Posted on 01/14/2010 7:15:09 AM PST by Tolik
While I agree that a lot of California’s problems rest with the Federal govt, the fact that California has more than 12% of all the Representatives in Congress should have made Congressional “oversight” more stringent. That amount of political power available to California has been totally invisible.
But wait! If, in contrast, networks, influence-accumulation, and contacts are the objectives to ensure a child remains, or enters into, the elite class, then the investment in such undergraduate schools is very much worth it—but should be considered analogous to a debutante ball, the social register, or the Grand Tour.
Brilliant.
We simply can’t afford these taboos anymore. All this bipartisan and nonpartisan nonsense defies common sense.
Of course Bush was responsible. That is a fact and not debatable.
But it's also a fact that most Democrat leaders supported Bush's policies and urged him on, until the going got tough. Then they turned on him and did everything they could to undermine him politically.
The chaos in Iraq did not happen overnight. It took years to develop and even longer to figure out what was required to defeat it.
So it's an interesting question: knowing everything we do today, could Iraq have been stabilized and returned to Iraqi control significantly faster, and with many fewer lost lives than, in fact, it was?
My point is: if Iraq was the fault of "stupid" George Bush, then a "genius" like Barrack Obama should be able to solve an easy problem like, say, Afghanistan in a matter of days, or weeks, right? :-)
Your points are valid. I was sticking to the political reality which this post was about.
Thanks for ferreting out his post...and posting it here.
A reasonable proposition. But not necessarily a correct one.
The Yale entering class may well be superior to Hillsdale's. But what comes out four years later is, on average, probably less educated.
But it's a sterile argument. You are never "hiring the class", you're hiring the individual. In that regard, I've had equal success with undergraduates from Princeton...and Bradley...and Oklahoma State.
My own experience was better with Princeton. I specifically remember the (Princeton grad) girl I hired asking why I hired her a year afterward considering that she had no experience doing what I hired her to do. I told her that I felt anyone who was reasonably smart could do what I wanted her to do and in her case, at least, I was correct.
As a geezer now, I sometimes take classes at two top level schools, one an Ivy. The classes I take are all real academic stuff (no xyz-"studies") and I can tell you that the level of the kids I encounter is pretty top drawer. I have a small state school near me. I've never taken classes there but the books they assign for their courses are mostly very low level.
ML/NJ
Some very good points.
“The left, with its roots in the early 1900 progressive movement, is about replacing God. Like most human endeavors of that nature, problems often are the result of man trying to play God.”
This is exactly correct, as is pointed out in “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg.
I am an agnostic, yet it is clear to me that Christianity is an important glue that holds American society together.
So it's an interesting question: knowing everything we do today, could Iraq have been stabilized and returned to Iraqi control significantly faster, and with many fewer lost lives than, in fact, it was?”
Yes, I believe that it could have been. The left in this country did a great deal to demoralize us and to lend moral support to the enemy, all simply to undermine the Bush administration. If the MSM and the left (but I repeat myself) had been enthusiastically for victory in the Iraq war, I believe we would have won cheaper and quicker. Remember Abu Ghraib?
VDH is so on the ball.Should be required reading by all politicians.
As an irregular verb, the word hamstring can be used either way.
TO hamstring, Have hamstrung.
My English teacher once told me that when in doubt, sound it out. To me, “hamstringed” clangs.
ah, truths we dare not speak... like moving Conan O’Brien to the Tonight Show was the biggest mistake NBC ever made. If no heads roll (ie. Immelt or Zucker) there is no justice in the world. Jack Parr and Johnny Carson gotta be rolling in their graves laughing their asses off.
ping for further reading. I LIKE this guy!
right on
I wouldn’t pay that English teacher no never mind. Lots of things “sound right” to lots of people.
The “string” in “hamstring” is not derived from the verb “to string.” It is the name of a part of the body. Thus, the verb “to hamstring” is analogous to “to gut” or “to skin.”
A person who hamstrings is not doing any stringing of anything—he is cutting. I.e., cutting a hamstring.
Another error: He mentions “St. Thomas Aquinas.”
The school he is referring to is Thomas Aquinas College.
There IS a “Saint Thomas Aquinas” college or university someplace—but it is a conventional used-to-be-Catholic college. Thomas Aquinas College, in Ojai, California, is the one Hanson means.
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