Shoney'sPonyBoy

Well, and again, this is what populism has done to the country. On both sides. Populism depends upon an absolute commitment to victimhood. Perpetual victimhood demands a Boogie Man. For white people on the left, that Boogie Man is Donald Trump and MAGA. For black people on the left, it's white people and institutional racism. For white people on the right, it's the "Deep State," "Uniparty," "Qanon Illuminati," etc. For black people on the right I don't know who it is. There are so few black people on the right I don't know who their populists have anointed as the Devil. But whoever the Boogie Man is, adherents of whatever particular flavor of populist we're discussing will believe any conspiracy theory about them. No matter how outlandish, illogical, or dumb, no matter how much evidence there is against it. Doesn't matter. It's why black people after Hurricane Katrina were claiming that Bush caused the hurricane to kill black people. I frequent TigerDroppings and the populists over there were posting that the Deep State caused the weather to be bad during the Iowa caucus (until Trump won, that is, then they stopped claiming that). Populists on both sides at different times have claimed that the government can control the weather. Case in point, I posted two pieces of evidence to contradict this populist's claim and one of them was his own damn link. And the larger point, which is why I replied in the first place, is that this guy is oblivious to the fact that he's JUST LIKE the people he's so smugly and condescendingly criticizing. He happens to be on the opposite side of the table, but he's JUST LIKE THEM. He's just as willing to believe in and defend absolute nonsense to maintain his populist victimhood status by standing firm in whatever conspiracy theory accomplishes that goal.

I didn't debate anything. I posted a quote FROM YOUR OWN LINKED ARTICLE and another link proving that you are lying about Russia x 3 not being deliberate propaganda. The one sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "Blah, blah, blah" to keep from hearing anything but his own dogma is you. (Of course, it's always you on this website.) And I am not MAGA. I dislike the populism on the left and the right. Have you come to the point that stating facts that you don't like (according to your own linked article) = MAGA now?

No, I said what I meant and didn't leave anything out. What was not accurate about it? That's what I thought.

You forgot the most important part. AND STOP ISSUING THE LOANS IN THE FIRST PLACE. If they will do that, I'm o.k. with everything else you said, just to close the door on a bad policy and run it through. But again, you (royal you) can't have it both ways. It's either a bad risk and you need to stop doing it or it's an acceptable risk and the risk is on the borrower. Which is it?

It's a huge coincidence that "there's (always) so much wrong there, I couldn't even begin to tell you what." If there was really something so wrong, you'd tell me what. But logical appeals to ridicule shield you from having to actually defend whatever nonsense you might say, so...

I see you've become no more honest than the last time I was here. It absolutely WAS propaganda. The Clinton campaign created and planted the dossier they KNEW was false, and the specific allegation is that trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-russia-collusion-hillary-clinton-2016-e341cd7d From your own linked article: "However, Mueller did not allege any crimes directly connecting the two — that is, that Trump advisers criminally conspired with Russian officials to impact the election." I'm not sure what a bunch of ham sandwich indictments and a handful of guilty pleas to unrelated matters are supposed to prove. I'll bet my bank account that if you investigated any group of people politically connected at that level (with no legitimate probable cause) you'd find stuff to charge them with. I never said they weren't guilty of anything. I said the "Russia, Russia, Russia" narrative was false. And it was. Knowingly so. Your own linked article confirms that.

No, you're right, that's a mischaracterization. Wait...what part of that is not accurate?

Yeah, my idea would drastically reduce the number of teachers needed. I didn't offer it as a viable solution—I know it won't ever happen—but it's what would NEED to happen if anyone got serious about improving education in America.

Maybe it's that they are going to become determined to see to it that unborn human health care is not neglected.

If either side loses the corresponding base is going to come unhinged. Both parties have been infested with populism. The left for much longer than the right.

I had a long reply typed out to this and managed to lose it. 😂 I'll summarize here: "Fixing" education in America starts with abandoning this model of forced mass government education. First, I can't see how it's not unconstitutional to mandate that parents send their children to school. Imagine the government coming up with some other program designed to improve society—say, an exercise program—and MANDATING by force of law that citizens participate in it. We take it for granted because it's always existed during our lifetimes, but it's unconstitutional as hell (even if some court has ruled otherwise...if that happened they made a mistake.) Second, we've got to reframe education as a privilege rather than a "right." Many of the biggest problems we have are caused by these two things...forcing everyone to participate, and acting like everyone has a "right" to a "free" education. It should be like the public library. It's there for your use, but you don't have to use it if you don't want to, and if you act up in there you get tossed and lose your privilege. They way we do it now is why 19% of high school GRADUATES (not drop-outs...they aren't part of this number) can't read. And those students keep others from learning and place an undue burden on the system. Third, the system itself is obsolete. We still need direct, in-person teacher to student instruction in elementary school, but once you learn to read and do basic math, most of the rest could and should be online IMO. Teachers could still be available, but they should function more like tutors to help students when they got stuck rather than going through the excruciatingly inefficient exercise of presenting all the material to them. There's just no reason that that should be necessary for the vast majority of subjects. Students could work through the material at their own pace, and a whole lot more material could be made available to those who were able to move faster. That's one of the problems with the current model. Too often, students who could go much faster are held back by students who need more time just to master basic material. In a mostly online model, students who could move faster could access more advanced material once they had completed the core material. Fourth, such a model would truly standardize public education. Because students all across the nation would be taking exactly the same courses and passing exactly the same tests (from a certain point on, at least). It would easily identify problem elementary schools. It would easily identify areas in which the courses were failing to prepare students, etc. The one thing I don't know how to tell you to fix is the fact that it would still be run by the federal government, so there would still be people constantly claiming that the tests and courses were biased, racist, whatever, and there would still be constant downward pressure to relax standard to accomodate those who couldn't perform. I don't have an answer for that. When you let politicians control something, that's what you always get.

I guess anything can. Lawyering, for example, can be about as toxic as it gets. But at least they make more money at the end of the day, even if it sucks just as bad.

He didn't say they were. He said the opposite, in fact. And does working in trades suck more than working as an unskilled laborer?

So my reading was correct? I don't mind the word "fair" in this context. Because it's easily demonstrated that the "fairest" solution in this context is for the people who took the loans to be the people who pay them back, and that forcing taxpayers to do so instead is even less "fair" than the (imagined) injustice of some people having more money than others to pay for school. But I understand what you mean. Most people learned that life wasn't "fair" somewhere around pre-school or kindergarten. Well, when I was coming up, at least. Seems like there are people now in adulthood who still haven't learned it.

Sure. Again, I wasn't assuming that you were missing that point. Just stating it for the record.

I'm not sure I understand. People say that because some people pay out of pocket and others take out loans that it isn't fair, and therefore taxpayers should pay the loans instead of the people who took out the loans? Is that correct? If so, then I would invite them to explain how it is more fair that someone who had no responsibility or obligation to a stranger, had no input or ability to influence that stranger as far as what school to attend (for how much money), what curriculum to study, how hard to study, how to search for employment after the degree was obtained, and how hard to work once employment was obtained, is compelled by the state to pay for that stranger's degree. Gee, that's fair.

What's disgusting about it?

The availability of the loans drives up the cost of the education. It's not the only factor, but it's a big one. Maybe the single biggest one. Stop federally guaranteed student loans and watch the cost of higher education plummet immediately. As for getting a higher percentage into trade schools, everyone I see who wants more tradesmen and women seem to forget that these competitive salaries that tradespeople make, they make because the labor market for those skills is balanced at a certain level of supply vs demand. Any significant number of new competitors in that field is going to change that balance and lower the salaries. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing. Not saying you're communicating this, but I see people all the time saying, "More people should go to trade school, an electrician makes XYZ$ an hour!" Without stopping to think that if the number of electricians increased by 40% over the next five years that electricians would no longer make XYZ$ an hour.

That's a secondary or tertiary problem for me. My primary problem is that these people took out the loans. Why shouldn't they have to pay them back? Why should ANYONE—college graduate or not—have to pay them back for them? If people want to claim that the students are not mentally capable of understanding the consequences of taking out the loan, THEN WHY DO THEY STILL WANT TO KEEP GIVING THEM LOANS? That's like declaring someone mentally incompetent to make their own decisions for themselves, then continuing to let them make their own decisions for themselves. You can't have it both ways. Either the people being loaned the money are capable of making that decision—in which case they should continue to be responsible for the decision—or they aren't, in which case they shouldn't be eligible to borrow in the first place. But this is the irrational world we now live in.

I don't know. Eventually the truth behind "Russia, Russia, Russia" came out. It took three years, as some people are dumber than others. But even it eventually came out.

Really? What is the hope/want/need—free evidence that a biological male with his twig and berries intact is an actual woman who belongs in women's locker rooms and on women's sports teams?

I'm with you. I think we need to be grateful for Pearl. And not just because I think he's a very good basketball coach. I also just think he's a really, really great fit for Auburn. I'm kind of an unusual fan in that I really don't care very much at all about winning national championships in football or winning the NCAA tournament in basketball. I'm old enough to remember '83 in football and how we got screwed out of a national championship that season. And then screwed out of the chance to play for one in 2004. We got screwed in basketball in 2019...I firmly believe that if the refs hadn't missed that double dribble in the Final Four game, we would have won the championship...I think we would have matched up very well in that game. Anyway, we finally won a football championship in 2010. And that high lasted a week...maybe. So I kind of regard the championships as a kind of scam. Not only do they depend on so many outside decisions, some of which are made by criteria that have nothing to do with competition and sport and some of them made by fallible officials, but all of the emphasis on the post-season absolutely kills the enjoyment of the regular season. Especially in football. There are over 130 D-1 football teams and over 350 D-1 basketball teams. Only one of them is going to win the NC/tournament and only a small handful are going to even have a chance to win it. If you're only happy when you're one of the top 5% football or 2% of basketball programs in the country, the overwhelming probability is that you're going to be perpetually dissatisfied. I think that advertisers and politicians and the media have realized how to manipulate human beings to keep them in that state, and I think that social media has poured gasoline on that fire. I know this isn't the political board, but I think that's what's happened with politics. The bases of both the left and the right have given in to a populism that depends upon the perception of perpetual victimhood to work and creates constant paranoia and belief in conspiracies and dissatisfaction. Consider that despite the fact that we have a society that has more civil rights, more opportunity, less racism, less sexism, more equality of quality of life, more comfort, more leisure time, more freedom, less discrimination and bigotry, and more prosperity than any society in the history of this planet, both political bases are absolutely convinced that we need to tear the system that produced all of these things down if their POTUS candidate loses the next election. It's irrational. It's a manipulated psychological state. As applied to sports it's why fanbases are constantly angry at and wanting to fire their coaches. It breeds irrational, delusional expectations. JMO.

They've got the whole Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum for one of them to practice in.

1. I think CBM 'effed around for several games and eventually found out. 2. I also don't think the foul was most accurately classified as an F2 (two things can be true at once). 3. I think BP does bear some of the responsibility for the incident. Not just CBM but also K.D. Johnson showed evidence of loss of temper or lack of self-control during our last several games and Pearl didn't seem to mind. I know he says he "likes his player to play with a chip on their shoulder" but there's a way to stoke the competitive fire without losing control and giving the other team gifts like that and he needs to find that way. 4. All of that said, CBM not being in the game is not why we lost. We still had chances to win it literally all the way to the buzzer. It was just one of those things. It's basketball. Sometimes you have games like that. All that said, I like Bruce Pearl and I think some here may have forgotten what Auburn basketball was like before he came here and what it is likely to be like after he leaves. I also think everybody needs to remember that we still won the SEC tournament this year, which is a rare accomplishment for us. We've only won three SEC tournaments ever, and two of them under Pearl. The other was when both Charles Barkley and Chuck Person were at Auburn if I'm not mistaken. Bottom line, CBM needed to learn a lesson and it's one that BP should have taught him but didn't. So he learned it the hard way.

I suggest a point guard or two. Since we're about out of those at this point.