Step one, eradicating for profit prisons.

This single idea was the worst thing that ever happened to our legal system, imo. It created billion dollar companies who's product is incarceration. Like any for profit company, they minimize their costs by warehousing people in illegally crowded cells as cheaply as possible with little or no treatments or support during or afterwards and maximize their business by lobbying for ever more incarceration. The prison guard union is the best funded lobbying group in Washington, and created minimum sentencing so every convict becomes a customer.

Make prison a government function again, who's goal is turning out functional citizens, not warehousing as many bodies as they can get paid for, and we might turn a corner.....but that won't ever happen, there's no multi billion dollar prison reform lobbying group to bribe senators into doing the right thing.

I hope you are wrong. A few countries have announce goals for increasing the percentage of electric cars on their roads. The reduction in sales for gas and diesel cars should lead to less demand for gas... maybe...

Hey BSR, I appreciate your question.

It's hard to overstate the impact that Christ has had on my life. Since I was saved He has transformed me into a new person. Not a perfect person, mind you; I am a work in progress.

Before I knew that God existed, I was totally secular in my beliefs. I didn't believe in anything supernatural. When I found out that God was real, it was completely mind blowing because it meant that everything I knew about reality was in some way wrong or incomplete.

I didn't immediately become a Christian, however. I didn't know who God was, but I did know He was all powerful and personally loved me. Actually the last thing I wanted to be was a Christian.

However over the years I received revelation that showed me that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and the bible is His book. It all kind of culminated one day when God showed me my spiritual beliefs were delusional and my choice was either to give my life to His Son or deliberately deceive myself. I didn't want to give my life to Jesus but I didn't want to believe a lie either. So I kind of begrudgingly asked the Lord to come into my life. He answered and did show up almost immediately.

I knew I was a sinner, no one had to convince me of that. I knew that if God was holy I needed forgiveness because that meant there would be a judgment. I knew that was the reason that Jesus was sent, to save us from that judgment.

As Christians, our goal is to grow closer to Christ. I am getting to know Him a little better in the last few years. Jesus has come to me not just as Lord but also as a friend. He has given me joy and peace which cannot be described and doesn't come from this world. If you had one second of His joy you would never be the same and never see this world the same way again. Everything you can gain in this world is dust and ashes in comparison.

Jesus Christ is God, but also an intimate friend, and He sincerely cares about our lives. He came to reconcile us to the Father and that is His heart for every person. Because He was human, He understands our weaknesses and doesn't condemn us for it. He knows we need help and has provided everything we need to live a godly life pleasing to God.

His revelation has taught me that there is hope which is real, substantial, and available every day of our life. He has taught me to love sacrificially and lay down my life for another. He has wiped every tear from my eyes and helps me with every problem and situation. He has shown me that He is all the bible says He is, and even more. I know He is faithful and eternally, He will always be there.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1015126/download
"On or about December 29, 2016, FLYNN called a senior official of the Presidential Transition Team ("PTT official"), who was with other senior ·members of the Presidential Transition Team at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian Ambassador about the U.S. Sanctions. On that call, FLYNN and 2 Case 1:17-cr-00232-RC Document 4 Filed 12/01/17 Page 2 of 6 the PTT official discussed the U.S. Sanctions, including the potential impact of those sanctions on the incoming administration's foreign policy goals. The PIT official and FLYNN also discussed that the members of the Presidential Transition Team at Mar-a-Lago did not want Russia to escalate the situation. "

^The Trump campaign knew about him breaking the law conducting affairs with a foreign adversary but still kept him in the White House until it was clear he was going to be indited.

Also, Flynn and Kushner (again this is prior to swearing in, aka illegal) https://www.wsj.com/articles/flynn-promoted-nuclear-plant-project-while-in-white-house-1505328226

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I can go through the rest, but see for yourself
https://www.justice.gov/sco
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^All the indictments hosted on the justice department's website.

I could go through all of them like I did Flynn above, but thankfully, people are already compiling a list of contacts and the denials associated with said contacts: https://cdn.themoscowproject.org/content/uploads/2018/06/14110352/MoscowProject-TrumpContacts-0618.pdf

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And last but not least, those denials about contact that were made to the investigators arguably constitute obstruction of justice, the thing Nixon and Bill Clinton were impeached for.

Here's a quote from Nixon's first article of impeachment:
"The means used to implement this course of conduct or plan included one or more of the following:

making false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;

withholding relevant and material evidence or information from lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States;

approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counselling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers and employees of the United States and false or misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings;

interfering or endeavouring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees;"

http://watergate.info/impeachment/articles-of-impeachment


Honestly now, has Trump made any false or misleading statements about his team's contact with Russia? Has he withheld any relevant evidence?




Did he endevor to interfere with the conduct of an investigation?

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So did he collude with Russia? who cares, no one is being charged or investigated with collusion.

Did he obstruct justice by misleading any US official or interefere with said investigation? That's debateable, and we'll have to see all that Meuller is going to put in the public record before anyone can make a clear decision. But it sure as hell looks bad, and it's very much NOT "Still no crime Still ZERO ZIP NADA"

If you look at the timeline for Nixon or Bill Clinton's impeachment, a lot of staffers (human shields) went down before the investigators got to the top.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Watergate_scandal
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/johnson/clintontimeline.htm

Every time a goal is scored the other team should have to drink a beer.

If there were no wrecks, everybody WINS! And shouldn't that really be the goal?

I don't get this line of argument, America has been propping up the Saudi regime since the 50's and they are the worlds leading sponsor of global terror.

America has been too reliant on the CIA to achieve it's geopolitical goals, and all they know how to do is spread fear and paranoia followed by screwing countries over with hired goons. It always ends badly. I'm just glad Trump is taking a different approach here.

trump has asked for more money for the military; it was one of his campaign promises; he's conceded to the wants of China concerning NK and has gotten nothing in return

he also blew up a denuclearization agreement with Iran that was working and had defined goals and milestones

But can you blame 'all' of the problem on Bush/Obama?

I can recall many changes in the 80's from Reagan, huge cuts to school lunch programs, and many attempts to either reduce or totally eliminate the Department of Education.

In 89, Bush Sr. and the Governors of 'every' state held a summit, where they developed some of the first goals for future changes to education. These included some of the first recommended changes to standards-based education.

During both of Clinton's terms they steamed ahead at full speed on these goals, leading to massive changes forcing standards-based education. They implemented ESEA, which was succeeded by the two later programs you mentioned.

So we clearly can't pin it to just one group, as both led the charge at one point or another. This is what I meant by my statement. Neither Liberals nor Conservatives can point a finger and say, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" They both grasped it and wielded it.

So, now as you mention, we have a climate which puts incredible importance on standardized testing. Because of this, and how the schools are funded, students are basically learning how to pass a test based on minimum standards as set by the government. Students aren't taught what they 'can' learn, but what the government thinks they 'should' learn.

I graduated in 1992, so I missed the true first wave of standardized tests. But if I had not been, I know I would have been *incredibly* frustrated at being forced to learn at a slower pace because all students needed to pass. I can almost guarantee I would have acted out, become more of a clown and troublemaker than I actually was in school, because I would have been bored to tears.

As you mention also, we have a highly media based group of children today. I agree cell phones should be not be allowed.

As far as the publishers, perhaps it is less than noble to prey upon the environment that we have currently. I can't blame them, however, because it would be akin to blaming cell phone makers for making products that children want for connectivity to social media. Like any company, they are in it for a profit. It just happens to be that currently the profit is more in tests than innovative learning tools/textbooks. They are simply doing what they have to do, like any corporation. I'm sure a lot of that includes lobbying to keep standards based education in place.

We can blame a lot of different groups, even parents. But that isn't solving the issue. I have my ideas of how to begin fixing it, which may differ from yours because I am not in the 'business' nor do I have children. I would say the following would be some baseline changes I would implement or suggest:

1. School Uniforms - It makes it harder to differentiate between children and helps against the forming of cliques.

2. A complete 180 from standards based education.

3. We have to invest more money into hiring more teachers. Smaller classes means less stress, more personal interaction, and more time for the teacher to be aware of 'problems' before they blow up.

4. Students should only be allowed to access devices owned by the school, ones that are for education and not instagram. What they have available before and after school is on their parents, but they shouldn't have it in class.

5. I will probably take some flack, but I do believe that vouchers should be allowed versus forced public school attendance. Forcing people who cannot afford private schooling to send their children to public education means you remove choice of the quality of learning. Once public schools start to even out in quality due to the aforementioned changes, then we can remove vouchers.

It's not even as much that BLM disrupted the Pride parade, but that one of their demands was to ban the police from participating in the parade in the future. That's actively destroying years and years of hard fought progress to bring people together, and I can't fail to call that a bad thing. Again, I hope the US chapters are different in that much, and in many states there is also much more justified outrage against the police, which is very much unlike up here in Canada.

Canada's BLM held sit in protests demanding to meet with the chief of police and then repeatedly abandoned the meetings before they were supposed to happen. They then went on to condemn the police chief for having zero interest in protecting black civilians in Toronto. FYI, the chief of police of Toronto at the time was a black man.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/mark-saunders-police-black-lives-matter-1.3587533

A BLM toronto co-founder railed at how our Prime Minister, who makes Barack Obama look like very right -leaning, is a white supremacist terrorist. Rhetoric that just means absolutely nothing and looks like little more than gross false victimhood.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/nzd4px/black-lives-matter-toronto-called-justin-trudeau-a-white-supremacist-terrorist

And then for good measure another co-founder squeezed in a quarter million dollar 'overtime' payment on their last week with the University of Toronto's Student Union. When the Student Union sued to get that money back as their was no documentation justifying paying out that kind of money all of a sudden the Student Union were racists. Eventually the case was settled with an undiclosed amount returned.

https://thevarsity.ca/2017/07/31/the-breakdown-the-utsus-lawsuit-against-former-executive-director-sandy-hudson/


BLM Toronto has done enough harm I am pretty comfortable saying I oppose them. The goal of making race relations better is of course good. Correcting injustices is of course good. I just don't see that coming from a group taking the actions I've seen, IMO they are actively making things worse, not better.

Again, that is specific to up here in Canada, I can't imagine that the US chapters can be as bad without it having been all over the media where I couldn't miss it. That said, up here I would likely have altogether missed everything but the parade as well save for having personally witnessed a just disgusting racist attack on someone at a an event. That led me to discover the attacker was tied in with BLM Toronto and suddenly seeing that as perhaps not an entirely isolated event .

It clearly says "He could appear" as in he hasn't said it, but could say it. It is following his own example of how he said he could shoot somebody. I know reading compression isn't his strong point, hell, we all know he can only read comfortably about a 4th grade level (though I have no doubt he could read at the typical 9th grade level with a bit more effort on his part), but I'd expect more from some others...

Trump won because Christians hate Democrats, despite the fact the Democratic party is closer to Christ's teachings than the Republicans are. Hell, we almost got a child molester as a Senator because the Christians didn't care if he was a child molester being true, they'd vote for him over the Democrat, who is also notably a Christian man... just doesn't act inappropriately around little girls. The only reason Roy More lost in the end, was because he went the extra mile to say America was last great when we had slaves, and we should get rid of all the amendments but the first 10, like the ones that allowed women and blacks to vote. Now they'll soon have the ability to persecute others for sinning differently than they do, which is modern Christian's goals. "How dare that person be gay, my sin is nothing, their sin is gross, and I don't give a fuck what Jesus said about loving one another, or not tossing stones, or treating others the way I'd want to be treated, I'll treat them with bigotry and hatred, but I'll tell them I love them, I just hate everything about them, because I'm Christian after all, love the sinner, hate the sin." Again, not a direct quote, just what one has to be thinking when they say they don't want equal rights under the law for LGBTQIA+ people, and won't bake them a cake for a wedding, because there can be no other thought process to ignore the golden rule and everything else Jesus taught. Recall, I used to be a hardline Fox news, GOP voting fool, but couldn't reconcile the teachings of Jesus with the GOP... and eventually, because only I seemed to have had that revelation, lost faith in the ass, and even if he is real, I'd still rather burn in hell than be around my family and the rest of the far right for all eternity.

It also has to do with a severe lack of education. 40 some percent of American's believe the universe is 6,000-10,000 years old because their Bible says so. A large number doesn't accept the science of climate change... too many idiots believe Fox news is honest and truthful, because they don't care to learn how to properly vet news and information.

Also has to do with greed. Pure unadulterated greed. People caring more for their pocket books, their job situation, than what will do the most good for the most number of people.

Not news...barely opinion. and don't forget lies

hmm all of the other countries that are part of this are going to continue with the treaty including Iran

inspectors have shown that all of the goals were being met and they are drastic goals

trump is just garbage; it's been suggested that he bailed to drive up oil prices which help his russian buddies; I doubt it was intentional because he's an effing moron, but they are benefiting

Not that I saw, but I didn't watch it all.
The glaring issue to me was, when asked 'You found out in 2015 about this data breach, when did you notify your customers?'
he answered with 'When we found out, we removed the apps and asked the thieving companies to delete the data, and took their word that they did...which was a mistake.', never addressing the question because they still haven't notified all the customers whose data was taken by this one breach and never would have if it hadn't been discovered by investigators and made public, and make no mistake it's far from the only breach.
To me, it's outrageous that he's pretending that keeping your data private is a goal, it's not. They exist by selling your data. Nothing's free, and things that claim to be free usually cost far more than you would voluntarily pay.

Heh, awesome.
Had to check the stats 'cos I know nothing of NHL. The top forty guys in the league are consistently up over 0.90 save percentage, topping out at 0.93. This guy is 0.875 in his rec league, so... pretty good but, statistically speaking, one more shot and it would have been a goal. The fact that he streaked like this, AND in the "big leagues" IS a feat.

From: http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/07/media/sinclair-broadcasting-promos-media-bashing/index.html

The instructions for producing and airing the localized versions went into great detail about how the promos "should look and sound," according to another document obtained by CNN.

"Talent should dress in jewel tones -- however they should not look political in their dress or attire," one of the documents says. "Avoid total red, blue and purples dresses and suits. Avoid totally red, blue and purple ties, the goal is to look apolitical, neutral, nonpartisan yet professional. Black or charcoal suits for men...females should wear yellow, gold, magenta, cyan, but avoid red, blue or purple."

At the end of the promo, viewers are encouraged to send in feedback "if you believe our coverage is unfair."

The instructions say that "corporate will monitor the comments and send replies to your audience on your behalf."

In other words, local stations are cut out of the interactions with viewers. Management will handle it instead.