Re: Another Reading
 

'And more and more typical school kids are getting hooked on it. In fact, close to four million American children are taking it under doctors' orders every day'

http://www.s-t.com/daily/04-99/04-19-99/b04op053.htm

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a)i dont know i know a lot of kids are though. just the first link that popped up on the web.

b) what else do u call getting boys to shut up and behave themselves and not ask questions (cause boys hog class time and dont let girls get in on discussions ... etc.)

c) feminists are liberals. seriously everything that is not rrr in schools is a liberal agenda to hard right, heh.

Re: Another Reading
 

Assuming we agreed that Fonda stepped over the line, I would still be much more upset over what my government did, as a matter of national policy, than what one movie star did, or a few (hundred?) Berkeleyites, or Bill Clinton at Oxford. The United States was a much more efficient death machine than the political assassination methods of its enemy: we dropped three times the tonnage of bombs dropped in all of World War II on an area smaller than California, most of it on South Vietnam, the "country" we were supposed to be defending.

Again, how about if I concede the point that Jane Fonda and Bill Clintons are pieces of sh*t? In my book, this means nothing compared to my government acting in evil ways, and lying to us about it in Orwellian fashion. And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with Ms. Noonan. She sees Jane Fonda, and the students at Berkeley, and Bill Clinton, and paints half of the electorate with the same brush. She praises the Democratic party of the 1950s and early 1960s; c'mon, we know she would have opposed the people and policies she faintly praises with 20-20 hindsight.

Re: Another Reading
 

Well, about the only thing I agree with is that getting boys to behave themselves is indeed getting them to act more like girls.

And now, to quote my friend Rick Nebiolo, I'm tired--goodnight.

Re: Another Reading
 

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=ri...net&rnum=2

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=ri...net&rnum=1


ok last link says like 1/6 of boys (in virginia) but its four years old and maybe its like 1/3 of boys 5-12 or something. also it says girls on it but hey what can i say

Re: Another Reading
 

"I could just as easily call the Republican party the party of racists and warmongers.

I have no doubt Ms. Fonda is despised by a greater number of Americans than most other famous movie stars for her activities during the war. I reiterate that those who did what they could to stop the United States from murdering peasants performed a great service to their country. "

Methinks that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was passed by a Congress with a large Democratic majority. The resolution was sponsored by a Democratic president and the war was waged by a Democratic president. Also a Republican was the president when the USA involvment in Viet Nam was ended upon his initiative something the Democrats seemed to have to clue on how to accomplish.

Re: Another Reading
 

Actually I've had quite a bit of experience in dealing with ADHD, public schools (well Albuquerque Public Schools), and to a lesser degree Ritalin. If you have a child that truely does have ADHD, you would probably be better off home schooling that child in subjects that they were having problems in than prescribing Ritalin and going through the special education process mandated by law (not Ritalin). Just my opinion through experience. I actually did this BTW. I have problems administering such a drug to a child and my experiences have shown me that at least part of the problem rests with the public school system itself.

Re: Peggy Noonan on the Democrats
 

Why is it interesting that Peggy Noonan wrote her thousandth puff piece on Bush and the Republicans? Has she ever written anything else but these strings of adjectives and adulations for her partisan heroes?

Can you imagine Murray Kempton or Walter Lippman putting their names to something like this? Of course, they were actually paid to think. Other scribes (Like Lippman) moonlit as speechwrites, but Noonan has never been anything but a sloganeer and coiner of catchy phrases. More interesting than anything she says is the Wall Street Journal's choice to feature her so regularly on one of the most widely-read op ed pages. Since our world is increasingly dominated by the seemingly inexplicable, it's important to let the PR folks provide context consisting of silly fluffed-up impressions of polticians as superheroes.

What can you say about multilayered nonsense like this?

"A recent illustration: President Bush broke through to the great middle of America and persuaded them we must move in Iraq. He didn't "break through" anything because nothing stood between the people and the official messages that dominate the airwaves. Bush and his phalanx of subordinates and supportive commentators have been on TV hourly for months saying the same thing again and again. How could it have been possible for them to fail? As a result, the vast majority of the public believe that Iraq is a nuclear power even though it unquestionably isn't, and that it was tied to bin Laden on 9/11, despite the lack of any evidence and an expert consensus that says it's bullshit He was able to do this not because the presidency is the Big Microphone (how could media concentration and technology have made TR's bully pulpit less powerful?) --President Clinton used to complain that Rush Limbaugh had the big microphone (no, Clinton complained that talk radio was dominated by right-wingers, which it unarguably is) --but because he honestly believed, in his head and his heart, he was acting to make our country and other countries safer. So it's not the White House's famous "focus" on consistency of message and the deference from the media, it's that people have a magical ability to peer inside Bush's body and soul to determine the truth of what he says. It's like she's reaching for some higher plateau of fatuousness). Maybe history will show him right and maybe not, but people can tell his passion springs from conviction." Setting aside how this applies to Hitler, how can people possibly "tell" if Bush has any passion at all, much less passion that "springs from conviction?" Voice intonation? Many people are alarmed about the things he says because he lies and exaggerates and no one calls him on it in the headlines. It isn't that people can tell he has convictions, it's that his credibility is a matter of ubiquitous assumption throughout the mainstream media. Every President gets this treatment from the media when it comes to foreign policy -- no one objected to Clinton's pointless killing in Sudan because the media didn't tell them about it -- It's the truth about illicit sex that the media are expert at ferreting out because it doesn't affect the consensus of the dominant institutions. Once that consensus gels, any glib unlearned halfwit who owns more horses than books can sell it, as Reagan and Dubya have shown.

Re: Peggy Noonan on the Democrats
 

Chris,

Last night CNN ran Bush's early appraisal of Vladimir Putin in which he peered into Putin's eyes, saw his soul, and knew that it was good. As you suggest, I guess we're supposed to do the same with Bush.

Well, during a session when the press actually got to ask Bush questions, he clearly defined for the press that they would be "allowed" one two-part question. When one reporter attempted to probe a little deeper, Bush made one of those stern, pissed-off faces, and told the reporter that he had gone too far, and he also reminded him that he had done such things in the past. (I guess this is what happens when reporters don't ask the right stuff in the proper format.) I looked into Bush's eyes but missed the soul.

Re: Another Reading
 

The escalation of American involvement in Vietnam did indeed take place under the auspices of LBJ; the Tonkin resolution was shephereded through the senate by Senator Fulbright; and the troop build-up and methods of fighting the war were a Democratic administration production.

The war then dragged on for many more years under a Republican president who claimed he had a "secret plan" to end the war. This secret plan was to act as a mad man and threaten nuclear bombing. The pathological lying by Johnson and McNamara was continued in spades by Nixon and Kissinger. They then ended the U.S. involvement on essentially the same terms they could have gotten four years earlier. They fully intended to reinvade Vietnam when the North Vietnamese violated the agreement, as they knew they would.

Plenty of blame to go around on all sides, to be sure.

Re: Another Reading
 

california (and presumabley other states but i CA for sure) has recently declared home schooling illegal unless parent has a teaching certificate or whatever (ie, qualified to teach in public schools).

so you would be a criminal in california today.

Re: Another Reading
 

"The war then dragged on for many more years under a Republican president who claimed he had a "secret plan" to end the war."

Doubtful someone could get elected today on that kind of a "platform." In retrospect, in true Orwellian fashion his plan to end the war was an escalation of the carpet bombing of North Vietnam and widening the fronts to incursions into Cambodia and Laos (if memory serves). The 1968 Presidential campaign didn't offer the voters much to choose from. HHH represented the status quo which was horrible; RMN had a plan to end the war but wouldn't tell the electorate which furthered his reputation as "tricky Dick" and third party candidate George Wallace, with Curtis "bombs away" LeMay as his running mate, spouting "We need to quit pussy footin around over there" as if B-52 carpet bombing, napalm, agent orange, etc. was "pussy footin around." Wallace had some other distasteful ideas as well (huge understatement). In the end I guess the voters thought "tricky Dick" was the best alternative or the least reviled one.

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With the election getting close, the Nixon team sabotaged the Paris peace talks. They privately assured the South Vietnamese military rulers than an incoming Nixon regime would give them a better deal than they would get from the Democrats. The South Vietnamese withdrew from the talks on the eve of the election. Here is what Clark Clifford said about this:

"The activities of the Nixon team went far beyond the bounds of justifiable political combat. It constituted direct interference in the activities of the executive branch and the responsibilities of the Chief Executive, the only people with authority to negotiate on behalf of the nation. The activities of the Nixon campaign constituted a grosss, even potentially illegal, interference in the security affairs of the nation by private individuals."

Having got away with what I see as this act of treason, the Nixon team may well have felt that this undermining of the Democrat's Vietnam strategy had produced the margin of victory for them in a close election. They got away with it because the matter was never investigated with any degree of rigor by the press or anyone else. As the same men faced the election of 1972, there was nothing in their previous exprience with an operation of doubtful legality to scare them off. Ergo Watergate.

Re: Another Reading
 

After reading your post I was thinking that it's a good thing that USA citizens are much more skeptical of what their government tells them now. The fact that someone could actually win a presdential election with a secret plan that he wasn't willing to go on the record about indicates to me that the electorate is much different now. I can't imagine how much Nixon would have been skewered today by proposing something so outlandish today. My cynicism for "inside the beltway" politics is unfortunate and something that I probably need to think about some more. Anyway I'm fairly certain that an objective evaluation of Republican and Democratic congressional voting would show that there isn't as much difference between the two parties as some might believe. The way I see things is that the congressional Republicans acted poorly (non statesman like) during the Clinton administration (flame away) and that it had a tremendous polarizing effect. Couple that with the presidential election of 2000 and the two parties seem to be almost at war with each other. I don't think the congressional Democrats have acted very well during this administration (non statesman like). Perhaps I'm wrong but it seems to me that much more bi-partesinship is needed, especially in these times. Perhaps Ms. Noonan should take note of the need for bi-partisenship as well.

Re: Another Reading
 

Surprise, surprise, I agree with 100% of what you say. I would add that the behavior of the Congressional Democrats during the impeachment was as shameful as that of the Republicans.