. Oh the humanity! Rational people crunching data!
I did NOT authorize this belly writing!

Nobody in their right mind could've endorsed the Patriot Act,

That's funny, I seem to recall the Patriot Act passing with a vote of 98 to 1 with 1 person not voting.....but don't let the FACTS get in the way of your opinion
:)

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