A disgusting vat of filth that no self-respecting intelligent person would wade into.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Did Sundance give an award to a "fake" documentary about the assassination of President Clinton?

No idea what you are talking about. Did the Democratic Party have an entry at Sundance?

Or, is this just another instance of you finding something you don't like and concluding that it must be the product of the monolithic, always-marching-in-lockstep Dems?

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Spank is often just arguing for the sake of it and going way out on a ledge. If you respected him at all you would see that. My point was 1) several of the Dems here posted that he is basically a dull wit who can't think logically (onthe FB to try to gain favor with someone arguing with Spank), and 2) he is really the only one left from the right. doesn't 1 + 2= something is wrong, and it's proven by your sense of the place.

Serious question: If Spanky actually means what he says (like, "we won the war in Iraq"), what would you think of him? Would that mean, to you, that he is "a dull wit who can't think logically"?

I ask because - I know Spanky, I met him IRL before he started on the board, and I've talked with him many times. I believe that he is sincere about most of what he posts here.

And yet, I don't think he is "a dull wit" -- to the contrary, I know that he's a very engaging and intelligent person. I just think he's drunk too much of the Party wine, which is a danger that anyone who actually works within partisan politics faces.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
And yet, I don't think he is "a dull wit" -- to the contrary, I know that he's a very engaging and intelligent person. I just think he's drunk too much of the Party wine, which is a danger that anyone who actually works within partisan politics faces.

I haven't met spanky. I think he argues to argue quite often. I think it is an exercise in boredom for him. The "dullwit" stuff is basically what several PB dems said about him last week on FB. I certainly have no beef with Spank. I merely point out that he is the only one who bothers to engage here anymore, and I wonder if he is actually engaged most times. I do note that several of your brethern apparently feel he is not engaged.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch
Serious question: If Spanky actually means what he says (like, "we won the war in Iraq"), what would you think of him? Would that mean, to you, that he is "a dull wit who can't think logically"?

I ask because - I know Spanky, I met him IRL before he started on the board, and I've talked with him many times. I believe that he is sincere about most of what he posts here.

And yet, I don't think he is "a dull wit" -- to the contrary, I know that he's a very engaging and intelligent person. I just think he's drunk too much of the Party wine, which is a danger that anyone who actually works within partisan politics faces.

Dude, in fairness, half the Left Leaners here - like most left leaners elsewhere - are blind to anything outside what they think are the proper talking points for liberals.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man

However, Hank -- we both know that documents are drastically overclassified, and that it is completely nonsensical to expect any media person in the modern era just to "take their word for it (i.e. the government) -- which leaves us with a subjective standard for publication, based in part upon the reporters' and editors' moral compass.
S_A_M

The NYT published a story that a foreign bank is helping us trace money to identify terrorists. That is, find the guys who are planning the next 9/11 , but earlier.

By publishing the story they ruined the source for information. Perhaps worse, they exposed the co-operating bank to Jihadi retribution. Do you think it likely some other foreign business or institution is likely to want to help us once it knows the details may be published in the NYT.

Next potential allie's President: "should I help America preserve itself by outing terrorists when it is likely America's "best" newspaper will someday out me, heedless to the harm it may cause?"

The most amazing thing is the Editor who greenlighted the story, a few month back published an editorial where he admitted he had made a mistake. Was the reason that the plan was working to trip up the names of terroists we would otherwise not know about until the bombs go off and the buildings fall? No. Was the reason because it might expose that bank to attack, or chill any other entity from co-operating? No.

The reason was under the strained in-bred test he had set up he had, in retrospect, answered a question wrong for himself. The mother fucker made every one of us less safe. He is on some side other than mine.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Last Sunday, the NYT Magazine ran a story about education reform. If you go here, you'll find a post by Matt Yglesias responding to a column by Jonathan Chait about the subject, both prompted by the NYT piece. Here's an e-mail from my brother, who knows a thing or two about the subject, responding to Yglesias:

Forgive me for finding Matt's foray's into education policy a whole lot less thoughtful than his other work, perhaps because its more of an area I know something about.

Educational policy-- like lots of other things-- gets grabbed by a certain number of experts (hello, Jon Chait) and used, baseball bat style, to beat on those of differing ideologies. Thus the hordes of liberals who use K-12 education as a handy excuse to complain about Republicans and their service-cutting ways, just as hordes of conservatives wail about Democrats' allegiance to corrupt and public-good obstructing unions. On this subject Matt seems to have a potentially deaf ear for when he's being played for a partisan patsie, and when he's not

The argument that widespread improvement in American education will take huge amounts of (presumably politically unattainable) money has been repeated so often over the years that lots of people consider it for 30 seconds, find it persuasive, and walk away to think about other things for the next several months. This ends up being extremely frustrating to people who are actually improving K-12 education and would really prefer if Chait and Yglessias paid attention to what has been working-- noticed its general lack of correlation with 'paying teachers like investment bankers'-- and wrote more about that.

Some recent observations that they don't seem to register:

• per student, many city and suburban schools do not have nearly the spending disparity that people assume. Boston city schools have spent more per student than suburban schools for years. This is because State and Federal funding offsets a large amount of the local funding disparity in most American urban schools
• Within schools of similar operational and capital investment levels, educational outcomes can swing wildly as a basis of lots of other things, not least of which is the actual educational program being delivered
• Teachers who work 16 hour days are far from universal among high successful school models. There are lots of public and charter school distracts that have achieved similar results to KIPP (the network Chait is referencing) without significantly increasing teacher time

Would more money help? Sure, why not. In the long run is it probably necessary, once the country reaches the limits to the improvement that can be made without increasing funding? Absolutely. Is more public money a necessary precondition for significantly improving US K-12 education? Not based on my limited experience.

To Chait's point about teacher retention: massively increasing teacher pay does a lot less to drive retention than having teachers work in schools that are very successful. Like lots of other industries, people who enjoy their work and are part of a very successful organization enjoy high levels of job satisfaction and longevity that far outweigh people who are paid moderately better but work in hell. The reason lots of inner-city schools have high staff turnover is not because lots of young, idealistic teachers go in with some delusion that they're going to work cushy 9-5 hours for really good pay. A bigger driver of turnover is the misery people feel at being a cog in a failed system. Lots of top-performing charter school networks around the country pay their teachers less than public schools, and enjoy far better retention. Pesky those facts.

Chait final paragraph that ends "you can't build a national education strategy around relying on the kindness of strangers" makes me momentary want to laugh or vomit. Can we translate this whole op-ed into a the bumper sticker 'I really want my wife to get a raise, and have been pissed about it for years', toss it into the trash can of silly commentary, and move on? Lots of people, like Chait, think their spouse does something admirable that should be paid more. The idea that this pay increase should come before any serious conversation about how K-12 education is already being improved is.... well, self-serving is one word that comes to mind.

Of course, there is another group of people out there who have been working for years to get public school teachers paid more-- and who are perfectly blunt about their indifference to improving education. That's the public teachers union. If you told me I could either 1) magically pay American teachers like investment bankers, or 2) abolish the teacher union, I would say that the second has far far far far more likelihood of resulting in a significant improvement in American public education in the near future. The first, absent something like the second, would lead to very little.

As shown by Chait's op-ed-- which might as well have been a press release from his wife's union-- we've still got a long way to go.

I may take this down, if he tells me to.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
The NYT published a story that a foreign bank is helping us trace money to identify terrorists. That is, find the guys who are planning the next 9/11 , but earlier.

By publishing the story they ruined the source for information. Perhaps worse, they exposed the co-operating bank to Jihadi retribution. Do you think it likely some other foreign business or institution is likely to want to help us once it knows the details may be published in the NYT.

Next potential allie's President: "should I help America preserve itself by outing terrorists when it is likely America's "best" newspaper will someday out me, heedless to the harm it may cause?"

The most amazing thing is the Editor who greenlighted the story, a few month back published an editorial where he admitted he had made a mistake. Was the reason that the plan was working to trip up the names of terroists we would otherwise not know about until the bombs go off and the buildings fall? No. Was the reason because it might expose that bank to attack, or chill any other entity from co-operating? No.

The reason was under the strained in-bred test he had set up he had, in retrospect, answered a question wrong for himself. The mother fucker made every one of us less safe. He is on some side other than mine.

And therefore when Rumsfeld's people leaked them that memo, they shouldn't have run it. QED.

[sgtclub]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
And therefore when Rumsfeld's people leaked them that memo, they shouldn't have run it. QED.

Based on the memo, do you now view all of the blame for Iraq placed on Rummy differently?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by sgtclub
Based on the memo, do you now view all of the blame for Iraq placed on Rummy differently?

Not so much.

The buck stops with three people: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. I see the memo as an attempt to shift the apportionment among them.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Not so much.

Wednesday evening I will post on what should happen with this board, and why it must happen.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
Wednesday evening I will post on what should happen with this board, and why it must happen.

If that means you're not going to be taking a shit here in the interim, that's good news for us, although I'm sure an elementary school near you will be paying the price.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
If that means you're not going to be taking a shit here in the interim, that's good news for us, although I'm sure an elementary school near you will be paying the price.

my main hesitation in doing this previously is that some people may/should decide to never post here again after reading my expose. in the end, I hesitate to do that to someone. some of you may want to put me on ignore.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
The NYT published a story that a foreign bank is helping us trace money to identify terrorists. That is, find the guys who are planning the next 9/11 , but earlier.

By publishing the story they ruined the source for information. Perhaps worse, they exposed the co-operating bank to Jihadi retribution. Do you think it likely some other foreign business or institution is likely to want to help us once it knows the details may be published in the NYT.

That expose is one that, if we're on the same page, is one that I agree should not have been published. I think I've said so at least twice before on this Board.

But what would your test be, Hank? If you were an editor, would you simply say that you should not publish anything about any classified program or activity? Bright line rule? Or would you apply some moral compas of your own?

I'm asking to try to figure out whether you are disagreeing with me, or just dumping scorn on that editor and paper for their decision.

S_A_M

P.S. To clarify, I never said anything about Spanky on the FB other than that the way he argued there is how he argues here.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Last Sunday, the NYT Magazine ran a story about education reform. If you go here, you'll find a post by Matt Yglesias responding to a column by Jonathan Chait about the subject, both prompted by the NYT piece. Here's an e-mail from my brother, who knows a thing or two about the subject, responding to Yglesias:



I may take this down, if he tells me to.

Spanky should like that one.

S_A_M

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
So who gets Kandahar and Kabul?

The Pasthuns get Kandahar and the Dari get Kabul.