Random News Stories

[Cain]

Vaz has survived exactly because of the way in which he plied his corruption.  A man to whom the Hindujah brothers owe favours is a man not lightly dismissed.

[Junkenstein]

True. Will be interesting to see who else jumps out to defend him though. I do hope the police find a criminal angle or two out of it. I'm pretty sure they still owe him a kick or two for his bullshit over the years.

Salman Rushdie must be laughing his tits off.

[Junkenstein]

Sheriff Joe is headed to court:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/us/sheriff-joe-arpaio-arizona.html

Not even taking bets on this one. The man is made of teflon so there will be a lovely riot when he walks.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Sheriff Joe is headed to court:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/us/sheriff-joe-arpaio-arizona.html

Not even taking bets on this one. The man is made of teflon so there will be a lovely riot when he walks.

No there won't.  He is worshiped as a living god in Tempe/Phoenix.

[Junkenstein]

I know, but a man can dream.

[LMNO]

This is relevant due to ballot questions.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/massachusetts-charter-cap-holds-back-disadvantaged-students/

Simply put, there's a question whether to raise the charter school cap on underperforming (read: urban/minority) districts.

The above study says that charter schools have been shown to help urban students, but have no-to-negative impact on suburban (white) students.

I started out against the idea of more charter schools, for several, kinda thought out, reasons.  But this evidence, added to the language of the ballot, is persuading my otherwise.

Any thoughts on the validity of the Brookings Institute, this study, or charter schools in general?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Brookings has a reputation for being a solid left-centrist think tank, if that's helpful at all.

[Eater of Clowns]

While that is good news, I still believe I'll be voting No to expand Charters.

Even if it passes the total amount of them cannot exceed 1% that of other public schools, which is not a high enough percentage to enact meaningful education reform even for underperforming districts. Ideally, a No vote could signal lawmakers that a significant investment is needed in public schools, rather than a series of charter bandages.

And while I realize this is significantly less solid basis than an actual study, I have a shit ton of teacher friends and they are all voting against it as well.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

While that is good news, I still believe I'll be voting No to expand Charters.

Even if it passes the total amount of them cannot exceed 1% that of other public schools, which is not a high enough percentage to enact meaningful education reform even for underperforming districts. Ideally, a No vote could signal lawmakers that a significant investment is needed in public schools, rather than a series of charter bandages.

And while I realize this is significantly less solid basis than an actual study, I have a shit ton of teacher friends and they are all voting against it as well.

Generally, "No" votes on any school funding signify to legislators that the public is unwilling to fund schools at that level, so they try to ask for even less next go.

[Cain]

I would've said Brookings was far more postwar liberal centrist myself.

The only reason it looks leftish is because of the insane rightwing think tanks like Heritage which were explicitly set up to drag the conversation right of said postwar liberal consensus, and it's actually frequently cited by conservatives.  They've got some notable PNAC neocons kicking around the place, as well (O'Hanlon, anyone?).

[LMNO]

Thanks, all.  The wife and I had a good talk about this last night, and the info you provided helped.  I need to look at the text of the ballot question to confirm if the cap rally is only being lifted on urban centers.

[xXRon_Paul_42016Xxx(weed)]

https://jacobbacharach.com/blog/

What I felt when Donald Trump won the presidential election last night was weirdly akin to what I felt on 9/11—yes, that 9/11: not terror at a catastrophe whose suddenness and magnitude were unprecedented in the history of the world, but rather sad, weary recognition of a smaller, more acute disaster whose antecedents and precedents were all too obvious, an inevitable result—I won't hesitate to use that word—of a long series of choices that we'd made. I didn't predict the hour, and I was very, very surprised when it arrived. But I wasn't shocked.

We are in for a long and unproductive argument about whether or not Trump's victory represents the revenge of the economically forgotten against the managerial political class or the petit-bourgeois revolt of classic fascism or some stinking eructation of the perpetual sin of American racism. I think it is at once all and none of these things. All of them are symptoms of the deliberate disorder of an unequal society in which the power, wealth, and influence—the real power, wealth, and influence—accrue endlessly to the same tiny sliver of the population, leaving hollow communities in the wake. Even people who are doing well by American standards—I am personally doing very well by American standards—are mostly doing so at greater personal expense to themselves and their families, their friends, and their communities.

This isn't meant to be a defense of racism and sexism and homophobia and all the other sins against identity, which are evil and wrong. But just as we recognize that terrorism, which is evil and wrong, has roots in the deliberate policies of the American government, so are we obligated to recognize that the persistence of prejudice, even as it tilts into violence, is not the result of some inexplicable defect in the innate character of human beings, but the savage, misdirected lashing out against nearer, vulnerable targets when the real enemy is so impossibly powerful and distant. Wrongs have explanations; they even have reasons.

I didn't know Trump was coming, but I knew a Trump was coming when I saw the response to the financial crisis. There are plenty of other ills of the American empire, but that was so viciously unjust and so close to home. (I anticipated a Trump as long ago as high school, when I saw what America had done to the old coal town where I grew up, but that was just an inchoate dread that turned me into some kind of political radical.) Sooner or later, I thought, all the useless pablum about everyone getting a bachelor's and learning to code while the Blankfeins of the world walked free, prospered even more than before, would bring this upon us. It was like a magic spell. It was a misdirected prayer to a trickster god, and here we are living in the accidental fulfillment of our vain rulers' stupid wish.

Sure Trump was lying—bullshitting is probably a better word, since I don't suspect he tells untruths instrumentally; he just lives in a collapsed distinction between true and false. But he acknowledged the material circumstances of the country out there, all those people, poor and middle-class alike, who are outside of the communion. Is their rage pathological? Yes. But he had the wherewithal to diagnose it and turn the endemic into a contagion. It got him just enough bodies. Meanwhile, a vaccine existed. The mildest—I mean, the mildest—sort of redistribution would have done it. Instead, we said: go be a programmer, as if everyone could, as if that would do anything for the people who'd still remain in Uniontown, PA.

I happen to believe our civilization will survive this. The Romans managed plenty of crises without collapsing; we focus on the ending only because it appears in retrospect the most spectacular. (In fact, it was slow and almost imperceptible to those who lived it.) Inertia is a powerful thing. I guess I counsel something like a cautious vigilance. I do however think we should stop pretending it's all malice without cause. It's shameful; it's embarrassing; it will be dangerous, and we should be prepared. But no matter who they are, let's not collapse on the old canard that they simply hate our freedom.

[axod]

Wtf is this, we already talked about this, right?

https://heathenwomen.com/2016/10/19/order-out-of-chaos-magic-the-discordian-origins-of-the-alt-right/

I can't even be bothered to read it now, I got St. Paul on the line, long distance.

[LMNO]

Eh, it's Starbuck's pebbles, and poorly connected, at that.  Gets origin dates and influences wrong and backwards, and really, really misses the joke and intent.

I have no doubt that a Thelemite who dabbles in chaos magick and has a passing knowledge of RAW can also be a bigot.  I can believe that quite easily, in fact.  And the fact that most of the Alt-right backstory is retconned is completely missed by the author.  All in all, not very interesting.

[Junkenstein]

Today's HA HA:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/homeopathy-treatments-must-be-labelled-to-say-they-do-not-work-us-government-orders-a7429776.html?cmpid=facebook-post

There is a huge market in the US for homeopathic remedies. In 2007 alone, it was estimated Americans spent more than $3bn on a controversial system of alternative medicine created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann, and which has long been dismissed by mainstream science.

Now, the US government is requiring that producers of such items ensure that if they want to claim they are effective treatments, then they need to make available the proof. Otherwise, they will need to point out that there is "no scientific evidence that the product works".