But Seriously...

I've seen numerous quotes from participants that said they were told it was a training mission, so that certainly explains why they let unarmed civilians take tanks. They probably were completely dumbfounded and clueless that they were taking part in a coup.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least. He has wanted to move Turkey to a more Islamic state for a long time, the military is more secular and pretty much in place to keep that from happening.

 

I can't believe I came back to post. Fuck.

Anyway, the only thing I wanted to add was to the education discussion. I just quit my teaching job for a multitude of reasons that apply to this discussion.

1) Pay was abysmal. I teach in Indiana, and the pay is awful. In addition, Gov Pence (I'm sure you've heard of that asshat by now) has gone out of his way to strip the elected state superintendent (a democrat) of all her power because, again, democrat. He basically reduced her to no more than a state-wide elected school board member, and reduced her power drastically to preserve his voucher and charter school interests he has been building up. Long story short, as a 4th year teacher I was slated to make less than $30k a year. When my wife went to full time as a pharmacist, we did the math on daycare and realized we would actually end up losing about $20 a week if I worked instead of staying home. When the pay is so shitty it is actually more affordable to not work, that should tell you something.

2) Racism. I worked at a largely rural school, 99% white, and let me tell you - racism is real and it is fucking scary. I also coached football for my entire 3 years at the school. In our one game against a predominantly minority school (their demographics were evenly split at 33% white, black, and Hispanic), I thought our captains were going to vote to change our mascot to the fightin klansman. When they thought we weren't listening they'd talk about "curb stomping those n------" and "we ain't lettin no n----- and wet---- beat us!" When they knew we were listening they'd be slightly less slur-y by referring to them as "them uppity colored folk from up north." We got multiple flags for our students using racial slurs on the field. I told everyone it was because I didn't see my kids enough, but that game was when I decided to never coach football again. I literally lost all respect for every player that said that shit. I couldn't handle even looking at them I was so fucking fuming. Coincidentally, almost every coach left after last year, with two remaining, both of whom had gone to "Klan High," as I've come to call it, and both of whom rather enjoyed the racial slur parade.

Our school had 3 black students, all of whom were adopted by white parents, and they faced a ton of racism every day. Kids we're smart enough not to do it directly in front of me after I went off on a kid for it, but other teachers let it go because they agreed. Point is - It wasn't just students, parents and even some teachers were racist as fuck, and I couldn't handle it. When you go to teach about Martin Luther King, and the kids genuine response is "I don't understand why they couldn't just stay in their part of town. What was the big deal?" Repeatedly.... I just... Fuck.

Parents would openly say if a black family moved to town, they'd leave. Just that simple.

Here is the irony: its called white flight, and it is the reason places like Gary turn into shitholes. Let me explain:

There is a nice, middle to upper class city. Known for great schools and high achievement. Naturally, people want to live there, but it is 99% white. Then, a few middle to upper-middle class black families move in. These black families heard about great schools and great property values, they work hard and earned enough, and they move into what is supposed to be a great place to live; what people should aspire to - moving up in the social and economic hierarchy.

The white families, however, collectively shit themselves. There is a palpable feeling of "there goes the town," and suddenly white people can't move out of the town fast enough. They sell their houses for slightly below market value because they just don't want to live next to "those people," even though "those people" are economically the same. Even non-racist white people start to see the value of their property slide because so many people are moving out, and they understand they have to move or risk owning a home that is worth less than their mortgage, so they move, too. The result? Mass exodus of white families selling their houses like crazy leads to a buyers market and reduced property values. This, in turn, leads to reduced property taxes (which are the primary source of funding for many public schools), hurting the school system, leading it on a downward trend. Suddenly, with lower property values, more people can move in who couldn't before, and the entire community starts a downward slide.

Why? Because white people couldn't handle some black middle class neighbors.

White flight. Its real, kids.

In Northwest Indiana alone, it happened in Gary and Hammond, and is happening in places like Merrillville and Highland.

3) I taught an AP class for 1 year, and it was the single worst teaching experience of my life. Kids had zero interest in taking the AP test or learning anything, parents had zero interest in their kids actually learning anything. As bad as the "low achieving" students can be, AP students were worse. No one in that class gave a single crystalline fuck about anything besides getting an A, which means learning meant jack shit. Learning how to think critically? Fuck you, what do I need to know to get an A? Any time I pushed them to think critically or take opposing sides to an argument, they'd shut down and stare at me like I was the biggest asshole on the planet. I would teach entire classes in stupid accents to entertain myself because my students refused to discuss, think critically, or do anything outside of what they had been trained to do to get A's their entire life - read the book, learn the facts, regurgitate the facts on multiple choice questions. I actually had a kid say "I've gotten A's my whole life, and I can't get above a B in here, because you don't just teach us facts." No fucking shit I don't just teach you facts. Its an AP Class, my job is to teach you to think critically. Don't get me started on the abysmal essays they wrote the first half of the year. I had to wade through bullshit parent letters about "not preparing my kid for college" because they weren't gettign an A (as if that means they're prepared for college), and zero support from the guidance department.

Related note - my guidance department put a kid who had an extremely low reading level in an AP US History class, which is a huge amount of reading. He literally hadn't passed our state test for English, and he was expected to take AP US History. Needless to say, he failed, and somehow that was my fault even though he never should have been in that class to begin with. The guidance counselor's excuse when I called her on that ungodly stupid move? "We were too busy getting ready for testing to completely vet all the kids taking AP classes. If you want to, you can do an application process next year." In other words, they were so bogged down with testing requirements, they wanted me to do their job for them. Which I did. Cause fuck me.

By the end of the year, I fucking hated my AP classes, and I could see why the pass rate for the AP test at our school was an astonishingly low 10% (for the AP History test alone, one of the hardest AP tests, the pass rate is about 50%).

When I told my principal I was resigning, he mentioned my AP students test scores. 40% managed to pass the exam, by nearly 30% the highest rating for any AP teacher in the school. In other words, I was the most successful AP teacher that school had ever had (even though I considered myself a failure, as it was still below the 50% average). The principal wasn't happy to lose me (he was a genuinely good guy who had only been there a year, and I wish him all the luck in turning that place around), but said he completely understood and even said he told his kids to avoid getting into education, because the pay is simply not worth it.

Anyway, Pay was the biggest reason I left teaching. 2 and 3 above merely made me suicidal going to work on a daily basis.

...and now back to never logging in again.

 

When you watched Remember the Titans, I think you were rooting for the wrong characters.

 

I read some of the recent posts here and to some degree I agree with some of what the people who appear to lean to the left believe but at the same time I feel that somewhere along the way either someone in your educational background or something else did you a disservice based on some of what I read. This is not the land of equality, this is the land of opportunity. I, for one, would not sign up for equality. Equality is managing outcomes, opportunity is creating your own. I know you all want to say that someone like me was born on second or third base and acts like he had an extra base hit. Well, I don't see it that way because I have actually left the developed world and worked in places where there have been generational strikeouts for centuries. Every American, Canadian and Western European was born on second base and whine and complain how it's so bad. Well, fuck all of you. Not happy where you are? Change it, be better.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/hom...rs-to-get-to-college-sleeps-in-tent/401160413

Now, juxtapose that article with what I deal with where I am every day. I have a rather complex operation to run that for a certain period of time requires a lot of truck drivers. Unfortunately, the local labor market has trouble supplying said drivers for one of three reasons: people here can't pass a background check, people can't pass a drug screen or people will not show up for 40 hours a week. I'm paying people $14/hr to just show up and drive a truck back and forth dumping dirt, that's all, so long as they can meet those three requirements. 70% fail the first two requirements and another 15-20% fail the third. This is a place, in the American sphere of influence that has a real culture problem. I got pissed off one day when I had several drivers not show up and it hurts production, so the next day they came in before I fired them I asked them why it is they don't show up for a full 40 hours a week. The answer overwhelmingly is that they know exactly how many hours per week they can work before they lose their subsidized housing and other welfare benefits. So, in order to remedy this situation, which is rampant here, most contractors circumvent the local labor force and bring in H2 workers. Sad really, there is opportunity everywhere here and people would prefer to be high, drunk and/or lazy.

These are choices. Everyone has a choice. That kid Fred from the article made a conscious decision that he wanted more out of life than what he saw around him. The people here choose to have things handed to them and take it as it comes. That is freedom.

 

Not at all making excuses - but it may very well be that making those 40 hours means losing assistance, and losing assistance means not being able to make rent/buy food/whatever.
$14/hour wouldn't BEGIN to cover rent here - even at forty a week.
Those people may be in better straits working part time and pulling benefits than working full time and getting no assistance.

 

A few things on this:

1. $14 on a firm, fixed, non-DBA job when the prevailing wage is $1.50 higher isn't bad
2. If $14 doesn't pay the bills, $15.50, the government-determined prevailing wage won't either.
3. Why sign up for a job that expects 40 hours a week, when you know you won't comply?
4. If you can't live at or near the prevailing wage, that isn't my problem, that is a bigger issue than an employer or a Government can solve.
5. You will never make more money than welfare levels if you don't sacrifice and work hard.
6. The market will only bear this wage for individuals with these sets of skills, education and work history; you need experience and skills to be paid more, the only way to do that is to work.
EDIT: 7. If I paid them cash, without a W-2, you bet your ass people would be fighting for this job, even at minimum wage.

This is not me agreeing with the process or not agreeing with it; this is me explaining what is real: This is how the world works and sadly there are armies of working people outside the US that would murder you to have what you have (however paltry you may feel what you have is). Corporations are making it easier for them too by buying influence with the Government to expand the H1 and H2 programs. Get ready to have your expectations lessened further unless someone changes something fast.

 

One of the biggest problems is people live way beyond their means and think it's a right. A cell phone is not a right. A car is not a right. A nice house is not a right. And so on and so on.

Just to use myself as an example, I only make about $40K a year. I could be driving a late model car with payments and full coverage insurance, I could have the latest phone and a $100 a month data plan, and I could rent a decent house in a good neighborhood. I could do all that and basically just be spinning my wheels and getting nowhere.

Instead, I drive a 17 year old truck with the check engine light on, I rent a room from a homeowner, and my $20 phone costs me $25 a month to keep on. What does this trade off get me? I get to pay extra money on my property every month, I get to put money in the bank for a rainy day, and I get to invest money to eventually build my next house.

In 10 years when I'm sitting in my paid off house on my paid off property I'll be lumped in as an example of "That's what's wrong with this country." An old white guy, everything is paid for, and owes no money....a clear example of white privilege.

People just need to check themselves and figure out what they want. Do you want to drive a nice car? If you can't pay cash, that nice car is going to cost you double if you finance it and be worth diddly squat when you sell it. Is upgrading your phone really that important when you're struggling with necessities? Do you really need to be connected to the internet every moment of the day?

 

I don't think you understand how to calculate interest. Unless you have the worlds worse rate on that car. You won't even pay double on a house on a 30 year mortgage.

 

Figure in the cost of full coverage insurance over 5 years vs. liability only and get back to me on that.

 

Just did. It still isn't even close. It's ends up being about 1.25x the value of the car on 5 percent interest.

 

I just did the math too and while you may not pay twice as much, how much is your car worth after you paid all that money? A $30K car will cost you about $4K in interest at 5% over 5 years and about $12K in insurance over 5 years of liability only with my driving record in my area. (My driving record: Over 50, no tickets, no accidents) That $30K car just cost $46K.

 

Insurance must be way more expensive in NV. I pay $600 a year for full coverage. It would be ~350 for liability only.

 

Insurance sucks here. I pay $480 every 6 months for liability only with a perfect driving record. When I drove a 300ZX here it was over $1000 every 6 months for liability only.

Like I said, it's a matter of living within your means.

 

I was not trying to say that racism was irrelevant to education in this country. If I was going to just throw out an arbitrary number, it might be something like 10% racism, 90% economic class. That's as it relates to segregation, in again, an admittedly arbitrary opinion. There isn't a clear method to divide class and race.

So many other problems with education:

- I don't think teaching should be a six figure profession, but yeah, the pay is too low. The median incomes don't look disastrous, but should probably be... I don't know, at least 15k higher? Especially considering I'm sure most make well below the median starting out. Then there's also the fact that in many cities it averages below 40k.
- Evaluating teachers by standardized test results. Just a horrible, horrible system. Teachers cheat, and then there's the desire to overemphasize what's on one test to the detriment of students. Plus, what if you're a teacher with a class that just isn't as smart or motivated? The onus is just on the teacher? Doesn't seem right.
- The class segregation of public schools. When I was in Jacksonville, there were schools that cut ALL after school activities. It was fucking unreal the dilapidated shit holes the community let these schools turn into. High schools in the Ponte Vedra (aka rich) area on the fringe of the city looked nicer than most universities. The community somewhat did this to themselves, always voting to cut taxes that go to schools. Then they end up spending more on cops and prisons to clean up crime, and cut schools again because those fucking tax rates. They'll tell you all about how well this works and how smart they are. Not even kidding.
- Pressure from parents to change grades/force kids through. The constant blame the schools and not my parenting. It's a cultural problem that isn't easy to fix, but school administrators could back off the teachers too. And some of the teachers could maybe be a little more willing to say no.
- Sex education. Teaching abstinence doesn't work. Not even for the people that insist on teaching abstinence. Don't even get me started on the whole creationism is science nonsense. I spent HALF a semester studying medieval theories in a class on evolution. This was at KU, and the professor half grumbled half spat this part of the curriculum at us. He was not happy about its mandatory inclusion.
- We spend only a tiny fraction of the federal budget on education, yet want to put the average American kid in that system for 14 years. I don't want to post the numbers again. If you don't know, just go look.

Ok, so I have another big problem with education and this is where I'm going to come back to liberal arts.

I won't apply this to every subject loosely crammed into the category, but as it applies to political science, gender, and ethnicity I don't think modern liberal arts has any place in academia. Having a bachelor of arts degree is becoming a running joke. There's no creativity in the coursework, there's no science to it, it's becoming a fucking cult. That book you recommended? One look at the title and I can already tell you the author is an idiot. Apartheid schooling. The shame of a nation. Racism is more prevalent every day. The truth. Sigh.
I haven't read that book and I'm not going to, but I had the unfortunate experience of reading books with similar titles and philosophies when I was in college. I had to. It was required, and after all I do happen to be a white with a penis so you might say, I really needed to read those books.
The worst part is the assholes think they're helping. They're not. They're making things worse. Calling our schooling system the restoration of an apartheid makes you an asshole. It also increases, not decreases the racial divide. That sort of mindless hyperbole just creates more backlash. White people resent the fuck out of it, and for good reason because it's nonsense. Some kids believe it, and when you start believing things like you're born into an apartheid state, it can really hurt your motivation. What's the point if the world is going to cheat you anyway? Does this help with introspection, self awareness, and learning from failure? Does it encourage a misdirection of blame? Do you really think these are wholly illegitimate questions? Is this author someone who spouts off about an 'open and honest discussion'? Is the reaction to criticism within liberal arts paradigms conducive to an open and honest discussion?
So I don't agree. That's my fragile identity. My defensiveness. How white is my identity? Apparently, very. In total sincerity the whole thing just makes me sad.

Race relations in this country really have been steadily worsening for the last ten years. Education is no small part of that, and the answer gets a lot more complicated than poor kids going to poor schools and rich kids getting all the funding. It's more complicated than the actual racists and ignorant white people too.

 

2 officers confirmed dead, 2 wounded.

EDIT: The local CBS affiliate is now reporting 7 total officers shot.

 

Does BLM have a social agenda? From what I've seen they promote anarchy and racism. Is there a point to the group? Is there any societal good that can come from them? I think they inspire hatred towards police and the white community.

 

Point me to something where they advocate violence. Last I checked they didn't.

This is the perfect example of Poe's law.

This isn't to say that what is happening isn't in Baton Rouge isn't despicable, terrifying, and anything less than a tragedy.

Y'all just need to slow your roll a little bit. I saw similar shit being posted in the wake of Dallas and last I heard that shooter wasn't associated with Black Lives Matter.

 

This just blindsided me. I have a very good friend and co-worker with family members who are police around Baton Rouge. Fortunately she just responded to me that they are all ok.

And before the little fire incident yesterday my wife and I were gonna take my son to the local police station this morning to bring them tacos and teach him to thank officers (instead of being scared of the police like so many shitty parents teach their children).

My jaw is still on the floor. This has me really considering quitting my job and signing up to be a police officer.