President Obama Is Looking To Extend The School Year

Unfortunately, it seems like there are more than a few Americans who would personally like to delete Obama himself. And getting increasingly brazen about saying so publicly -- I wouldn't want to be the guy that started that Facebook poll. (And not that I'm suggesting that RavenTTD is anything of the sort.)

Its not clear to me that the number of folks who feel that way is significantly higher than at other times in the past. Its just now they have public forums capable of reaching large numbers of people with ease. Personally, I believe that the world would be a much better place if politicians of both parties and all of their supporters were banned to a distant planet forever. And I have thought that for a number of years. But I don't create facebook polls about it. :)

I do find it kind of ridiculous that Obama himself gets blamed when people who support him "attempt to indoctrinate impressionable children". I must have missed the "smoking gun memo" where Obama told schoolteachers to engage in that sort of practice...

I mean, at least Christianity has source documentation...and people still manage to indoctrinate children with a wide variety of "the one truth" kind of thinking. Yet I still don't see people in the streets picketing Jesus....weird.

rollergator said:
I still don't see people in the streets picketing Jesus....weird.

We should be...but after 2000 years, you have to accept that someone just isn't going away.

If Obama is still talked about in they year 4000, I doubt there'll be many protests.

;) ;)

(winkies, people, winkies!)

^Oh noes! I forgot to add winkies! :)

GoBucks, everything that I've heard and read says that death threats against Obama are way up over the levels George W. Bush and preceding presidents faced. By one account, he receives over thirty death threats a day.

Forget the winkies; I think we definitely need a "weak man's stick" emoticon for CBuzz. :)

Mike -- I was not talking about actual threats but just people who feel that way. There are many more avenues at this point to express displeasure with other folks. If someone wanted to threaten Nixon, what methods did they have? Phone call (on a landline), letter or telegram. What other options were there? You could hop on a plane and head to DC but there were not as many flights and the cost was much higher. How many options do we have today? Phone call (landline, cell phone, internet phone, etc.), letter (sent via US Mail/Fedex/UPS, fax, email, etc.), posting on the internet (message boards, twitter, facebook, news media websites, etc.), call ins to an exploded list of political radio/tv shows, etc. The options are a lot greater today than they have ever been. And I suspect a lot of threats are heat of the moment type things. In the past, the heat of the moment was past before you could even make the threat known by the communication means available at the time. Now, in 5 seconds, you can have your threat online with it taking a life of its own long before the heat of the moment even passes.

Economy doesn't help. In my experience, when folks have money in their bank account, they tend to be much happier/easy to deal with and will let much more roll of their back. Empty the bank account and all of that changes. Folks will do some crazy/stupid stuff when that bank account is empty (seen that too many times mostly while working for a bankruptcy court several years back). Bush wasn't dealing with the current economic problems that Obama has except at the tail end of his presidency. And for a lot of people, the bank accounts have gotten a lot worse since Bush left office (and in no way am I saying that is Obama's fault).

Carrie -- Are you asking for an emoticon that looks like a Viagra pill? :)

Speaking as a weak man, I generally try to keep my stick out of C'Buzz. ;)

I don't think the vocal portion of the population that dislikes Obama even knows why they dislike him. Generally speaking, I agree with a lot of his policy decisions, but not all, and like any president, I can appreciate that much of what he'd like to do requires the approval of Congress.

A lot of what we see right now is the result of the same rally cry that happens any time a Democrat comes into office. There's a natural tendency for the Republican opposition to cry "big government and spending," when in reality, it's just big government and spending on different things. When a Republican takes office, the Democrats rally with accusations of cultural insensitivity and help for the rich. I've seen just enough presidents in my lifetime to see that it's a recurring theme.

What's frustrating is that right now I don't feel like any real issues ever get aired out. I mean, look at the nonsense around health care. There has been all kinds of "Obama will..." statements before Congress even has a draft of a bill. The president does not write the legislation. Nothing has even made it out of committee. Then you have these morons on TV and marching on Washington who don't even know what socialism is (or that they already participate in it), make ludicrous comparisons to Nazis (because health care reform is just like slaughtering millions of Jews) and spread FUD that we'll all lose what we have. I mean, I don't think any of the proposed legislation fixes the right problems, but then why don't we discuss what will instead of wallowing in hyperbole and nonsense?

Education does not have a silver bullet fix. I also restate that I don't believe that longer schools years is an appropriate first step in fixing problems.

There you go again, Jeff...bringing calm and rational thinking into the discussion.

One, there is no money/power for politicians in providing solutions. Two, many of the problems we have cannot be solved by government.

To me, the problem with government is the two parties. Totally controlled/bought by special interests/lobbyists. And the power/money for the politicians is in the game itself, not which party is in the White House (which goes back and forth over time in any event). A republican politician's biggest fear isn't that you will vote for a democrat and a democrat politician's biggest fear isn't that you will vote for a republican. Their biggest fear is that you will toss them both out. All the rallying cries about tax and spend, favor the rich, etc. are all part of the game. At campaign time and on the political talk shows, both parties are at each other like nothing else arguing like they are as different as night and day. But in terms of results, they are simply the same (except maybe a couple of fringe issues that don't matter anyway). They remind me a lot of the WWE. All just a show/act put on the fool the electorate. Keep voting for one part over the other as the lesser of two evils and you will get evil.

Jeff said:
Education does not have a silver bullet fix.

No "real problems" have a silver-bullet fix. Not the economy, energy, terrorism, health, housing, none of them.

The only "problem" you can solve with silver bullets.....werewolves. ;)

Or what was done to solve KBF's lack of an inverted.... ;)

Jeff said:
wonk wonk wonk Obama wonk wonk wonk Congress.

wonk wonk wonk Democrat wonk wonk wonk Republican wonk wonk wonk Obama wonk wonk wonk socialism wonk wonk wonk Nazis wonk wonk wonk hyperbole and nonsense?

You're a Socialist Nazi!

< There, wolf.

There, castle. >

GoBucks89 said:
Carrie -- Are you asking for an emoticon that looks like a Viagra pill? :)

I would only use it when I needed to make a point. Really. :)

GoBucks89 said:
Totally controlled/bought by special interests/lobbyists.

But the funny thing to me is that Obama has been trying to make strides in changing that problem, too. He took a different approach to fundraising during his presidential campaign. And he seems to be turning a deaf ear to some pretty powerful lobbyists when it comes to policy.

He's pretty much said he won't be bullied by the banking industry when it comes to the student loan program (as he makes the change to Direct Lending.) And he's pretty much saying the same thing about insurance companies in his healthcare reform.

I wonder if that could be why we are hearing more vocalized opposition than ever before really. Someone has to start the chain of "noisy" rebellion and hearsay. Is that what the powerful lobbyists do when they don't get their way? Hmmmm....

(@ Moosh) Would you like to roll in ze hay?

Darn it Carrie, you messed it all up! ;)

I do that sometimes. ;)