bobknight33 said:

Jerry Nadler In 1998 Contradicts Everything Jerry Nadler In 2019 Has To Say

Good question, BSR.

I wasn't a Christian until I'm in my 30's. But throughout my 20's, I occasionally get asked if I'm a Christian whenever I was just being nice/helping people. So after a dozen times getting asked that, I went to a church event from a Christian friend and got involved. I only wanted to get baptized after I read the whole Bible cover-to-cover.

I really don't get attached to the church much, although I do go every Sunday & have fellowship 3, 4 times a month. Not getting attached in the sense that knowing church is like any organization with lots of people - it's natural their hearts & minds tends to go to the daily running of the church (Getting more people into church, donations vs expenses, etc.) and communal/social side of things more than the spiritual-growth side.

I'm more of a "Jesus Follower" type of Christian I guess? not impressed with organized religion, but I just agree and put myself into practicing what Jesus preach to people, his simple commandments: Love God & my neighbors. Looking at Jesus as a humanitarian philosopher perspective, I can't believe He doesn't want us to make this Earth a better place. He's all about understanding, accepting and instill love & respect into everyone...

It's crazy to see people using and twisting religion to turn this world into - pardon my French - merde... how is this what Jesus wants? There are way too many people who just want the benefit (getting into heaven? bragging right? think Christianity is superior than others?) without the effort... these we call the "free-gift (read: cheap-fakes) gospel" that really have zero value and zero contribution to the betterment of the world.

You said it right. Jesus placed the world on his shoulder, if I call myself a Christian and I don't carry the cross as He does... I'm just lying to myself and to the world.

That is a pretty great concept

newtboy said:

"He's got a knife!" (Points to discarded knife 20 ft away and continues to point his gun at bystanders, not just his suspect)
You've got a gun, asshole, and you're endangering the public with it. Should someone shoot you....for safety?
Having had a knife in their possession doesn't make a person criminal, dangerous, or threatening. It's simply an excuse to treat them that way.

Yep, she saved his life. That cop was clearly itching to shoot him....or someone. Dude needs retraining or reassigning to parking enforcement.

I don't trust your video, not even a little bit.

I know you just dismissed opposing evidence earlier up thread, but here's a link to audio recordings and english transcripts the NSA captured and posted from Israeli helicopters in the area at the time. Again, I know you dismiss it, but they certainly were uncertain of what had just been hit/attacked.

https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/uss-liberty/recordings.shtml

Friendly fire is a fact of war, Canadians on a training mission in Afghanistan where killed by USAF runs despite their training operation and location being registered with the airforce. Fatal screw ups happen in war so it seems much less of a stretch to call this an accident than a deliberate scheme against an ally.

You go ahead and believe some video referring to the 'mockingbird media' and using literally 4-5 words of audio and leaving out all other communications though, I'm sure they left it out for brevity and not because it contradicts their narrative. That's something only the mockingbird media would do...

Or perhaps more briefly, provide a little better evidence before acting like this is as clear cut as our knowledge that the earth is round...

JiggaJonson said:

I disagree. Pinpointing the problem isn't very hard if you have some idea of where to look.

As someone who was 'coming of age' in my profession when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and its successor the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I can provide some insight into how these policies have been enacted and how both have been detrimental to the public education system as a whole. The former is a GWBush policy, and the latter is an Obama policy meant to mend the original law, so both liberals and conservatives are to blame to some degree, but both are based on the same philosophy of education and teacher-accountability.

There are some other mitigating factors and outside influences at work that should be noted: gun violence, the rise & ubiquity of the internet, and universal cell phone availability, all mostly concentrated in the past 10 years that play a large role. Cell phones, for example, are probably the worst thing to happen to education ever. They distract, they assist in cheating, they perpetuate arguments which can lead to physical altercations, and parents themselves advocate for their use "what if there's an emergency?!?!"

The idea of "teacher accountability" is the biggest culprit though.

Anecdotally, I've caught people cheating on papers. A girl in my honors English class basically plagiarised her entire final paper that we worked on for close to a month. The zero tanked her grade, which was already floundering, and the parent wanted to meet. I'd rather not go into detail to protect both the girl and my own anonymity, but suffice to say, all of the blame for this was aimed directly at me. How? Well I (apparently) "should have caught this sooner and intervened." Now, the final in that class is 8 pages long, I have ~125 students all working on it at the same time. but my ability to check something like that and my workload are beside the point. I'M NOT THE ONE WHO COPY PASTED A WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE AND DOCTORED IT UP SO IT COULD SQUEAK BY THE PLAGIARISM DETECTOR (shows she knew what she was doing, IMHO). Yet, I'm still the one being told that I was responsible for what happened.

Teacher-accountability SOUNDS like the right thing to do, but consider the following analogies

--Students are earning poor grades, therefore teachers should be demoted; put on probationary programs; lose some of their salaries; and if they do not improve their test scores, grades, and attendance; be terminated from their positions.

as to

--Impoverished people have poor oral hygiene/health, therefore their dentists should be forced to take pay cuts from insurance companies. If the patients continue to develop cavities and the like, the dentist should be forced to go for further training, and possibly lose his practice.

I have no control over attendance.
I have no control over their home life.
I have no control over children coming to school with holes in their shoes, having not eaten breakfast.

@Mordhaus the part about money grubbing could not be further from the truth.

I'll be brief b/c I know this is already too long for this forum, but Houton Mifflin, McGraw Hill, Etc. Book Company is facing a shortfall of sales in light of the digital age. It may be difficult to blame one entity, but that's a good place to start. They don't sell as many books, but guess who produces and distributes the standardized tests and practice materials? Those same companies who used to sell textbooks by the boatload.

When a student does poorly, they have to retest in order to recieve a diploma. $$$ if they fail again, they retest again and again there is a charge for taking the test and accompanying pretest materials. Each of which has its own fees that go straight to the former textbook companies. See: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/schools/testing/companies.html

In short, there is an incentive for these companies to lobby for an environment where tests are taken and retaken as much as possible. Each time a student has to retest that's more $ in their pocket.

How can they create an enviorment that faccilitates more testing? Put all the blame on the educators rather than the students.

That sounds a little tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory-ish, but the lobbying they do is very real: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/?utm_term=.
9af18f0d2064

That, combined with exceptions for charter/private schools where students have the option to opt-out of said testing is skewing the numbers in favor of all of these for-profit companies: http://sanchezcharter.org/state-testing-parent-opt-out/ << one example (you can't opt-out in a public school, at least in my state)
@bobknight33 idk if i'd call business-minded for-profit policies "liberal"