Here is your f---in' "well regulated m*****a"
Jul 12, 2016 00:37:02 #
To Blurry, Part IV
Case II
Circa the early 1990s the leadership of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) concluded that somehow, it just could not deliver many of the the same services the relatively lower paid management team had been able to direct since the foundation of the district. It thus farmed out the cafeteria and janitorial services, as well as the operations for its most vicious behavioral problems. It is this latter issue that I examine here.
When the HISD superintendent received far less pay as a percentage of average teacher salary, he and his associates were able to operate their own behavior alternative center to which the nastiest, most violent kids were banished. Their better-paid successors found it necessary to farm out this function. The first corporation entrusted with this function, Corporation A, balanced the need to show good data, despite making a hefty profit, by having waivers for the qualification of the teachers, underpaying them, and inventing data to justify continuation of the contract. Eventually, when their school district patrons could no longer help shovel the fraud under the rug, HISD fired Corporation A and hired Corporation B to do the job.
Corporation B has an ostensibly impressive system for both educational and behavioral rehabilitation. It also has statistics to show how its inmates/students progress, instead of just being returned to their regular schools after serving their time. The original principal of Corporation B was fired when one of the kids hammered the head of another with a chair and fractured his skull. The school authorities sent the kid home, instead of the hospital, and neglected to have the assailant arrested, because of a policy I call "murder in the cathedral."
Higher management pressured local administrators to accept egregious behavior from the students committed murder in the cathedral, a crime dramatically played out in the 12th century, but repeated many times ever since. On December 29, 1170, four knights of Henry II of England, Richard le Breton, Reginald FitzUrse, and Hugh de Morville murdered Archbishop Thomas Beckett as he was saying his prayers in the Canterbury Cathedral. Beckett had dared to oppose the king's interference in church matters, especially by condemning the Henry's insistence on practicing lay investiture of bishops. Henry II had never formally ordered his men to commit the crime, but did allegedly say “After all I have done to promote your careers, is there not one of you who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”
Ever since, and without doubt, even before that fateful day, leaders of institutions have been able to conduct policy on two different levels. The formal level is the one at which the leaders are held accountable. It is a set of written directives and policies; etched in stone, so to speak. The other, the informal level, is only implied conversationally, but clearly enough that the lieutenants expected to carry it out understand that they must do something they would never do on their own. The written standards of Corporation B are very strict, but its informal ones are totally different. I know, because the principal who replaced the one who sent home the kid with the fractured skull had worked with me, and held me in very high regard. He asked me to work for him, which for ten hellish weeks I did.
The corporation claimed that unlike traditional schools, it had developed a method of dealing with such students well enough to control their behavior and lead them to viable academic achievement. Despite its elaborate theories on those methods, what in fact the corporation had the alternative school do is to offer no consequence for severe misbehavior, and for abject refusal to do any classwork. Short of criminal assault on another student, for which there was a suspension, the consequence was no more than a gentle warning not to do that again, and/or a call to the parents.
Thus, the kids were essentially free to do every day that for which they had been expelled, and even arrested in their regular schools. Some had been expelled for what the criminal code of the State of Texas calls a “terroristic threat.” This is a class C assault consisting of threatening to harm or to k**l another person. One of them had informed his principal that he would beat the hell out of her. She had him arrested and expelled to the alternative school, where he soon felt empowered regularly to inform me, “I'm going to knock your b***h ass out.”
The principal of the alternate school, in accordance with corporate policies, abjectly refused to allow the city policemen working at the school to arrest any kid for making a terroristic threat. Consequently, the students threatened teachers all day long with such impunity that it was pointless even to report it to the behavior support staff, who would only tell the kid matter of factly, “you know you shouldn't have said that,” or not address the issue at all. All day long teachers were told, “I'm gonna knock your ho ass out... I'll beat your ass... you gonna get smoked... I'll fuck you up”
The kids also felt empowered to throw things at the teachers. As a new teacher, I was a major target for this kind of behavior. Moreover, most of the kids were minorities with more than their share of r****t sentiments. They taunted me with appellations such as “fuck you, whitey” and “I'm gonna beat your ass, honky.” Moments after my very first day in the classroom a shower of pencils hit me. A few books followed, although I must admit that they threw far more books at each other than at me. Before the end of my brief two-month tenure one girl threw a chair at me and hit me with it. The school authorities refused to arrest her for this, or the boy who doused me with stale orange juice by throwing a garbage can at me. At my insistence, however, they did arrest a boy who punched me in the face.
The kid who hit me was one of many who constantly engaged in play fighting with each other. They would playfully threaten, then throw their kicks and punches. They tried to lure me into these exchanges, but I adamantly declined, because way too many of them were too emotionally unstable to be trusted to adhere to the rules of shadow boxing, especially against an authority figure, like a teacher. There was a great chance that they would use it as an excuse to land a real punch.
Fortunately, I did see the kid's punch coming in time partly to roll my head out of the way, making it glance off me harmlessly, instead of landing with full force. I was tempted to ask, “Sissy, is that all you've got?” Instead, I just had the behavior support men take him out of the classroom. The head of the behavior support team did not have the perpetrator arrested until I asked for that to be done. If I felt he was threat enough to require counter-punching, I would surely have been fired for “overreacting,” and probably arrested for assault. The other criminals in my classes needed an example to deter them from putting me in that position.
That evening someone from the district attorney's office called me to let me know that they would not prosecute the kid for criminal assault, because he was only seventeen, thus too young to spend two to ten years in prison for attempting to cause me brain trauma. I consider this familiar argument utterly invalid; that a young adult human is somehow not old enough to be responsible for his violent crimes. Does he somehow fail to understand that punching someone in the face can severely injure him? What then was his objective when he threw a punch? Would he still think it was a minor offense if he himself were the victim? How does a cat or a dog learn to understand and respect the fine difference between touching a person's hand as opposed to his eyes or lips? How old does homo sapiens, allegedly the wisest creature on the planet, have to be before reaching that level of social and moral development, fifty? The assailant thus ended up spending a couple days locked up, and was put on juvenile probation. Three days later he was back in my class. He would have to commit many more crimes before the criminal justice system, let alone the behavior alternative school did anything significant about them.
I failed to develop a rapport with enough students to be as effective as most of the other teachers were. The problem was that I saw certain things in absolute terms, whereas to the school nearly everything was fluid. When kids rushed up to erase what I had written on the board, I restrained them physically. This caused even more of them to do it. The behavior support staff only told them it was wrong to do that and that they should not do it again. This did not stop them.
Finally, upon the advice of the leader of the behavior support team, I stopped using the white board altogether. From that point on I wrote the assignments on computer and printed them to hand out. Some enterprising hoodlums thought it was really funny to attack my desk to take things off it to throw at each other and at me. They did not make exceptions for the assignments. For me the last straw was when right in front of the behavior support leader a kid invaded my desk, snatched the entire class set of assignments, and began flinging them about. While he did this another brazenly threw a pencil at me. The behavior support man said, “Hey! Hey! Stop that!” Later he told me that I shouldn't have anything on my desk that was irreplaceable. I should lock up everything in the storage room behind the desk. That was untenable, because it would take entirely too much time to lock and unlock the door every time someone turned in a finished assignment. Moreover, whenever the door to the storage room were open, some of the bolder kids would force their way in even when I was in it. Their purpose would be to harass me, to commit vandalism and theft, in front of me if I did not have the physical ability to stop them.
The wayward students were far more dangerous to each other than they were to the teachers. On the streets many of them were in rival gangs, which to them was an excuse to attack each other in the classroom without warning. The most common tactic was walking up behind the victim and punching him in the face from behind. It is absolutely miraculous that during the time I was there no one was severely injured, or even knocked out. Their fighting techniques must have fallen far short of their evil intentions. When a fight broke out the large, athletic behavior support team had to stop it without harming the culprits. Most of the teachers timidly sat out the fights, but I helped bring a few under control. In retrospect, I was taking an unnecessary risk. Although a fight, except in self defense, is legally an aggravated assault, not one kid was arrested for any of the daily fights while I was there.
I finally had a conference with the principal about the lack of consequences for very disruptive, threatening and even violent behavior. Why were the kids allowed with impunity to threaten the staff? Why was nothing done to them for pummeling each other? Why was it all right for them to pull the teacher's decorations off the walls? Why did they feel empowered to punch kick and poke holes in the walls of every classroom?
He threw his hands up and asked me what I thought should be done. At that point I had been working there for ten weeks, only eight of them actually in the classroom. I was only a teacher, not there to develop a working disciplinary system. It made very little sense for me to have to tell an institution where I just started working how to take care of its most severe problem. In fact, the corporation running the alternative school could not deliver its claim of rehabilitating each kid academically and behaviorally. They were dealing with the most violent young criminals in the Houston area; a student body that would not cooperate with the most basic rules. The institution created false statistics to match its false narrative, even to the point of claiming that the same students kept returning to the alternative school because within its high structure they could succeed, but in the more permissive regular schools they regressed. If the school admitted that the problem of managing severely misbehaved students could not be contained, except by severe force, similar to that in prisons, it would have to give up its profitable contract with the public school system. I resigned on the spot.
The two corporations Houston ISD had hired to run its behavior alternate program both altered data to pretend they were succeeding where in fact they failed utterly. A much larger behavioral support staff might have helped create more sane conditions, but Corporation B could not hire more staff, because that would eat up its profits. The public narrative they and Houston ISD issued told of a smooth operation about yet another public/private partnership. Until another skull is smashed, only a cynical thinker or someone who worked there will know any better.
Case II
Circa the early 1990s the leadership of the Houston Independent School District (HISD) concluded that somehow, it just could not deliver many of the the same services the relatively lower paid management team had been able to direct since the foundation of the district. It thus farmed out the cafeteria and janitorial services, as well as the operations for its most vicious behavioral problems. It is this latter issue that I examine here.
When the HISD superintendent received far less pay as a percentage of average teacher salary, he and his associates were able to operate their own behavior alternative center to which the nastiest, most violent kids were banished. Their better-paid successors found it necessary to farm out this function. The first corporation entrusted with this function, Corporation A, balanced the need to show good data, despite making a hefty profit, by having waivers for the qualification of the teachers, underpaying them, and inventing data to justify continuation of the contract. Eventually, when their school district patrons could no longer help shovel the fraud under the rug, HISD fired Corporation A and hired Corporation B to do the job.
Corporation B has an ostensibly impressive system for both educational and behavioral rehabilitation. It also has statistics to show how its inmates/students progress, instead of just being returned to their regular schools after serving their time. The original principal of Corporation B was fired when one of the kids hammered the head of another with a chair and fractured his skull. The school authorities sent the kid home, instead of the hospital, and neglected to have the assailant arrested, because of a policy I call "murder in the cathedral."
Higher management pressured local administrators to accept egregious behavior from the students committed murder in the cathedral, a crime dramatically played out in the 12th century, but repeated many times ever since. On December 29, 1170, four knights of Henry II of England, Richard le Breton, Reginald FitzUrse, and Hugh de Morville murdered Archbishop Thomas Beckett as he was saying his prayers in the Canterbury Cathedral. Beckett had dared to oppose the king's interference in church matters, especially by condemning the Henry's insistence on practicing lay investiture of bishops. Henry II had never formally ordered his men to commit the crime, but did allegedly say “After all I have done to promote your careers, is there not one of you who will rid me of this turbulent priest?”
Ever since, and without doubt, even before that fateful day, leaders of institutions have been able to conduct policy on two different levels. The formal level is the one at which the leaders are held accountable. It is a set of written directives and policies; etched in stone, so to speak. The other, the informal level, is only implied conversationally, but clearly enough that the lieutenants expected to carry it out understand that they must do something they would never do on their own. The written standards of Corporation B are very strict, but its informal ones are totally different. I know, because the principal who replaced the one who sent home the kid with the fractured skull had worked with me, and held me in very high regard. He asked me to work for him, which for ten hellish weeks I did.
The corporation claimed that unlike traditional schools, it had developed a method of dealing with such students well enough to control their behavior and lead them to viable academic achievement. Despite its elaborate theories on those methods, what in fact the corporation had the alternative school do is to offer no consequence for severe misbehavior, and for abject refusal to do any classwork. Short of criminal assault on another student, for which there was a suspension, the consequence was no more than a gentle warning not to do that again, and/or a call to the parents.
Thus, the kids were essentially free to do every day that for which they had been expelled, and even arrested in their regular schools. Some had been expelled for what the criminal code of the State of Texas calls a “terroristic threat.” This is a class C assault consisting of threatening to harm or to k**l another person. One of them had informed his principal that he would beat the hell out of her. She had him arrested and expelled to the alternative school, where he soon felt empowered regularly to inform me, “I'm going to knock your b***h ass out.”
The principal of the alternate school, in accordance with corporate policies, abjectly refused to allow the city policemen working at the school to arrest any kid for making a terroristic threat. Consequently, the students threatened teachers all day long with such impunity that it was pointless even to report it to the behavior support staff, who would only tell the kid matter of factly, “you know you shouldn't have said that,” or not address the issue at all. All day long teachers were told, “I'm gonna knock your ho ass out... I'll beat your ass... you gonna get smoked... I'll fuck you up”
The kids also felt empowered to throw things at the teachers. As a new teacher, I was a major target for this kind of behavior. Moreover, most of the kids were minorities with more than their share of r****t sentiments. They taunted me with appellations such as “fuck you, whitey” and “I'm gonna beat your ass, honky.” Moments after my very first day in the classroom a shower of pencils hit me. A few books followed, although I must admit that they threw far more books at each other than at me. Before the end of my brief two-month tenure one girl threw a chair at me and hit me with it. The school authorities refused to arrest her for this, or the boy who doused me with stale orange juice by throwing a garbage can at me. At my insistence, however, they did arrest a boy who punched me in the face.
The kid who hit me was one of many who constantly engaged in play fighting with each other. They would playfully threaten, then throw their kicks and punches. They tried to lure me into these exchanges, but I adamantly declined, because way too many of them were too emotionally unstable to be trusted to adhere to the rules of shadow boxing, especially against an authority figure, like a teacher. There was a great chance that they would use it as an excuse to land a real punch.
Fortunately, I did see the kid's punch coming in time partly to roll my head out of the way, making it glance off me harmlessly, instead of landing with full force. I was tempted to ask, “Sissy, is that all you've got?” Instead, I just had the behavior support men take him out of the classroom. The head of the behavior support team did not have the perpetrator arrested until I asked for that to be done. If I felt he was threat enough to require counter-punching, I would surely have been fired for “overreacting,” and probably arrested for assault. The other criminals in my classes needed an example to deter them from putting me in that position.
That evening someone from the district attorney's office called me to let me know that they would not prosecute the kid for criminal assault, because he was only seventeen, thus too young to spend two to ten years in prison for attempting to cause me brain trauma. I consider this familiar argument utterly invalid; that a young adult human is somehow not old enough to be responsible for his violent crimes. Does he somehow fail to understand that punching someone in the face can severely injure him? What then was his objective when he threw a punch? Would he still think it was a minor offense if he himself were the victim? How does a cat or a dog learn to understand and respect the fine difference between touching a person's hand as opposed to his eyes or lips? How old does homo sapiens, allegedly the wisest creature on the planet, have to be before reaching that level of social and moral development, fifty? The assailant thus ended up spending a couple days locked up, and was put on juvenile probation. Three days later he was back in my class. He would have to commit many more crimes before the criminal justice system, let alone the behavior alternative school did anything significant about them.
I failed to develop a rapport with enough students to be as effective as most of the other teachers were. The problem was that I saw certain things in absolute terms, whereas to the school nearly everything was fluid. When kids rushed up to erase what I had written on the board, I restrained them physically. This caused even more of them to do it. The behavior support staff only told them it was wrong to do that and that they should not do it again. This did not stop them.
Finally, upon the advice of the leader of the behavior support team, I stopped using the white board altogether. From that point on I wrote the assignments on computer and printed them to hand out. Some enterprising hoodlums thought it was really funny to attack my desk to take things off it to throw at each other and at me. They did not make exceptions for the assignments. For me the last straw was when right in front of the behavior support leader a kid invaded my desk, snatched the entire class set of assignments, and began flinging them about. While he did this another brazenly threw a pencil at me. The behavior support man said, “Hey! Hey! Stop that!” Later he told me that I shouldn't have anything on my desk that was irreplaceable. I should lock up everything in the storage room behind the desk. That was untenable, because it would take entirely too much time to lock and unlock the door every time someone turned in a finished assignment. Moreover, whenever the door to the storage room were open, some of the bolder kids would force their way in even when I was in it. Their purpose would be to harass me, to commit vandalism and theft, in front of me if I did not have the physical ability to stop them.
The wayward students were far more dangerous to each other than they were to the teachers. On the streets many of them were in rival gangs, which to them was an excuse to attack each other in the classroom without warning. The most common tactic was walking up behind the victim and punching him in the face from behind. It is absolutely miraculous that during the time I was there no one was severely injured, or even knocked out. Their fighting techniques must have fallen far short of their evil intentions. When a fight broke out the large, athletic behavior support team had to stop it without harming the culprits. Most of the teachers timidly sat out the fights, but I helped bring a few under control. In retrospect, I was taking an unnecessary risk. Although a fight, except in self defense, is legally an aggravated assault, not one kid was arrested for any of the daily fights while I was there.
I finally had a conference with the principal about the lack of consequences for very disruptive, threatening and even violent behavior. Why were the kids allowed with impunity to threaten the staff? Why was nothing done to them for pummeling each other? Why was it all right for them to pull the teacher's decorations off the walls? Why did they feel empowered to punch kick and poke holes in the walls of every classroom?
He threw his hands up and asked me what I thought should be done. At that point I had been working there for ten weeks, only eight of them actually in the classroom. I was only a teacher, not there to develop a working disciplinary system. It made very little sense for me to have to tell an institution where I just started working how to take care of its most severe problem. In fact, the corporation running the alternative school could not deliver its claim of rehabilitating each kid academically and behaviorally. They were dealing with the most violent young criminals in the Houston area; a student body that would not cooperate with the most basic rules. The institution created false statistics to match its false narrative, even to the point of claiming that the same students kept returning to the alternative school because within its high structure they could succeed, but in the more permissive regular schools they regressed. If the school admitted that the problem of managing severely misbehaved students could not be contained, except by severe force, similar to that in prisons, it would have to give up its profitable contract with the public school system. I resigned on the spot.
The two corporations Houston ISD had hired to run its behavior alternate program both altered data to pretend they were succeeding where in fact they failed utterly. A much larger behavioral support staff might have helped create more sane conditions, but Corporation B could not hire more staff, because that would eat up its profits. The public narrative they and Houston ISD issued told of a smooth operation about yet another public/private partnership. Until another skull is smashed, only a cynical thinker or someone who worked there will know any better.
Jul 12, 2016 01:00:31 #
Blurry: 2012 was the last year that I was able to find gun murder statistics for and that number was 8855,
Nagy: FBI stats are compiled through 21014 (Ihttps://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls)
Nagy: FBI stats are compiled through 21014 (Ihttps://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls)
Jul 12, 2016 01:02:16 #
Blurry: when you consider that this is a country of about 320,000,000 people that number represents (8855/320000000) = 0.000027671875 of our population.
Nagy: Why not break it down by murder per 320 million? That way you could make all those thousands of deaths look even more negligible.
Nagy: Why not break it down by murder per 320 million? That way you could make all those thousands of deaths look even more negligible.
Jul 12, 2016 01:03:56 #
Blurry: Interestingly enough when you break that down to murders per 100,000 it is only 2.8 per 100,000 yet the reported murder rate for the US in 2012 was 4.6 which means that 1.8 murders per 100,000 are committed with something other than a gun, it also can be reasonable deduced that if guns were not available to commit those gun related murders that significant number of them would have still occurred using some other type of means.
Nagy: These are correct observations. Only about 60% of our murders are committed with firearms.
Nagy: These are correct observations. Only about 60% of our murders are committed with firearms.
Jul 12, 2016 01:05:32 #
Blurry: The Murder rate for the EU is somewhere close to 1 per 100,000 so it is quite obvious that this is a much more violent country...
Nagy: At this stage we undoubtedly are. I wonder, however, how much other kinds of murder are inspired by the high level of gun murders committed here.
Nagy: At this stage we undoubtedly are. I wonder, however, how much other kinds of murder are inspired by the high level of gun murders committed here.
Jul 12, 2016 01:08:26 #
Blurry: … it is also worth noting that if you study the demographic of murder that it is not the white redneck god and gun loving wing nut committing all of this murder as murder by white folk was at 1.52 per 100,000 getting down close to the European numbers,
Nagy: EU murders would also look much better if they were compiled only on those committed in the better areas. Eastern and Central European rates, for example, would dramatically decrease below their current levels if the k*****gs perpetrated by the Gypsies were not counted, or that in any impoverished area.
Nagy: EU murders would also look much better if they were compiled only on those committed in the better areas. Eastern and Central European rates, for example, would dramatically decrease below their current levels if the k*****gs perpetrated by the Gypsies were not counted, or that in any impoverished area.
Jul 12, 2016 01:16:55 #
Blurry: even without guns this country's murder rate would probably more than double the EU murder rate. Now you can look at a bunch of other things that k**l people in vastly larger numbers than homicides by guns. I know that seeing news releases such as New Town or Orlando is tough to watch and even harder to understand, but I am not so sure that all this talk about the repeal of the second amendment, or banning rifles that have a minute representation in the number of gun deaths each year is not an overreaction.
Nagy: My previous claim that our murder rate would be cut to a fourth its current level was based on an assumption that did not take into consideration the different means by which people are murdered. About 50% of the current gunshot fatalities would live through a knife attack. Others would not even be attacked by a knife, because it takes some physical prowess to succeed with one. It seems that a majority of gunshot victims would live through the attempt. Lest us assume, however, that only 50% would survive. That eliminates more than 4,000 victims. It is revealing that my standards think this is a problem worth eliminating, while yours looks at it as an acceptable price unarmed people must pay to maintain others privilege of owning and carrying dangerous weapons.
Nagy: My previous claim that our murder rate would be cut to a fourth its current level was based on an assumption that did not take into consideration the different means by which people are murdered. About 50% of the current gunshot fatalities would live through a knife attack. Others would not even be attacked by a knife, because it takes some physical prowess to succeed with one. It seems that a majority of gunshot victims would live through the attempt. Lest us assume, however, that only 50% would survive. That eliminates more than 4,000 victims. It is revealing that my standards think this is a problem worth eliminating, while yours looks at it as an acceptable price unarmed people must pay to maintain others privilege of owning and carrying dangerous weapons.
Jul 12, 2016 01:39:19 #
robertjerl: Johnson did pick targets in person as stated in several biographies.
Look here in the Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d4bde2fc-5987-11e2-88a1-00144feab49a.html#axzz4C8g1ogIp
OK forget the link. In my case the second time I went there it popped up a window covering the article demanding I subscribe to read it. Try it and maybe it will open once for you like it did me.
But by chance (in case Murphy struck, he did) I copied the article: It lost the format and graphics, only the words are left.
Nagy: There is no need for the link. I have read the stories about Johnson hovering over maps, but dismiss the degree to which he made any tactical decisions for the following reasons:
1. Tactical aspects of war are too numerous and constant even for the theater commander to direct personally, except to a negligible degree, let alone a president, whose other duties greatly limit his time at maps.
2. There are all sorts of fluid targets that cannot be seen on maps alone.
3. With USAF Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay standing next to him, showing him what he wanted Johnson to see, and explaining military necessities as he saw them, Johnson did not make independent tactical decisions enough to effect the flavor of war. His military involvement was like the French royalty dressing up as peasants.
Look here in the Financial Times.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d4bde2fc-5987-11e2-88a1-00144feab49a.html#axzz4C8g1ogIp
OK forget the link. In my case the second time I went there it popped up a window covering the article demanding I subscribe to read it. Try it and maybe it will open once for you like it did me.
But by chance (in case Murphy struck, he did) I copied the article: It lost the format and graphics, only the words are left.
Nagy: There is no need for the link. I have read the stories about Johnson hovering over maps, but dismiss the degree to which he made any tactical decisions for the following reasons:
1. Tactical aspects of war are too numerous and constant even for the theater commander to direct personally, except to a negligible degree, let alone a president, whose other duties greatly limit his time at maps.
2. There are all sorts of fluid targets that cannot be seen on maps alone.
3. With USAF Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay standing next to him, showing him what he wanted Johnson to see, and explaining military necessities as he saw them, Johnson did not make independent tactical decisions enough to effect the flavor of war. His military involvement was like the French royalty dressing up as peasants.
Jul 12, 2016 01:41:12 #
RobertJerl: “... LBJ liked to pick bombing targets himself”. More strongly expressed in Vietnam Magazine, December 1997, by Air Force Major John Keeler (Ret) – who quotes LBJ as saying: “Those boys can’t hit an outhouse without my permission” – this was something every soldier (and reporter) in Vietnam was aware of, because the president’s arrogant ineptitude was responsible for untold American losses.
Nagy: Johnson overrated his tactical decision making for reasons I listed above. I dismiss his tactical involvement as annoying, but negligible interference.
Nagy: Johnson overrated his tactical decision making for reasons I listed above. I dismiss his tactical involvement as annoying, but negligible interference.
Jul 12, 2016 01:54:47 #
Blurry: Peter, let me ask you a second question, how much spending in grants, loan guarantees, research, subsidies etc. has our government spent during and subsequent to the Clinton administration on g****l w*****g? How much regulation, how much control over agriculture, how much control over our society has the government gained since it began its war on energy? Lastly Peter, when Obama and Hillary threaten to make our energy costs soar, is that not a regressive and punitive attack on the less fortunate among us?
Blurry: You are really at your worst now. Politicians have absolutely no legitimate incentive to make war on any harmless energy industry. As a matter of fact, it would be pure suicide. Their regulatory attempts in the US are too little too late responses to a real growing problem. The US refuses to sign major climate control agreements because its politicians are bought by corporations, including those in the f****l f**l industry.
This tendency of yours is on the intellectual level of disputing the heliocentric theory. I am sure you would pretend that you are like Galileo bravely standing up to the official theories of the time, but you are totally different. Galileo's dissent was based on science against myth. Yours, though in a thin minority, is based on myth disputing science. Pleaasse do not waste my time with this mindless nonsense.
Blurry: You are really at your worst now. Politicians have absolutely no legitimate incentive to make war on any harmless energy industry. As a matter of fact, it would be pure suicide. Their regulatory attempts in the US are too little too late responses to a real growing problem. The US refuses to sign major climate control agreements because its politicians are bought by corporations, including those in the f****l f**l industry.
This tendency of yours is on the intellectual level of disputing the heliocentric theory. I am sure you would pretend that you are like Galileo bravely standing up to the official theories of the time, but you are totally different. Galileo's dissent was based on science against myth. Yours, though in a thin minority, is based on myth disputing science. Pleaasse do not waste my time with this mindless nonsense.
Jul 12, 2016 03:32:28 #
Blurryeyed wrote:
LOL.... Peter, just as I would not involve myself... (show quote)
My goodness, Blurry. I do have to hand it to you. You have taken the art of bulls**t to a new level. I am perpetually impressed with how much energy and time you spend building and shaping your piles of bulls**t. Kudos to you, sir! You really are one of the best!
You also seem to be perpetually holding up the mirror while writing. You go on and on about how you are an infantile trolling presence in this forum and spend so much time in the dirt. You rarely have much more to offer than insults, particularly when the debates don't go your way. That's when you really start piling on the bulls**t and the childish insults.
Your paragraph above didn't address one single substantive issue discussed by either Peter or myself. Both Peter and myself identified in detail Robert's silly Saul Alinsky straw man diversion and other illogical methods. Instead of addressing any of that, you spewed a bunch of empty accusations, claiming we had an "infantile discussion about Robert" without specifying anything at all that was infantile, and without identifying a single thing that Peter or myself got wrong. Nada. Nothing. Just silly baseless accusations and diversions free of substance or relevance.
What a child you are, Blurry. No matter how many times you get called out for your ridiculous diversions, bulls**t and childish name calling, it just never ends for you. You are unfazed. You never get embarrassed or ashamed of your behavior, apparently. If you put 1/10 of the amount of energy that you put into your bulls**t, into more intelligent discourse and on topic relevant substantive points, people might take you more seriously. Unfortunately, you are mostly just a windbag. You are mostly just something to laugh at and smh, making me think, "what a waste of brain cells and human potential".
Jul 12, 2016 10:45:46 #
Wrangler: Oh my God Peter. You really got me this time!
Nagy: This time? Every time. I suggest you read the posts of RobertJerl and Blurry. Both rely on facts, and use logic that requires some time, effort, and citations to answer. A few days ago I wrote a two-part response to a very good apology for gun nuttery written by Blurry, but lost it somehow. I am in the midst of a paid writing task, so I cannot take the time to go to the sites I need to restore it properly, but you are easy work. I would have to suffer severe brain trauma to be brought down to your level. If I were there, or if illness ever brings me there, unlike you, I will not publicly document my condition.
Wrangler: Peter you are a legand in your own mind. I'm once again impressed by your pithy axiomatic words.
Nagy: One need not be a legend to overshadow you, Wrangler; most short bus riders can do that, in fact, many single celled organisms. It is interesting to note that even in a single sentence you have to resort to a worn-out phrase, instead of being constructing something original.
Nagy: This time? Every time. I suggest you read the posts of RobertJerl and Blurry. Both rely on facts, and use logic that requires some time, effort, and citations to answer. A few days ago I wrote a two-part response to a very good apology for gun nuttery written by Blurry, but lost it somehow. I am in the midst of a paid writing task, so I cannot take the time to go to the sites I need to restore it properly, but you are easy work. I would have to suffer severe brain trauma to be brought down to your level. If I were there, or if illness ever brings me there, unlike you, I will not publicly document my condition.
Wrangler: Peter you are a legand in your own mind. I'm once again impressed by your pithy axiomatic words.
Nagy: One need not be a legend to overshadow you, Wrangler; most short bus riders can do that, in fact, many single celled organisms. It is interesting to note that even in a single sentence you have to resort to a worn-out phrase, instead of being constructing something original.
Jul 12, 2016 10:54:04 #
green wrote:
the funkiest one I saw was the Palestine Academy for Science & Technology... and they have over 60 doctorates listed as fellows.
http://www.palestineacademy.org/main/en/palast/fellows/academy-fellows.html
http://www.palestineacademy.org/main/en/palast/fellows/academy-fellows.html
Jul 12, 2016 10:59:18 #
SonnyE: My comment was for the original poster, Nagy.
Not your bloated self importance.
Nagy: This is a very novel use of language: The demented SonnyE address not my person, but a particular alleged quality of myself.
Not your bloated self importance.
Nagy: This is a very novel use of language: The demented SonnyE address not my person, but a particular alleged quality of myself.
Jul 12, 2016 11:16:16 #
Keenan: That is the crux of your problem - that you somehow got the idea in your head that your belief trumps science. This is a stunning example of the combination of ignorance and arrogance.
Nagy: World class ignorance and arrogance.
Nagy: World class ignorance and arrogance.
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