In The News Today...

Quote: AZDuffman

How does raising the minimum wage help anything? Skills, yes. Remove obstacles, yes. Quit sending people with no business in college there.

My daughter is a college math teacher.
She asks that question every new semester,
why are half these students here. They
obviously paid no attention in HS, they
don't even know the fundamentals.

She loses half the class in the first week
and is down to 1/3 by the 2nd week.
These kids are wasting time and money
on classes they don't understand and
will never use.

Quote: Evenbob

My daughter is a college math teacher.
She asks that question every new semester,
why are half these students here. They
obviously paid no attention in HS, they
don't even know the fundamentals.

She loses half the class in the first week
and is down to 1/3 by the 2nd week.
These kids are wasting time and money
on classes they don't understand and
will never use.

Just over 50% graduate. Of that group, we cannot even guess how many have useless degrees. All that wasted time and money. The white collar office world makes out like you need a Bachelors. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is becoming the 21st century version of indentured servitude. Let the feds loan you the money for school now vs. your voyage then. After which you are stuck for years working off your debt.

On average, a college degree pays off by age 34.

Quote:

the unemployment rate for 25- to 34-year-olds with a Bachelor's degree was 2.6% last year, more than five percentage points below the unemployment rate for those with just a high school education.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/09/pf/college/college-degree-payoff/index.html

Generally speaking, with a college degree you will have higher lifetime earnings.

Quote: AZDuffman

As I said above, if you think the comment is racist, then you are saying that conditions in Haiti and Norway are the same.

I said the comment by itself is not racist. The topic was immigration. The policy is that Trump wants to people coming in from these s***hole countries, which is racist.

Quote: AZ

One of the unseen problems in Haiti at the moment is that it is a playground for the non-profits. After the earthquake they set up camp. They destroyed the local economy, and it cannot recover. But they stay as it lets their fundraising continue and gives a nice little concession for the executives of said non for profits. I have worked several Haiti fundraisers, this is their biggest complaint.

To support your argument, Are Foreign NGOs rebuilding Haiti or just cashing in?. So non-profits have the same business goals as the profits. What is the solution? Ignore?

Quote: AZ

Not exactly. Pre-1964, probably 95%+ of all immigration came from a very few small areas. Ireland, Germany, Italy, and Eastern Europe. Undesireables often got turned back. The idea of "take anyone from anywhere" is very new, just 1.5 generations old.

Don't forget China. Both the Visa Lottery program and the Refugee program are subject to extreme background checks. Heck, my family based immigration from Canada is going to take 1.5 years to complete because of my background checks.

Quote: AZDuffman

Just over 50% graduate. Of that group, we cannot even guess how many have useless degrees. All that wasted time and money. The white collar office world makes out like you need a Bachelors. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is becoming the 21st century version of indentured servitude. Let the feds loan you the money for school now vs. your voyage then. After which you are stuck for years working off your debt.

Agree that the cost of education is a deterrence to getting a degree. The cost of tuition at the University of Toronto, one of the world's top university, is about $5,200 US per year (and this is before the Ontario grant kicks in, which makes her education free). Actually, all public universities in Canada have the same tuition rates for residents.

Millenials have different ideals than us. They see their parents being slaves to their job so their focus is on happiness and fixing the world. They do what they want to do to achieve their dreams. This is achievable due to the internet and technology. Some would rather be happy and poor than rich and a slave.

Quote: boymimbo

Some would rather be happy and poor than rich and a slave.

In their 20's maybe, after 30 things
change drastically. Then it's mortgage,
cars, kids, and all the money you need
to do that.

Quote: Dalex64

On average, a college degree pays off by age 34.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/09/pf/college/college-degree-payoff/index.html

Generally speaking, with a college degree you will have higher lifetime earnings.

These kinds of calculations are suspect. Going to college vs. getting a trade and working sooner probably puts the college student $100,000 behind on graduation day when you consider lost earnings as well as tuition, both debt and what the student might have paid in cash.

The problem comes in that they are taking entire populations into account. IOW, the lazy lumps who spend their early 20s still working very low skill jobs get lumped in with the ones who go and learn a skill. My point is that there are far better ways than the old BS degree. Check the student loan stories on YT.

Quote: boymimbo

Millenials have different ideals than us. They see their parents being slaves to their job so their focus is on happiness and fixing the world. They do what they want to do to achieve their dreams. This is achievable due to the internet and technology. Some would rather be happy and poor than rich and a slave.

Someone should tell them you rarely get to "fix the world." Even they will have that idea beaten out of them by their late 20s. On "being a slave" what I see is alarming. They do not want to be a slave to a mortgage payment, I agree. But the junk they spend their money on, oh my! I keep going back to where I worked in 2016. Pod of millenials and two oldsters. We would talk when they were not around. And I saw the same on other jobs.

They do not grasp the idea of living like a monk a few years to make your goals. Little to no long range planning. Many will hit their late 30s and get a smack in the face of a wake-up call.

Nope. A photograph can't accidentally reveal anything. Someone allowed a photograph to be taken when the Hawaii Emergency Center's password was on the screen.
\.

Text of Senate speech today by Jeff Flake, R-AZ. Absolute must-read. Part of Senate record, so not subject to copyright.

Mr. President, near the beginning of the document that made us free, our Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote: "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." So, from our very beginnings, our freedom has been predicated on truth. The founders were visionary in this regard, understanding well that good faith and shared facts between the governed and the government would be the very basis of this ongoing idea of America.

As the distinguished former member of this body, Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, famously said: "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." During the past year, I am alarmed to say that Senator Moynihan's proposition has likely been tested more severely than at any time in our history.

It is for that reason that I rise today, to talk about the truth, and its relationship to democracy. For without truth, and a principled fidelity to truth and to shared facts, Mr. President, our democracy will not last.

2017 was a year which saw the truth -- objective, empirical, evidence-based truth -- more battered and abused than any other in the history of our country, at the hands of the most powerful figure in our government. It was a year which saw the White House enshrine "alternative facts" into the American lexicon, as justification for what used to be known simply as good old-fashioned falsehoods. It was the year in which an unrelenting daily assault on the constitutionally-protected free press was launched by that same White House, an assault that is as unprecedented as it is unwarranted. "The enemy of the people," was what the president of the United States called the free press in 2017.

Mr. President, it is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies. It bears noting that so fraught with malice was the phrase "enemy of the people," that even Nikita Khrushchev forbade its use, telling the Soviet Communist Party that the phrase had been introduced by Stalin for the purpose of "annihilating such individuals" who disagreed with the supreme leader.

This alone should be a source of great shame for us in this body, especially for those of us in the president's party. For they are shameful, repulsive statements. And, of course, the president has it precisely backward -- despotism is the enemy of the people. The free press is the despot's enemy, which makes the free press the guardian of democracy. When a figure in power reflexively calls any press that doesn't suit him "fake news," it is that person who should be the figure of suspicion, not the press.

I dare say that anyone who has the privilege and awesome responsibility to serve in this chamber knows that these reflexive slurs of "fake news" are dubious, at best. Those of us who travel overseas, especially to war zones and other troubled areas around the globe, encounter members of U.S. based media who risk their lives, and sometimes lose their lives, reporting on the truth. To dismiss their work as fake news is an affront to their commitment and their sacrifice.

According to the International Federation of Journalists, 80 journalists were killed in 2017, and a new report from the Committee to Protect Journalists documents that the number of journalists imprisoned around the world has reached 262, which is a new record. This total includes 21 reporters who are being held on "false news" charges.

Mr. President, so powerful is the presidency that the damage done by the sustained attack on the truth will not be confined to the president's time in office. Here in America, we do not pay obeisance to the powerful -- in fact, we question the powerful most ardently -- to do so is our birthright and a requirement of our citizenship -- and so, we know well that no matter how powerful, no president will ever have dominion over objective reality.

No politician will ever get to tell us what the truth is and is not. And anyone who presumes to try to attack or manipulate the truth to his own purposes should be made to realize the mistake and be held to account. That is our job here. And that is just as Madison, Hamilton, and Jay would have it.

Of course, a major difference between politicians and the free press is that the press usually corrects itself when it gets something wrong. Politicians don't.

No longer can we compound attacks on truth with our silent acquiescence. No longer can we turn a blind eye or a deaf ear to these assaults on our institutions. And Mr. President, an American president who cannot take criticism -- who must constantly deflect and distort and distract -- who must find someone else to blame -- is charting a very dangerous path. And a Congress that fails to act as a check on the president adds to the danger.

Now, we are told via twitter that today the president intends to announce his choice for the "most corrupt and dishonest" media awards. It beggars belief that an American president would engage in such a spectacle. But here we are.

And so, 2018 must be the year in which the truth takes a stand against power that would weaken it. In this effort, the choice is quite simple. And in this effort, the truth needs as many allies as possible. Together, my colleagues, we are powerful. Together, we have it within us to turn back these attacks, right these wrongs, repair this damage, restore reverence for our institutions, and prevent further moral vandalism.

Together, united in the purpose to do our jobs under the Constitution, without regard to party or party loyalty, let us resolve to be allies of the truth -- and not partners in its destruction.

It is not my purpose here to inventory all of the official untruths of the past year. But a brief survey is in order. Some untruths are trivial -- such as the bizarre contention regarding the crowd size at last year's inaugural.

But many untruths are not at all trivial -- such as the seminal untruth of the president's political career - the oft-repeated conspiracy about the birthplace of President Obama. Also not trivial are the equally pernicious fantasies about rigged elections and massive voter fraud, which are as destructive as they are inaccurate -- to the effort to undermine confidence in the federal courts, federal law enforcement, the intelligence community and the free press, to perhaps the most vexing untruth of all -- the supposed "hoax" at the heart of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

To be very clear, to call the Russia matter a "hoax" -- as the president has many times -- is a falsehood. We know that the attacks orchestrated by the Russian government during the election were real and constitute a grave threat to both American sovereignty and to our national security. It is in the interest of every American to get to the bottom of this matter, wherever the investigation leads.

Ignoring or denying the truth about hostile Russian intentions toward the United States leaves us vulnerable to further attacks. We are told by our intelligence agencies that those attacks are ongoing, yet it has recently been reported that there has not been a single cabinet-level meeting regarding Russian interference and how to defend America against these attacks. Not one. What might seem like a casual and routine untruth -- so casual and routine that it has by now become the white noise of Washington - is in fact a serious lapse in the defense of our country.

Mr. President, let us be clear. The impulses underlying the dissemination of such untruths are not benign. They have the effect of eroding trust in our vital institutions and conditioning the public to no longer trust them. The destructive effect of this kind of behavior on our democracy cannot be overstated.

Mr. President, every word that a president utters projects American values around the world. The values of free expression and a reverence for the free press have been our global hallmark, for it is our ability to freely air the truth that keeps our government honest and keeps a people free. Between the mighty and the modest, truth is the great leveler. And so, respect for freedom of the press has always been one of our most important exports.

But a recent report published in our free press should raise an alarm. Reading from the story:

"In February…Syrian President Bashar Assad brushed off an Amnesty International report that some 13,000 people had been killed at one of his military prisons by saying, "You can forge anything these days, we are living in a fake news era."

In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has complained of being "demonized" by "fake news." Last month, the report continues, with our President, quote "laughing by his side" Duterte called reporters "spies."

In July, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro complained to the Russian propaganda outlet, that the world media had "spread lots of false versions, lots of lies" about his country, adding, "This is what we call 'fake news' today, isn't it?"

There are more:

"A state official in Myanmar recently said, "There is no such thing as Rohingya. It is fake news," referring to the persecuted ethnic group.

Leaders in Singapore, a country known for restricting free speech, have promised "fake news" legislation in the new year."

And on and on. This feedback loop is disgraceful, Mr. President. Not only has the past year seen an American president borrow despotic language to refer to the free press, but it seems he has in turn inspired dictators and authoritarians with his own language. This is reprehensible.

We are not in a "fake news" era, as Bashar Assad says. We are, rather, in an era in which the authoritarian impulse is reasserting itself, to challenge free people and free societies, everywhere.

In our own country, from the trivial to the truly dangerous, it is the range and regularity of the untruths we see that should be cause for profound alarm, and spur to action. Add to that the by-now predictable habit of calling true things false, and false things true, and we have a recipe for disaster. As George Orwell warned, "The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it."

Any of us who have spent time in public life have endured news coverage we felt was jaded or unfair. But in our positions, to employ even idle threats to use laws or regulations to stifle criticism is corrosive to our democratic institutions. Simply put: it is the press's obligation to uncover the truth about power. It is the people's right to criticize their government. And it is our job to take it.

What is the goal of laying siege to the truth? President John F. Kennedy, in a stirring speech on the 20th anniversary of the Voice of America, was eloquent in answer to that question:

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

Mr. President, the question of why the truth is now under such assault may well be for historians to determine. But for those who cherish American constitutional democracy, what matters is the effect on America and her people and her standing in an increasingly unstable world -- made all the more unstable by these very fabrications. What matters is the daily disassembling of our democratic institutions.

We are a mature democracy -- it is well past time that we stop excusing or ignoring -- or worse, endorsing -- these attacks on the truth. For if we compromise the truth for the sake of our politics, we are lost.

I sincerely thank my colleagues for their indulgence today. I will close by borrowing the words of an early adherent to my faith that I find has special resonance at this moment. His name was John Jacques, and as a young missionary in England he contemplated the question: "What is truth?" His search was expressed in poetry and ultimately in a hymn that I grew up with, titled "Oh Say, What is Truth." It ends as follows:

"Then say, what is truth? 'Tis the last and the first,

For the limits of time it steps o'er.

Tho the heavens depart and the earth's fountains burst.

Truth, the sum of existence, will weather the worst,

Eternal ... unchanged ... evermore."

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Quote:

Text of Senate speech today by Jeff Flake,

I made it to where he compares Trump to
Stalin. That's the new Godwin's Law.

"If an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone to Adolf Hitler or his deeds."

Stalin is the Trump replacement of
choice for the deranged Lefties. As
soon as you see Stalin, in this case
it was almost right away, you can
be assured the author is a loon and
you can quit reading.