Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

[facilitatorn]

Covid caseloads more than double in counties that are struck by trump rallies. Republicans have submitted to their monster. May they burn with him as well.

[josh]

The US educational system needs to be improved, but a lot of the problem relates to the socio-cultural problems in society whereby it's very difficult to actually teach and maintain order in some schools.  While lots of children are not properly prepared for school and learning.  The downfall of stable two-parent families has a lot to do with this.  I really haven't kept up with educational challenges in the US much the past decade or two, but they used to say that free nursery school or kindergarten advances life-long learning significantly.

Very little of the problem is from "socio-cultural problems in society whereby it's very difficult to actually teach and maintain order in some schools."

We've learned that the vast bulk of the education gap goes away when you equalize the financial circumstances of the students. Not all of it, but much of it.

We've learned that the vast bulk of the disparity in punishments between races in schools goes away when you increase the number of Black faculty in a school - not because the Black teachers aren't punishing the kids as much, but because the white teachers are not punishing the African-American students as much!

The extent of racism within our schools remains both high and challenging to address effectively.

And with all of that, should we manage to somehow rectify it all, we would still need to improve our schooled, as they do a dreadful job preparing students for the world they are to enter, regardless of whether that's work post high school or college and beyond.

They largely do not come out well prepared to take command of their own further education and/or skill development.

/climbs off soapbox/

[bodiddley]

Very little of the problem is from "socio-cultural problems in society whereby it's very difficult to actually teach and maintain order in some schools."
...
The extent of racism within our schools remains both high and challenging to address effectively.

Seems like you disagreed with me and then largely cycled back to where I started ...

[josh]

When you know you cannot win if every vote is counted, you try to stop the votes from being counted - if you are not only contesting an election, but have no integrity.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-campaign-nevada-stop-counting-early-votes

Trump campaign asks court to stop Nevada from counting early votes

The Trump campaign and state Republicans are demanding that a state Nevada court temporarily block election officials in a Nevada county from counting early votes, accusing election officials of mishandling mail ballots and of refusing to accommodate their observers.


"It is troubling that those trusted to run our elections are going to have to be compelled by the court to follow state law and protect this election," Michael McDonald, chair of the Nevada Republican Party, said in a statement Friday. "We join President Trump in his fight for transparency and accountability in Nevada's election system."

The lawsuit, first reported by The Nevada Independent, follows a letter sent to Clark County's election officials this week by the state Republican Party's attorneys outlining many of the same complaints, including restrictions to its election observers, and threats of legal action if they were not addressed.

Filed early Friday with the state court in Carson City, the Trump campaign's lawsuit follows a months-long string of complaints from Republicans in Nevada over election procedures.

"Here, simply holding off on the counting of ballots until a determination can be reached on the merits of the pending petitions is no real burden," wrote Trump campaign's attorneys in their request for a temporary restraining order. "Ballots need not be counted until election day and, given the provisions of AB4, are even counted for days after election day."

Republicans had earlier this year mounted an ultimately unsuccessful bid in federal court to block the state's election changes in response to the pandemic, including Nevada's move to mail ballots to all active voters in the state this year, citing concerns over voter fraud.

A decision by a Nevada judge to pause ballot counting in Clark County could significantly delay results in the battleground state, given Nevada's shift to a predominantly mail-in-ballot election and the additional steps that processing mail ballots — like resolving so-called "mismatched" signatures — introduces to the process of tabulating early votes. Nevada also began early in-person voting last week and will have polls open on Election Day.

Both in the letter and in their lawsuit, Republicans claimed that the Clark County registrar had failed to submit a written plan for how the general public could observe the processing of early ballots. They also disputed restrictions on observers in the county's facilities, including blocking their access to "rooms dedicated to resolving ballot issues" or to installing cameras to monitor tabulation remotely, citing COVID-19 concerns.

In the lawsuit, Republicans also raised objections about how Clark County was handling mail ballots, claiming that county officials "intentionally lowered the tolerance number" on a processing machine leading to fewer rejected signatures.

In a statement Thursday before news of the lawsuit, county spokesperson Dan Kulin had dismissed many of the GOP's complaints as "misleading or inaccurate" and insisted Clark County had gone "above and beyond to provide access to observers."

"We have met with representatives from both parties to discuss the issue and made some of the changes they have requested, and we will continue to work with them," said Kulin.

Kulin also claimed that some of the areas Republicans had requested access to would violate voter's privacy and that the request for installing cameras was "likely not permitted" by law. He insisted concerns about protecting the privacy of ballots, which Republicans had also raised in their letter, were misconstruing the "two-person, bi-partisan counting boards."

Nevada Democrats dismissed the Republican suit as "baseless attacks to undermine confidence in Nevada's election integrity."

"So, it's no surprise that now, as Democrats hold a significant mail ballot lead in Clark County, Republicans are making one more desperate play. The demands articulated in the GOP's lawsuit amount to voter suppression, plain and simple," Nevada State Democratic Party Chair William McCurdy II said in a statement.

Encompassing nearly three in four Nevada residents, Clark County is by far the battleground state's largest county by population. Election officials in Nevada were permitted to begin counting ballots on October 19, under a package of election reforms passed in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Bethany Drysdale, a spokesperson for Washoe County — Nevada's second most populous — said Friday they were not aware of any observers being denied access to their own ballot tabulation location and would be providing their own livestream of their ballot intake area.

"We have not received any requests to do so, but it is a service to our community that we already provide," said Drysdale.

[josh]

Very little of the problem is from "socio-cultural problems in society whereby it's very difficult to actually teach and maintain order in some schools."
...
The extent of racism within our schools remains both high and challenging to address effectively.

Seems like you disagreed with me and then largely cycled back to where I started ...

That I disagree with your description of the problem ("difficult to actually teach and maintain order in some schools") while agreeing that our schools need improving and adding that our schools have systemic and endemic racism does not mean I circled back to claiming that it is "difficult to actually teach and maintain order in some schools."

I think that calling racism and poverty "socio-cultural problems" is... er... white-washing the problem.

Poverty does not make it difficult to teach in our classrooms. And racism makes teaching in our classrooms easier... depending on what you consider teaching! The kids learn plenty.

Shifting... we have high poverty, high African-American population schools that do quite well. What we (we = the educational "system") have not figured out (or are not prepared to accept, I suppose) is that those successes are not built upon the system being put in place by the people running/teaching in the schools that work, but rather are built upon the people running/teaching in those schools.

It is the people that make it work, not the approach those people take.

I hate that that is true.

[bambu.]

It’s good there is enough metal assembled for the failed wall project to weld neck collars on every member of the trump administration so they will be easy to identify in public for the rest of their lives. Otherwise it would have been a total waste.

The wall needs to be finished...law and order immigration policy.
It won't be.
Biden's immigration policy will be different, basically open borders.
Open borders, sanctuary cities, cheap labor everywhere.
It's what Americans want, obviously.

[facilitatorn]

We like taking the best and brightest and embracing them as our own. It’s worth it even when we take in bad apples like the trumps every now and again. The Khan family is a boon that offsets our plague of trumps. This will be more true when, unlike their Khans, most of the trumps will be incarcerated, God willing.

[FlyingVProd]

I support school choice.

I met a guy in Italy who owned an Irish pub in Rome, who was from New York, he was a former public school teacher in New York and he said that he hated his job and that he feared for his life, he said it was horrible. So, he quit his job, and he went to work teaching at a Catholic school, and he said that all of a sudden he loved his job, and the students really wanted to learn. He loved teaching at the Catholic school. 

And the Catholic schools are not expensive, it is just all about what kind of environment you want to be in. You do not need to be wealthy to be a Christian, you just need to behave as a Christian.

Salute,

Tony V.

[bambu.]

Speaking of God...
New Zealand was another one who went around signing
nuclear non-proliferation treaties and left itself defenceless.
Now that China is banging the drums of war, all New Zealand has for defence is its national anthem ..."God Defend New Zealand".

Australia is the same.
Britain has 140 nuke warheads....but what about rockets to fire them on?
They can easily reach Beijing.
Britain had better come to the aid of Australia and NZ or there'll be drama.
France has 300 nuke warheads, most designed to be delivered from subs. The rest by bombers.
Australia helped France, France needs to help defend Aust/ NZ.

[luee]

I blame the liberal elites who have an insatiable need for cheap nannies

Of course you do.

Because the conservative elites who did the same things, in spades, are above reproach.

Open borders and amnesty is not on the Republican agenda. Somehow it is for liberal Democrats. How does it benefit the American public? A pet project of Ted Kennedy. Uncle Joe if elected should stay away.

[LarryBnDC]

How about the slave labor in the US where prisoners make $0.30 an hour?


(it varies per state, with a few states paying nothing at all, and some but not many over $1 per hour)

Some people believe that prisoners working on the inside are taking jobs away from workers on the outside.

The idea of having prisoners learning a trade -- how to use machine tools or whatnot, makes sense.  And saving taxpayer money by having prisoners wash the dishes, mop the floors, handle the laundry, act as librarians, etc also makes sense.  Giving them a routine, getting them used to a regular job, occupying their time, and such can be beneficial.   But paying them less than $1 an hour is awful.  Money which they are just likely to recirculate to the likely overpriced prison store (I owe my soul to the company store fashion).

Hell, you could pay prisoners $6 an hour, thereby paying half what you would a civilian, and have $2 of that go to a state crime restitution fund, another $2 saved into a bank account for when they are released, and still pay the prisoners $2 an hour which would be double or even quadruple or more than what they earn now.

Took me two minutes of thought to come up with that.
Sure prison budgets would go up.  But they are artificially low due to current slave labor practices.  My proposal could be tinkered with, but seems more humane with prisoners working to get some kind of money to have upon release, and victims being helped as well.

One of the worst scams of the Prison Industrial Comlex is how much it costs for an inmate to make or receive telephone calls...

[LarryBnDC]

I blame the liberal elites who have an insatiable need for cheap nannies

Of course you do.

Because the conservative elites who did the same things, in spades, are above reproach.

Open borders and amnesty is not on the Republican agenda. Somehow it is for liberal Democrats. How does it benefit the American public? A pet project of Ted Kennedy. Uncle Joe if elected should stay away.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/23/trump-obama-veterans-choice-act/

[bodiddley]

One of the worst scams of the Prison Industrial Complex is how much it costs for an inmate to make or receive telephone calls...

You'd think that would have ended with the advent of Skype and other internt phone services.
It costs $0.02 per minute to call from China to a US landline.  And if you call Skype to Skype it's free.

[kiidcarter8]

"The daily case count on Friday hit 77,289, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That's the second-highest number of cases reported in a single day since the pandemic began. The highest day for new infections was on July 16 with 77,362 cases."



Much less testing back then of course.  Likely many more had this virus than was reported.

[josh]

Gee, Kid hasn't come in to tell us the latest IBD/TIPP poll results! How surprising. (Not!)

https://www.investors.com/news/trump-vs-biden-poll-favors-democrat-after-debate-ibd-tipp-presidential-poll/

Biden's lead is 6.4% in the four-way, up from 2.3% last Tuesday or 4.6% yesterday.

Biden's lead is 5.6% in the two-way, up from 1.8% on Wednesday or 3.9% yesterday.

My favorite line from today's IBD/TIPP poll press release?

The latest IBD/TIPP Trump vs. Biden poll finds former Vice President Joe Biden with a wider lead over President Donald Trump. The tracking poll, which includes five days of polling, includes only one day after the last debate, but the initial sign doesn't suggest a big change in the race, the IBD/TIPP presidential poll update shows.

One day of adding the post-debate results in bumpted the race by roughly 1.7% toward Biden, according to them. How big would it have to have been to be ajudged "a big change?!" This is a change from one day in 5 - they talked to 194 people a day, roughly, but 57 more for today's vs. yesterday's.

As of yesterday, 47 more people preferred Biden in the four-way. Today, 66. So... that's an increase of 7.5% for the post-debate day compared with five days before! While I doubt that full increase will hold, I imagine some of it will, given the short window from now to the election and the lack of other head-to-head events giving a big chance for Trump to gain much.

I'll take it. It's big enough for me, certainly for starters.