Let’s try another open thread. Please think about your words and if they are hurtful to others.
104 Thoughts to “Open Thread…………………………………….Monday, October 17”
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Blogroll
- 9500Liberty
- Bacons' Rebellion Blogspot
- Bearing Drift
- Blue Virginia
- Citizen Tom
- Counts of Monte Cristo. The
- Derecho, The
- Dixie Pig, The
- My Side of the Fence
- My Star Journey
- NARAL Pro-Choice VA Blog
- New Dominion Project
- Nova Common Sense
- NovaTownHall Blog
- One Libertarians's Point of View by Al Alborn
- Pete Candland's Blog
- Potomac Local
- Prince William Muckraker
- PW Conservation Alliance
- PWC Moms
- PWCPolitics.com
- PWCPolitics.com
- Red NoVA
- Shad Plank, The
- She the People
- State of NoVA, the
- The Jeffersoniad
- Townhall
- VEA Daily Reports
- VivianPaige
- WDGolden.com
- You, Me and the Lamp Post
Um…I think that last Open Thread was the fastest changeover yet. 24 hours? mas y menos?
Annyyyywaaaayyyssss………..
“The first wave of kids to be raised wearing bicycle helmets with their training wheels, use hand sanitizer obsessively, and be sent to the principal’s office for drawing a picture of a gun is now in college.
http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P5174
Interesting observation. My thoughts are that many of the daredevils we see in the X-games are the first ones to ever wear bike helmets and body armor…or were they the first to REJECT the bike helmets……? Are we sanitizing childhood? Is there such a thing as “too safe”?
Probably. I see many kids without helmets. Is that illegal? The helmets seem very geeky.
Amazing how many kids made it through childhood without concussions “in the old days”.
Child-sized bikes and training wheels werent invented when I learned to ride a bike. There were no life guards at the lakes where we swam. Took a bath every Saturday, but washed feet and hands in a washbasin more often. Can’t remember tooth brushing, really.
My son, just 50, wrote a book at age 8, titled “The hick and his dick” with graphic illustrations. His teacher was a Stanford MBA who got tired of the business world and went into teaching. Oh well, that was then / this is now. Parents get so darn uptight about their kids, especially the real young ones, they don’t let them have much freedom to simply enjoy themselves.
@punchaki, please don’t leave us hanging. What happened over ‘the hick and his dick?’ bwahahahahahahah. Did the teacher go running back to Stanford?
I worry because there are so many creeps out there parents are afraid of just letting their kids go play. Mine were gone from sun up to sun down. Their children don’t have that kind of liberty.
A Zuccotti Park Education
Jeff Madrick
Many observers are frustrated that they do not seem to have a clearer agenda or to make specific demands. But they have issued a set of principles or assertions. Among them, “They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage,” and “They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.” There are some two dozen such assertions they unanimously approved on September 29 and they say it is not a complete list of the concerns of those among them. They are determined, as I say, to be inclusive. But they are concerned that a specific agenda or a list of demands may shut people out or misrepresent too many.
Over this past weekend, I and others met with a few of their representatives privately. Several of them have advanced degrees. What struck me immediately is how thoughtful they are. They want to make a different kind of protest. Time and again, they make clear their devotion to this principle of inclusiveness and horizontal organization. And they are right now gathering strength around the world. There is no pressing reason for them to come up with a formal agenda. They have voice. Even Washington has to listen.
I also think it is likely their direct influence on the nation’s lawmakers and the media is underestimated. Senators talk about a millionaires’ tax. Morning Joe talks about whether banks should be broken up or nationalized. Nancy Pelosi does not fear talking on national television about the protestors in complimentary ways. There is now a new institution to answer to, and its essence is its “non-institutionality.”
But soon it will get cold in Zuccotti Park. The protesters may also face the more practical problems of sit-ins: frictions with the police that could escalate, infiltrators from the outside, a loss of control in general. Eventually they will have to make tougher decisions. They seem to know this.
I think they want to go wherever they perceive serious injustice and bring attention to the matter. If it is unfair foreclosures, they may well be there. Shedding light on the matter may be enough. But at some point, at the least, they will probably have to develop specific demands, or perhaps a set of desired reforms. There is a lot to do in America: a true jobs policy, more serious regulation of Wall Street, mortgage relief, tax increases (eventually), a truly reformed health system, a meaningful energy policy, more equal educational possibilities, and student loan relief.
They haven’t spelled out a list such as this one for the reasons I mention above. But so much is changing so fast, this too could change. The protesters are eager to hear from many people on the issues and policy options facing the nation. I will go back down to do another teach-in or two. I feel lucky to be witnessing this. It is one of the exciting social experiments of our time. And it shows how our conventional institution—Congress, think tanks, the media—did not reach the deep concerns of the American people. It shows that our democracy has been stunted. It took this group of mostly young people with an empathic vision about American suffering to build an institution spontaneously that expresses the grievances and concerns of what must be the majority of Americans.
October 11, 2011, 10:57 a.m.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/oct/11/zuccotti-park-education/
Respect your elders. They made it through school without Google, Wiki and Siri.
or in some cases, calculators @marin
I wear a helmet when I ride. It may not look “cool”, but I figure I won’t look very cool with spit dribbling down my shirt, as a result of the brain injury sustained after crashing, without a helmet.
I might have said that wrong. Helmets look geeky so I am surprised kids will wear them. I was wondering if they go around the corner and take their helmets off. I did that with the boots my mother made me wear all the time.
I agree about the brains on the shirt thing. My son has scraped skin off of every part of his body from arguments with bikes. He didn’t grow up riding with one because we didn’t know about helmets then.
Apparently helmet laws are left to localities to enact.
http://www.bhsi.org/law_va.htm
We were feet-on-the-handlebars, arms-outstretched type of riders when we were kids. I don’t think helmets were even available. We probably would have moaned about the heat and humidity if we had to wear them.
Remember the fights about seat belts? New Hampshire (live free or die) fought the law for a long time. A lot of people fought the law.
How about motorcyclists?
One of my children was awarded a saved by the belt award. I am a great believer in seatbelts.
Not to change the subject, but if you wonder why the people involved in
OWS are pissed, read this:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/18/goldman-execs-stay-fat-and-happy.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet
And if you’re curious as to why they’re getting arrested for exposing themselves to children, read this:
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/132064518.html
Busing? Remember when it was a big issue? Busing was an attempt to rectify problems in our communities. I’m against racism, but I’m also against busing. We really ought to come up with a better solution than using petroleum to move kids out of their communities. BTW we move them in buses, not equipped with seat belts. Ugh, this is my first post here, I hope I’m within guidelines?
I am curious what the exposer has to do with OWS. Any large crowd is a good place to hide if you are a fugitive.
Let me try to see if I understand you….pokie…you feel it is ok to under perform like GS just did last quarter and the upper echelon employees should still receive huge bonuses? Their stock dropped 40 something %.
Where is the accountability? Stock holders don’t count unless they are major stockholders.
Wall Street continues to reward its own just for showing up.
It sounds like the very things schools are criticized for– lets not make anyone feel bad. Of course, schools really aren’t run that way. That is just bull schist being spewed by enemies of public education to trash schools. It might have happened in some kindergarten class and suddenly became common place for every classroom in America as apocryphal tale of why little Johnny can’t read.
George, everyone should be angry at these clowns. What does one do about it?
@alex fraser
Welcome Alex, I sure don’t know the answer to that one. I am not sure how to move anyone without using petroleum or feet, at least around here.
@Moon-howler
You lefties crack me up. One incident out of tens of thousands of tea party folks and it’s the worst movement on earth. 25% of Occupy protesters turn out to be total degenerates, and it’s just an “odd coincidence of a large group of one-offs” You know we see through it, right? 🙂
Everyone knows that Obama is the biggest recipient of Goldman Sachs money, right? And he installed GS employees and former employees in Treasury and the Fed. So why aren’t the people protesting HIM?
Yeah, it’s perfectly acceptable, because our government was dumb enough to give them the money in the first place. No bail-out? No bonuses.
@Moon-howler
I am the only one in my “remedial” algebra class without a calculator. I do all my work on paper, including exponents. And most of the time, I still finish before most of the students. And I don’t think that I’m that great in math. One student, on the first day, had to use her calculator to figure basic multiplication, saying “I never learned the tables. I always had a calculator.”
My daughter learned how to do basic math. No calculators allowed.
You should have seen their faces when I casually mentioned that my last college class was in 1982. They all stopped and turned and looked at me. Then I mentioned that they didn’t have calculators that did algebra when I was in college. They had “programmable” calculators that one inserted a magnetic strip into in order to program it.
Next I’ll tell them about records and dial phones….
Hawaii is weird. Bicycle helmets required. Motorcycle helmets not so much. Seat belts required. Riding in back of pickups allowed.
Schizoid.
Another point: HCR has a law within it nationalizing the education loans. Gov’t is now the source lender.
I heard a caller on a talk show today state that he is paying off his wife’s loan at 2% interest, which she got because she shopped around. Today’s interest rate is 7% with processing fees extra. And no shopping available.
He was wondering why none of the college grads bemoaning their loan amounts are criticizing that?
Not true. You can go buy one share of GS, show up at the annual shareholder’s meeting and raise hell. In fact, that would be a pretty damned interesting shareholder meeting if everyone showed up to #occupy.
I own GS, and I’m not upset. The reason I’m not upset is that this is like Tom Brady having a bad game. Tom’s a stud delivers for me 9 out of 10 times. If GS starts to make a habit of putting up stinky quarters and paying out bonuses I’ll change my tune, but until then the bonuses are the price of keeping the talent from running down the street to JPM.
A better question would be why do you care? Unless you own the shares, it’s not your money, and GS paid the govt. back at a profit long ago. Why should their compensation practices be any of your business whatsoever?
@Cato, yea you can go and act like an AH and and when you walk away…what do you have? A reputation for being an AH.
Are you assuming I don’t own GS shares? And yes they did pay back TARP. They might have been first in line. What do you care that I support a contributors concerns?
I very much mind the huge salaries and compensations paid to some of these people, not just at GS. Unless you are a major shareholder, you can just keep on very much minding.
@Slowpoke Rodriguez
Oh dear God, Now I have to assume the sins of the left. What are you talking about? No one is talking about OWS. I don’t really give a crap about them one way or the other.
Actually I am enjoying looking at all of you all getting your tightie whities bunched up over them. Explain why they bother you so much? Do you have to walk past them to go to work? If not, change the channel.
Who are the “1%”?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/18/1-percent-most-common-jobs_n_1017640.html#s417253&title=10_Business_Operations
Here’s the true 1%.
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2011/10/1-of-the-53.html
Hi Alex,
Not sure where are goin’ with “busing”. Busing failed miserably, schools are as segreated as ever.
[running finger down throat over last 1%-er]
Talk about missing the point.
Cargo,
That is offensive to me, to suggest the 1% are veterans or are actively serving in the military. There was just an article in the Post about the returning vets and lack of jobs for them. Pretty sure they aint the 1% people are referring to.
You know what.
Forget this.
I can’t seem to write a damn thing or link to anything that y’all don’t find offensive. It wasn’t offensive. Mr. Wolf, at that link, belongs to the 1%. He is a veteran.
‘According to multiple sources, only around 1% of the population of the US has ever served in uniform- overall.”
No, I wasn’t missing the point. This is an open thread. I even gave you guys a link to the “real” one percent. Then I linked to Mr. Wolf who wanted a different definition of the 1%.
So I guess you don’t want discussion.
Sorry I offended you.
@Elena
Oh, and you missed the point. HE was redefining the 1%. Anybody can declare a 1%. And he disagrees with much of what he sees at #Occupy.
But never mind. You don’t want to read what’s offensive or whom.
@Moon-howler
Well, I guess I’d have to say “same reason the Tea Party seems to get you lefties all twitchy. And don’t take “lefties” as a derogatory thing. It’s not meant to “label” or annoy anybody.
I have just never thought of myself as a lefty. Lefties don’t want much to do with me.
I didn’t get twitchy over the tea party. I just don’t like what they stand for. There’s a difference. I also don’t like what Code Pink stands for, but damn, they don’t make me twitch. I mostly ignore them.
When all is said and done, it is probably good all of them exist. It keeps things in balance. You know, the old pendulum has to keep swinging.
Anyone watch the debate? Romney mopped the floor with Perry’s face……and he even got into the corners! Cain missed some great opportunities to jab at Romney, and he missed them…..too bad.
I couldnt find it. What channel? I also got side tracked.
@Moon-howler
I don’t have an answer–if Idid, I would run for office.
It was on CNN. I had to watch it online because Mrs. Slowpoke had to watch her cake-contest shows. They’re replaying it at 10:00. For a little while I thought Romney and Perry were going to come to blows. My advice to Romney….don’t put your hand on Perry in the middle of a loud exchange. He’s a crazy Texan and he probably feels cornered and threatened…..don’t put your hand on him! Romney really cleaned Perry’s clock, I thought. Cain isn’t doing a good job of defending 999….that’s going to be a problem for him. I’d still like to see some real analysis of 999. I’m a little less convinced about it than I was before…..I need to see some impartial analysis (good luck finding that, right?)
Replay at 11:00….my bad.
@Slowpoke Rodriguez
How did one p ervert become “they”? Does he suffer from some multiple personality disorder in addition to being a flasher?
Slow,
The Grinch did a better job at defending 9-9-9 than Mr. Cain did. I sometimes think that Cain only put out 9-9-9 to sell books. I like the idea of 9-9-9 but the details need to be clarified (for example, Cain doesn’t support waiving food and medical but he’s ok with used goods).
Romney put his hands on Perry. Now, Perry is a pretty hands on guy (see Paul’s explanation of Perry going hands on with him) but I agree with Slow. Romney did so – maybe to show he won’t back down – but Perry has that look like he’ll take you down and skin you. I might think he’s a rube but I wouldn’t dare touch the man. Forget the Texas Rangers. I’m pretty sure he’d put a hole in you and sleep well that night.
Santorum makes me laugh. The dancing during the response to the Iran hostage question and that families are the basic unit (not individuals). He’s good comic relief.
Funniest tweet of the night – for me – was from Aisha Tyler
Oh crap! I agree with Ron Paul again! I mean, I agree with Bilbo Baggins again! #fellowshipoftheGOP #cnndebate
Honorable mention for
Oh, snap, Ron Paul is spankin’ that ASS right now! Albeit while standing on a step stool, but still. He’s putting his back into it.
Now I have to stay up all night and watch it. It is close to 1 am.
George, you made me spit coke on the screen.
@SlowpokeRodriguez
You know – I thought the exact same thing.
That hand on the shoulder was sooooo patronizing I was sure
Perry was going to do something.
I liked it when Perry called Romney on his hiring illegal aliens to mow his lawn. I really don’t have a problem with Romney’s stance on hiring illegal alien labor. I also like that Romney supports health care insurance mandates. I prefer Obama, but Romney would be a reasonable alternative. Looks like Romney will be the Repugs nominee, and that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
For those of you who claim that Obama is soft on illegal immigrants, read this and think again:
U.S. deports record number of immigrants in 2011
By Lily Kuo | Reuters – 10 hrs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States deported nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants in fiscal 2011 — the highest number since the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was formed eight years ago.
About 396,906 foreign nationals were deported in the fiscal year ending September 30, the agency said on Tuesday.
This compares to about 393,000 removed in fiscal 2010.
http://news.yahoo.com/u-deports-record-number-immigrants-2011-230107407.html
This Administration has deported more illegal immigrants than any other in the history of the Republic! Comprehensive immigration reform is long, long overdue.
Ralph Nader “The Tea Party Now Is Basically The Corporatist Wing Of The
Republican Party”
http://www.youtube.com/user/MOXNEWSd0tCOM#p/u/37/f6k2SOaEWsw
Thanks for looking out for corporate interests, tejadis.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/299812
Suggestions?
My wife for putting up with me.
I love it!! The only way a liberal can win a debate….censorship! We see, we know!
@SlowpokeRodriguez
Are you referring to yourself? What did you do to land in moderation? Did you keep talking about something that you shouldn’t have? Did you put too many links in? Am I suppose to sit up all night just to make sure you don’t misspell your own email address and land in moderation?
I don’t go to moderation but once a day. Its too early.
Plus there is this little jackass who is getting ready to have his IP address published if he doesn’t stop with the harrassment that gets caught behind the scenes. He knows who he is. He spends a lot of time insulting us. Sort of like clone of Elvis.
(this is NOT slowpoke)
Social security is slated for a 3.6% COLA in 2012 but there
will be some give back amount when an increase to
Medicare Part B premiums are announced next week.
While the average SS monthly check will go up only $38 –
before Part B subtractions – it is still good news.
Every extra $ helps. Really rocking at the retirement home!
How much will Medicare B go up, Big dog?