# Bush, you're not at a frat party, you dick **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [July 18, 2006, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036 "2006-07-18T16:27:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/441 "2006-08-01T00:48:06Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] A snicker, a guffaw… what have you. A blanket indictment of foreign polcy, all Republicans in general, and all who disagree being labelled “cocksuckers,” not so much. [/quote] Oh, I agree you cannot solely on this issue make a blanket indictment of foreign policy, all Republicans in general, yadda yadda. But a snicker, a guffaw? While the situation is somewhat amusing, Bush is your highest profile representative to the world, and if he manages to annoy other world leaders (and have that event publicised the way it has been) it both reinforces people’s ideas about him being pretty stupid and really isn’t going to make him any friends. It’s an important issue, both personally to him and generally for the U.S.; if you’re happy just to snigger at it, well, that’s fine by me. It just seems like too small a reaction to me. > [@](#): > > I was kidding about the master plan of such genius that it was beyond comprehension and mistakenly viewed as an error. This was said more than once, and really, it’s not too difficult to figure out. You didn’t claim it was beyond comprehension; after all, you figured it out. 😉 Anyway, your posts just don’t strike me as “kidding” about the subject. You did take the opportunity to get a jab in; [QUOTE=Scylla] I have another theory. You all think Bush is some stupid backward-assed bumpkin, when in fact he’s a pretty cunning motherfucker. Let’s face it, he’s been running circles around you guys for almost six years. If he’s stupid, what does that make you? [/QUOTE] . You defended your post to me, **Zoe** , **Excalibre** , and\*\* RTFirefly\*\*, all whilst keeping a serious tone and without hyperbole. You then expanded on your idea; [QUOTE=Scylla] Allow me to elaborate. Bush made a gesture at the edge and maybe over the edge of generally acceptable social protocol. It’s not like it’s so far over the line or so unusual that one can make a big deal about it. If one does make a big deal about it one is making a bigger faux pas than the actual incident. So, he’s safe in making the gesture. He gained something by making this gesture. He got a genuine reaction. This lady doesn’t like him. This lady doesn’t trust him. This lady doesn’t feel friendly towards him. This lady doesn’t want to be familiar with him. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=Scylla] Bush elicited her true feelings. She is a professionally trained diplomat. Her job is to hide her true feelings. Her job is to promote her country’s agenda. From her reaction we can ascertain that either she thinks Bush is generally skeevy, or else she is feeling antagonist to him. She does not recognize him as someone friendly or familiar and welcome. She is not comfortable being touched by him in a friendly way. Touching is important. It’s why we have the ritual of shaking hands. We can convey a lot of meaning and emotional content with contact. We are wired that way. We respond to it involuntarily. Bush now has information. She doesn’t like him, or, she may have to promote an agenda with which she anticipates will be antagonistic to him. Bush has not “alienated” her. He has gotten her to express that he is “alien” and unwelcome to her. You may or may not believe that Bush is capable of doing this and exploiting the information. You may think that it is a thoughtless innapropriate gesture. But, I think Bush is cunning, and an operator and is very good at this kind of thing. [/QUOTE] These do not strike me as the words of a person who’s really joking about what he’s saying. I think you probably held this position yourself (or at least seriously defended it), and then dropped it after pretty much everyone disagreed with you, be they the rabid far-lefters you snigger about or the more sane left-winger, or **John Mace**. Of course, I can’t prove it, so i’ll assume you’re telling the truth now. I’m just pointing out that it really isn’t that clear; in the future, you might have to highlight your joking around so that we can get it, too. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/442 "2006-08-01T02:04:42Z")
[QUOTE=Oy!] Vouchers? You must be kidding! [/quote] No. I’m not. > [@](#): > > They’re a double hitter - subsidy for the wealthy AND for the ultra-religious. For the wealthy, no. I beleive you are mistaken. One of the great inequities is that the public schools tend to be pretty decent in wealthy areas. If you’ll recall the program would only provide vouchers for schools that failed to meet certain performance criteria. Vouchers would typically be available in less wealthy areas since those tend to be the ones with poor schools. Ultra-religious? Not that either. A person with a religion has as much right to respect as any other person. There is nothing wrong with parochial schools. My daughter attends Corpus Christi which is a Catholic School. 1/3 of her class isn’t Catholic. You know why? Because the public schools fucking suck around here. She would go there whether or not she was Catholic. There’s also a Montessori school and a private high school in the area both non-parochial. Right now the only people that can afford to attend the good schools are either Catholic (the Church gives you a discount for being Catholic,) or those that are relatively well-off. Assuming the local schools can’t get their act together, this higher quality education would be available to a lot more children. My daughter’s school has lots of space available. So do the two others. All these schools run on budgets that are almost intangible to the giant behemoth of a bureacracy that is the local school system. We pay huge school taxes, here. I truly wouldn’t mind if it was going to educating kids. It’s not. The bureacracy protects itself, and is huge slow and wasteful. The classrooms are crowded, the buildings old, and the whole thing just sucks in money and returns very little in the way of actual education. There is no reason or incentive for the schools to do a good job and be efficient. If they don’t waste money their budgets aren’t justifiable. They have no competition. They’re a fucking disgrace. So no, it doesn’t help the ultra-wealthy, and it doesn’t help the ultra-religious especially, not that there’s anything wrong with wanting kids from religious families to get a good education. > [@](#): > > Not to mention a nod to the ultra-libertarians who feel that schools shouldn’t be publicly financed at all. And just think about the consequences for ONE minute. Your better suburban schools would suffer little if any. And, consequently, vouchers wouldn’t be available to the residents. > [@](#): > > But the city schools that suffer the most already from having too little funding? They’d be so broke in a year or two that they’d have shut down entirely. And how are they fair? I’m not a parent at all, but I pay school taxes. My parents haven’t had children of public school age in 32 years, but they pay school taxes. Spread among us all, school taxes are a comparatively low expense, even when they’re as high as they ought to be (which in these days of anyone promising any tax cut whatsoever being a shoe-in to office is rare). Cities have huge tax bases. What makes you think they don’t have the proper funding? Why is that your automatic answer? Is it also possible that the fucking school system is indistinguishable from the motor vehicles bureau in terms of its bloated corruption and incompetance? Fuck that. You want to see underfunded? I’ll show you are Catholic school. That thing runs on a shoestring. They squeeze pennies like you wouldn’t beleive. I’m on the board and I know exactly what goes into keeping that thing running. Don’t tell me that the schools are automatically underfunded because they are not doing well. Not doing well does not equal underfunded. It doesn’t necessarily follow, and it’s an insult to teachers both public and private who do an outstanding job with limited resources, and there are quite a few that do. If the school can demonstrate that it needs more money in order to be capable of doing a good job, I have no problem funding it. Throw money at a shitty bureacracy running a shitty school and you get wealthy bureacrats and uneducated kids, and that’s just stupid. > [@](#): > > No Child Left Behind? I’ll grant you one half. I think it was reasonably well-meant, and enormously, hugely ill-conceived. It was based on an absurd premise: that teachers and other school officials are primarily motivated by money. They aren’t, especially in the inner cities - who in their right minds would take an inner city school job if they didn’t have a real desire to do the job, and do it right? Well, yes. You have that. You also have people that want summer’s off and security and don’t really care. They think it will be an easy job. And then, you have teachers that suck so bad they can’t get a job in a good school. But yes, I will grant you that there’s a surprising number of highly motivated saints doing their best. > [@](#): > > The administrators weren’t money-driven before; they were driven mostly by a desire to do the job well. NOW they are forced to work to federal guidelines and meet federally established goals that practically guarantee that funding will be cut for those schools that need it the most, because the motivation they are using is not “Look, if your kids fail we’ll help.” but rather, “Look, if your kids fail, we’ll take away what little money we give you.” It’s not the kids that fail. It’s the school. I don’t give a fuck about the school. I want the kids to have an education. If the bloated incompetant bureacracy that is the public school system can’t provide it the kids should have a right to go elsewhere. Their education is important. Our tax dollars are important. They should help kids get an education, not sustain a failed enterprise. > [@](#): > > Since there is an extremely strong correlation between school performance and income in the school district, this means that the poorest schools are likliest to go under. The schools in my area don’t have enough text books that kids are allowed take them home in the evening to study. Let me repeat that in case you didn’t get it. _The kids in my area are not allowed to bring their text books home at night with them, because the school doesn’t have enough._ And one of the solutions? Well, let’s turn it over to a third party for-profit company to run! No one has yet to explain to me how introducing a layer of profit is supposed to make things better. Everything the government does it does slowly stupidly and wastefully. There is literally nothing to check the growth of a government bureacracy. What specific school district are you talking about? Do they have their budget online? I’d love to see it. God forbid some fat lardass incompetant administrator shouldn’t have a full government pension, complete and total health benefits, tenure, and a whole department to write reports at millions of dollars cost and a little fiefdom to rule over. They don’t cut the fat from the bureacracy. They are disincentivized to do so. They cut the end product and claim they need more money. 10-1 that’s why your kids can’t take their textbooks home. > [@](#): > > The employees of a corporation are no difference from the employees of a government: they will work according to their own work-ethic and drive to perform well, not because the corporation’s performance will make any difference to their lives. Listen. The corporate model is not perfect. However, it has one enormous advantage over government bureacracy. It is, to a degree, self-correcting. > [@](#): > > Social Security sep_a_rate accounts: A subsidy to Wall Street, and a near guarantee of the need for a bail-out some twenty-thirty years down the road that would make the savings and loan scandal bail-out look like a tiny pimple. I have lectured professionally on the subject of social security. I would love to hear you prove to me why Seperate accounts are guarranteed to necessitate a bailout. It is completely true that Wall Street would benefit from seperate accounts. The markets would also benefit. The investors in those seperate accounts would surely benefit since they would have access to the upside of the markets and limited downside. Historically, the stock market has provided a return that has outperformed bonds, money markets and inflation. The Social Security trust fund invests in none of those things. In fact, it invests in nothing. It is a total fantasy. There **used** to be a seperate account. It got used to pay for Vietnam. What there is now are IOUs that are mandatorily invested in made up securities that exist nowhere outside of the make-beleive social security trust fund for the large reason is that are so shitty nobody would ever by them. At the very least, a seperate account forces the government not to spend all the money that comes in from SS and instead gives the people that are actually paying for it a chance to have their money work for them. > [@](#): > > I’ve sometimes wondered if the whole point wasn’t to try to sneak in the second ‘alternative’ the president offered: basing SS payouts on income. While this sounds on the surface like a Democratic policy, being progressive and all, it is the one thing that almost could have guaranteed that ultimately SS would have been done away with, which after all was the ultimate intent. Social security is a ponzi scheme that you or I would go to jail for if we tried to perpetrate. The principle to making something like SS work properly are well-known and mathematically derived. Insurance companies can do it, and make a ton of money in the process. The problem is the government is not content to just make some money. They take it all, and they do it stupidly. At first, people weren’t really expected to live long enough to get SS for very long, and it didn’t matter if they did because everybody knew that America’s population was growing and there would always be lots of people working to support the people who weren’t and the government could just take the rest. **This** is the fucking basic assumption of SS. **This** is how asinine and stupid your government is. **This** is why I don’t like Democrats. Your guys answer to everything is to give up our responsibility for ourselves and just turn more and more over to the government, let the government take care of us, because we’re too stupid to do it ourselves. The government sucks. It does most things badly and wastefully, and by giving the government responsibility for taking care of us we lose our freedoms our competance, and our liberties. And you know what? The government doesn’t even follow throuh. SS isn’t enough to live on reasonably. There are retired people out there that never worried about their futures because they assumed SS would be enough. It used to seem like enough. At first, the payouts weren’t so bad. The bottom line though is that you pay in with current dollars, get an imaginary and shitty rate of return and get paid out in deflated dollars. Shit, if you would have just put the money in tax-free bonds you’d have made out orders of magnitude better in many cases. But, the government assumes you’re too stupid to take care of yourself. So, they steal your money, and fuck you up the ass later. Why should it not end? > [@](#): > > The answer to The Social Security Problem is to stop considering the intake for Social Security as part of the federal budget, as Moynihan suggested some twenty years back. That is a great idea. The problem though is that might mean you need to stop considering the outflows as part of the Federal Budget. Since there’s not actually anything in the seperate account what would then provide SS’s solvency? > [@](#): > > Besides, SS isn’t in immediate danger. Medicare is, but not SS. Actually, this is true. Social Security isn’t really in any immediate danger of failing to assfuck the entire population of the country. Shame that. > [@](#): > > Which brings us to prescriptions for the elderly, as you so sweetly call it. Most of the rest of us who aren’t seniors call it a subsidy to both big Pharma and the med insurance companies, Calling it names isn’t really much of an argument, but go ahead. > [@](#): > > while the seniors themselves just call it a mess (when not using stronger language). Administered by the already in-place Medicare system, and given the power to negotiate directly with Pharma AND with foreign manufacturers such as Canada, this could have been a wonderful program - simple for seniors to use, and of real value in getting them lower cost medicine. > [@](#): > > But that would have served the seniors \*without \* protecting Pharma or increasing insurance business, so it wouldn’t have done. I don’t know what you mean about the latter, but could you elucidate? As for the former, why wouldn’t you want to protect Pharma? In case you haven’t checked pharmaceutical co’s haven’t been doing so hot. To invent a new medecine and bring it to the point where it can be consumed by sick people to make them better is a horrendously expensive undertaking. It is also one of the worst sort of business risks to take because it is basically all nonrecoverable expenses. Sometimes decades and sometimes billions of dollars go into bringing a single drug to market. Who is going to take this risk? Who will fund this? Why would they and where will they get the money? The **only** way it makes sense to take on these kind of NRE’s is if there is a payoff proportionate to the risk. There’s an outfit out there right now called Amylin pharmaceuticals. These guys have a real good shot at saving millions of lives, including my wife’s cousin. The founder was on vacation when he learned that gila monsters only eat once every several months but posess very different metabolisms from most other reptiles. To make a long story short he figure they must have some kind of whiz-bang form of insulin in their system and he started studying gila monster spit. Because this guy is a genius and could convince people with deep pockets that he knew what he was talking about he was able to raise capitol and form a company to study the issue. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/443 "2006-08-01T02:06:04Z")
Their first drugs are coming out now. Amazing diabetes drugs that have the potential to improve millions of lives of very sick people. They’re not finished yet. They think they can make a drug, one shot, once a month that will regulate a person’s blood sugar. No fucking testing, daily pinpricks, daily shots, daily worrying. Basically a shot, once a month that effectively cures diabetes. My wife’s cousin probably won’t live into his twenties without better diabetes meds. Goddamn fucking a-right, you protect this company! > [@](#): > > Sorry, in my book you score one half out of 3. I’ll grant you that on the whole NCLB was well meant, but given its providing mandates without additional funding and its flawed basic assumptions, I can’t give you better than a half. Well, I don’t think you’re right to do so. > [@](#): > > Of course you feel that way - I was demonstrating the ways in which I am NOT a fanatical democrat. Cool. > [@](#): > > Whereas living in rickety old slums without functional heat, plumbing, and/or electricity was granting enormous hope to this particular population? 😕 The projects haven’t improved things the way they were hoped to, but I’m not seeing how they made things _worse_. I see no real difference between housing projects and internment camps. > [@](#): > > The basic problem here is a large concentration of poor people with no hope living in a small area. That problem exists whether it’s happening in tumble-down nineteenth century slums or 1960s era slums. And they tore down the slums and built big projects under the guess that if we forced everybody to live close together they would help each other. We took away their ability to own, their pride of place and their responsibility to help themselves and then we reneged on our part of the deal and left them to fester helpless jobless and living like animals without a chance to better themselves because there is no opportunity or education. Personally, I’d rather just be poor than a prisoner in fact if not in name. > [@](#): > > I don’t have a good solution for the problems of the poor. I have some ideas, but they’d never get traction with either party. My idea is to provide unlimited goods and services (i.e. food, dorm-style shelter, serviceable clothing, basic medical and legal service) to ANYONE who shows up - no applications, no background checks, nothing. The recipient has the choice of paying a nominal fee (e.g. a buck or two for a meal) or working at some aspect that service’s administration (e.g. clearing up and washing dishes for a meal) for a given number of hours. If millionaires wanted to come down and have their meals there, so what? No transfer payments, except for Social Security, which if it didn’t keep being spent by the government to conceal deficit spending, would be fine. Oddly, things like that sometimes work. Keystone Health in my area is a fantastic health care provider for the wealthy and the poor. The only downside is they have to give me “aids counseling” every year when I come in for my checkup to get the federal funds. But hey, a refresher course in how to use a condom is always a good thing, right? I know some other examples of communities that work well. Menlo Park in DC is a real fantastic multi-ethnic neighborhood with an income distribution across the boards. When we visit my friends their we just let them run loose. It’s funny, but just about everybody there is from the same ethnic/religious group: They’re all parents. They all watch out for each other and each other’s kids. So, some of this stuff can work. Personally, I think the government trying to do it is about the worst idea anybody ever had. The government can’t do anything for us or take care of us. That’s our job. It can’t give us anything we don’t already have. It can however, take away a lot. > [@](#): > > You might as well blame them both for the weather. As long as there is multi-generational poverty, there is going to be a serious problem with inner-city schools. I can make some suggestions though: > [@](#): > > 1. Legalize Drugs. The only result of the current drugs laws is to hugely inflate the value of a commodity that otherwise would be absurdly cheap. This means there is a mountain of money to be made in an illegal fashion, and this is perceived as a potential ‘way out’ (or at least way up) for many poor kids. Same thing to a lesser extent to prostitution, except that since there has been no declared “war on whores,” the actual price and the true market value are probably far more in sync. Or we could just napalm the projects. > [@](#): > > 1. Subsidize day careprograms like Head Start and keep going. The earlier you can get these kids, the better, but you have to keep it going after kindergarten. Shouldn’t parents be teaching their kids? Shouldn’t people be exercising self-control and discipline as regards raising their children? Why do you think the government would do a better job with pre ks than responsible parents? On the other side of the coin if the kid isn’t getting what he needs, he needs to get it. I don’t have an answer, but it doesn’t look like you do, either. To me, the best solution is to try to get parents to be responsible. > [@](#): > > 1. Recognize that the schools having problems is generally NOT the fault of the teachers. Yes, there are a few underqualified teachers out there. Some of them are really unqualified, others are great teachers who haven’t dotted the proper i’s or crossed the right t’s. Most people who go into teaching have a sincere interest in teaching well. A little more or a little less money isn’t going to change their attitude toward executing the job of teaching their students, but it may cause enough resentment to drive them out of the field altogether. Generally, the bureacracy and system is to blame. > [@](#): > > As long as we have a great divide between suburban parents spending all their time practically doing their kids’ homework for them and trucking them around to soccer, music, and the seventeen other activities their first grader has scheduled already, and the urban parents who are either working three jobs to keep a roof overhead or are lying around watching General Hospital drunk or stoned, the divide between the people who say Education is My Top Priority and then vote for reduction after reduction of local and/or property taxes that pay for education, the problems are going to continue to exist. I think the argument that if you just raises taxes and throw more money at the problem is a bad argument. What needs to happen is that money needs to be spent well and responsibly. Arguing for more money is an easy argument. “We need more money. You’re selfish if you don’t give it to us.” Bullshit. Most people who make this argument don’t know their way around a balance sheet or a cash flow statement. Show me the money is going where it needs to go, and doing an efficient job, than tell me it’s not enough and demonstrate it, and I’ll be in favor of placing property taxes where they need to be to get the job done. Until you do that, you’re assuming your conclusion and I’m not a big fan of feeding bureacracy that does a poor job. > [@](#): > > I don’t have a good answer. Throwing money at the problem isn’t enough, I’ll grant you - there the Democrats have not succeeded. But taking money away, which seems to be the Republicans’ solution, is certainly NOT the answer. I don’t understand this. If throwing money at it doesn’t work, why would you keep doing it? Wouldn’t you take the money and try something else? > [@](#): > > If you’ve ever lived on Welfare, or even Unemployment (which is considerably better if you had a pretty good job to begin with), you’d recognize that the money being given is NOT enough to encourage anyone. It generally barely covers the cost of a roof over the head, if that. Yes, I started as an Econ major, and I understand the principle. Maybe if we incented (God, I HATE that word!) our working poor a bit better, we’d do a bit better, but right now, if you’re on Welfare, you can generally get help in other areas such as medical care and food. If you’re working a job for a miminal pay, you’ve disqualified yourself from most financial aid programs for everything, quite possibly leaving yourself worse off than you were on Welfare. And here’s a clue: the Dems aren’t the ones who scaled back those programs so much that only those who have nothing at all can qualify. Funny, but Welfare is actually justifiable as it exists. The average person/family on it doesn’t stay long. That part of the program is decent. It works in spite of the fact that Welfare makes it really difficult to get back on your feet as you lose benefits as you work your ass off, treading water. That it works to the degree it does in spite of this gives me great faith in people. The program though sucks. It works in spite of itself. I’m ignoring for purposes of argument the abuses of the program, because the positives work. Welfare, as a concept is good. It should be executed better. It should incent people to get off. The more you work, the more you get up to a takeoff point. > [@](#): > > **Scylla** , I’m sure that if you and I met in person, we’d like one another. You’d tell funny stories and I’d laugh my head off. We’d probably find that we agree in principle on many issues - I consider myself a pragmatist as well. It’s when we come down to what constitutes pragmatism that things fall apart. I’m listening. > [@](#): > > You seem to be in favor of the kind of pragmatism that leaves more money in your pocket (and a LOT more money in the pockets of the very wealthy), while I’m in favor of the kind of pragmatism that helps people a bit more, and a bit more sensibly, even if it means making some mistakes along the way. I do want to protect my pocket, and yours, and everybody else’s and still provide the basic services of government efficiently. You know why? Because I believe that you and I can make better use of what’s in our pocket and do greater good than government. If you put the onus on the government to take care of everybody and you throw money at the problem without solving it, you give people an excuse not to care “I pay huge taxes. I shouldn’t have to help.” It’s a partially valid argument. We are paying for something that we’re not getting. And, we’re selfish by pawning off our communities problems onto the government and making a boogeyman out of “wealthy people.” I think wealthy people is a good thing. I’d like to see everybody wealthy. It seems to me that your solution is to make everybody poor. That’s the difference. For what it’s worth, in the last four years when my situation has become sound and I’ve had children, I’ve begun to give a lot back in terms of time effort and money, because life has been good to me, and I think I should. So, when you say selfish, I don’t think you know what you’re talking about, and you didn’t bother to ask before you judged which is pretty shitty of you. I don’t think being charitable with other people’s money is charity. I don’t think casting wide nets and blaming the wealthy or corporations or Pharma is smart. I don’t think throwing money at bloated innefectual bureacracy’s that completely fail there purpose is reasonable. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/444 "2006-08-01T02:22:39Z")
[QUOTE=Scyllla] …I see no real difference between housing projects and internment camps… [/QUOTE] Breathtaking. The sweep, the vista, the sheer _majesty_! Lookout, Annie, there’s a new sheriff in town! ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/445 "2006-08-01T03:14:29Z")
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold] Oh, I agree you cannot solely on this issue make a blanket indictment of foreign policy, all Republicans in general, yadda yadda. But a snicker, a guffaw? While the situation is somewhat amusing, Bush is your highest profile representative to the world, and if he manages to annoy other world leaders (and have that event publicised the way it has been) it both reinforces people’s ideas about him being pretty stupid and really isn’t going to make him any friends. It’s an important issue, both personally to him and generally for the U.S.; if you’re happy just to snigger at it, well, that’s fine by me. It just seems like too small a reaction to me. [/quote] We may disagree. That’s ok. > [@](#): > > You didn’t claim it was beyond comprehension; after all, you figured it out. 😉 > [@](#): > > Anyway, your posts just don’t strike me as “kidding” about the subject. You did take the opportunity to get a jab in; > . You defended your post to me, **Zoe** , **Excalibre** , and\*\* RTFirefly\*\*, all whilst keeping a serious tone and without hyperbole. You then expanded on your idea; I understand your confusion on this. Y’all say it proves he’s an idiot. I think that’s stupid. I take it to the other extreme, and I go for it. I went a whole day once convincing my daughter Mommy and I were retired Power Rangers. I do this shit all the time IRL. I once wrote this almost novella about how I fucked sheep (but I didn’t finish it.) The trick is to find something that **could** be true. It wasn’t even original either. Do you remember that old Saturday Night skit where Reagan acts like a dottering old fool in front of the camera and then as soon as the cameras are off he goes into this incredibly complex and technical explanation of Iran/Contra and how it all works? Plus, the paradigm of the hokey good ole boy who is stupid/smart is a common one, and the truth of the matter is I do think that Bush is this sort. If you watched “Journey’s with George” it gave you a real insight into how he works and what his schtick is. I read something today about him that impressed me. Do you know that George is the first President to say that the Palestinians should have their own country? Do you know why, according to the story (which may be apocryphal) this came about? Apparently, he was rehearsing a speech and the speech contained some line like “that the Palestinian people should have a place in which to live and share in harmony their cultural identity.” and George said “what does that mean? Their own country?” “We don’t know about that, that’s just the standard language we put in their to handle the issue.” “Do we think they are going to get their own country.” “We do, but we don’t want to say it outright.” “Well, if we think they should have their own country we should say so. Put it in.” I like that. I think the left does a really really bad job in portraying Bush as stupid. He clearly has some kind of speech issue, and a lot of times it seems to me that you take him to task for his impediment, whcih is as bad as making fun of somebody for only having a hare lip. I think he’s smart. I don’t agree with his big government social conservatism at all which is why I gave up being a Republican. It’s the antithesis of the conservatism I espouse. I like other aspects though. I’ve read about the guy. I’ve read Plan of Action where Woodward got good access. It seems to me that every serious inquiry into the guy reports the same thing. He’s sharp and he’s a canny operator. So, I think a lot of what I said is true in general, but I really think this one issue was a simple fuck up. Does that explain it well enough? > [@](#): > > Of course, I can’t prove it, so i’ll assume you’re telling the truth now. I’m just pointing out that it really isn’t that clear; in the future, you might have to highlight your joking around so that we can get it, too. 😛 I really did think that it was obvious the way I wrote it. A faux pas like that is clearly not an act of genius. Now, if he’d have grabbed her tit… ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/446 "2006-08-01T16:42:18Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] I understand your confusion on this. Y’all say it proves he’s an idiot. I think that’s stupid. I take it to the other extreme, and I go for it. I went a whole day once convincing my daughter Mommy and I were retired Power Rangers. I do this shit all the time IRL. I once wrote this almost novella about how I fucked sheep (but I didn’t finish it.) The trick is to find something that **could** be true. It wasn’t even original either. Do you remember that old Saturday Night skit where Reagan acts like a dottering old fool in front of the camera and then as soon as the cameras are off he goes into this incredibly complex and technical explanation of Iran/Contra and how it all works? [/quote] I confess I fail to see the distinction between this and trolling, other than your belief “that it was obvious the way [you] wrote it.” If, when people clearly took you seriously, you’d apologized and explained the nature of your joke, that would have been the action of an honest parodist who realized he’d missed the mark. But once people respond seriously, and you keep up the pretext of someone who’s defending their intended position with some degree of intensity - how is that **not** trolling?? > [@](#): > > I think the left does a really really bad job in portraying Bush as stupid. He clearly has some kind of speech issue, and a lot of times it seems to me that you take him to task for his impediment, whcih is as bad as making fun of somebody for only having a hare lip. > > I think he’s smart. [Smart Bush](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060728-1.html): > [@](#): > > PRESIDENT BUSH: David Gregory. > > Q Thank you. Mr. President, both of you, I’d like to ask you about the big picture that you’re discussing. Mr. President, three years ago, you argued that an invasion of Iraq would create a new stage of Arab-Israeli peace. And yet today, there is an Iraqi Prime Minister who has been sharply critical of Israel. Arab governments, despite your arguments, who have criticized Hezbollah, have now changed their tune. Now they’re sharply critical of Israel. And despite from both of you, warnings to Syria and Iran to back off support from Hezbollah, effectively, Mr. President, your words are being ignored. So what has happened to America’s clout in this region that you’ve committed yourself to transform? > > PRESIDENT BUSH: David, it’s an interesting period because instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability. > > For a while, American foreign policy was just, let’s hope everything is calm, kind of managed calm. But beneath the surface brewed a lot of resentment and anger that was manifested in its – on September the 11th. And so we’ve taken a foreign policy that says, on the one hand, we will protect ourselves from further attack in the short-run by being aggressive and chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice – and make no mistake, they’re still out there, and they would like to harm our respective peoples because of what we stand for – in the long-term, to defeat this ideology, and they’re bound by an ideology. You defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom. > > And, look, I fully understand some people don’t believe it’s possible for freedom and democracy to overcome this ideology of hatred. I understand that. I just happen to believe it is possible, and I believe it will happen. And so what you’re seeing is a clash of governing styles, for example. The notion of democracy beginning to emerge scares the ideologues, the totalitarians, those who want to impose their vision. It just frightens them, and so they respond. They’ve always been violent. > > I hear this amazing kind of editorial thought that says, all of a sudden Hezbollah has become violent because we’re promoting democracy. They have been violent for a long period of time. Or Hamas. One reason why the Palestinians still suffer is because there are militants who refuse to accept a Palestinian state based upon democratic principles. > > And so what the world is seeing is a desire by this country and our allies to defeat the ideology of hate with an ideology that has worked and that brings hope. And one of the challenges, of course, is to convince people that Muslims would like to be free, that there’s other people other than people in Britain and America that would like to be free in the world. There’s this kind of almost – kind of weird kind of elitism, that says, well, maybe certain people in certain parts of the world shouldn’t be free; maybe it’s best just to let them sit in these tyrannical societies. And our foreign policy rejects that concept. We don’t accept it. > > And so we’re working. And this is – as I said the other day, when these attacks took place, I said this should be a moment of clarity for people to see the stakes in the 21st century. I mean, there’s an unprovoked attack on a democracy. Why? I happen to believe, because progress is being made toward democracies. And I believe that – I also believe that Iran would like to exert additional influence in the region. A theocracy would like to spread its influence using surrogates. > > And so I’m as determined as ever to continue fostering a foreign policy based upon liberty. And I think it’s going to work, unless we lose our nerve and quit. And this government isn’t going to quit. > > Q I asked you about the loss of American influence in the region. > > PRESIDENT BUSH: Well, David, we went to the G8 and worked with our allies and got a remarkable statement on what took place. We’re working to get a United Nations resolution on Iran. We’re working to have a Palestinian state. But the reason why – you asked the question – is because terrorists are trying to stop that progress. And we’ll ultimately prevail, because they have – their ideology is so dark and so dismal that when people really think about it, it will be rejected. They just got a different tool to use than we do: They kill innocent lives to achieve objectives. That’s what they do. And they’re good. They get on the TV screens and they get people to ask questions about, well, this, that or the other. I mean, they’re able to kind of say to people, don’t come and bother us because we will kill you. > > And my attitude is, is that now is the time to be firm. And we’ve got a great weapon on our side, and that is freedom, and liberty. And it’s got – those two concepts have got the capacity to defeat ideologies of hate. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/447 "2006-08-01T16:45:22Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] So, I think a lot of what I said is true in general, but I really think this one issue was a simple fuck up. Does that explain it well enough? [/QUOTE] Yes, thank you for clearing it up for me. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/448 "2006-08-01T21:54:54Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] I confess I fail to see the distinction between this and trolling, other than your belief “that it was obvious the way [you] wrote it.” If, when people clearly took you seriously, you’d apologized and explained the nature of your joke, that would have been the action of an honest parodist who realized he’d missed the mark. But once people respond seriously, and you keep up the pretext of someone who’s defending their intended position with some degree of intensity - how is that **not** trolling?? [/quote] Because you are simply deconstructing my posting style in order to create some kind of tortured justification for being an asshole. It’s you that’s trolling with this tedious shit. If you think it’s trolling feel free to report the post. > [@](#): > > [Smart Bush](http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060728-1.html): I agree. That is a smart response of Bush’s ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2006, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/449 "2006-08-01T21:56:07Z")
[QUOTE=Revenant Threshold] Yes, thank you for clearing it up for me. [/QUOTE] My pleasure, and sorry if it wasn’t as obvious as I thought. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2006, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/450 "2006-08-02T12:50:47Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] Because you are simply deconstructing my posting style in order to create some kind of tortured justification for being an asshole. It’s you that’s trolling with this tedious shit. If you think it’s trolling feel free to report the post. [/QUOTE] As **Bricker** said just yesterday: > [@](#): > > Trolling is…posting without a good-faith belief in the underlying merits of your argument. I thought I’d give you a chance, as I said, to explain why I shouldn’t regard it as trolling, and the answer seems to be you can’t give me such an explanation. So I think I’ll take your advice. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2006, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/451 "2006-08-03T02:59:27Z")
Well, that certainly amounted to a lot! (according to your innane and literal minded interpretation of **Bricker’s** post, that statement, too, would be trolling, as would all sarcasm) Any other peccadillos you care to make an issue about? Any other non-substantive issues concerning my posts you wish to whine about? ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2006, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/452 "2006-08-03T21:23:26Z")
I was kinf of hoping **Oy** would be back. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2006, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/453 "2006-08-03T22:29:18Z")
I’m sorry, **Scylla** , but this is the third straight day of 100 degrees at the computer (I’m home for the past six weeks with dizzy spells), and I just don’t have the oomph to do it. Maybe tomorrow. Thanks for thinking of me… 🙂 I promise I’ll be back. But not now. ☹ I’m just too hot, and too tired (and sometimes too dizzy). ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2006, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/454 "2006-08-03T22:46:13Z")
That’s ok. No worries. Just wondering and all. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/455 "2006-08-04T00:50:36Z")
Well, **Scylla** , thanks to your long and arduous defense of a position you took completely in jest, this thread is in the Top 50 Trainwrecks by any measure: tied for 38th in the Pit for number of posts, and 45th in number of views. Impressive bit of trollery, and a rich payoff. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/456 "2006-08-04T04:07:30Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Well, **Scylla** , thanks to your long and arduous defense of a position you took completely in jest, this thread is in the Top 50 Trainwrecks by any measure: tied for 38th in the Pit for number of posts, and 45th in number of views. Impressive bit of trollery, and a rich payoff. [/QUOTE] Then you shouldn’t feed me, right? Yet here you are. Or, you should report it. You did, didn’t you? Did they tell you to fuck off? You should run along and insult and make specious accusations against **Shodan** **Bricker** **Weirddave,** **Duffer** or any of your other usual targets. You sure don’t seem to do much other than run around critiquing everybody else’s posting style looking for offense. And, you’re a hypocrite as well. I seem to remember not too long ago a long pit thread about **Weirddave** in which you took a position in jest and defended it in your Op. “Trolling” by your own criteria. By my criteria you’re trolling. I tried to have a real discussion with you like we did in the recent WMD thread, but you kept playing these tedious games. Now I’m having one with **Oy** and you’re throwing a little fit crying for attention, just being a whiny bitch for its own sake, but there’s little if any substance in dealing with you. So, please, do us both a favor. Take it up with the mods and/or fuck off and stop bothering me with your whining. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/457 "2006-08-04T14:39:38Z")
[QUOTE=Scylla] Then you shouldn’t feed me, right? [/quote] Notice that I haven’t said you’re a troll. I have accused you of trolling _in this particular thread_, but I certainly can’t recall your having done so in the past. So I was kinda hoping you’d come to your senses and be ashamed of yourself, although I expect that’s pretty much a lost cause at this point. > [@](#): > > Yet here you are. Or, you should report it. You did, didn’t you? Did they tell you to fuck off? You should run along and insult and make specious accusations against **Shodan** **Bricker** **Weirddave,** **Duffer** or any of your other usual targets. Geez, if you’re going to give such an intense response, you should at least keep track of who my ‘usual targets’ are. I have often engaged in debate with **Bricker** , but he’s a worthy opponent (like you once were), not a target. I can’t recall having responded to a **Duffer** post in quite some time. And one hardly needs to make specious accusations against **Shodan** or **Weirddave** ; the truth suffices all too well. > [@](#): > > You sure don’t seem to do much other than run around critiquing everybody else’s posting style looking for offense. Well, I _had_ been trying to debate you for some time in this thread, but by your second post addressed to me in this thread (#207, if you want to go back and look; I’d posted at 164, you responded at 182, I’d responded in turn in 197) you were combining insults with attacks on my posting style. I’d much rather debate substance than style, and I think the record’s clear in this thread about who turned the debate into one over posting style. > [@](#): > > And, you’re a hypocrite as well. I seem to remember not too long ago a long pit thread about **Weirddave** in which you took a position in jest and defended it in your Op. > > “Trolling” by your own criteria. If you’re going to say what my criteria are, you might want to read what I said: > [@RTFirefly](#): > > I confess I fail to see the distinction between this and trolling, other than your belief “that it was obvious the way [you] wrote it.” > > If, when people clearly took you seriously, you’d apologized and explained the nature of your joke, that would have been the action of an honest parodist who realized he’d missed the mark. But once people respond seriously, and you keep up the pretext of someone who’s defending their intended position with some degree of intensity - how is that not trolling?? In the **Weirddave** thread, my OP was satirical - and was recognized by its target as such _in the tenth post in the thread._ Others recognized that fact pretty quickly too, but just to clear up any confusion, I said expressly that the OP was satirical, _on that same page_. As opposed to your allowing hundreds of posts to go by before clearing things up. > [@](#): > > By my criteria you’re trolling. Feel free to define ‘trolling’, and explain how I fit that definition. If your definition bears little resemblance to the SDMB definition, then cry me a river. > [@](#): > > I tried to have a real discussion with you like we did in the recent WMD thread, but you kept playing these tedious games. Let’s see: you opened things up in 182 by taking a position that you have admitted was completely in jest. You followed up in 209 by a post that extended that position, threw some insults, and complained about my posting style. And it kinda kept on going like that. > [@](#): > > Now I’m having one with **Oy** and you’re throwing a little fit crying for attention, just being a whiny bitch for its own sake, but there’s little if any substance in dealing with you. > > So, please, do us both a favor. Take it up with the mods and/or fuck off and stop bothering me with your whining. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that, having chased off everyone else, you’ll probably get **Oy!** to leave in frustration as well. But I doubt I’ll take your feelings into consideration in considering where to post; it ain’t worth the trouble. ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/458 "2006-08-04T22:01:02Z")
OK, I’ll give this a try. It’s only 90 today, and surprisingly, that’s made an enormous difference in my comfort level, enough so that I will endeavor to continue my enjoyable argument with **Scylla**. I said something about **Scylla** having to be kidding about school vouchers being not driven by the two great motivators (according to me) of the Replublican party: benefits for the wealthy and/or reduction of civil liberties in support of either ultra-religiousness or misguided patriotism or both (and of course, the ultimate, which is the promotion of the Republican party at any cost). [QUOTE=Scylla] For the wealthy, no. I beleive you are mistaken. One of the great inequities is that the public schools tend to be pretty decent in wealthy areas. If you’ll recall the program would only provide vouchers for schools that failed to meet certain performance criteria. Vouchers would typically be available in less wealthy areas since those tend to be the ones with poor schools. [/QUOTE] OK, this was NOT my understanding (about vouchers being provided only where schools weren’t meeting certain criteria - in fact, that’s the absolute first I’ve ever heard that idea), and I don’t know off-hand which of us is correct, but we’ll assume it’s you for the moment. If so, then yes, it’s a decent thing for the people, but it pretty much destroys any hopes of bringing those public schools up to snuff. The other thing you have to understand, and I seriously doubt that you do, because it’s pretty evident that you made a tidy little bundle on Wall Street and then retired to a farm in PA, is that tax breaks are virtually useless to the extremely poor. I’m not quite certain how the voucher system is supposed to work - if it means that people can apply for a coupon that would actually cover the tuition on a local private school, then yes, it would be useful to a poor family. But a really poor family is NEVER going to have the money to pay for a private school, even the Catholic ones, which admittedly are less expensive than other private schools and certainly better quality than the local public schools in my area at least. Lots of non-Catholic lower middle class families do in fact send their kids to Catholic school here in Trenton, and I don’t blame them one bit. I imagine that a break from paying school taxes for them would be very welcome. But it makes the possibility that Trenton public schools can ever hope to improve almost nil, because they will have even less funding than they do now. I’m jumping ahead to some of the points you made later in your post here, but you have a very distorted idea of urban areas, at least in the fading industrial North East. You think they have plenty of funding? Think again. This city is mostly poor, dirt poor. There are very few wealthy folks in Trenton, and I would imagine that Trenton is fairly typical of a city of its size in this general geographical area. Actually, it’s probably a bit better off than most, because at least it is the state capitol, providing a fairly decent job base. Of course, the pay from the state is beans, but it’s a lot better than no job at all, and the benefits, although not what they once were, are pretty good, at least comparable to a GOOD corporation (and better than a bad one). But the majority of people around here who work at all work at hourly jobs with no benefits, no sick time, no vacation, etc. And a lot of people in this area can’t find work at all. Basically, rather than argue each point, I’ll just say this. You have it firmly embedded in your mind as an article of as deep faith as the Pope (hopefully) has in God that anything run by the government is automatically far less efficient than anything done by a corporation. You also have the idea that government employees, believing themselves to be firmly set in their jobs for life, saunter through their jobs doing a little work when they find it amusing to do so. I can’t convince you otherwise, because nothing I tell you is going to permeate that belief. The fact is that people are people everywhere; some are going to work incredibly hard, some are going to slide through on the minimum they can get away with. You were, I gather, a stock broker, which is a very high-profile job where not exceeding the already extremely high expectations they have of you is pretty much grounds for firing. But that’s not how most of corporate America is. In the majority of positions, they’re every bit as afraid to fire someone as they are in the state. If the employee is not performing up to their expectations, they have to document up the wazoo what they’ve done to inform the employee and direct his or her efforts better. After some six or eight months of non-improvement, they MAY feel sufficiently comfortable to fire someone, assuming they’ve been documenting and informing, informing and documenting. I think many of the periodic corporate lay-offs exist as much to give managers an opportunity to fire the people they either don’t like or feel aren’t performing as they do to actually cut the budget, because it’s not nearly as likely that a person could sue for being laid off as it is for being fired. You were, I gather, in a very high stress job, in which your performance and the performance of the company overall were very closely linked. Again, this is NOT the typical situation. In most corporate jobs, it’s exactly the same as a government job. There is a monolithic entity out there who may or may not benefit from the work you do, and who pretty much arbitrarily decides whether or not you will get a raise or a bonus or nothing. Lip service is paid to the concept of ‘merit raises,’ but the fact is that most people get very close to the same percentage, regardless of their performance. Promotions appear to be based most closely on who plays the political game the best. There is little to no identification with the company as an entity in whose well-being you take a sincere interest, and quite often, the company’s end product is one you’d just as soon see removed from the market entirely, if truth were told. What I’m trying to tell you here is that for most of us, there is absolutely NO difference in what our performance would be in a job for a corporation versus a job doing the same thing for the government. It’s only at the highest levels that this changes, and even then, I suspect it’s just a matter of the rewards being different - in a corporation you get million dollar bonuses, and in government, you get enormous status that may translate into a high-level appointment or an elected position. The majority of teachers, oddly enough, DO identify with their schools and want desperately for them to succeed, especially the ones in the poorest areas where the teachers tend to be rather idealistic or altruistic. The reason the kids generally do better in the Catholic schools is first and foremost because their parents are the kind of people who send them to a Catholic school! You say that it’s not the kid’s responsibility, but I say bullshit. It IS the kid’s responsibility to try to do well in school, and in families that care about their kids’ education, this is so automatic that you don’t even recognize it. The inner city schools not only get the poorest of the poor, they get the most indifferent of the indifferent; children who not only have never really known someone personally who did well because of education, but whose parents have never known someone like that either. Note here that when I’m talking about really poor people, I’m NOT talking about the college grad who has chosen a very low paying field because that’s what they really want to do. I’m talking about the multi-generational poor, the ones who have virtually NO exposure to anything but the lives they and their immediate peers live. And here, societal trends in the past fifty years have been distinctly unfortunate. Probably when Ronald Reagan was a young man, it was truly possible for a dirt poor kid to work his way up to the top. Education was still viewed pretty universally with respect, and children were expected to try to do as well as they could. Things have changed a lot. There are plenty of people living in the ghettos who flash cars, clothes, and jewelry that cost far more than I would ever consider paying for those things, and I make a pretty decent living. How? Drugs, mostly. Thanks almost solely to their illegality, there is a fortune to be made in the distribution of drugs, and plenty of kids who recognize that this is a comparatively easy way of getting ready cash. Sure, there’s risk and illegality involved, but what kid truly thinks about risk, and many of these kids simply are indifferent to legality. After all, what has the ‘system’ ever done for them? Their parents are different too. I’m guessing you’re about five-ten years younger than I (I’m just 50), and I’m the youngest of some widely spread children, so my parents grew up during the depression. My mom lives, and lives fairly comfortably, on $15-$20 K a year. Part of that is due to a subsidized senior apartment complex, but most of it is that she knows how to use (and not use) her money. Still, that social security that you so scorn is what keeps my mother eating, and this despite the fact that she worked full time almost her entire life. Sure, she MIGHT have done better investing that extra paycheck money it in the market herself. Just as likely, she would have lost it entirely. And then what? But I digress. Today’s kids’ parents among the very poor don’t know how to stretch a penny six different ways. They don’t even know that they SHOULD. They just know that occasionally they have a surplus, which generally goes to buying something obscenely expensive for their kids that “all the other kids have,” and usually they have less than they need to meet this month’s bills. Tax benefits are almost useless to them, because they pay almost nothing in taxes as it is. What they WANT is a large sum of money to let them catch up, and which will (in their minds) then allow them to keep up in the future. What they NEED is a complete culture change, so that they are more like my parents were. I don’t know how to do that. Do you? So vouchers? If they aren’t going to be subsidizing Mr. and Mrs. Ultrarich Ashton-Clarke the Third’s little Muffie going to the most pretigious private kindergarten in the area instead of the perfectly adequate public school down the street, they’re a nice little benefit for the middle class. But one that will be highly damaging to the public schools, which whether you can accept it or not, are ALL struggling financially, and NOT because Mr. Lazy-ass Do-nothing Superintendent gets 3 months a year paid vacation. Do you actually KNOW any teachers? I do. Very few of them get summers off, and their day sure as hell doesn’t end at 3, even though some of the kids go home then. But under-funding isn’t the worst of the problems with the inner cities schools. It’s just a bad one that vouchers would make even worse. The worst problem is the environment and the culture in which they’re trying to educate students. And it’s not the kids’ fault either, or even their parents’, or rather, it is, but it’s understandable. They come from a culture that sees no value in education, and that mocks those who try to get one. Very few kids are going to push themselves to try in that situation, and their parents are mostly either too indifferent or too damned busy (with hourly jobs, it’s probably going to take two or even three a day to support a family) to be able to provide the necessary support. OK, I’m out of steam now. I’ll continue this tomorrow. I’m sorry, **Scylla** but it’s the best I can do for now. Better than yesterday or not, it’s still 90 degrees. Fondly, Oy! ---
**Author:** ![Oy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/bc8723/32.png) [@Oy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oy)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/459 "2006-08-04T22:10:27Z")
After re-reading my post, I realized that one line could be interpreted as saying that I make a pretty good living from Illegal Drugs. This was not intentional; I am a computer programmer, and the drug people are the ones in the ghettos with the pricier clothing, jewelry, and/or cars than I have. This was probably obvious, but just in case there was any doubt… 😃 ---
**Author:** ![zoo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/71c47a/32.png) [@zoo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoo)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2006, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036/460 "2006-08-04T22:39:26Z")
Thank you **Oy!** for a very thoughtful post. I agree with most of your sentiments but I suspect some will view with a different lens. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036.md?page=22) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bush-youre-not-at-a-frat-party-you-dick/365036.md?page=24)