>> ^Selektaa:

Dear America,
Please STFU.
Love,
Haiti

Co-signed,
New Zealand
Japan
and Chile

Added that for you

Well, that was an easy one to disprove. Via Wikipedia:

Riots in the 1970s
1970 - Kent State shootings, May 1970, (Kent, Ohio, United States)
1970 - Hard Hat riot, Wall Street, May 8, 1970, (New York City, New York, United States)
1970 - Harakat Tahrir riots, June 17, 1970 El-Aaiun[citation needed]
1970 - Falls Curfew (Belfast, Northern Ireland on 3–5 July 1970)
1970 - Fatti di Reggio, July 1970, (Reggio Calabria, Italy)
1970 - Koza riot, December 20, (Ryukyu Islands, United States, later Okinawa Prefecture, Japan)
1971 - May Day Protests 1971, May 1971, (Washington, D.C., United States)
1971 - 1971 Springbok tour (Australia)
1971 - Camden Riots, August 1971, (Camden, New Jersey, United States)
1971 - Operation Demetrius (Northern Ireland on August 9–11, 1971)
1971 - Attica Prison uprising, (Attica, New York, United States)
1971 - Indo-Pakistani War of 1971
1972 - Bloody Sunday (Derry, Northern Ireland on 30 January 1972)
1972 - Operation Motorman (Northern Ireland on 31 July 1972)
1973 and 1974 - Athens Polytechnic uprising, Greek student riots and revolution at National Technical University of Athens, military junta overthrown, (Greece)
1973 - Oklahoma State Penitentiary Prison Riot, (McAlester, Oklahoma, United States)[citation needed]
1973 - Ageo incident, Tokyo Metropolitan Railways Riot,(Tokyo and Saitama, April 1973)[citation needed]
1974 - Cherry Blossom Festival at the Richmond Stadium, (Richmond, Virginia, United States)[citation needed]
1974 - Ulster Workers' Council strike (Northern Ireland, May 1974)
1974 - Ten Cent Beer Night, (Cleveland, Ohio, United States, June 4, 1974)
1975 - Chapeltown riot Leeds, West Yorkshire ,England
1975 - Nieuwmarkt riot, March - April 1975 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
1975 - Livernois-Fenkell riot (Detroit, Michigan, United States)
1975 - European cup Final 1975, Leeds United riot in Paris
1976 - Vitoria Riots, March 3 (Vitoria, Basque Country, Spain)
1976 - Kobe Festival Riot by motorcycle gangs (Bōsōzoku), May 15 in Japan
1976 - Notting Hill Carnival Riot (London, England)
1976 - Soweto Riots (Soweto, South Africa)
1977 - 1977 Egyptian Bread Riots, January, 1977, (Egypt)
1977 - New York City Blackout riot, July 1977, (New York City, United States)
1977 - Sri Lankan riots of 1977, (Sri Lanka)
1978 - Rameeza Bee Riots, (Hyderabad, India)
1979 - Disco Demolition Night, (Chicago, Illinois, United States)
1979 - White Night gay riots, May 1979 (San Francisco, California)
1979 - Greensboro Riot/Shootings, Nov. 1979, (Greensboro, North Carolina, United States)
1979 - Southall Riots, (Southall, West London, England)

>> ^quantumushroom:

Of course, watching an atheist angered by a lack of morality in the populace is hilarious. People didn't regularly act this way 40 years ago. What changed?
Not everyone proclaiming to be a Christian follows Thou shalt not steal all the time, but more of them have values than the ones raised with....NOTHING.


So what's the reason that all these god-fearing, morally-informed-with-superior-'Christian'-values people engaged in riots? Ummm... maybe it is because the proximate causes of a riot are based on economic and societal conditions and not prevented by a 2000 year old book. Also worth noting in the list is included Bloody Sunday, which, if I remember correctly, was part of a conflict based on rival gangs within your beloved Christianity kicking the shit out of each other.

1. I have no problem with teachers being held more accountable in a fair manner, and that they could be let go for poor performance more easily than they are now. The fundamental problem with getting rid of subpar teachers is we don't have enough teachers as is. You can be selective when there actually is a surplus of people wanting to teach. You can't pay teachers a crappy salary, then fire them more readily for poor performance when you have class sizes of 30-40 students. That's my entire point. Right now, the problem is not that you can't get rid of bad teachers. The problem is you can't attract enough good ones, and when you do get them, they leave because the job sucks, and they're not paid enough.

2. We are born with predispositions for certain kinds of intelligence. The ability to teach well is an exceptional skillset. You have to have the right blend of intelligence to learn the subject matter you want to teach, plus the emotional and social intelligence to relate that information to other people, most of whom do not think like you do. The natural ability alone isn't enough, you are correct. But there are people who just will never be good at teaching no matter how hard they work at it. If you haven't the social and emotional intelligence to relate well to others, you won't be a good teacher.

3. The devil is in the details. If a teacher has a class of 37 8th grade students, most with special needs with learning disabilities, and the teacher gets no special education help, should the teacher's performance evaluation be negative if the kids' performances are subpar? (I faced that my last year of teaching, went to guidance dept, raised a stink about it, and their response was that's the best they could do. Thankfully, I left the first week of the school year when I got my first permanent IT job, but I raised a stink anyway because that wasn't fair to the person who would replace me. Our pay wasn't influenced by student performance, thankfully, because that's fundamentally unfair. What about the fact that the #1 factor in a student's achievement is the socio-economic class of the parent(s)? Does that mean teachers in inner-city schools should get more negative performance evaluations than teachers in suburbia? It's easier said than done. And this is the problem with comparing how the business sector works with public education. In the business sector, if these factors caused the business to not perform well, the business would get shut down, and there would be far less negative societal problems because of it. Sure, a few people would lose their jobs, but it's not as likely to cause very long lasting repercussions. If public schools' mission is to provide everyone with a basic education, you can't shut the inner-city school down. Even if you don't shut them down, if teachers realize they'll get paid less because their performance hinges on factors that are not under their control, such as the socio-economic class of the student, they'll flee inner-city schools to teach in suburbia, which means the inner-city schools who desperately need the best teachers will get worse ones.

It's really simple to say there should be merit based pay for teachers. On principle, I agree. But I haven't yet seen a merit based pay system for teachers that addresses all of these kinds of problems, which are significant fundamental problems you can't simply ignore just because such a system works in the private sector.

5.

a) There is incentive to take the risk if it also meant if teachers perform better, overall pay would on average could go up for teachers. But that's not on the table, let's be honest. The real reason teachers aren't getting paid more on average is there's not enough public support for the higher taxes that would have to be paid. And once again, it's a crappy job as is, so why would someone be in favor of making a crappy job even less secure? You don't have enough teachers, period, and even if you did, you're not attracting enough talented individuals to become and remain teachers. How does it make sense to make the job less secure then until you correct that problem.

b) I disagree with you about teacher unions. First off, I lump in any organization that collectively advocates for employees as a "union" when I hear people say "teacher's unions". Here in Virginia, there is the Virginia Education Association, which is an affiliate of the National Education Association. However, it is not a union; it can't initiate strikes. It's a professional association, just like the NEA at the national level. Some states do in fact have teacher unions, some don't. Would you call the following technically unions:

American Medical Association
American Bar Association
American Dental Association

So to lump teachers all together and say they are all unionized is not true.

The VEA and the NEA would not be worried in the slightest about a reduction of members because they still advocate for things other than pay, and teachers are fools if they don't join because, as an example, the VEA/NEA is the absolute cheapest way to acquire liability insurance (if you get sued for anything you do at your job, and there's a lot you can get sued for that makes no sense).

I'm not particularly gung ho about unions in general, nor for teacher unions and associations, but their existence is needed, and they're not nearly as rigid as you're suggesting.

The arts thing, once again, the arts can be a driver to motivation to higher achievement in other things. I won't say they are per se correct in what they advocate, but that would be towards the bottom of the list of things that should elicit that kind of reaction by society in general. There is far more pressing issues in education where you have people who fundamentally don't understand the issue and advocate horrifying policies.

Btw, thank you for actually being open to a discussion about this. I hope you're at least learning something out of it, and are open to changing your mind at least some.

LOL... oh, we're gonna play that game now.

So what do you call the stock market crashes post 9/11, 2007, 1987, all under your heroes - George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan? Guess your boys were... what did you call them... or, right... "clueless fking idiots".

Dude, seriously, check your facts before you post idiotic stuff like this.

Just to clarify, I'm not blaming Reagan or W. singlehandedly or even predominantly for those crashes. The drop today in fact has as much to do with European markets as it does the American markets. How exactly Obama could be blamed for that makes absolutely no sense.

About Bush's spending - completely laughable. The right was 100% on board with tax cuts (which contributed massively to the deficit, regardless if you want to count it as spending or not), and both the Afghan and Iraqi wars. About the only thing they were against was the senior citizens prescription drug benefit, and even then, I sure didn't hear a whole lot of opposition by them at the time. Compare that to Obama wanting to raise taxes on millionaires by a few percentage points and the right, including you, come out saying he's a communist or socialist, which is utterly ridiculous.

Name socialist programs that worked?

I define programs socialist in nature that cause the gov't to determine what is produced (related, how it is produced), who produces it, and/or who consumes it. With that said, here are the gov't programs that overall unquestionably the US is better for it.

Universal primary/secondary education
Federal grants and scholarships
Environmental regulation
Food and Drug Administration (before it, it wasn't safe to assume the food you bought from the grocery store wouldn't kill you)
Social Security (say what you want, but even critics have to agree Social Security has run very well, and benefitted the economy for most of its existence)
Medicare (seniors are happier with their health care than any other age group, and the vast majority are on medicare, medicare has been in existence for over 45 years)
Medicaid
VA hospitals

BTW, you can't say something has been a failure just because it's having problems today. If the program has existed for decades and was fine up to this point, it clearly can be run properly. Instead of questioning its existence, it's perfectly rational to look at how to reform it to allow it to work again.

And yes, public schools are underfunded. That's clear as day. And your rationale to not spend more is preposterous. Carried to its absurd conclusion, we should eliminate all funding for education in any manner whatsoever. Kids will learn just as much outside without shelter, books, or even teachers! Funding does matter. It doesn't determine everything about achievement. The #1 factor of student achievement is actually the socio-economic class of the students' parents. However, if the school is drastically underfunded, that child's performance will be inhibited.

See, I taught public schools, so I actually know wtf I'm talking about. You explain to me how routine classes of 37 8th grade students, 24 of them with learning disabilities, in a single class with no special education help (because there weren't enough special edu teachers to go around because it's impossible to find enough special edu teachers, because, oh wonder of wonders, nobody wants to go to spend the money to go to college to become a special edu teacher because their salaries are crap, just like every other teacher, and the job is even harder than other teaching jobs) doesn't qualify as ridiculous underfunding. This wasn't an inner city school, either. It was suburbia in a comparatively well off county in Virginia. Our textbooks were 15 years old and above reading grade level and falling apart. The county didn't have enough schools, so most of the schools had outside trailer classrooms. And no, there wasn't embezzling, or major issues with misallocation of funds. The area was heavily conservative; voters would rather have low taxes than well functioning schools, and it showed. Then you have idiots who claim the schools suck, and say it's because they're public schools, and the government can't do anything right. The government failed because it did what the people wanted - lowest taxes regardless of the consequences.

>> ^quantumushroom:

The Dow dropped 500 points today (04 Aug). Are you awake yet? People are voting with their $$$ and they have zero confidence in the Kenyanesque Hawaiian (a true label, as Papa was Kenyan and Barry is from Hawaii) who has proved to be a clueless fking idiot.
(If you don't want to believe Obama is clueless, a more terrifying conclusion awaits you: everything about his lifelong ideology, thinking America is the #1 threat in the world which must be stopped [or slowed down] is 100% true).
I know you want to believe this debt crap is a 'victory' for the right. It's nothing of the kind. We are in serious trouble and both sides ain't worth sh1t, but only one side is even trying to steer away from the cliff and rocks below.
The "spending cuts" are smoke and mirrors. Allow me to explain. Say you wanted to buy a car for 100K but instead buy one or 20K. The government would call that an 80K "spending cut". The government has NEVER cut spending.
As for your assessment of me, I don't remember enough about you to make a similar assessment, you seem to always be in attack dog mode but rarely do I see you drawing on facts for arguments. The left judges programs on what they're supposed to do, not how well they work (or not). That kind of insanity can only be measured in good intentions and resources wasted. You're standing on the edge of a cliff wearing Styrofoam wings, believing you can fly because that's the intent of the wings. Gravity says otherwise.

I've said it before and will again: I wish you lefties could prove me wrong with results: e.g. actual created jobs and prosperity, real evidence the (Bush created) scamulus worked, proof social programs work efficiently without counting good intentions, and stable financial markets attractive to investors the world over. There is no consumer confidence and zero trust now.

The left's incessant demonization of "the rich" is to win class warfare votes. It can do nothing else. Obama has already apent 3 trillion dollars in 3 years. Do you think "the rich" have more than 3 trillion hidden away? Democrat spending never stops and Republican spending barely slows down.
You can be pissed at me all day long, but I'm even more pissed at the disastrous results of this piss-poor excuse of an administration.

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^quantumushroom:
The Kenyanesque Hawaiian never met a spending cut he liked. He's overclocked this economy because he wants to cripple it. Here comes the broom to sweep the moonbats out of the belfry.

Did you not notice the economic bill he just fucking signed. Spending Cuts EVERY FUCKING WHERE...and Obama saying that it's wonderful...he didn't add any fucking taxes either. You've WON EVERYTHING by supporting the richest in the nation...and you're still bitching about something that's been proven COMPLETELY wrong.
This is my problem with you QM...you're just wrong, even using your own logic and facts, you're just always fucking wrong. I've met conservatives that were smart and made good arguments and I can have a conversation with...you could be one of those people but you're just fucking not. You're given a lot of shit on here but you're also given a lot of leash I would've banned your ass a long time ago just for being stupid.

messenger,
He has every right to make it. But I don't make the same decision he's making at my income level. I make six figures, and live in Virginia. I'm not moving to Florida. You know what I think when I pay my state income taxes? I see it as absolutely necessary to have things like an educated population, those who somewhat know how to use a computer, which as an IT guy, allows me to have a job since I service said IT infrastructure. His problem is he apparently views the money he pays into income taxes like it's this financial black hole that doesn't do anything for him. It doesn't apparently go towards educating people who helped him grow his business as an example. It's an incredibly short-sighted and ignorant point of view. If everyone tried to flee paying taxes, eventually the piper will be paid so to speak. Workers you desperately need won't have the skills necessary to provide the labor you need, and in this day and age, that's increasingly skills that require more education and creativity like IT people, not manual labor. You won't have transportation necessary for your business logistics. I could go on and on.

Those who oppose income taxes like to point to Florida as proof of how taxes should be. There's one tiny problem with that. Florida gets a lot of tax revenues from sales taxes related to tourism because they get a ton of tourism into the state. So they effectively shift the burden of their tax revenues onto people outside of the state. Every state can't do that. My state of Virginia gets some tourism, but if we eliminated income tax and increased sales tax especially on industries that are related to state tourism, we'd be screwed, and we'd kill the tourism industry in our state at the same time.

This is retarded. They have stairs like that on the Virginia Tech campus, and nobody has ever complained that I know of. The only way anybody would see more than just calf is if they were standing directly under the stairs, which would be obvious. Even if somebody was under the stairs they'd see no more than if the woman was wearing a bathing suit. And the problem is trivially fixed by placing a couple potted plants under the stairs so people can't walk under it. Why is this on the news?

Except for Bush because the lamestream, liberal media was out to get him, right?

Just stop. Sarah Palin has said some ridonculous stuff that is brain numbingly moronic for presidential candidate, and it has nothing to do with gaffes or the media being "out to get her".

This isn't a gaffe:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txfqWzGMgm

She doesn't have a freaking clue what she's talking about. Or this one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rXmuhWrlj4

Can't name a single Supreme Court case she disagrees with?! Seriously?! She says any that takes away the states' right to determine their own laws. So Brown vs. Board of Education? Plessy V. Ferguson? Baily V. Patterson? Loving v. Virginia? Can't name a single one, huh? I totally get why she wouldn't name any of the above because of the political fallout, but then don't say idiotic stuff like any court case that infringes on states' rights is bad. She's not a moron. She's just not smart enough to be President, pure and simple.

>> ^bobknight33:

All Quaumtum was doing
is pointing out the blatant Bias the media has. He correctly points out that time after time after time after time after time the current fool called the president gets a pass every times he fucks up.
But the media will dog Palin on every opportunity they can.
When will you get your self absorbed heads out your asses and see the truth? You heads have been up you asses so long you all think you shit doesn't stink.

>> ^ponceleon:
Really quantum?
Defending her just makes you a troll. Please. I like you more than Shiny right now, just take it back and we can still be friends.

>> ^Enzoblue:

Hopi's didn't have cows. The first cow came to the Jamestown colony (Virginia) in 1611.


JESUS CHRIST! Haven't we put those poor people through enough Genocide, Rape, Torture, Murder and stealing their land that you have to go and take their COWS from them too?! You sick bastard!

>> ^Enzoblue:

Hopi's didn't have cows. The first cow came to the Jamestown colony (Virginia) in 1611.


Bisons then

Hopi's didn't have cows. The first cow came to the Jamestown colony (Virginia) in 1611.

You know, there are things called scope and context. Dancing in a Memorial is not the same scope or context as what Jefferson worked for.

If you're at the Memorial to have a solemn moment or Reflection about what Jefferson did for our country, I think some moron spazzing out to his iphone doesn't fit the scope of what a "Memorial" is for, nor the context.

Can you go to the University of Virginia, walk in to any classroom, and dance? Do you have a right to do whatever you want in that context, or is there a purpose that is greater than one's rights in that space and context? Can you pull down your pants in reverence to Jefferson in his Memorial. Why the hell not? ... What is the difference? The difference is context. There are certain things we do in certain places.

self expression and protest are not what you do at a Memorial.

Did any of you or the dancers read the the court's decision? Is anyone discussing it openly? I think Jefferson would probably encourage study like that before someone makes a juvenile decision. He kinda thought people should educate themselves about issues first, ya know.

From wikipedia:

Gingrich has been married three times. In 1962, he married Jackie Battley, his former high school geometry teacher, when he was 19 years old and she was 26.[105][106] In the spring of 1980, Gingrich left Battley after having an affair with Marianne Ginther.[107][108] Battley told the Washington Post in 1984, "He can say that we had been talking about [a divorce] for 10 years, but the truth is that it came as a complete surprise ... He's a great wordsmith ... He walked out in the spring of 1980 and I returned to Georgia. By September, I went into the hospital for my third surgery. The two girls came to see me, and said Daddy is downstairs and could he come up? When he got there, he wanted to discuss the terms of the divorce while I was recovering from the surgery ..." [109] Gingrich has disputed that account.[88] In 2011, their daughter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, said that it was her mother who requested the divorce, that it happened prior to the hospital stay (which was for the removal of a benign tumor, not cancer), and that Gingrich's visit was for the purpose of bringing the couple's children to see their mother, not to discuss the divorce.[110]

Gingrich has two daughters from his first marriage. Kathy Gingrich Lubbers is president of Gingrich Communications,[111] and Jackie Gingrich Cushman is an author, whose books include 5 Principles for a Successful Life, co-authored with Newt Gingrich.[112]

Six months after the divorce from Battley was final, Gingrich wed Marianne Ginther in 1981.[113][114][115][116]

In the mid-1990s, Gingrich began an affair with House of Representatives staffer Callista Bisek, who is 23 years his junior. They continued their affair during the Lewinsky scandal, when Gingrich became a leader of the Republican investigation of President Clinton for perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with his alleged affairs.[117] In 2000, Gingrich married Bisek shortly after his divorce from second wife Ginther. He and Callista currently live in McLean, Virginia.[118]

In a 2011 interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network Gingrich addressed his past infidelities by saying, "There's no question at times in my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."[115][116]

Staggering that this serial adulterer and hypocrite of the first degree is STILL doing the "Return to Family Values" schtick and equating religion with morality.

Yeah, but the students in the Virginia Tech massacre were unarmed.

UNWANTED is right.

http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/

http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

http://www.stopshariahnow.org

Little by little Shariah is creeping into our society, as per the following examples:

*footbaths in banks & airports (Minneapolis)
*polygamy (USA & UK)
*forced child marriages (Europe & Canada)
*honor killings (USA, Canada, Europe)
*spousal abuse among Muslim immigrant populations (USA & Europe)
*Islamic holidays replacing American holidays like Labor Day (Tyson Foods)
*publicly funded Shariah-Islamic schools (Virginia, NY, Minnesota)
*companies creating Islamic prayer rooms (Wachovia)
*nurses required to turn beds towards Mecca five times a day (UK)
*elimination of wine and alcohol at hotels (Hyatt)
*separation of men and women for recreation activities (Harvard)
*taxi drivers refusing to pick up passengers with wine, alcohol or seeing eye dogs (Minneapolis)
*and a growing Shariah Finance investment market supported by Citibank, UBS, HSBC, Dow Jones, Standard & Pours, and nearly every national investment bank you can think of, which is branding “Shariah” as some innocuous religious accommodation required by “moderate” Muslims

That totally looks like the video from Health class "Miracle of Life" where the pernis jackmates into the Virginia.