US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8032

On July 08 2017 05:58 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
What answer? Everytime I ask you a question you just say, see previous answers somewhere, or see previous post somewhere. Just answer the question plain and simple. It's almost a yes or no question.

On July 08 2017 05:40 Zambrah wrote:


I think a stronger elective focus is really critical, I took Graphic Design courses that taught me up through intermediary Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and other shit like Finalcut Pro and that was a huge thing when I went to school with a solid amount of technical knowledge that let me skip past useless introductory courses in school.

I imagine it's pretty fuckin tough to get that strong elective focus going in schools and exposure to the academic fundamentals doesn't need to go away, but I think that having to go through all of that foundation is unnecessary, and having competent career counselors and services could be useful to get students on the right track to not leaving high school with jus zero idea about what they wanna do. Even if they just know what they DON'T wanna do that's better than pure aimlessness

On July 08 2017 05:58 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
What answer? Everytime I ask you a question you just say, see previous answers somewhere, or see previous post somewhere. Just answer the question plain and simple. It's almost a yes or no question. Do you consider showing shoulders a taboo is modern day USA? Yes, No, Don't know.

On July 08 2017 06:02 Danglars wrote:

I quoted the post in my response and you chose to edit it out and ask for a new answer. Mohdoo got it, you didn't. I have no reason to think a further answer will be read and not edited out because the first didn't even get discussed to why you think it's insufficient. If you need more clarification having read my answer, PM me. I'm unwilling to shit up the thread any further.

On July 08 2017 07:17 Stratos_speAr wrote:


It all depends on your school and what they have available.

When I was in high school, there was an extremely limited selection of classes, especially if you were an advanced student looking at college. Now I hear stories from younger people that went to the same high school as me and they mention all the different classes they were able to take that were never offered when I was there. And the high school I went to is a very high quality public school with a large student body.

It all depends on where you go to school, the resources they have, etc. The difference in quality of education between one school to the next in the U.S. would blow your mind.

On July 08 2017 07:19 TheTenthDoc wrote:
Education in the U.S. is hyper-heterogeneous because of how heavily localized it is. Even public schools have enormous variance in their course offerings based upon how much funding they have, state laws, and local schoolboard decisions. I needed to take two semesters of practical arts, one of home ec, one of personal finance, one of health, and a semester of government to get a high school diploma where I grew up, but that's because of the state I grew up in and the huge amount of resources my school had available because the tax base was big allowing me to take pretty much whatever over the summer along with a bunch of other advanced courses to make me satisfy requirements AND look good to colleges.

Being a schoolboard member is probably the best way to cause some positive change in your community if you can stomach it (and plan to be around for a while). Often times just having competent people can be hugely beneficial, regardless of political leanings.

Today’s Washington is overrun by two kinds of crimes.

The first is the still-speculative kind, which the Washington press corps obsesses over— Trump -Russia collusion, obstruction of justice—despite no evidence of its existence. By all accounts, special counsel Robert Mueller’s growing team of Democratic lawyers intends to devote itself to this fiction.

Yet if Mr. Mueller were serious about bringing down a threat to the nation, or even carving himself a place in history, he’d be tackling the second kind of crime, the real kind. These are the crimes that occur constantly and actually harm national security, even if they’re routinely ignored by a self-interested media. We are talking of course about the serial leaking of sensitive information, the daily profession of a new government elite akin to an organized crime network.

Lucky for Mr. Mueller, he doesn’t even need his army of legal investigators to get an immediate handle on this mafia. He can instead stroll down to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. That’s the purview of Sen. Ron Johnson, who keeps dogged oversight of government among his many self-set tasks.

That mission resulted this week in a shocking staff analysis of the recent deluge of secret-spilling, and the manner in which these unauthorized disclosures are harming national security. It’s the first congressional scrutiny of the leaks—and notable for its straight-up nature. This is no partisan document. It’s a bloodless accounting of a national-security failure, perpetrated by dozens of government employees willfully breaking the law.

The first 126 days of the Trump administration featured 125 stories that leaked harmful information. Just under one a day. The committee staff judged the stories against a 2009 Barack Obama executive order that laid out what counted as information likely to damage national security. And as it chose to not include borderline leaks or “palace intrigue” stories, that number is an understatement.

For reference, the first 126 days of the Obama term featured 18 stories that met the criteria. Ten of those were actually leaks about George W. Bush’s “torture memo,” which Mr. Obama released.

The Trump leaks show the sweeping nature of this enterprise, coming as they have from “U.S. officials,” “former U.S. officials,” “senior U.S. officials,” “intelligence officials,” “national security officials,” “Justice Department officials,” “defense officials” and “law-enforcement officials.” One story cited more than two dozen anonymous sources. Alarmingly, the titles, and the nature of the information disclosed, indicate that many leaks are coming directly from the U.S. intelligence community.

What’s been disclosed? The contents of wiretapped information. The names of individuals the U.S. monitors, and where they are located. The communications channels used to monitor targets. Which agencies are monitoring. Intelligence intercepts. FBI interviews. Grand jury subpoenas. Secret surveillance-court details. Internal discussions. Military operations intelligence. The contents of the president’s calls with foreign leaders.

The analysis lays out the real and the assumed fallout. One clear example is the May stories hyperventilating that Mr. Trump shared classified intelligence with the Russians. Subsequent leaks suggested Israel provided the intelligence, about Islamic State. This revelation caused a diplomatic incident, and reportedly a change in the way Israel shares with the U.S. Even former Obama CIA Director John Brennan called the leak “appalling.”

How many foreign allies are pulling back? How many will work with a U.S. government that has disclosed military plans, weapons systems and cybersecurity tactics? What have our enemies learned? One March story divulged sensitive FBI data on U.S. border vulnerabilities, in hopes of undercutting Mr. Trump’s travel order.

The Johnson report doesn’t go here, but let’s go ourselves: This is lawbreaking, in the aid of a political hit job. The leaking syndicate can’t claim whistleblower status, since it has yet to leak a piece of evidence showing Trump wrongdoing. This is about taking out a president. And with a role model like James Comey —who wrote secret memos with the express purpose of leaking and launching a special counsel—that’s no surprise.

But as Mr. Mueller surely knows, the Espionage Act doesn’t trifle with intentions. As even the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has noted, leaks enjoy “no First Amendment protection, regardless of the motives,” and no accused leaker “has ever been acquitted based on a finding that the public interest was so great” that it justified unlawful disclosure.

Mr. Mueller is sitting astride a leak crime wave, run by a bureaucratic underworld that is happy to harm U.S. interests if it maims a president. He can dig four years into Trump hearsay and innuendo. Or he can, more immediately, take action that would rein in the lawbreakers and restore some calm to the Capitol and the media. That’s how to really promote law and order.

On July 08 2017 08:27 GreenHorizons wrote:
My high school was/is majority minority, one of the biggest in the state, and graduates ~3/4 students, but only about 1/5 are proficient at math. ~1/2 are reading and writing at grade level, and most of the students qualify for free/reduced lunch.

Anywhere from 5-20% of the teachers are in their first/second year (in a given year). And many teachers are actually sports coaches who "teach" to supplement their income.

The school on the other side of the district is a completely different story.

Did anyone else here go to a school where the majority of students qualified for free/reduced lunch?

On July 08 2017 09:07 Danglars wrote:
Trump is a small fry, here and gone. Damage to our national security by unelected bureaucrats will stay long after his tenure with no cautionary tale of "you voted for this" ... because you didn't. Let's not focus like a laser on the president as this goes on. I sincerely don't want to explain to my children how bloodlust corrupted a republic and forever broke faith in our institutions.

On July 08 2017 08:27 GreenHorizons wrote:
My high school was/is majority minority, one of the biggest in the state, and graduates ~3/4 students, but only about 1/5 are proficient at math. ~1/2 are reading and writing at grade level, and most of the students qualify for free/reduced lunch.

Anywhere from 5-20% of the teachers are in their first/second year (in a given year). And many teachers are actually sports coaches who "teach" to supplement their income.

The school on the other side of the district is a completely different story.

Did anyone else here go to a school where the majority of students qualified for free/reduced lunch?