Not a huge fan of Pres. Bush, but kudos to him for

pk500 · Post by **pk500** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 5:35 pm

Leebo:
 
 Throwing money at education -- usually without any plan or directed toward ridiculous plans like Leave No Child Behind -- is an easy way for politicians on both sides of the aisle to get votes.
 
 After all, if the parents don´t give two shits about their kids´ education, will they look deeper than the skin at an education appropriations bill? F*ck no. They´ll just see that Uncle Sam is spending more money on education, relieving even more responsibility from them to educate their kids and have stable home lives.
 
 We´re a government of entitlement, on both sides of the aisle. And entitlement breeds a horrible lack of responsibility, the No. 1 underlying political and social problem in this nation right now. No other problem is even close.
 
 The big quandary is that it´s damn near impossible to legislate responsibility, and no politician on either side of the aisle has the balls (or ovaries) to cut entitlement programs. After all, that will cost them votes, and that´s all that matters to them at the end of the day.
 
 Take care,
 PK

Brando70 · Post by **Brando70** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:28 pm

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD>Quote:<HR></TD></TR><TR><TD><BLOCKQUOTE>
 On 2004-01-23 17:38, JRod wrote:
 
 Brando. I´m not defending Clinton. But what exactly were we doing around the time from oh say 96-99. Watergate, Monica, TravelGate. We all forget that the Senate Intelligence Committee gets the same reports the President does and many of those wanted Clinton Impeached. Sure seemed we had our head on wrong.
 
 Wouldn´t it be funny if the 9/11 report game back and said if Monica wasn´t an issue we would have stop 9/11.
 </BLOCKQUOTE></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>
 
 Clinton was certainly distracted, but I don´t think that´s much of an excuse. I think he failed to act as swiftly and decisively after the first World Trade Center bombing as he should have. That should have been a wake up call. Likewise, his failure to get Osama was definitely a big screw up on his part.
 
 Bush´s responsibility lies in not taking terrorism seriously enough as well. Sandy Berger and the Clinton staff warned the incoming Bush admin that terror attacks were going to be a problem, but the Bush team didn´t see it as the top security priority. When that report comes out, it´s going to have a lot of damning implications for a lot of people.

Brando70 · Post by **Brando70** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:36 pm

No Child Left Behind is a good idea in theory, but teaching to the test doesn´t necessarily produce smarter kids.
 
 Brett and Pigpen are right -- you have to want to learn, or have parents that stress education. Both of my parents had no college education, but they pushed me to study and didn´t accept bad grades. I wound up being one of the first people in my family to get a college degree, and the first to go to grad school.
 
 I think you have to have standards, but it´s too easy to point to a teacher when a kid fails. There are certainly some bad teachers out there, but I think most kids that don´t do well choose not to do well and don´t have parents that push them to learn.

JRod · Post by **JRod** » Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:54 pm

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD>Quote:<HR></TD></TR><TR><TD><BLOCKQUOTE>
 On 2004-01-24 13:35, pk500 wrote:
 Leebo:
 
 Throwing money at education -- usually without any plan or directed toward ridiculous plans like Leave No Child Behind -- is an easy way for politicians on both sides of the aisle to get votes.
 
 After all, if the parents don´t give two shits about their kids´ education, will they look deeper than the skin at an education appropriations bill? F*ck no. They´ll just see that Uncle Sam is spending more money on education, relieving even more responsibility from them to educate their kids and have stable home lives.
 
 We´re a government of entitlement, on both sides of the aisle. And entitlement breeds a horrible lack of responsibility, the No. 1 underlying political and social problem in this nation right now. No other problem is even close.
 
 The big quandary is that it´s damn near impossible to legislate responsibility, and no politician on either side of the aisle has the balls (or ovaries) to cut entitlement programs. After all, that will cost them votes, and that´s all that matters to them at the end of the day.
 
 Take care,
 PK
 </BLOCKQUOTE></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR></TD></TR></TABLE>
 
 I agree that both President´s are taking it lightly. But there´s no way in a snowball´s chance in hell would a Rep led congress led Clinton tackle terrorism in the way that woulc have solved the problem. There´s no way congress would have approved military operations in Afganistan. That´s the first problem the second is many republicans would have cried the tail was wagging the dog. They would have said Osama isn´t really a big threat to America, that a big attack wasn´t emminent and he was just trying to squeel his way out of the allegations about Monica.
 
 So even if Clinton wanted to do something he couldn´t because of Republican tactics in the late 90´s.

ProvoAnC · Post by **ProvoAnC** » Sun Jan 25, 2004 5:05 am

that´s where the problem lies...no one wants to work together. No one cares about Joe Schmo voter. If one party came up with a plan that didn´t cost anything, brought unemployemnt to 0, and put 10,000 in everyone´s pockets, no strings attached, the other side wouldn´t go for it just cause their opponents came up with it. That´s why I only vote for local govt...same stuff still goes on, but at least its not as bad, or at least here its not. Although our County Exec, totally hates us, but she´s a liberal a-hole who´d rather build another dog-park than protect our residents.