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[mainiac]

Anyways, I wonder why the greens can't find a decent candidate.

Because the decent candidates want to actually accomplish something.

[smirk]

Stein has been cavorting with the pseudoscience crowd for years. Anti-GMO, anti-vaxxer, alternative medicine, all sorts of woo bullshit like this. It's only a matter of time until the crystal healing and alien worship starts.

Aye, she's hunting the "my increasingly paranoid ex-hippy aunt" vote. That ain't figurative, either: she sounds to be on the exact same track as my elderly, increasingly paranoid ex-hippy aunt. It's only a matter of time until her platform includes some comment on "dismantling HAARP due to weather and/or mind control".

[sluissa]

RE: Stein's Wifi and anti-vaxx stances, I've seen nothing at all that she's actually firmly holds either of those positions. She's courting those votes because those people are listening to her, but she's only courting them by basically listening. The wifi she just says "well, maybe we should take a closer look at it." With the vaccines the only thing I've ever heard her say definitively is that the Pharm companies need more oversight. I've never heard her say that vaccines are bad or shouldn't be required.

It's pretty ridiculous the kind of stuff that gets spread around without even listening to the source it comes from. Almost like there's a narrative being pushed by a group that's afraid she'll be a spoiler vote.

As for Johnson, if he's open to a UBI then that's a tick in his favor. Even if not, still a better choice than either Clinton or Trump.

[mainiac]

I'm not saying that we need to arrest you and put you in a re-education camp, sluissa.  I'm just saying that the idea is worth consideration.

Please keep in mind, I'm not coming out in favor of government agents in ski masks busting through your door and dragging you to a black site where you never see your family again.  No siree.  I'm just saying we should think long and hard about the benefits of that.  For instance the benefit that maybe you would learn what weasel language is.

[Sergarr]

The only things I've heard about Johnson is that he was against NATO, and wanted to forbid women wearing burqas.

[Culise]

The only things I've heard about Johnson is that he was against NATO, and wanted to forbid women wearing burqas.

Actually, he reversed his position on the latter after a single day, during which the decidedly un-libertarian position drew down a ton of ire.

[Elephant Parade]

My first thought upon hearing about Johnson was "hey, wasn't he the guy who thought the government should step away from education?" I looked it up, and...

Hey, look, he is that guy! Sort of.

Governor Gary Johnson worked tirelessly as governor to have a more substantive discussion about the best way to provide a good education for our children.

He did so while working with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and despite fierce opposition from powerful special interests. Knowing full well that the establishment would resist calls for change, he nevertheless advocated a universally available program for school choice. Competition, he believes, will make our public and private educational institutions better.

Most importantly, Governor Johnson believes that state and local governments should have more control over education policy. Decisions that affect our children should be made closer to home, not by bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, D.C. That is why he believes we should eliminate the federal Department of Education. Common Core and other attempts to impose national standards and requirements on local schools are costly, overly bureaucratic, and actually compromise our ability to provide our children with a good education.

Johnson and Weld believe that the key to restoring education excellence in the U.S. lies in innovation, freedom, and flexibility that Washington, D.C. cannot provide.

Deregulating education seems like a pretty bad idea, IMO. Here in Canada, it's handled by provincial (basically state) governments, and that works out well enough, but it isn't clear whether he wants it to be handled by states (which might be okay) or cities/towns/areas/whatever (which would probably be a disaster). The fact that he specifically mentions local governments suggests that he wants to hand at least some power to towns, which I am 100% against.

[Rolepgeek]

The controversy continues in its fourth day. Many pundits are beginning to ask a question that surely has not been asked for a while: did Trump finally go too far? Did he say something that shouldn't be said? Or at least, keep saying it? Condemnation from every angle for attacking a hero is not good optics 98 days from the election.

And of course, the part of it that keeps this going is that while Trump's CAMPAIGN realizes and understands whats going on, and is doing the whole "Humayun Khan was a true american hero" thing, while Trump himself continues his personal war against the Khans. Another candidate would look at the situation, realize "this is not a war I can win", and back off, but Trump is so determined to win ALL of his wars that he refuses. He just can't relent. And as long as he can't relent he adds fuel to the fire, and the Khans continue lambasting him in interviews. Hell even the Khans, on their own, could not keep up the fight if Trump did not want to. Just by redirecting his attention Trump could ensure that, eventually, they wouldstop being talked about, but he just, hasn't. So self-destructive.

None can stand before the Khans. As it was  800 years ago, so it is today.

also:

I believe the wifi was a recent thing.

Man how crazy would it be if the american political class was being poisoned with something insanity inducing.  Like that theory about how lead pipes drove the roman emperors insane.

It turns out that all of those hip new diets and clothing fads and organic food?

Actually highly toxic. Like mega-cancer levels of bad.

My first thought upon hearing about Johnson was "hey, wasn't he the guy who thought the government should step away from education?" I looked it up, and...

Hey, look, he is that guy! Sort of.

Governor Gary Johnson worked tirelessly as governor to have a more substantive discussion about the best way to provide a good education for our children.

He did so while working with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature and despite fierce opposition from powerful special interests. Knowing full well that the establishment would resist calls for change, he nevertheless advocated a universally available program for school choice. Competition, he believes, will make our public and private educational institutions better.

Most importantly, Governor Johnson believes that state and local governments should have more control over education policy. Decisions that affect our children should be made closer to home, not by bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, D.C. That is why he believes we should eliminate the federal Department of Education. Common Core and other attempts to impose national standards and requirements on local schools are costly, overly bureaucratic, and actually compromise our ability to provide our children with a good education.

Johnson and Weld believe that the key to restoring education excellence in the U.S. lies in innovation, freedom, and flexibility that Washington, D.C. cannot provide.

Deregulating education seems like a pretty bad idea, IMO. Here in Canada, it's handled by provincial (basically state) governments, and that works out well enough, but it isn't clear whether he wants it to be handled by states (which might be okay) or cities/towns/areas/whatever (which would probably be a disaster). The fact that he specifically mentions local governments suggests that he wants to hand at least some power to towns, which I am 100% against.

Well, Common Core is rather shit, to be fair. America spends a whole lot of time testing to see if we've made any progress and not so much time funding schools in neighborhoods that need it. Kinda backwards.

[sluissa]

Well, Common Core is rather shit, to be fair. America spends a whole lot of time testing to see if we've made any progress and not so much time funding schools in neighborhoods that need it. Kinda backwards.

Common core is kinda shit, but some states *cough*Florida*cough* want to hand their schools over to private corporations to run which is somewhat scarier. The whole system is shit though, so I don't think there's much you can really do worse than what's already being done.

[Frumple]

Deregulating education seems like a pretty bad idea, IMO.

It's an incredibly fucking horrible idea, yes. It would basically mean the end of being able to take your education in one part of the country anywhere else, and make interschool cooperation and communication several orders of magnitude harder than it already is -- and it's already pretty damn rough in a lot of places. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of horror that is the concept of deregulating the U.S. education system. It's an idea of hate, and anyone holding it should probably be shot before they're allowed anywhere near anything having to do with educational legislation. Maybe not shot dead, but kneecapped and hung outside wherever they were trying to get involved at for a few hours/days as a warning to others might not be excessive.

And I'm not entirely sure how much I'm joking, there. That kind of maddened bullshit would literally get people killed, since that education system significantly helps standardize the competence level in a number of fields where screwing up means dead or crippled people. Letting who the fuck ever set what the fuck ever as their baseline is a friggin' nightmare scenario.

The regulation definitely could use work in places, but getting rid of it is just... words in a human language does not exist to express how poor a course of action that is.

[Rolepgeek]

?

I have a feeling businesses might tell universities to fuck off if they want to try to fob off uneducated people on them and say they're engineers.

Besides which, there's more than a bit of evidence that pre-college education (aka when it's not specific job training in techniques and shit) has minimal effect on long-term outcomes.

Deregulating the system as it is now would fuck things up, but universities and colleges are basically okay as it stands. What would probably change is security laws on campuses, affirmative action programs for some places, losing federal funding based on following certain regulations...

[sluissa]

Deregulating education seems like a pretty bad idea, IMO.

It's an incredibly fucking horrible idea, yes. It would basically mean the end of being able to take your education in one part of the country anywhere else, and make interschool cooperation and communication several orders of magnitude harder than it already is -- and it's already pretty damn rough in a lot of places. And that's just the tip of the iceberg of horror that is the concept of deregulating the U.S. education system. It's an idea of hate, and anyone holding it should probably be shot before they're allowed anywhere near anything having to do with educational legislation. Maybe not shot dead, but kneecapped and hung outside wherever they were trying to get involved at for a few hours/days as a warning to others might not be excessive.

EDIT: And I'm not entirely sure how much I'm joking, there. That kind of maddened bullshit would literally get people killed, since that education system significantly helps standardize the competence level in a number of fields where screwing up means dead or crippled people. Letting who the fuck ever set what the fuck ever as their baseline is a friggin' nightmare scenario.

How about the other sides of the coin though. Some of the federal mandates are actually holding back teachers and students who could be progressing so much further. There is the possibility that education systems tailored for local conditions could do more for kids than they'd ever get from a one size fits all approach. I understand and appreciate your opinion, but schools as they are now are absolute shit and I'm surprised any student gets anything worthwhile out of their time there. I don't necessarily agree, but I also understand and appreciate the opinion of people who want to try something different.

Also to note, I strongly believe that state and local governments are able to fuck things up more reliably than the federal government can, but it only takes one fuck up by the feds to affect the whole country. We've got 50 states and thousands of counties that have a chance to get things right if given the chance. Not sure I'd take those odds, but at the same time they're not terrible odds either.

[RedKing]

RE: Stein's Wifi and anti-vaxx stances, I've seen nothing at all that she's actually firmly holds either of those positions. She's courting those votes because those people are listening to her, but she's only courting them by basically listening. The wifi she just says "well, maybe we should take a closer look at it." With the vaccines the only thing I've ever heard her say definitively is that the Pharm companies need more oversight. I've never heard her say that vaccines are bad or shouldn't be required.

It's pretty ridiculous the kind of stuff that gets spread around without even listening to the source it comes from. Almost like there's a narrative being pushed by a group that's afraid she'll be a spoiler vote.

Yes, you got me. After months and months of being anti-Clinton, they finally broke me down by playing guitar at me LCS-style. I'm an anti-Green Hillbot now. 


Dude, she didn't say "we should study this more", she said:

Person from crowd: What about the wireless?

Jill Stein: We should not be subjecting kids’ brains especially to that. And we don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe where they do, they have good precautions around wireless—maybe not good enough, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. We make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die. And this is like the paradigm for how public health works in this country and it’s outrageous, you know.

In just the last hour or so I've delved into the anti-WiFi community on the Net, and it's extremely similar in mentality to the anti-vaxxer crowd: any studies which claim no harm are "industry propaganda" while any studies which claim harm (no matter how flawed or criticized or debunked) are "scientific proof". And if you think that the potential risk, if any, is outweighed by the utility of WiFi in an educational setting, then you hate children and are a greedy, corporate denialist.

There's also a strong strain of neo-Ludditeism intertwined with it, wherein a number of people are arguing that children shouldn't be using computers AT ALL in school. Which is what Stein was discussing and agreeing with just prior to the question and response about WiFi. Sorry, but we don't have a bright future as a nation if we have a President who wants to revert classrooms back to textbooks and an abacus.

[Sergarr]

Trump Super PAC: Khizr Khan’s son ‘would not have been allowed to serve’ under ‘President Trump’.

“Why not use the Muslim parents of a fallen soldier?” Gorani asked. “What’s the problem with that?”

“They don’t represent the majority of the fallen,” he replied, before suggesting that Democrats would not have invited a Muslim couple if they “really cared about the troops.”

inb4 "he's totally not against all Muslims, just terrorists"

[sluissa]

RE: Stein's Wifi and anti-vaxx stances, I've seen nothing at all that she's actually firmly holds either of those positions. She's courting those votes because those people are listening to her, but she's only courting them by basically listening. The wifi she just says "well, maybe we should take a closer look at it." With the vaccines the only thing I've ever heard her say definitively is that the Pharm companies need more oversight. I've never heard her say that vaccines are bad or shouldn't be required.

It's pretty ridiculous the kind of stuff that gets spread around without even listening to the source it comes from. Almost like there's a narrative being pushed by a group that's afraid she'll be a spoiler vote.

Yes, you got me. After months and months of being anti-Clinton, they finally broke me down by playing guitar at me LCS-style. I'm an anti-Green Hillbot now. 

I wasn't pointing that specifically at you, more at the media who, if they ever do report on Stein at all do nothing but discredit her. Although she does make it easy to do that by making the statements she does and using ambiguous language.

Dude, she didn't say "we should study this more", she said:

Person from crowd: What about the wireless?

Jill Stein: We should not be subjecting kids’ brains especially to that. And we don’t follow that issue in this country, but in Europe where they do, they have good precautions around wireless—maybe not good enough, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. We make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die. And this is like the paradigm for how public health works in this country and it’s outrageous, you know.

In just the last hour or so I've delved into the anti-WiFi community on the Net, and it's extremely similar in mentality to the anti-vaxxer crowd: any studies which claim no harm are "industry propaganda" while any studies which claim harm (no matter how flawed or criticized or debunked) are "scientific proof". And if you think that the potential risk, if any, is outweighed by the utility of WiFi in an educational setting, then you hate children and are a greedy, corporate denialist.

There's also a strong strain of neo-Ludditeism intertwined with it, wherein a number of people are arguing that children shouldn't be using computers AT ALL in school. Which is what Stein was discussing and agreeing with just prior to the question and response about WiFi. Sorry, but we don't have a bright future as a nation if we have a President who wants to revert classrooms back to textbooks and an abacus.

I disagree that she's as strong on it as people make her out to be. It's just working her audience with very soft promises.

In any case, I have no real reason to defend her. She's low in the polls, Johnson is the horse to bet on if you want an upset. But just as a personal preference and without betting strategically, and in a race full of acknowledged nutjobs, Stein is still my personal preference.