US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

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My primary concern with an end to the Department of Education would be an end of special education funding. Some districts really do take kids with intellectual disabilities and lock them in broom closets when a basic attempt at education could help those kids be functioning adults.

That's a concern, but there's no reason states couldn't fund those programs themselves.

The harsh truth is that the public school system is not designed for special ed cases. It's been a progressive, German, Industrial Revolution-era factory model for over a hundred years, designed for commodity education delivery to blank-slate homogeneous pupils. Unique cases don't work in a factory. (This is also true for extremely smart kids; the "gifted" programs are just as bad, and should be eliminated everywhere.)

The more brutal reality is that there's no good solution for real special ed kids. Most likely, they should have their own separate, specialized facilities (an even bigger funding, scale, and utilization problem). Or they should be handled by home schooling, communal if possible, assisted if necessary. Grafting special need accommodation onto standardized classrooms is a kludge that rarely works out right, and when it does it's because individual educators go above and beyond to make it work.

Complicating all this is the expanding variety of "special needs". There's a difference between a misdiagnosed ADHD kid and a true, unironic autistic kid. Some of these benefit from classroom time with normal kids, others are too disruptive to allow it. Discerning which is better can only be done individually, which doesn't scale, and with personal knowledge, which doesn't work with top-down programs. Again, a mismatch with the factory model.

Don't interpret any of this as writing off special needs kids. My heart goes out to their parents, who have more hard choices to make than the regular "drop off and disengage" parents. But the truth is special ed programs will always be a problem, with or without the DoE, and you'll only see success from highly local, highly motivated efforts.
 
Today my family tried to get out of me who I'm voting for, and I realized I actually don't know if I want to or if I should vote at all. I have pretty strong views on specific issues and both candidates have sworn to do things I absolutely fucking hate and affect me personally, basically. It feels like voting if I want to get shot in the left foot or the right foot.

For a while I've been thinking "Who are these undecided voters anyways?" and literally just today I realized I'm one of them.
Without going into more specifics about my state, I don't really think it fucking matters what my vote is, it's a foregone conclusion. All of my family and many of my friends are highly political one way or the other, and I feel like it'll just start fights I don't want to fight if I make a choice either way.

Obviously I don't have to tell them my choice, but if I go vote they'll know I made a choice, and if I don't assure them I chose their side, they'll assume I voted for Hitler because that's how these things work I guess. The best choice seems to be to not leave my fucking house on Election Day and to have a good alibi to prove I never voted at all. I'm still going to hear "you refused to fight for my righteous cause, you didn't say no to Hitler" for the next few years regardless..... God I hate politics.
 
If I didn't have kids, I would at least wear a t-shirt or a MAGA hat or something in public just out of rebellion. Plus, I'm preggo right now, and I can't afford to have some psycho do something to me.
So I guess this means you won't be wearing a "Childless Cat Lady for Kamala" tee shirt:

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Today my family tried to get out of me who I'm voting for, and I realized I actually don't know if I want to or if I should vote at all. I have pretty strong views on specific issues and both candidates have sworn to do things I absolutely fucking hate and affect me personally, basically. It feels like voting if I want to get shot in the left foot or the right foot.

For a while I've been thinking "Who are these undecided voters anyways?" and literally just today I realized I'm one of them.
Without going into more specifics about my state, I don't really think it fucking matters what my vote is, it's a foregone conclusion. All of my family and many of my friends are highly political one way or the other, and I feel like it'll just start fights I don't want to fight if I make a choice either way.

Obviously I don't have to tell them my choice, but if I go vote they'll know I made a choice, and if I don't assure them I chose their side, they'll assume I voted for Hitler because that's how these things work I guess. The best choice seems to be to not leave my fucking house on Election Day and to have a good alibi to prove I never voted at all. I'm still going to hear "you refused to fight for my righteous cause, you didn't say no to Hitler" for the next few years regardless..... God I hate politics.
I'm not going to tell you to vote for the President, but I do highly recommend voting for local candidates, as that's also more important imo.
 
I'm curious, if anyone else works with hard leftwingers have you noticed anything with their speech patterns in the last couple years? I've noticed a couple of the heavy NPR listeners have adopted this weird cadence where they just monologue and never actually ask questions or engage with whoever they're talking to and seem to completely lose the conversation if you ask them a question that doesn't relate to whatever the monologue is about even if it's something benign related to the job or someone's schedule. Got me thinking of the whole adage about people's behavior patterns being derived from those who they're closest to, and I honestly wonder if some of them have isolated themselves to the point where they're in an odd parasocial relationship with the radio or TV news. All of the cases I'm thinking of are boomers who don't use social media and I'm positive at least two of them who I've known for a decade or so weren't like that before.

Bout $3.15 a gallon here. Not terrible, but not good
$4.79 at the lowest here and my shitbox work hauler only gets 10mpg. Feels bad.
 
Today my family tried to get out of me who I'm voting for, and I realized I actually don't know if I want to or if I should vote at all. I have pretty strong views on specific issues and both candidates have sworn to do things I absolutely fucking hate and affect me personally, basically. It feels like voting if I want to get shot in the left foot or the right foot.

For a while I've been thinking "Who are these undecided voters anyways?" and literally just today I realized I'm one of them.
Without going into more specifics about my state, I don't really think it fucking matters what my vote is, it's a foregone conclusion. All of my family and many of my friends are highly political one way or the other, and I feel like it'll just start fights I don't want to fight if I make a choice either way.

Obviously I don't have to tell them my choice, but if I go vote they'll know I made a choice, and if I don't assure them I chose their side, they'll assume I voted for Hitler because that's how these things work I guess. The best choice seems to be to not leave my fucking house on Election Day and to have a good alibi to prove I never voted at all. I'm still going to hear "you refused to fight for my righteous cause, you didn't say no to Hitler" for the next few years regardless..... God I hate politics.
I’ll echo what Amerimaid said: you absolutely should go vote, even if you don’t make a choice for president.

And I’d strongly encourage you to vote for someone for president, even if it is just a write-in for Ron Paul or Joe Biden or something. Our democracy is dependent upon civic participation. People checking out and not caring is what led to so many of the problems we have now. Preserving and exercising that right is critical.

Allowing people to bully you into not voting, or voting for a candidate who you don’t agree with, is that proverbial “good men doing nothing.” Especially if you’re going to deal with crazy people getting mad no matter what, you should take a stand for what you believe in by going to vote.
 
Today my family tried to get out of me who I'm voting for, and I realized I actually don't know if I want to or if I should vote at all.

I don't care who you're voting for, but tell them to fuck off. If they don't, tell them you're going to spend the rest of your life campaigning against whoever they're voting for just to spite them.

Don't negotiate with terrorists.
 
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