I’m against it, it’s a crime.
I believe in work visas, refugee status, and legal immigration. I believe in a system of charging employers who hire illegal immigrants to skirt taxes, wage laws, labor laws, etc. harshly enough to make it not worth the risk (like take the company/assets of repeat offenders, and using the money collected to fund the immigration and naturalization department and figure out how to supply labor without forcing people to be criminals to get a job.

Sadly those systems are broken.

Because those systems are completely broken and don’t serve the needs of either the immigrants nor the employees that need their labor, we have a massive illegal immigration problem because we have a massive labor shortage issue.

There is a parallel, but it’s not the same thing. We have (or had until recently) a strong well defended democracy, and an enormous population and landmass compared to 1917-48 occupied Palestine, and they had only a fledgling government when the Jewish war refugees they invited started inviting and facilitating a flood of illegal immigrants with a plan to take over the small country. Most of our illegal immigrants are here to make money to take home, I’m unaware of any efforts to return Texas (pre-breakup) to Mexican control like 40’s -50’s Israel.

IMO, Israel is like if 2/3 of Texas became “Tex-Mex” by force, a new country where only those of Mexican descent have rights, a vote, can own property, etc. and white Texans are forced to live in NW Texas under guard struggling to find food and water with Tex-Mex constantly squeezing them into smaller and smaller areas.
Strangely enough, you will note that those same flag waiving anti immigrant (not just anti illegal immigrant mind you) far right wingers are staunch supporters of Jewish Israel….almost like they don’t know history….wait…

Is it me or can you see the crowd father away from the stage lagging behind a bit?

If you have a venue sufficiently enormous the sound does take a little longer to travel back. I'd be super excited if that was the case!

Teacher here. It's made-up-nonsense. I don't give a shit what gender or sexual orientation a kid is and im CERTAINLY not going to try to convince anyone to change anything about themselves.

That said, I'm going to acknowledge that gay/trans people exist in authorship and literature as it arises. You can't read someone like Whitman (Leaves of Grass, arguably America's greatest poet) and not come across references to sexuality either implicit or explicit. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45472/i-sing-the-body-electric

It becomes relevant in passages like this:

5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused, mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

----------------------------------
Maybe a conversation like:

"'Love flesh swelling' like he's in love with some woman and they...he...?"

"Probably not, he didn't have any serious female relationships as far as I am aware."

"But the title is 'The female form'"

"Well, it's possible, but it's not likely the case that he was talking about himself being in love with a woman. This poem is in the text but he wrote many other pieces about he-himself falling into and out of love with various men and we have letters documenting those relationships with his male significant others. Although, I'm not sure what to call them because gay marriage would have been illegal at the time. He's likely writing the poem in a way where he appreciates the female form and sees men who are drawn to it like the way I appreciate watching bees act obsessively driven to the middle of flowers. I like watching Bees in action, but that doesn't mean I'm going all pollen crazy, still I appreciate it for what it is."
-------------------

This is an example of how discussion of sexuality would come up in my classroom as I imagine it. Note how I'm not trying to convince the kid I'm talking to to turn gay like it's a big game of rainbow-red-rover or something. Nevertheless, knowing the author's sexual preference in this instance informs our understanding of the piece.


My own personal theory?
The people railing against things like this are the same shitheads that can't be bothered to read ANYTHING and instead giggle and guffaw at "hurhurhurhur he hadd'a boner" where I get to live an early stage of Idocracy.

Also, I agree that the "funky stuff" shouldn't be just avoided altogether. For goodness sake, just let teachers have the difficult conversation that everyone is avoiding. Reminds me of when Peggy Hill was struggling to say "Penis" when she was assigned sex ed.

CRT is not real outside of law school. It’s a big racist lie. It’s not taught in grade school.

Edit: Yes, if true, actual CRT, the law school class, was banned in grade school, nothing would change….but you want the intentional misuse and bastardization of the phrase to mean any mention of racial disparity, racist actions, slavery, Jim Crow, racist policies including those adopted by the Republican Party at the same time those racist policies were abandoned by Democrats in the late 60’s early 70’s, any mention of lynching, the KKK, the fact that non whites were not allowed to vote, the fact that non whites were not considered full human beings in the constitution, etc to all be under the name “CRT” and want it all to be removed from schools. You want to rewrite history so it resembles the false image you think you project. It’s absolutely moronic, attempted forced ignorance. The Republican plan for children because ignorance makes it easy to abuse and control the populace.

American history is real….and really racist.
By intentionally mislabeling anything about our racist history as “CRT”, a right wing buzz word they have stripped of any actual meaning to create some fantasy racial boogeyman they can point to to excuse blatant racist policy and actions, you think that allows you to pretend it doesn’t exist, to deny it, and to return to it. Removing any mention of our racist history is racist, stupid, and is a ploy to convince right wing morons that racism isn’t real, never happened, and so doesn’t need any fixing or even teaching. It erases an ENORMOUS part of American history, and all of black American history. You love that.

You bold faced liar. That’s EXACTLY what “anti CRT” is about, renaming the slave trade as “Africans immigrating”, calling slavery “job security”, pretending that Lincoln ended racism completely (but being confused because in your mind slavery is a hoax), ignoring the murderous atrocities during reconstruction, ignoring the blatant often deadly racism that was the norm through the 70’s, and the institutional racism that still exists, never mentioning and pretending attacks against blacks like Tulsa and others, mass murders, arsons, terrorism, all by law enforcement so there’s no legal remedies for the survivors….(The Tulsa race massacre took place on May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of White residents, some of whom had been deputized and given weapons by city officials, attacked Black residents and destroyed homes and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Oklahoma, US)…never happened. The anti CRT movement is about erasing that history so they 1)don’t feel guilty or uncomfortable for trying to defend or excuse having a murderously racist history, and 2)so it’s easier to return to that racist society with minimal effort because they won’t know where it leads.

Why? Because the senators that were complicit all switched to the Republican Party after the southern strategy, and those who believed in equality and rights for all switched to the Democratic Party. Another bit of racist history you personally love to deny despite it being the historical, undeniable record of our history. They don’t want to be asked, because they either answer truthfully and are proven to be racists, or lie and lose their racist voter base. Racists are nearly all…99%+-, right wingers. They do not belong to the party trying to eradicate racism. They belong to the party that openly accepts and fosters racism, and pretends, often insists it doesn’t exist when they’re in public….your party. The party of racists, white nationalists, insurrectionists, revisionists, anti American, pro Russian, sexist, anti democracy, anti education ignoramuses.

Quit bringing nothing but dishonest bold faced lies and rewritten history to the table. That means you leave, because dishonest bold faced lies and revisionist history are all you ever spout….because you are a dishonest liar and blatant consistent racist….and a sexist.

LBGTOW (little boys going their own way)….that describes you people well, we wish you would follow through. Go on now…shoo. Go your own way, buy your own country and go there. See for yourself just where unopposed right wing nonsense leads, just leave the US out of it. Ask Musk to forget Twitter and buy Guatemala or an island nation, invite Trump to lead for life, then GO! You have so many issues with other people having rights, so GTFO and create your own white male controlled, white right wing utopia…or move to Russia….but don’t expect to get to come back when it devolves into criminal despotism, economic collapse, and ecological disaster.

Elon is dumping Tesla to pay some enormous capital gains and income taxes he’s avoided for the last decade by taking out loans against his stocks instead of selling any. He likes to say he’s paying the most taxes anyone ver has, and right wing propaganda is trying to back that up, but he didn’t pay any taxes for over 10 years while becoming the richest man ever…so divide by 10 and try again, liar, and his stock gains are also from his companies making artificially high profits by not paying taxes.
If reports are to be believed, he’s worth $200 billion now, so really that amounts to 5.25% total taxes (fed and state)….hardly his fair share…because he’s really a socialist welfare queen!
Be prepared for a massive slump in its value. He’s planning on selling off 10%, but prices will drop far more.

Therein lies the problem: most people HUGELY over-estimate their 'Acceptable risk level'.

- "This crumbling cliff edge above a 1,000 foot gorge is the PERFECT place for a selfie!" (one of the saddest deaths in WA was when one of the best skiers in the state decided to look over the edge of a cornice. It gave way and she fell almost a thousand feet to her death.)

- "100f and 0% humidity? What a perfect time to go for a 10 mile, uphill hike with only a can of Coke and some salty beef jerky!"

- "10 essentials? Beer, pot, lighter, cellphone, hat, earbuds, that little map they give you at the visitor center, more beer and is that 10?"

- "I can read a map just fine! This off-trail hike through a rugged part of the park will be breeze!"

- "I can get signal anywhere in this enormous national forest!"

- "Aww! What a cute little baby bear!"

- "Can we get an Uber at the bottom of this ravine?"

- "Let's go swimming! This raging river of snow melt will be the perfect place to cool off!"

etc etc etc

I think the worst part of these summits is their stated goals.
Paris intended to keep warming to 1.5 degrees by 2050 (no real plan beyond then)…but you might recall, 1.5 degrees of warming is considered the tipping point where feedback loops and natural processes outpace human inputs, meaning even if we hit zero emissions by 2050, and if everyone kept to their Paris agreement promises, and if other nations don’t continue to ramp up emissions, and if unforeseen feedback loops aren’t stronger or faster acting than predicted, we still lose control completely by 2050. That’s the best plan we have, runaway climate shifts in <30 years AT BEST….and no one seems to be living up to even that planned disaster of a plan. Emissions aren’t being cut, they’re increasing. Feedback loops are ramping up 40 years earlier than predicted. All the while, people are complaining that gas is over $3 (I haven’t seen it under $4 in decades where I live) and insisting we adopt some heavily polluting power generation instead of investing in green energy solutions. People assume, it seems, that some last minute fix will solve climate change, ignoring the fact that emissions from today are reactive in the atmosphere for between 25 and 150 years, so we needed to be at net zero 25 years ago to even start effecting the atmosphere today…and some emissions from the industrial revolution are still effecting us now. Net zero by 2050 (a pipe dream, and the best plan so far) is planning to fail completely…like turning off the blast furnace in your house when the thermometer hits 450.5 inside and thinking you can stop it from burning down.
If Covid taught us anything, it’s that there is 0% chance humans will be able to cooperate enough to tackle climate change. People were asked to simply wear a mask and distance a bit to save their lives, and enough refused to do it that the methods that worked beautifully elsewhere failed miserably to control a virus. If we can’t pull off such a simple, blatantly obvious plan against a virus, what chance is there of cooperation across the board to sacrifice enormous amounts of money and completely revamp our wasteful way of life in uncountable ways to stop something seen as a future problem by many? IMO, there so little chance of pulling it off that it’s statistically correct to say there’s absolutely no chance at all.

A bit odd they're making an enormous concrete dam as a carbon emission offset, because cement makes .9lbs of CO2 for every lb of cement. (Cement makes up approximately 10% of concrete by weight...1 gallon of concrete weighs approximately 20 lbs, they used 21.4 million gallons) ....that's a shitload of CO2 for materials alone.
Plus big dams kill their rivers.
Hydro electric is not really green energy....not this kind of hydro electric anyway. Maybe micro hydro.

Right after Jackass came out, a couple of friends-of-a-friend decided to stage their own version of the movie -- with a hornet's nest. They found the thing hanging from a tree at the edge of a field and it was not remotely on the small size. Also, this was in late August and the queen had already flown away, leaving the drones to slowly starve to death. Thus, the enormous number of stripey-stripey sting-stings were already good 'n' pissed-off.

They were about to get moreso.

So chowderhead A and chowderhead B have a brilliant plan: they're going to shoot this enormous ball full of astoundingly-irate murderous insects with a shotgun while they're filming it. If you're hearing banjos playing and luke-warm cheap beers being cracked open, you're about in the right frame of mind.

Places, everybody!

The stage is set: on one end, at what's decided to be "minimum safe distance", are our erstwhile David Attenborough/Jonny Knoxville knock-offs. At a decidedly NOT minimum safe distance away is the arthropod version of the T'sar Bomba. All we're missing now is a Mossberg, enough idiocy to think this can end any way but badly, and a camera. With far too much alacrity for what's about to happen, all three are provided.

Aaaaaand, ACTION!

* BOOOM! *

At first, surprisingly, nothing happens. This period of stasis lasts roughly a picosecond. Then, unsurprisingly, things start to happen and they happen far more quickly than the Chuckle Brothers planned on. This plays out in three acts:

Act 1: "Hey, uh, why is the nest still there?"
Act 2: "Uh-oh..."
Act 3: "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!"

Hubris takes many forms, and schadenfreude takes twice as many, but both combined were statistically zero compared to the number of hornets involved in this fiasco. Had the two Mensa escapees who irked said hornets thought this thing through -- stop laughing -- perhaps they would have arrived at the conclusion that 1. a shotgun slug is not the preferred load-out when dealing with a ball made out of wasp puke and 2. being the only two things visible within a 20 mile radius of the ball made out of wasp puke pretty much negates the mystery of who the hornets are going to sting the ever-loving fuck out of.

With their plans in ruins and the nest not, our heroes decide to quit the field. This is the first smart thing they've done since looking at that big ball of wasps and deciding it was redolent with untapped hilarity. The hornets are having none of this white flag nonsense, however, and they decide to quit screwing around and really inflict some pain. It's a quarter mile back to the car and the hornets are going to make them pay for every inch of it.

The final score:
Hornet losses: meh, they were all going to die in a few weeks anyway.
The chucklenuts: 23 stings, a dropped shotgun, and three minutes of footage that they took in the pre-YouTube era and thus is lost to time.

Moral:
Hornets are not toys.

The end of the war and resumption of the Third Indochina War would precipitate the Vietnamese boat people and the larger Indochina refugee crisis, which saw millions of refugees leave Indochina (mainly southern Vietnam), an estimated 250,000 of whom perished at sea.
The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Cambodians, 20,000–62,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict, and a further 1,626 remain missing in action. -wiki

So, millions fleeing as refugees, hundreds of thousands died in their attempts to escape, tens of thousands of allies killed by the VC, far more weapons, vehicles, and equipment left abandoned (and less of it decommissioned) to the enemy and a similar abandonment of the government we had been supporting. The scale of Vietnam was exponentially larger, so were the losses when we retreated. How is Kabul worse than that?

Please explain in detail how Kabul is worse. My guess....you've got nothing.

Duh....install as many high power using carbon sequestering designs as there's room for. Use that surplus clean power to offset some of the enormous dirty power emissions...suddenly there won't be enough wind and water power again.
Too much clean power is only a problem for the completely unimaginative.

He touched on why I've said for 20+ years that it's already too late to stop out of control climate change or save civilization as we know it. Even if we managed to produce more clean energy than we can distribute, switching older polluting technology over to clean energy is a bigger problem than clean generation. Assume we had the ability to power every form of transportation using clean and cheap energy....it would still take decades and tens if not hundreds of trillions to replace the combustion engines alone, with the corresponding new ecological issues of creating, building, and implementing a new power usage method across the board. In order to reverse the carbon trend, we needed an excess of clean energy and the desire to use it exclusively decades ago, because the change over will take decades after the clean power generation ability exists.... decades we no longer have.


Side note, aren't they worried all those wind turbines are going to give them all cancer?

Good thing Biden stopped nearly another $10 Billion from being available to them through banking and the IMF, now they’re just left with the enormous piles of cash and weapons Trump shipped to the region for bribing locals to be on our side and other unethical spending he wanted off the books.

@bobknight33 doesn’t seem to know where this cash and weapons came from….it wasn’t Biden, he’s not been sending more weapons and more pallets of cash during the draw down/retreat. These were in the hands of the Afghanistan government, put there by the previous administration, largely as bribe money.

Reminds me of when Bush sent $12 billion in cash to Iraq with similar intentions and $9 billion of it went missing.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani had fled the country with four cars and a helicopter full of cash and had to leave huge piles of cash behind on the tarmac as it would not all fit in, the RIA news agency reported.

Not with a P/E of ~370 it won't. A P/E of 370 means TSLA would have to make 370x current earnings to be even remotely close to its current valuation. TSLA can't sell regulatory credits and rely on BTC profit forever; at some point they have to make a profit with their core business.

Protip: they won't because they're going to be eaten alive by the number of other electric car manufacturers coming online who DO know how to run a profitable business.

TSLA is pure BBB- speculative garbage and as soon as the Fed stops holding back the enormous lake of shit that is the US economy right now, reality WILL assert itself, just like in 2000 and 2008.

Maybe Runny Rudy can help Pillowboy pay the enormous settlement he's going to owe from the Dominion lawsuit.

Stossel is a far right propagandist these days.

My theory is they waste money by offering loans for the first two years at major private universities....knowing that the classes are designed to weed out >75% of students before their Jr year. Jr colleges aren't designed to fail or burn out most students, class sizes are exponentially smaller, and the teachers are often better, certainly more accessible to students.
By offering to loan the money they knowingly set up that 75% for failure and long term debt for nothing. By paying for those two years at Jr colleges they could let students figure out if they are capable of a full degree without the enormous expense. As long as the Jr colleges are qualified, 4 year universities will usually transfer credits already.

As to trades...yes perhaps professionals can, under some circumstances, make as much as some white collar professional, even lawyers, but that certification takes years of low paid apprenticeship to qualify for. I welded for years, I built bridges, water tanks, construction tools, industrial ovens, crash attenuatiors, race cars, boats, .... my average wage in that time was barely over $10 an hour, and never over $20. It takes a long time to start earning a real living wage in most cases.