American politics and news thread

ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

It's quite odd that certain individuals in US politics choose to attack teachers at a time when the US economy primarily needs a highly educated workforce. We're a generation or so away from blue-collar manufacturing jobs being all but gone in the West.

Indeed, but the neglect of manufacturing is a grave mistake. Part of the genius of Henry Ford was that he realised high wages enabled his workers to buy his cars. The' trickle down effect' produced a virtuous circle. That recognition that people need well paid jobs if they're to continue to consume seems to have all but disappeared in the West.

Well that's another matter entirely.

But it's not just in the US that the squeeze is being put on the middle class. All over Europe the same is happening. I wonder how this era will be remembered. It seems like a colossal mistake longterm.

Sharky wrote:

From what I've heard, that much more common in so called 'higher education.'

Would that that were the case. All US teachers are required to get a teaching certificate which is contingent upon taking a load of courses from a college of education, and the courses these colleges teach are appallingly inane and ideologically driven. Dumbing down is the norm and rigor is driven out the window lest it result in unequal outcomes dividing along racial lines (and it would). If the hammerlock of colleges of education could be broken, and true mastery of real intellectual subjects were required in its place, this would be a good start toward improving education in the US. I don't see this happening anytime soon, though.

Stilicho Bias wrote:

Sharky wrote:

From what I've heard, that much more common in so called 'higher education.'

Would that that were the case. All US teachers are required to get a teaching certificate which is contingent upon taking a load of courses from a college of education, and the courses these colleges teach are appallingly inane and ideologically driven. Dumbing down is the norm and rigor is driven out the window lest it result in unequal outcomes dividing along racial lines (and it would). If the hammerlock of colleges of education could be broken, and true mastery of real intellectual subjects were required in its place, this would be a good start toward improving education in the US. I don't see this happening anytime soon, though.

Yeah, I feel the majority of the education classes were a colossal waste of time.

I got more out of my content courses and use what I learned in them every day. That's not to say it isn't important to learn pedagogy, methodology, child psychology, etc....But having to spend entire semesters working on getting down a lesson plan format that I will never use.

I got more out of teacher observations and student teaching than I ever did sitting in a classroom having someone tell me how to teach and write a lesson plan.

I think what they need to do is make it more like when you go into the medical field. You take content classes to learn the information you need in your job, then you start to actually get in to the field and see how it works, observing professionals, getting hands on training, and being able to discuss what you've learned with your peers. It make a load more sense.

There are also things inherent in the tenure system that aren't ideal. If you've had your job forever, whether you're a good teacher or not, it's practically impossible to get rid of you. If you're a new teacher and you're excellent, you have less luck. In the public schools, anyway.

Good point about tenure, LaLa. There are an awful lot of untouchable hacks and mediocrities in the system because of tenure.

At least if Trump were to become President, he might finally end up with a hairstyle that looks like it actually belongs on the head of a human being.

Obama has officially said he will be running for re-election. Here are my thoughts, The United States will never survive another four year tenure with Obama as the leader of this country. There is no light at the end of this tunnel for the taxpayers. We can expect nothing but to pay higher food prices, fuel prices, energy prices and last but no least, higher health costs.The health program that he and that scatter-brain Pelosi helped pass is the biggest foley of all time.

Better get used to it, Willard. I don't think there's a Republican out there, who will actually run, who can beat Obama.

You're right about there not being a Republican at this time, but we need somebody to step up and be a leader (even if its not a Republican).

Stilicho Bias wrote:

Better get used to it, Willard. I don't think there's a Republican out there, who will actually run, who can beat Obama.

I believe quite the opposite. Obama is toast regardless of which Republican gets the nomination. Obama has lost nearly all of the libertarians who held their nose and voted for him in '08 and he will lose millions more votes on the disillusioned youths who expected him to walk on water and make it rain butterflies.

Not to mention that four years of Obama has galvanized the GOP base in the same way that eight years of Bush galvanized the Dems. He'll be a one-term Dem like Carter.

Anyone who votes against Obama is a racist, pure and simple. I'm taking names.

Willard Whyte wrote:

Obama has officially said he will be running for re-election. Here are my thoughts, The United States will never survive another four year tenure with Obama as the leader of this country. There is no light at the end of this tunnel for the taxpayers. We can expect nothing but to pay higher food prices, fuel prices, energy prices and last but no least, higher health costs.The health program that he and that scatter-brain Pelosi helped pass is the biggest foley of all time.

We've had worst presidents. One of the good things about our system is that even a crappy President can't screw it up too terribly bad. He doesn't have enough power.

That said, I think Obama's days are numbered.

Then again, if a viable third part candidate comes forward it might split the vote in a way that ensure he stays...No telling.

The next election is the Republicans' to lose. If they have a candidate with economic credentials who doesn't focus too much on the pet issues of the Religious Right, then I think Obama will end up a one-term wonder.

I don't know if I'd hand it to the Republicans so soon. I think Obama might walk away with this election.

Obama seems stuck in the middle. He hasn't been amazing, but hasn't been awful. Unless Libya blows up into a major fiasco and he can keep his reputation clean, he won't have anything to bad against him. Then again with US troops for the most part being pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, that might play an important factor depending on how that turns out come late 2011/early 2012.

Again, a year and some months before the election it is impossible to say. The economy, the deficit, the Arab Revolutions, and who knows what else could drastically change everything in a heartbeat.

Quite frankly though I have to say the Republican field looks absolutely pathetic for 2012.Unless in the next few months someone starts to show some potential. Right now, no one really looks too exciting.

Romney seems like the ideal candidate, all the qualities you would want, and - I don't mean to be rude about this- but the fact that he is a Mormon probably hurts his chances with the religious core of the Republican party. I don't think they'd be too enthusiastic about it.

Unless one of the Republican challengers surprises us I don't really see them fielding a worthy challenger. Judging by the candidates in the running so far, I'm going to say Obama is going to run away easily with a second term.

Moore wrote:

I don't know if I'd hand it to the Republicans so soon. I think Obama might walk away with this election.

Unless the Republicans can come up with a pretty strong candidate or the state of the nation divebombs in the next two years, then I think Obama's probably going to stick around.

That's my thought exactly. With the election so far off, I dislike even making a prediction. A day, an hour sometimes makes the entire difference. But my odds are on Obama. Unless some unforeseeable crisis emerges, he'll be on his way to a second term.

Basically, you summed up in two sentences what I tried to articulate in about 50. I was never good with being concise.

America faces government shut down once again...
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/04/obama-boehner-seek-to-avoid-shutdown/1

Arkadin wrote:

Moore wrote:

I don't know if I'd hand it to the Republicans so soon. I think Obama might walk away with this election.

Unless the Republicans can come up with a pretty strong candidate or the state of the nation divebombs in the next two years, then I think Obama's probably going to stick around.

Obama has a lot of problems to overcome. He will have lost a lot of the independents he swayed his way. And the kids who were briefly stirred out of their apathy by the unrealistic promise they believe he held will not show up in 2012. Meanwhile, the one group you can be positive will show on election day in 2012 are the conservatives.

Obama can only win if the GOP sends a really, really weak ticket up against him. Any candidate who can genuinely represent an improvement will push him out of the White House.

Basically we'll all but know for sure how it'll pan out after the GOP primaries.

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/04/nearly-of-mississippi-republicans-think-interracial-marriage-should-be-illegal.php?ref=fpb

Quote :

In a PPP poll released Thursday, a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal. 40% said interracial marriage should be legal.

Well that's a pretty shocking stance in this day and age. What business should it be of the government what race your husband or wife is?

Salomé wrote:

What business should it be of the government what race your husband or wife is?

True enough - government, local or national, should stay out of people's lives (and wallets) as much as possible.

Those were Republican voters in Mississippi.

And for the record, interracial marriage, particularly black/white marriage, is one of the last remaining social taboos of any consequence. I expect if you polled blacks you'd see similar ambivalence toward interracial marriage.

Interesting British perspective on the changing racial make up of the USA in today's Telegraph.

Quote :

How will Anglo-American relations fare when America is no longer majority white?
By Ed West Politics Daily telegraph April 4th, 2011

America’s Census results show that the country is being transformed “into a much browner, more suburban, more southern and western place”.

The Economist reports: According to a recent study from the Census Bureau, the majority of them are now from groups normally considered minorities, chiefly Hispanics and blacks. The latest release of data from last year’s decennial census confirms that whites still constitute a slender majority, 54%, of those under 18, and a larger one, 64%, of the population as a whole.

America’s demographic change is rapid enough to be called a revolution. Over the past decade minorities accounted for 92 per cent of all population growth, with the number of Hispanics in the US now somewhere around 51 million, and minorities a majority in California and Texas, the US’s most populous states. By 2050 whites will be a minority in the US, a historically astonishing transformation.

For its first century the US was not particularly diverse. Writing the Federalist Papers in 1787, John Jay, first chief justice of the United States, gave thanks that “Providence has been placed to give this one connected country to one united people, a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs”.

From the 1880s to the 1920s the United States was transformed by its first wave of mass immigration, from eastern and southern Europe. But the differences with today’s movement are striking. America imported overwhelmingly Christian, European migrants into a confident national culture with a high native birth rate in a sparsely populated continent. It had no welfare state and ruthlessly rejected immigrants who did not succeed (some 40 per cent of European immigrants returned home), immigrants faced enormous social pressures to drop their ethnic baggage, and for reasons of money and time they had to abandon links with their mother country. All of those things are true today, if you insert the word “not” before (with the exception of population density).

The United States only embraced diversity in 1965, with Senator Edward Kennedy’s Immigration Act, which opened up the country to non-Europeans in large numbers for the first time (although more than they expected: Kennedy predicted 62,000 immigrants a year; by 1996 it was 1.3 million a year). Before that, the United States was 90 per cent white, with large swathes totally dominated by northern European Protestants; America’s diversity experiment is as recent as Britain’s.

How will this new America be different to the old one, apart from being far more unequal? In some ways, not much. America’s political culture was forged by British-Americans such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, and its political ideals are still explicitly Anglo-Saxon. But culture and biology need not match, and Anglo-Saxon political ideas have survived better in the US than they have in England, where governments of recent years have assaulted such principles as the right to remain silent, habeas corpus and double jeopardy.

What may change is the United States’ relationship with Europe and Britain in particular. The term “special relationship” is a tragically embarrassing fiction – Britain is way down the list of America’s best friends, barely an usher, let alone best man; but the two countries have enjoyed a more than close relationship during the last century. It is not just two World Wars, the fight against Communism, a dozen smaller operations and intelligence sharing. In many parts of the world Britain effectively handed over the British Empire to Pax Americana. Mark Steyn even suggested that future historians may see British and American rule as two parts of the same political era.

And this relationship was not entirely just about shared interests and a shared language; there was also a certain degree of shared descent, if not biological than at least cultural. Certainly President Woodrow Wilson, who effectively invented modern Anglo-Americans relations, saw it in familiar terms, and subsequent WASP presidents felt a certain attachment to the country from which the Mayflower sailed. And while American Anglophiles come in all shapes and colours, a disproportionate number come from historically English parts of the country and from Anglo, or at least European, backgrounds.

But what will Anglo-American relations look like when America is no longer Anglo? Will a Latinised, less European United States enjoy such a spiritual bond with England? We already have some indication with Barack Obama, the most anti-British US president in living memory, an inheritance from his Kenyan father (although on his mother’s side he has a great deal of English blood, and claims descent from both Alfred the Great and Edward I), and Hillary Clinton’s views on the Malvinas. Considering the nature of the future US electorate, which politician would take Britain’s side against a Latin American state?

Let’s hope Britain, and Europe, never needs rescuing, once again, from an aggressive totalitarian ideology.

Stilicho Bias wrote:

Those were Republican voters in Mississippi.

From my perspective, that's even more reason to find it a puzzling stance. You'd think that Republicans would be less in favor of government meddling in people's personal lives than Democrats.

Quote :

And for the record, interracial marriage, particularly black/white marriage, is one of the last remaining social taboos of any consequence. I expect if you polled blacks you'd see similar ambivalence toward interracial marriage.

Well I find the sentiment distasteful regardless of the color of the individual that holds it. It's no business of anyone what color of skin or religion the person you marry has.

It's an interesting article Ambler, though it ignores the strong ties between Latin America and Southern Europe. It's not like the Anglo-American relationship is the only cross-continental bond.

Salomé wrote:

It's an interesting article Ambler, though it ignores the strong ties between Latin America and Southern Europe. It's not like the Anglo-American relationship is the only cross-continental bond.

Those countries are hardly comparable in power and influence to the United States.

ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

It's an interesting article Ambler, though it ignores the strong ties between Latin America and Southern Europe. It's not like the Anglo-American relationship is the only cross-continental bond.

Those countries are hardly comparable in power and influence to the United States.

I meant it differently, in that there is no reason to assume a Hispanic president would have no bond whatsoever with any European country.