Open Thread (7/5/2007)

PB, That begs the question, what kind of food do trolls eat?

I think that Al Gore is paying attention to his son, and vice versa.  He was driving a Prius, right? 

I'm just surprised that you can get one of those things up to 100 mph.

I was unaware of anyone able to make it to the fireworks exhibit.

Also, nothing says class like going after a politician through his kid!

Dan - I'm sorry, I thought everyone knew that I had no class by now.  My apologies for you discovering this so late...

You don't think a kid's behavior reflect on his or her parents?   Little Al is HOW old...and how many times has he screwed up in the past???  Remember, this isn't his first time.

Al wants to treat us all like little children, like this is some sort of nanny state, yet one of his own kids is this messed up? 

Doing 100+ on the interstate,  and in posession of pot... and pills that he did not have any prescriptions for.  He has a history of drug abuse and problems.   Yet his old man feels compelled to lecture all the rest of us at every chance he can get... 

Now that we have that out of the way, how about some discussion of Larry, Moe, and Curly... otherwise known as Rod, Emil, and Michael?

re: Al Gore's son... who cares?  The "gotcha" politics that really seeks to descend on every human tradgedy to attempt to score points is truly subhuman and unworthy of any consideration whatsoever.

re: Conservatism.  It amazes me that the liberal position of giving back 15 cents of every dollar as "services" is considered the "right" thing, but letting people keep that dollar and provide their own services as "greed incarnate" is rather absurd.  When the government operates at anything close to the level of efficiency most charities do, then we can talk about giving the government money.  I posit that higher education would be **more** affordable if the government got out of the business.

Let's be honest, this view of taxation is really nothing more than seeking to find other people to pay for your "stuff".  Sure, police, fire, military, that's all common good and everyone should pay.  But the primary beneficiary of a higher education is the recipient and there is no reason that individual should be able to leech on the rich to get something that they'll benefit from the most.  The fact that it is so cheap to attend college shows itself in how unseriously most undergrads take their education.  College to most is really a 4 5 year drunk fest.  I used to have a problem with professors who loathe to teach undergrads (especially gen ed courses), then I came back and realized why they dislike it so much... so few people are there to actually learn.  Exactly why should society pay for the scorched ass mentality of doing just enough to get a piece of paper?

Until we get the idea that with the public receipt of money comes a reciprocal sense of duty, I'm not convinced higher education is really worth spending money on (or most other social programs).

--
j
Part-Time Pundit

> I think the elder Gores probably did the best they could with their children and at the age of thirty, the Child should be responsible for himself.

Thirty?  He's 24 right now, and his first run-in with the law was in 2000.  Therefore, the problems with the law began when he was around 17.

My Dad would have been MORE than happy to have taken some serious corrective action if I had needed it, when I was 17.  Or did the Gores "have people" to take care of issues like that for them?

It isn't my intention to attack the kid.  It really isn't. 

HOWEVER,  when his old man thinks that he has the God given right to lecture, belittle, and talk down to all of us like we're all a bunch of small children, at the same time that one of his own kids is such a mess... that reeks of hypocrisy in my book.  This ISN'T the first time the kid has screwed up.

And Tipper isn't much better either.  Remember the PMRC?   And Tipper knew better than the rest of us on that topic as well, didn't she?  Typical liberal mindset.

I guess I should be surprised that only *one* of their kids has problems.

The accident with the Kerr family sounds like a fluke.  A three-year-old figured out how to undo her restraints, the father tried to get them back on, and the mother got distracted and had an accident.  The legislation that Julia Rietz helped draft was related to 1) drivers who were at fault in an accident where someone was killed and 2) drivers distracted by interactive technologies (e.g., cellphones).  So these laws wouldn't have applied to the Ms. Kerr.

Ideas on how to make our state and national legislatures more effective can be found at this link

Michael Fuerst

At least they didn't kill anyone.......like Ted Kennedy did.

WEFT is about to have another Board of Directors election, and the Committee for the Reform of WEFT

Ah, CROW (http://reformweft.org/) ?  I remember hearing about that fight.

Caw!  Caw!  Besides Giraldo Rosales, the other two CROW candidates are Zernial Bogan and Durl Kruse.

Zernial seems like a nice guy, and I've never had a problem with Durl either.

"They haven't filed yet.  They want to do it at the last minute in order to gain the element of surprise."

1) What conceivable advantage is there to such a strategy?  Either there are other people running, or there are not.  If there are other people running, they should conceivably be talking to members in advance no matter what.  If there are no other people running, then what's the point of any sort of manipulation?

2) How much of a secret can it be if you know about it?  I'm assuming that your knowledge is not isolated; i.e., if you know about it, probably others do, too.  Now everyone knows.  At least everyone who reads IP, which I will grant you, may not be a significant number of WEFT members...

Xian - I don't think members need to attend multiple meetings before they can vote. Or, rather, we didn't. We were simply sent a ballot last time with a brief paragraph written by those running to be potential board members. We voted accordingly.