Patting the wrists, rolling the eyes.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Sorry to have been absent all day. Both club and Spanky seem to be misconstruing what I am saying about education funding. To anyone familiar with what has happened in this state, it is undeniable that public education in California used to be much better, and has suffered as funding has been cut. I'm not saying that spending more money will magically transform things, but it's a prerequisite for real change. There's a staunch conservative on a bus I sometimes take -- always reading National Review and proselytizing with libertarian readings -- and I have talked to him from time to time. His pet issue is education reform, and he says he's completely frustrated because any change involves spending money -- e.g., if you want new curriculum, you need to pay to replace books -- but the GOP insists on blaming the unions for everything and won't spend money, and the Democrats won't hold the unions to anything and insist on spending money. This may be satisfying for partisans, since it lets them blame everything on the other side, but it's frustrating for us parents.

I don't have any particular sympathy for teachers unions, but blaming them is like blaming government contractors for waste in defense spending. They're acting out of self-interest, just like many, many actors in other policy areas. Get over it. Blaming the unions is a useful crutch for failing to have fresh ideas about what should be done.

Improving schools is difficult. Cutting their funding, and preventing localities from taxing themselves to try new things makes it even harder.

I don't agree with much of the above, but given that I haven't slept in about 35 hours, I don't have the capacity to argue, so instead I'll be productive. What do you think about that proposal in AZ I posted a few weeks ago - It mandates that 65% of education funding go to educating rather than administration. Apparently, the national average is about 61.5%, and making that adjustment would free up literally billions.

[Gattigap]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
What does Bush think FDR should have done at Yalta? Told Stalin to get out of Eastern Europe or we send Patton to Moscow?

I didn't get it either, but FWIW Anne Applebaum at WaPo makes the argument that the comment wasn't so bad.

• Both left and right would do better to stand back and think harder about how important it is for American diplomacy, and even Americans' understanding of their own past, when U.S. presidents, Republican or Democrat, admit that not every past U.S. policy was successful -- which, by any measure, Yalta was not. Since the end of the Cold War, historical honesty has become more normal everywhere in the West, and rightly so: We aren't, after all, trying to withstand a Soviet propaganda onslaught, and we've grown more used to thinking, at least some of the time, of our national disputes as evidence of the authenticity of our democracy. To put it differently, apologies are something that democracies can do, at least occasionally, but that the Chinese or the Syrians always find impossible. Infallibility nowadays is something that only dictatorships claim.
  
  Both left and right should also consider contexts more carefully. Certainly the president's speech last weekend did not sound personal, as if he were apologizing to feel good about himself. It did not mention Roosevelt by name or wallow in Cold War rhetoric. On the contrary, Bush went on afterward to talk about the democratic values that had replaced Yalta, and to draw contemporary lessons. The tone was right -- and it contrasted sharply with the behavior of Russian president Vladimir Putin, as perhaps it was intended to. Asked again last week why he hadn't made his own apology for the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, Putin pointed out that the Soviet parliament did so in 1989. "What," he asked, "we have to do this every day, every year?"
  
  The answer is no, the Russian president doesn't have to talk about the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe every day -- but during a major, international anniversary of the end of the war, he clearly should. And no, the U.S. president does not have to talk about Yalta every year, but when he goes to Latvia to mark the anniversary of the end of the war he should -- just as any American president visiting Africa for the first time should speak of slavery. No American or Russian leader should appear unpatriotic when abroad, but at the right time, in the right place, it is useful for statesmen to tell the truth, even if just to acknowledge that some stretches of our history were more ambiguous, and some of our victories more bittersweet, than they once seemed.

[Say_hello_for_me]

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/bestplaces05.html

Forbes best places to live (or something like that).

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/bestplaces05.html

Forbes best places to live (or something like that).

Man, Spanky, you're lucky to have a job.

If you do. I'm not clear on that. For all I know, you're independently wealthy and just pull levers from behind a curtain to keep from getting bored.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/bestplaces05.html

Forbes best places to live (or something like that).

Have fun hanging with Mark Furman in Boise.

[greatwhitenorthchick]

Originally posted by Spanky
The Canadians do not have any significant group of minorities so it is not fair to compare. They only diversity they have is the fact that people of the same ethnic group speak two different languages. And we all know how well these two groups get along. My experience is that Anglo-Canadians are pretty open about their prejudice against French Canadians and visa versa. You do not see the USA about to split into two countries because of bigotry.

48% of Toronto is minorities. How is that not significant?

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
http://biz.yahoo.com/special/bestplaces05.html

Forbes best places to live (or something like that).

So pick one and go, already.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
48% of Toronto is minorities. How is that not significant?

He has not been to Vancouver either, apparently.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
48% of Toronto is minorities. How is that not significant?

I believe Windsor has one of the largest Asian communities (as a %) in NA. Maybe his perception is from the ketchup capitol of the world, and the impression of white bread that this creates?

[Hank Chinaski]

http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104x3634589

• Poll question: What do you believe Al Qeada is?
  
  Poll result (135 votes)
  A real terrorist organization (25 votes, 19%) Vote
  A once real terrorist organization that the administration is now using to get what they want (30 votes, 22%) Vote
  A completely fictional organization (80 votes, 59%) Vote

[taxwonk]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
http://www.democraticunderground.com...ss=104x3634589

• Poll question: What do you believe Al Qeada is?
  
  Poll result (135 votes)
  A real terrorist organization (25 votes, 19%) Vote
  A once real terrorist organization that the administration is now using to get what they want (30 votes, 22%) Vote
  A completely fictional organization (80 votes, 59%) Vote

It's like the mafia, right? It doesn't really exist, but is merely an invention by bigots bent on defaming an ethnic group.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
48% of Toronto is minorities. How is that not significant?

Toronto is significantly more diverse than most US cities of comparable size. (Though I think to get to 48% you need to include non-hispanic white minorities, like the Portuguese and Italians, who generally wouldn't count as "minorities" in the US.)

Toronto seems, on my sporadic acquaintance, more tolerant than NYC. (Montreal seems less so.) But then I'm not a native NYer, and I find NY and the NE in general to be noticably more racist than other areas of the US I've lived, so my view of the US may be weird. That said, I've found (without living there) Canada to be about as racist overall (including the boonies, not just the major cities) as the US, though the targets are somewhat different. Incidentally, Canada in the boonies can be a weird place.

No racism I have seen anywhere in north america compares at all to what I saw living in Europe. Holy crap, the stuff that was screamed by passers by while I would walk down the street with non-white friends ... and the really scary thing was they were so used to it they often didn't even notice.

BR(I remember a long chat with a Turkish cabbie in Copenhagen who had worked in 7 or 8 European countries, including the UK, France & Germany, about being non-white in Europe. He claimed that Sweden was the most racist place he had ever lived.)C

eta: actually I think I'm wrong about the visible vs. non-visible minority in Toronto thing -

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Gattigap
I didn't get it either, but FWIW Anne Applebaum at WaPo makes the argument that the comment wasn't so bad.

• Both left and right would do better to stand back and think harder about how important it is for American diplomacy, and even Americans' understanding of their own past, when U.S. presidents, Republican or Democrat, admit that not every past U.S. policy was successful -- which, by any measure, Yalta was not. Since the end of the Cold War, historical honesty has become more normal everywhere in the West, and rightly so: We aren't, after all, trying to withstand a Soviet propaganda onslaught, and we've grown more used to thinking, at least some of the time, of our national disputes as evidence of the authenticity of our democracy. To put it differently, apologies are something that democracies can do, at least occasionally, but that the Chinese or the Syrians always find impossible. Infallibility nowadays is something that only dictatorships claim.
  
  Both left and right should also consider contexts more carefully. Certainly the president's speech last weekend did not sound personal, as if he were apologizing to feel good about himself. It did not mention Roosevelt by name or wallow in Cold War rhetoric. On the contrary, Bush went on afterward to talk about the democratic values that had replaced Yalta, and to draw contemporary lessons. The tone was right -- and it contrasted sharply with the behavior of Russian president Vladimir Putin, as perhaps it was intended to. Asked again last week why he hadn't made his own apology for the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, Putin pointed out that the Soviet parliament did so in 1989. "What," he asked, "we have to do this every day, every year?"
  
  The answer is no, the Russian president doesn't have to talk about the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe every day -- but during a major, international anniversary of the end of the war, he clearly should. And no, the U.S. president does not have to talk about Yalta every year, but when he goes to Latvia to mark the anniversary of the end of the war he should -- just as any American president visiting Africa for the first time should speak of slavery. No American or Russian leader should appear unpatriotic when abroad, but at the right time, in the right place, it is useful for statesmen to tell the truth, even if just to acknowledge that some stretches of our history were more ambiguous, and some of our victories more bittersweet, than they once seemed.

As the dinasour pointed out, at Yalta we did not have the bomb yet. I was confusing Yalta with Potsdam. The red army was already sitting or about to be sitting in those countrys. What the hell were we supposed to to about it. Maybe we should have complained more but at that point the red army had about fifty division in eastern Europe.

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

The fraternal twin of Intelligent Design...

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/...ch_of_the.html

[Spanky]

Originally posted by greatwhitenorthchick
48% of Toronto is minorities. How is that not significant?

According to my encyclopaedia of world Geography Canada is British 40%, French 29% and other European 22%. All other races combined are less that ten percent. To say that Canadians are more tolerant is a joke. If you are not Anglo American you are considered a minority. If we followed that system in the US you could say the US is like 70% minorities.

1) The Caucasians in Canada can't even get along. The are openly hostile to eachother and the country is very close to splitting apart.

2) In Vancouver the hostility towards Asians is intense. I have spent a great deal of time in Vancouver and have seen it first hand. A lawyer in my old firm, who was Asian, left British Columbia just for that reason.

3) The true test of a country is when an ethnic group reaches five percent of the total population. In France, the North Africans gave rise to Le Pen. In Germany the turks gave rise to the SDP. In Holland and Belgium overtly racists parties are very strong. There is quite a strong party in Western Canada, whose name escapes me, is also overtly racist - expecially against Asians.

4) In the US is 13% African American, 12% Hispanic, 4% Asian and 69% percent Caucasians. Before any European nation, or Canada got close to these numbers you can bet your bottom dollar a national racist party would come to power.