What's YOUR Overriding Political Issue in the Next Election?

Quote:

these programs are being cut left and right.

But there's always money for the basketball and football guys!

0 Replies

aidan wrote:

Miller wrote:

Quote:
And he wants preservation of wildlife! Will the apes be performing in the NYCity ballet?

Miller-not to sound biased at all, (except that I really am, having spent so much of my time around scientific/medical folk, and noticing a certain, shall we say, lack of interest in anything that doesn't have to do with science/medicine in a lot of those folks), but I've noticed this about you- for a person who works in the medical profession- you have very creative thought processes.

I myself don't see any discrepancy with wanting to preserve wildlife while not wanting to fund the arts. I do however see a discrepancy with wanting to preserve wildlife on this planet, not wanting to fund the arts on this planet- while at the same time, diverting those moneys and pumping them into the space program.

Only a flaming idiot will find that a desire to preserve the earth's wildlife and opposition to publicly funding the arts are mutually exclusive. They have no correlation at all except in the befuddled mind of The Liberal.

The comment that suggests I might argue that apes should dance Swan Lake (sorry but even when I repeat moronic criticism I feel compelled to improve its literary representation) is incredibly stupid.

You know, if your are intellectually honest, you don't get to argue whatever point you may want to manufacture. It amazes me, continuously, that the posters on A2K have such a feeble grasp of not only rhetorical argument but of truth.

0 Replies

aidan wrote:

I see what you're saying- and I agree that it is not the government's role to subsidize individual artists.

But I do think it'd be a productive use of public funds to provide oppotunities for exposure to various forms of artistic expression in public schools-especially music. Unfortunately these programs are being cut left and right.

OK but can you fashion a program that provides opportunites without political influence? I don't think so.

When I was in high school I was something of a literary talent with left wing leanings. I had a tough ass teacher who stuck by me but the school administration worked very hard to censor me. This was the Right censoring the Left. Today, the Left censors the Right. At some point in the future it will flip again.

If art cannot thrive on its own and in the face of deprivation, it is suspect.

If kids in High School need the government to make them artists, they will not be artists.

I think if you get a kid hooked on music- especially making his or her own- you see the dividends in all other aspects of their lives. If we'd use funding in such a way in the early stages of their lives, we'd have to pour less of it into rehab and prisons and young offender programs at the later stages.

A HUGE stretch - teach kids music and we will not have to pay for their incarceration! This is just an argument without founding that supports a presupposed conclusion.

Sort of like preserving wildlife- only these would be our children we'd be helping to preserve.

Public support of the arts has an infintessimal chance of "saving" kids at risk. Would that our fantasies about a violin saving a miscreant child from a life of vilolence be true. They are not, and they are moronic.

Your desire to associate art with the salvation of children is understandable and, to a certain extent, speaks well of you, but it is a fantasy.

In any given year there are some scant number (try 20 -25) of kids who are saved by music. Chance are pretty good that these kids would be saved irrespective of public funding.

The government is OK with broad and dull solutions, It will never be capable of focused emmergence. It is a pipe dream to think that first graders singing Drill Ye Tarriers Drill have any leg up, at all, on an future of artistic expression.

Our kids, capable of artistic expression, are far better served by individual mentoring, planned or serindipidous, than by publically funded mass indoctrination that is more likely to sap a child of his or artistic bent, institutionally sucking all talent dry.

0 Replies

Miller wrote:

Quote:
these programs are being cut left and right.

But there's always money for the basketball and football guys!

Yeah! Those damned jocks!

How minimal is your concept of art.

0 Replies

What?!

I'm not talking about mass indoctrination. I'm talking about providing opportunity where it might otherwise not have existed - for those WHO WANT IT- because believe me- I've no inclination or desire to force feed anyone anything they don't want, as I'm well aware how futile that is- especially in the case of music lessons which are painful for all involved if the person you're trying to teach has no innate talent.

I don't have any statistics to back any of this up- although maybe I'll try to look after I post this. But I do have my own power of observation, and I can tell you that there are a lot of kids out there who do have musical talent, but no money for or access to instruments and lessons.

I've seen school systems that provide lessons and a choice of instrument starting in fourth grade, and I've seen those that don't. Of course, I can't isolate the variable, as along with providing lessons and instruments, there are all sorts of other differences beyond the music that can't be controlled for- but I will say that I have observed this:

Kids who have a creative passion instilled in them at a young age, are less likely to be drawn in and distracted by other available, and perhaps less positive outlets because they have a focus for their energy.

And in the case of music and lessons, which require them to practice and actually study music, it helps them develop discipline. If they play in an orchestra, it provides them with a social set of peers which is also more disciplined and less likely to be distracted and drawn in by other less positive outlets.
It means that they're spending less of their time in front of the tv and/or computer and all the negativity associated with that.
It exposes them to aspects of their own culture to which they may not otherwise have been exposed to, and may open up a whole different world for them..

Any one of these things on its own would be enough to change the direction a life takes, but when you put them all together and multiply those effects by the millions of kids this one funding proposal would possibly steer in a different, more positive direction- I think the results would be astounding.

I admit I'm an optimist, but even if, as you say, it would only positively effect twenty or twenty-five children- multiply that by the annual cost of incarceration for each of those and then by however many years of the average sentence...that'd be a nice little sum of money.
And then aside from the money, when you know and get to love these kids as individuals- twenty saved lives is nothing to sneeze at.

*And it'd have to be offered at the right time- first grade may be too early- highschool would be too late- I'd say third or fourth grade would be just about right.

0 Replies

Quote:

first grade may be too early

For ballet class they like to start the children out at a very early age, especially the boys.

0 Replies

Whether or not a schools curriculum should provide music and art classes should be decided by the local community, not the Federal government. Its long past time for States and local communities to take responsibility for managing their own business, as intended in the Constitution. Federal government and control isn't the most effective and efficient means of determining State and personal decision-making. Get the Federal government out of local and private affairs, and perhaps it'll be more effective and efficient at managing those responsibilities that it does have under the Constitution.

0 Replies

I agree with that sentiment in theory, although if school attendance is going to be mandatory within a country, I don't think it's a bad idea to have some minimum national standard and/or curriculum.

And since the federal government has already inserted itself into public education in various ways (think NCLB), I think this is one way in which its participation, by way of funding, might actually accomplish something positive and productive.

0 Replies

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Only a flaming idiot will find that a desire to preserve the earth's wildlife and opposition to publicly funding the arts are mutually exclusive. They have no correlation at all except in the befuddled mind of The Liberal.

Wait. I know of your obsessive urge to invoke the alleged stupidity of The Liberal - as in, you know, the archetypical, collective Liberal with a capital L - but this must be the most far-fetched insertion of the reference so far.

"The Liberal" asserts "that a desire to preserve the earth's wildlife and opposition to publicly funding the arts are mutually exclusive?" What liberal? Or rather, what liberals, considering you evoke the archetype? What are you talking about?

You're not equating Miller, of all people, with The Liberal, are you? Have you, umm, followed Miller's posts?

Surreal.

0 Replies

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

If, in practice, it is unlikely that a law abiding immigrant from Germany will not be detained as an enemy combatant in some pen in Cuba, than the Law is pretty effective.

A telling slip of the tongue? Laughing

0 Replies

I consider myself to be a liberal Conservative, thank you.

Scientist and dancer>>~~~~

0 Replies

http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/images/gywo.shoelace.gif

0 Replies

edgar, Excellent!

0 Replies

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

FreeDuck wrote:
Asherman wrote:
1. Prosecution of the war on Radical Islamic terrorism.
2. Reclaim a majority in the Congress.
3. Defeat whichever candidate the Democrats pick to run for the Presidency.

While the nation is under attack from an enemy determined upon our destruction, all other issues are secondary. The National Debts is an important issue, but wars always are expensive and the alternative is unacceptable.

Yes, what better way to fight those who want to destroy us than to do the job ourselves, thereby depriving them of the pleasure.

Now this is a feeble retort.

Says you.

Quote:

Where in what Asherman has presented is there the slightest hint that he would like or might lead to our destroying ourselves?

If the national deficit was able to destroy us we would be wallowing in the mud long ago.

No, I admit I'm reading a bit into it, but the idea that everything in our country comes secondary to prosecuting a war on something resembling an ideology which so far has led us down a dark road of, what I believe, is an erosion of American principles (liberty and justice for all) sticks in my craw. I'm quite sure you don't agree with that, but it's an argument for another thread.

Quote:

Are you really so partisan as to suggest that restoring a Republican majority in congress and/or defeating the Democrat's 2008 candidate is tantamount to destroying America?

What could be more partisan than to proclaim that the highest priority for our nation is restoring Republican control?

Nothing I said was partisan. The Republican majority laid down and bent over while allowing their president to walk all over checks and balances, squandered and wasted money like it grew it on trees, set up systems of corruption that would make even the Democrats blush, and I have no reason to believe that a Republican majority restored to Congress would do anything different. There has to be accountability and right now, to me, that means the Republicans have to get their house in order before being given a majority again. Meanwhile the Republicans in the white house spend their days not solving the nations problems or even thinking about them, but trying to figure out how to extend the Republican control throughout many government agencies that should be apolitical, including and especially the justice department. They give great weight to legal geniuses who tell them what they want to hear, like torture is legal and the president is omnipotent, and the president signs bills into law with signing statements that simultaneously render them moot. They've brought back extraordinary rendition, Clinton's bad idea that Congress thought they put a stop to in 1998. They've taken the free market concept of privatization to its extremest point where they've created a more or less private military that acts throughout the world with impunity and bleeds our armed forces dry while charging the American people an arm and a leg for something that we've really already paid for. And all of this is done in the name of 9/11. We should face the fact that we could absorb 100 more 9/11s and still be strong, still be America, and still flip Islamic terrorists the bird.

I promised you a summary and I realize that was more of a rant. I'm quite sure that you will take issue with much of it, but there are other threads that deal with each of these issues separately and maybe that's the place to tango.

Gitmo Thread

America spying on Americans

Gonzales must resign now

Blackwater thread

Ghost detainees

And there are probably more. I was looking for a thread on the al-Marri decision but didn't find one. There was discussion of it but not sure where. Perhaps I should start one since I think a lot of my issues come together in that topic.

Quote:

Actually, I don't think you are and so have to wonder what triggers this sort of gag reflex rhetoric.

I readily confess to it being a gag reflex.

0 Replies

What the republicans have done during the past six years gags most of us with any common sense.

That most republicans would ignore all the crimes committed and revealed during the past couple of years by so many GOP government officials such as DeLay, Cunningham, Rove, Cheney, and others should gag anyone.

0 Replies

The Democratic Congress has gone from an approval of more than 50% to approval of 23% in less than 6 months - and Harry Reid is even lower. He is sitting at 19% now whereas he was at 53% right after he took over. It took the Republicans 12 years to sink as far as the Democrats were able to in 6 months. Amazing, isn't it?

0 Replies

Those low polls reflecting on the democrats is pretty accurate in my books; the dems have done nothing since they took over in January to deserve anything higher. They are a shameful lot playing politics with the lives of our soldiers. Most of them deserve to be ousted when they come up for reelection. I, for one, am tired of both parties that can't be the representatives of the people of this country.

0 Replies

The only way we are going to get out of Iraq is to have a majority in congress that Bush cant overturn. But its too late for that. The dems aren't doing the job but do you think a republican congress and president is the answer. We've already had 6 years of that garbage.

0 Replies

No, the republicans are a sorrier lot than the democrats. They let Bush run roughshod over our constitution and bill of rights, and did practically nothing when their own party-members were caught with corruption and sexual deviancy with minors. Look what they did to Bill for having a consenting sexual affair. You can't get any lower than that!

0 Replies

HokieBird wrote:

The Democratic Congress has gone from an approval of more than 50% to approval of 23% in less than 6 months

Where the hell do you get your numbers from? Are you just making them up ?

Not one - not a single poll - has had Congress over 50% this year. In fact, not one poll has had Congress over 50% at any time since 2003...

At the height of the post-elections victory feel-good vibe for the Democratic Congress, job approval for Congress ranged in the polls between 27-44%, with the average of the last polls out never exceeding 34%.

Currently, the last polls out have ranged between 23-29% approval for Congress, with the average standing around 26%. (See graph below, courtesy of pollster.com).

So the average of Congress's job approval has fallen from 34% to 26% - a fall of eight points, not of over 27, as you would have it.

HokieBird wrote:

It took the Republicans 12 years to sink as far as the Democrats were able to in 6 months. Amazing, isn't it?

Yeah, that would be amazing if it were remotely true.

Instead, we had job approval for Congress falling from, on average, around 50% before 9/11, and 60% right after it, to around 25% on average last October. Thats minus 25 or 35 points.

Since the Democrats took over, approval has first gone up about 8 points, and then falling again 8 points. Balance: 0. No gains, no loss.

Thats pretty embarassing, for sure - you'd have hoped an actual improvement. But what you're saying is just blatant nonsense.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/2CongApprovalRough20070611.png

(Click to enlarge - dots represent individual poll results, the lines represent a more and a less sensitive average.)

But wait - it gets worse - for your side. Congress approval is still at a dismal 26% or so now - but the Democratic side actually does a lot better than the Republicans do. In polls from the last couple of months, the work of the Democrats is approved by about 40%, and disapproved by about 45%. But the work of the Republicans is approved by only about 30%, and disapproved by about 65%. (See graph as of late April).

So no - no equivalence between the two parties remotely in sight, sorry.

0 Replies

What's YOUR Overriding Political Issue in the Next Election?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know