http://denbeste.nu/special/polltrends.shtml

That article is basically looking at all of the polls.

You can read for yourself, but basically the jist of it is this. The pollsters continue to switch polling practices. One poll they will oversample Republicans, other polls they oversample Democrats. Because of this any relationships between the polls are essentially useless and can not be used to form a solid hypothesis on which way the polls are turning.

It is interesting to note that all the pollsters over sampled Republicans durring the month of september, then right after the first debate began oversampling Democrats. Thus the huge poll swing.

Is noone un-biased!

At this point, barring a "surprise", Kerry is done. He failed to capitalize on the debates, and if there's nothing new, the polls are showing a comfortable elad for BUsh.

I would tend to agree, and hope you are correct. I have grown more comftorable with kerry on most domestic issues, but the man has a true lack of international knowledge, and that truely scares me.

Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Isreal, Germany, and France to name a few are all issues that I am warry to watch him handle.

Damn straight he's correct. why do you think I'm trying to line up a summer job in Toronto???

I need an exit route...

Make sure to visit the Skating rink next to the City Hall in Toronto - it's free!

Dolce,

I think you will be plesantly supprised by Mr. Bush in the upcoming 4 years.

I think you will see a move toward the goal of better education in the United States, with a lot of reform of the current plan and how to fund it by the white house.

I think you will see the economy continue to build on the 13 months of strait job growth.

I think you will see Iraq get finally fixed as I believe Bush will commit the needed man power there after the election.

Plus we get to keep one of the best first lady's in recent memory.

KJ

Your serious?

Yes, I am. To each his own political beliefs.

KJ

Your right...I really didnt know if you were being sarcastic or not. I wasnt trying to be mean about it.

1. Define "Better" Education. Its just that I cannot possibly discuss such vague phrases. Better for whom, better in what way, what do you consider "good." And how do you think he'll go about doing that? Is the process in which he is going about doing it, regardless of the outcome, agreeable to you? Or do you think there are otherwise you would desire be put into action more that would still lead to the same ultimate goal? What is that goal?

2. This one is for anyone to guess. Economic cycles transcend single presidencies, and I do not credit the rise in job growth to the President, nor do I blame him for the slump that was bound to be the post-quick growth economy of the mid 90's. What I can address is what type of plans he did(n't) implemented to support American citizens, what his discourse is around the global economy, and what actions he took to try to rectify the situation. These are personal. I don't believe in trickle-down. I don't believe he did what he could as far as agriculture to hold inflation, I don't think his discourse around oil prices is going to get us anywhere. Also, what indistries did he invest in most in order to"create" the new jobs, and what policy and controls were put on these businesses? This last question is pretty self-explanatory. I just don't think its industries that are going to hold water in the future. Hate to be the one to put it out there. But its true.

3. As to Iraq. I will say it once, and say it again. It ultimately lies in how Machievellian you are. I don't care if 20 years down the road Iraq is on its feet. The ends DON'T justify the means. Look I could get from NYC to Pittsburg MANY different ways, if I get in a car and drive rechlessly down the one highway at 140 miles/hour while sucking back teqillas and I make it to the front door of the Mattress Factory. You'd slap my hand and say I could have hurt many innocent people. I could argue that I got to there fine, but you would have know better. Same goes with Iraq. There are/were other routes that could have lead to the same end point that were less obnoxious. So yes, maybe Iraq will be better by 2008. That doesn't make the past two years "right" though.

4. I'm not even going to acknowledge that statement.

OoOo,

A serious response, and a serious thread. I like. I may be to tired to respond. So why not break this down into parts. Shall we do education first?

First off, I commend the president for the No Child Left Behind act. I am glad that he was able to push such legislation through. It has good intentions and shows something I want to see, his dedication to the education of american youth.

That said the bill was short sighted. Alot of that had to do with the partisan lobbying that it took to pass the bill. The funding was at times misplaced, and once it became apparent that there were problems, it became a partisan mess.

The good news is the president knows things need to be changed, and is relocating funding as well as ammending the bill. They will get it right, they have too. I just think this is one of the most important peices of legislation to pass in many years, and even though they didn't get it right to begin with, it is a slow process which in the end will leave us with a much better funded, and adequate public school system.

Your thoughts?

KJ

I don't think vouchers is the way to go. In his decision to provide everyone with some way to pay for education 2 hours from home just because it is "better" he forgot that it is two hours away from home. Educational centers, unlike other "businesses" have to be community based. Its a two way relationship, and a good healthy school can build a good healthy neighborhood. Furthermore, access to school facilities such as school libraries, gymnasiums, and computer labs have always helped communities. If kids just get sent far off, the local school suffers, more kids, given the opportunity, get sent off, the school continues its downward spiral, and the less resources the school has, the less the community has. If you want a case study, check out how rebuilding the local elementary school system in North Kenwood/Oakland helped the community there.

More importantly, this method of shipping kids around fails to take into account family life and commuting. On a most basic level, school buses don't pick up every kid two hours away from the school they go to. Now, if the kid is already getting bussed out of a crummy community school, how wealthy do you think the parent(s) are? Wealthy enough to have someone free to drive 4 hours a day? Probably not. That requires either a stay at home parent, or at minimum, a part time emplyed second-parent. Otherwise, tough you;ve stuck with geographical constraints regardless of if the voucher is in your fist or not. Also spending much longer in commute leaves less family time. That's a self evident problem right there. I don't need to go into it too much except for to say if the kid wants to engage in after school activities and sports, etc, (s)he is only going to see the rest of the family from 7 pm until 6 am. Not quality bonding right there.

Schools, libraries, community centers, cannot be run on a business model. They do not have clients, they have patrons. There is a subtle but fine difference.

College funding, you might know more than I do, so I hesitate to speak of it only so far as too say all of my current syudent funding is loans...not grants. And interest rates aren't exactly peachy keene on them either.

I understand your gripes on the sending away issue dolce. And your arguments are well grounded in truth.

The problem is that most kid's being shipped away are not going 2 hours away. Instead they are going 15-30 min away, which greatly reduces most of the problems.

That said, shipping students out of the problem schools is a last ditch effort if a school is totally failing. This is not his solution to the education system. He wants every school to succeed.

Bush's plan is meant to promote propper spending and reform. The whole idea is to reward schools that are teaching properly, and make sure the schools that arent get extra attention from supervisors to get back on track before it gets to a crisis point where kids would need to be shipped out. The problem is in the way they measure the teaching. The standardized tests have become to heavy on the mind of administrators, and because of it, they have taken away some of the creativity from teaching.

They have gotten better, and already have re done the rules a bit, but still further 'nurturing' of the bill is needed. Regardless the problem with education and the bill is not the shipping students away, that almost never happens and is not a key factor, the problem is with the testing and the funding. Both are issues that will be fixed and are being fixed.

As for college funding, If someone wants to go to college, and pushes themselves to do good in school, then they can go. My personal take is that grants should only really go for acedemic reasons. Other than that the goverment should offer just loans to students and help more instead to keep the interest low.

1. But you must admit regardless of if it is two hours of 30 minutes, that the use of vouchers encourages people to invest outside of the community, and that in turn, the community has less to offer.

2. And here lies the problem with defining what a "good" education is. I think Bush has no concept of holistic education. I'm not blaming him in particular, its been a long-term downward spiraling problem with the standardized tests. But I went to an elementary school that had art twice a MONTH for an hour, and music twice a month on the compliment weeks. C'mon, the decision, again, to treat education as though it were some "business" that needed to be streamlined for cost-effectiveness hurts no-one but our youth. Most of our intelligentsia up until 1980 were trained in Germany anyways, and we reeped the benefit of explorations into physics, physcology, and philosophy. They quickly converted our university system into the most powerful and treasured in the world, and Bush, with his Yale degree, somehow didn't pick up on that.

Advancement has always come at times of informational excess. Libraries, research institutions such as the Smithsonian, and, well, pretty much anything you can think of down to the a-bomb, came because of a wealth of "extra" knowledge was available and archived for later use, which at its inception was not a clearly defined thing. I just studied the history or guns and gunpowder, and neither was conceived of initially for what it was used. And lets not get started on the Medical field. That excess is necessary, both in exploration of information, and funding, neither of which Bush is willing to invest in. Why does education "funding" need to be fixed? I know why, because its a paltry investment that has more holes than a piece of swiss cheese. Its like giving someone a dime and then applauding them for making the most of it, when you just could have given them ten bucks to begin with. You must see how scant Bush's attention has been both fiscally and personally in the past four years? Regardless of what he's saying now on the campaign trail. We know where all the money has gone and its been corporate welfare and weapons contracts.

O brother,

Let us stay on track with education.

I just want to re-iterate that vouchers and shipping kids away are a very last resort and only used in the most dire circumstances, they are the final straw and are in no way encouraging people to invest outside the community, the goal is for each community to have an adequete school system, and in the end hopefully that will be the case.

Now first of all dolce, you must admitt that the school system needed reformed. Because it did, regardless of how you wanted to do it, it had to be done.

Now as an english major, i love creativity, and my biggest gripe is that they have taken creativity down a notch. I don't think this was intentional, but until schools all find the propper curiculum to teach the students what they need to know, this will be the case.

I think that the buisness like attitude is in a sense needed. Look at many asian countries, the buisness like atmosphere they set at a young age instills a work ethic into the children that lasts a lifetime. I don't think you will see the US follow in the same footsteps but that is one bonus of the atmosphere.

Bush's funding is just trying not to reward poor spending schools, or schools that just waste money. They are focusing on keeping the number of children per classroom down and managable, which in the end, if accomplished will once again help to allow for more 1 on 1 time, and enhanced creativity. I think right now the main thing they are doing is figuring out which schools are the poor ones, and thus need to be replaced. You say let them spend the whole 10 dollars, but what if you gave them 10 dollars and they went and bought a lolly pop and forgot to get change.

Being outside of the US, I concentrate more on what each have to offer in terms of foreign policy and the domestic debate means little to me.

Having said that though, there is one domestic debate I do care about and that is in terms of education.

I so far havent been impressed with Bush on both fronts and have little knowledge of Kerry's views as well (cept a little bit about the foreign policies, which really scare me)

What am i trying to say? Nothing really. Just wanted to comment.

1. Its not superfluous creativity. Its necessity, until we assign equal value to the humanities in the sphere of common knowledge we (and I mean this globally, not just USA) do no justice to future generations. I'll repeat again that prosperity comes when there is an excess of knowledge. Not when its widdled down in a way to create little cyborg cogs in the greater wheel of singular production.

2. I'm surprised you mentioned Asian schooling since on the global level I think much more attention and esteem has been devoted to, at least as far as extended education, the American system for the very reason of the U.S. educational system's vast influence over international structures. More influence, I believe than Asian schools have thus far accumulated.

3. You'd be hard pressed to find a school that "wastes" its money as though there is all this extra cash in hand waiting to be splurged with. More likely the class sizes are do to under-funding, NOT mismanagement of financial resources.

So you think we should vote for bush on the ASSUMPTION that Iraq MAY get better?
I have a better idea...kick the person who went into a war without proper knowledge, yet still tries to defend his stance no matter how many times he gets proven wrong.



P.S. (Nothing personal Eagle....Im just debating )[/b]

LMX,

The problem with that statement is two fold.

First,

Bush did not go in ill prepared, at all. All the intelligence world wide was the same, and it all suggested WMD's not just ours. The initial war went supremly well because the militants laid down weapons and ran. Essentially the army met minimal resistance.

Now after we declared victory they began re-surfacing and thus we have the current situation.

Secondly,

Kerry has no plan to get out. His plan includes involving the world, and the UN. Well news flash to him, the world and UN aren't going to send troops in.

Kerry is naive and does not seem to understand the situation in Iraq. Bush will commit more troops to Iraq, which every general agrees, is the answer to the problem. Kerry has boasted of not doing that and instead begining to bring troops back, because he believes as many wont be needed after internation troops come.

International troops won't come. I can explain why, but I am lazy.

KJ

And we stayed there AFTER we found out there were no WMD's because?

Because of the tens upon thousands of bodies we found burried in mass graves of people who were murdered by the regime.

Because of the Iraqie people.

Because of a law clinton passed years ago making it US policy to end the Saddam regime.

Because of all the times the regime had played with the UN security council and ignored requests.

Because they left out weapons from the report they were forced to suply to the UN Security council.

Because they would constantly shoot at British and US planes surveying the No Fly Zone.

Because they NEEDED to be ousted.

Because they had France, Russia, and Germany keeping the UN off their back.

But most of all, Because it was the right thing to do.

KJ

cough:Republican Rhetoric:cough


:wink:

Interesting response since if you asked Kerry he would likly say almost the exact same thing.

I am a little confused as to where you stand :wink:

Get to know your candidate better.

KJ

I was making a joke :wink: But I dont think we were on the same page :?

Hehe,

Oh I got the joke, I just thought it was misplaced because well ... its not true :wink:

KJ