America is the laughing stock of the world right now. I firmly believe this.

We have a politician on the House Science Committee who believes that if someone is "legitimately raped" that the body somehow magically produces an as-yet-unnamed compound to "shut down" her reproductive system.

We have people on the House Science Committee who don't believe evolution is real. Who don't believe Climate change, regardless if they believe man causes it or not, is real. We have people on the Senate who believe homeopathy is legitimate.

We are raising our third generation of BET and MTV addicts, people who would rather watch such gems as Jersey Shore than focus on things like Math, Science, and History.

When we have people like this, the fact we have conspiracy theory douchebags who claim that we're one step away from setting up Concentration Camps really shouldn't be suprising.

I'm really getting f*cking sick and tired of the "well it's not in the Constitutions" bullshait. The Constitution is supposed to be a guide on how the government should function, it's not there to deal with petty BS like if there should there be Federal student loan program or definitions of marriage like some GOP nutters want in there.  If you want to go down that road I guess I can go out and start raping women because, hey, there's not a 'shred of evidence' in the Constitution that says I can't rape women.

farking dammit Fartlett. This is one of many reasons why I'm voting against you in November....IF I'm still living in the region.

Fun fact: Fartlett came into my parents' house after a parade a few years ago.I struggled against asking him why he decided to go to the ceremony that crowned Sun Myung Moon as God-Emperor of the world.

Even funner fact: My dad, a lifelong Republican, switched his party affiliation to Independent recently and will be voting for Obama in November. He can't stand the Republicans and their bullshiat anymore

THIS is how you Godwin a debate without ending up sounding like a douchebag:

South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian compared South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to Hitler's mistress on Wednesday, The State reports. "She was down in the bunker a la Eva Braun," Harpootlian said, according to The State.

In an interview with CNN on Wednesday evening, Harpootlian said he won't be apologizing for his comments.

"Hell no. What am I apologizing for?," he told CNN. "This is fake. Nikki Haley is feigning this. There is not a sincere bone in her body."

"I wasn't trying to insinuate that Nikki was a Nazi," Harpootlian continued. "I was saying that she was hanging out in an insular bunker in Charlotte when she won't give access to the press here in South Carolina ... So she has some hurt feelings? I didn't know she had feelings."

sno man: We're not laughing at you, were laughing with you...

Oh, no. America, as it exists today, deserves to be laughed at. The once great country has become a bastion of stupidity and theocracy. We champion willful ignorance and revisionist history, while pretending to stand on a moralist pillar to other countries.

sno man: Actually that's not true either, but when you are ready to join the rest of the first world, rather than the third, we're here...

It's sad to think that this nation once lead the world in Science and Technology, and we've so gladly given that up to be the nation of derp.

I used to scold people on here for making comparisons to Idiocracy. Now, I firmly believe that we're moving towards that.

The real horror is that there are people more stupid than this knuckle-dragging mouth-breather

/and they voted for him

EvilRacistNaziFascist: BronyMedic: America is the laughing stock of the world right now. I firmly believe this.

You're a grown adult who watches a kids' show about magic ponies. Who are you to complain about being a laughing stock?

ERNF, you might want to read up on the genetic fallacy.

MattStafford: Gwyrddu: Well our number one government employer, the military doesn't require a college education, and that is a pretty well respected career in most but not all social circles.

And the engineers that build the tools that military uses?

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. Do you expect people to become engineers without a higher education.


Because of the education they receive in college, or because a college degree is becoming standard. I would suggest the latter. As the government sends more and more people to college, a college degree is worth less and less.

It's both. Civilization is becoming more intricate and simple tasks are ever easier to automate, leaving the tasks that require more education for human employees. At the same time, good paying jobs are becoming scarcer for a number of reasons which allows businesses to become more picky. Business is also terrible at evaluating the true worth of candidates, which makes them more likely to weed out resumes based on education level as a simple shortcut. None of these problems would really be solved by cutting back on college education by the way, it would most likely just benefit the people with the most money to put people through college.

You don't think the government promotes college education? They say in speeches that they are trying to get as many kids to go to college as possible, and that everyone should receive a college education. You don't think that creates a stigma against those that don't want to go?

The stigma would still exist whether the government said anything about it or not. The government is just responding to the demands of employers and the international marketplace which is calling on a more educated workforce.

Which is part of the problem. College should not be easy. Not everyone should be able to go to college. The vast majority of jobs out there do not require a college education (they might require the degree, but that is different). We shouldn't dumb down college so everyone can go.

Nobody is saying to dumb down colleges or loosen academic requirements. The question is how to loosen monetary requirements of college so the US becomes more of a meritocracy and less a plutocratic society. The only part of higher education that should be academically easy to get into are community colleges, which can act as a feeder to prepare students for more academically challenging programs elsewhere even if their primary education failed to do so.

The massive amounts of private debt people are being stuck with is a slippery slope, but I'm thinking we're headed more towards something resembling the French Revolution than anything else.

EyeballKid: GET. RID. OF. ATHLETIC. DEPARTMENTS.

You know, I have to wonder: How did we, from like the '50s-'80s manage to provide both a quality education AND have athletic departments? There's always the problem when an athletic department 'takes over' and consumes too much resources, but I think that a proper athletic department is good for a school.

Of course, at that point the 'athletic department' is more running a 'PT program', of which schools that eliminated it in favor of more classes found that they didn't increase academic performance, indeed they suffered increased disciplinary problems, and vice versa with instituting exercise programs - academic performance often INCREASED, while disciplinary problems dropped like a stone. That's before you figure in better health, fewer missed days, etc...

Gwyrddu: Is that really an issue of student loans though rather than free trade and the comparative cost of living between third world and first world countries? Most colleges and universities in the US do a decent job providing higher education, which is why so many foreigners come to our schools to learn (the for-profit schools need to die though). The main issue is how to better distribute the cost of education so it is more affordable while still giving schools the funding to educate ever larger numbers of students

Sure, there is the issue that we are in a globalized economy and are forced to compete with human capital that can live off of a far lower wage.

Our issue is trying to give every kid a college education. Not every kid needs to go to college. There should not be a stigma on not going to college, yet we've created one through our public education system and government policies. Take a look at some European school systems. They have different tracks for different students [I know we do as well, but ours (at least mine) carry a bad stigma, and are looked down upon]. This idea that we need to send every kid to school, even if they are majoring in underwater basket weaving is completely idiotic.

coeyagi: But seriously, the solution is obviously to cut funding or raise interest rates. When keeping the status quo from getting worse if all you have time to do thanks to the know-nothings in the GOP, what do you expect? Also, I liked your idea for fixing it. No, the other. Nope, not that either. The other one. Yeah, that one. You hit the nail right on the head.

"When keeping the status quo from getting worse if all you have time to do thanks to the know-nothings in the GOP, what do you expect?"

That sentence appears to be missing something.

Solution? There is no solution. We're farked. My solution is some sort of debt jubilee, which would crush our economy. This isn't a situation you can get out of except through some extremely painful measures.

keylock71: I went to a state school using a combination of Pell Grants, Student Loans, and money I saved working part-time jobs while I was in school... My loans are all paid off, and I have an education and a career I love.

How long ago was this? It's the second one that's causing the problem right now, there are increasing numbers of students graduating with $100k+ in those loans. You can't save that kind of money working part time. It takes decades to pay off - while you're trying to buy a house, often a car, etc...

What concerns me is these here teenagers playing their "beat" music in the park and throwing their "frisbees" right where our nation's youth can see them. Now, grown-up lady parts might have the power to ward off rape babies, but a child's developing brain has no such defense against this menace. A child hears this here Dave Clark Five, and one generation later you've got yourself a Holocaust, which as I understand it, means tax rates above fifteen percent--I know, I know!--and redistribubating of the wealth and what-not.

EyeballKid: No, this is what private student loans are like:

FTFY. With private loans you have all the problems of undischargeable debt without any of the protections provided by federal loans. If it wasn't for federal loans, the student debt problem would be a lot worse than it currently is.

BronyMedic: America is the laughing stock of the world right now. I firmly believe this.

I think that your belief is up there with the dry womb representative. In my travels around the world, I've learned that you get idiot, mislead, corrupt, and overly religious politicians everywhere. I've become disillusioned as to how 'good' Europe supposedly has it, I've heard of stinkers in Australia, and Korea has fist fights and occasionally tear gas shot in their legislature.

That being said, the problem with student loans is that there are many parallels between the way we've been handling student loans and home mortgages. The cost of a college education has been rising far above inflation, just like home prices. To the point that the cost of a college degree can reduce your income to the point that you're better off going directly to work or through a technical school. It can take decades to make up the difference. 

That being said, I hardly think it'll lead to an actual holocaust.

Why all the debate? He Godwinned himself, he loses.

Had a guy at work tell me that "all of our problems are caused by PHD's" . That they were "educated Idiots". He wants to vote for some one who represents the simple folks, salt of the earth, you know...

/On a totes diff note, I really liked Bubba's speech yesterday about ARITHMETIC!

Lorelle: GOP Rep

But of course.

Not at all like those reasonable Democrat politicians who believe that the GOP are Nazis who are secretly planning to reinstitute slavery.

What the senator in TFA was saying -- clumsily expressed tho' it may have been -- is that the federal government has no place in taking on big projects of any kind when these can reasonably be devolved to a lower level of authority; and that an unconstitutional concentration of power at the federal level is, in the long term and in the broadest sense, potentially dangerous. This is no more than a restatement of the old idea that "a government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have", which is to say that once we grow entirely dependent upon an all- powerful State for its largesse we are also placing ourselves at its mercy should it ever choose to withdraw its favour for any reason. Because the State has a natural inclination and incentive towards perpetual expansion, even the good things it offers to the citizenry are potentially weighted with adverse consequences, and that is something we all ought to be aware of.

/now back to the Two Minutes Hate! BLARGH RETHUGLICAN BIGOT

I can't stand assholes like this that spout off some crazy nonsense then try to back it up by saying that there is nothing in the constitution that supports it. Well you know what asshole? There are a lot of things the government does that aren't mentioned in the constitution, like give subsidies to oil companies, but you would be standing on your head screaming if the government stopped half of them.

And it is even worse when it is coming from an elected official.

being a "Conspiracy Nutjob" is almost a qualification for Republican Congress Critters these days.