Godless

That's what school boards are for. You're never going to appease 100% of the parents, but you can vote for board members that you feel reflect the best interests of the kids and parents.

That's what school boards are for. You're never going to appease 100% of the parents, but you can vote for board members that you feel reflect the best interests of the kids and parents.

It would be great if schoolboards listened to parents. 
Instead, we've seen report after report, video after video of boards cutting off the microphone as soon as it was revealed that the speaker's intent was to object to woke curricula. 
Other boards would simply look at their phones and dismiss the person when their time was up -- they wouldn't answer questions from the parents.  NEXT!  They didn't even engage on any level.
Other boards would schedule the parents and other participants who agreed with them to speak first, trying to run out the clock.  They would let all these favorable individuals talk WAY over their time limit.  Then they would try to keep anyone else from talking by either shortening their allowed time, or simply ending the meeting because there was no time left.
Allowing open and honest debate is what parents wanted.  And they never got it.
Conservatives were sticking to the rules as far as schedule and allotted time.  Liberals didn't honor that system.
Now that conservatives took over many school boards through elections, the liberals will now point to the parental rights bill when conservatives actually follow the rules -- and cut them off for going over their time limits -- and say that they now feel disenfranchised by those evil transphobes for cutting them off.  Well, you went over your time limit which was the same limit for each speaker.  What do you want?  Favoritism?

As my dad used to say, you can't please everybody, but with a little effort, you can make them all angry.

He can shut me up by showing how the Gators did against Georgia last year! 

Lol! That's actually "for the win". 

I wouldn't be too sure.  

Uummm...
Let's say you mean "Free The World."  Yeah, that's what you meant.  Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.

I haven't been following this very closely, but I know the Dem running to replace Kyrsten Sinema is using the regulatory rollbacks to torch her.

Many of you have heard of the recent bank failures.  Biden has now blamed it on Trump.  Let's take a closer look at that.
The bill that was passed under Obama was the Dodd-Frank Act.  It placed more restrictions on how banks can invest.  And it provided many more channels of oversight by creating more government departments.
The Trump-era legislation was the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act.  It changed some limits on how big a bank had to be subject to some provisions of the Dodd-Frank Act.
Points to consider:
Dodd-Frank's biggest effect was to enshrine "Too Big to Fail" into law. EGRRCPA was sponsored with bipartisan support.  An equal number of senators on both sides of the aisle. It passed with 17 Senate Democrats voting with the Republicans. The CEO of SVB was the one most interested in lobbying to pass the rollback bill.  This was because SVB was "just" on the borderline" of the threshold for where Dodd-Frank would hamper SVB investments.While some Democrats were adamantly against the "roll-back", most of the Democrats only disagreed with the degree (how low/high were the limits).  So, if the bill were re-written to the levels that most Democrats agreed with, SVB would still have been under the threshold. At the time of failure, they were below the threshold anyway.  So, they were not considered "Too Big to Fail."

Reason and sanity right here.
2020ElectionMitchMcConnell.MP4

The Trumpers turning on Mike Pence-a conservatives conservative was very validating to me. It proved that they worship Trump and don’t care at all about conservatism. 

Recent remarks from Mike Pence:

I couldn't find video, but this is from last night's Gridiron Dinner.
https://www.axios.com/2023/03/12/pence-trump-jan-6-accountable

Fair enough. For my part, I apologize if I read into your words more than you meant.

In reality, I’ve always thought there was far less racism then both sides think there is. Down here we all live together in the same communities-Asians, African Americans, Hispanics, Caucasians. If we all hated each other there would be a race war daily. 
 
Both sides make grave mistakes on race. The left loves to wage class and race warfare because it’s how they get votes. The right gives lip service to racism being a thing but then downplays or dismisses even the most legit claims of racism. 
 
Open racism is also not tolerated. Yes, even down here (actually especially down here) mixed race marriages are pretty common. Even the boomers down here no longer stare at a white guy dating a black girl. 
 
It just gets harder to hate someone based on their skin color when you see one another every day. 

True. I also think that MAGA culture pushed quite a few liberals into leftist territory and they discovered that leftists like guns.

I think the culture wars have fundamentally changed.  Conservatives sort of gave up on gay marriage and while they’ll still whine about what Rihanna wore at the Super Bowl- you won’t see a massive outcry with letter writing campaigns, calling the FCC, etc. Those people absolutely exist but have gotten much much smaller. 
 
Everything I said about the right can be said about your side and guns. Oh sure, you’ll still see gun control activists but even the left has realized that's sort of a losing battle for them. 

I wasn't necessarily talking about Kaepernick specifically in that part of my post. A better "rags to riches" story would be Lebron James, raised in a poor household by a single mother who was 16 when he was born. And there are a myriad of other professional athletes with similar backgrounds. If nothing else, Kaepernick has probably used the life experiences of some of his NFL peers to hone his views on race. He may not share the life experiences of his peers, but that doesmean he can't learn from them.
And as far as community goes, the black community is one that's sometimes defined by nothing else than skin color. People who cheekily ask why there's no "White History Month" take for granted the fact that their heritage is often well-documented going back several centuries. For many black Americans, their known family and cultural history begins on a Southern plantation. Some of their oldest geneological documents are records from slave auctions. THAT'S something that Kaepernick likely has in common with his peers. Obviously that doesn't fully define him now, it seems he's trying to make an honest attempt at honoring his racial identity despite his privileged upbringing. I get that it doesn't make much sense to the outside observer, myself included, but I think it's important to respect the cultural identity of people who had their culture ripped away from them in the early days of our country's history.
I'd argue that there's probably at least a small amount of correlation between racism borne of stupidity and racism borne of genuine malice and hate. Ignorance and stupidity are often the seeds that grow into hate and prejudice, and I think it could be argued that the former often encourages and enables the latter. It's true that stupidity and racism will never be erased from society, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to correct it when we see it.

For starters, because I don't believe that a lot of that is anything more than privileged people freaking out because their privilege is slowly crumbling. There's a culture war raging in the US right now, and I'll gladly recognize that people on both sides of it have gotten overzealous in recent years. Liberals, like conservatives, never get everything 100% right. But I generally think that the right doth protest too much on a lot of issues.

Just a joke!

I would have a lot less of a problem with Lebron James saying it than Kapernick.  But how often does he thank America for the blessings he enjoys today.  Maybe he had a few more obstacles than another.  But he made it and he enjoys it.  Maybe if he spent as much time pointing out, "Hey, it took a lot to get where I am today. But I made it.  You can too."  The world might be a better place.
That's a problem no matter where you're coming from.  If you keep making things about race, then there is no hope of ever being rid of it.
The logic is really pretty simple.  If you keep making race the central issue of any exchange, then it will always be an issue.  It seems logical to me.
My position echo's Mr. Freeman's opinion on Black History Month.  And it was not about what genealogy we should do or anything like that.
,
I have an Asian history that goes back exactly zero generations before me.  I have no way of obtaining records beyond that.  Korea was still recovering from the Korean War when my parents were married.  I don't even know if they have birth certificates.  My birth certificate was created by court order.  I have no way of really knowing if my birthdate is accurate.  We know my sister has the wrong year on her birth cert.  We believe it has the wrong day.
My adopted family has records.  And I research those for my family tree.
Kapernick chose his history that he wanted to care about.  His birth mother was white.  He could easily honor both lines of his family tree (or all four, if you see what I mean).  He chose differently than I did.  If you look nothing other than what choices we made regarding our personal history, which of us do you think is more grateful for what we have and who we are?
What genealogy has he done?  What do they do with that history?  What does it mean to them?
I thought it was funny to hear there was an Asian Awareness Month.  I still don't know which month that is.  I think they may have done away with it.  I've never personally met anyone who cares.  And Asians sure have a lot more emphasis on family history and honoring one's ancestors than most other demographics.
If I were firmly in the same camp as Kapernick about my personal history, I'd be highly offended that they would lump Chines, Japanese, and Koreans all in the same group.  Both Chinese and Japanese spent a lot of the 20th century enslaving Koreans and using the prettier women as comfort women.  There's even a big to do over it right now (current news).  The last few survivors of Japanese slave labor camps have been asking for Japanese reparations for WWII.  
Why wouldn't the children of those slaves be asking for reparations?  Because even after enslavement, individuals and families picked up the pieces and began rebuilding.  And it wasn't easy given the Chinese desire to unify all of the Asian race under one Chinese banner (Korean War).  But they moved on.  How?  America defended them and supported them financially.  The Koreans used that money and relative peace to get on their own feet.  The nation and the people had that mentality.  That's what saved them.  In the past 20 years South Korea has gone up and down from #15 to #8 (I think they're #12 now) largest economy in the world. 
The American Black community has had a very different and varied story.  A large portion of Black America mirrored what the South Koreans did.  And their levels of success are just as promising as South Korea. 
Much of the remaining community voluntarily took on the mentality of North Korea, with somewhat similar results.
I cannot say that there is any we can compare to the history of black slavery in America. It was among the worst travesties and abominations in history.
I can certainly have sympathy for the people enduring the shameful history of slavery in this country -- the country that promised the world that all men are created equal.  And I share some level of anger for those people 200 years ago.  And I'll grant that it took a couple generations to get away from it even after the abolition of slavery.  But if you're aware of the history from the 30s onward, you'll find that the past slavery was only a small portion of what defines the poverty of the Black America today.
Do I respect the cultural identity of Korea?  Absolutely.  Do I announce it and bring it up at parties?  Sure.  It's interesting history.  And as a student of language and cultures, I like delving into that sort of thing.  But I did not experience WWII or the Korean War.  I was not alive during that time.
I felt only a few years of the poverty that Korea was still getting out of.  But we didn't have to worry about war (at least, I didn't as a child).
I can certainly have a lot of sympathy for those who did.  But I think it is presumptuous of me to believe that I can "identify" with their suffering.  If I were to meet that generation and say that I was one of them, they would think I'm completely out-of-touch.  There's no way I could identify with them.  How could I possibly know or even properly empathize with their tragedies?
That is where I think Kapernick's "identifying" is completely irrational.
It's a "balanced" perspective between two extremes:
If you're not a woman you have no right to even have an opinion on the plight of women in this world. If you're a privileged woman who has never felt need in her entire life, you're still in our group because all women are oppressed. Instead I'd look at it this way:
You can have sympathy and an intellectual understanding of someone who's gone through an experience. You cannot "identify" with them because you haven't experienced the troubles they have. Of course.  We do our best.  I believe the level of outrage must fit the crime.
If I were to meet with someone who fought the Japanese and the Chinese, I believe the one message I could give to them was that because they laid down the groundwork, I was able to make something of myself.  And it is all because you made the sacrifices, whether voluntarily or not.  You made the sacrifice for me.  And I am grateful.

I wasn't necessarily talking about Kaepernick specifically in that part of my post. A better "rags to riches" story would be Lebron James, raised in a poor household by a single mother who was 16 when he was born. And there are a myriad of other professional athletes with similar backgrounds. If nothing else, Kaepernick has probably used the life experiences of some of his NFL peers to hone his views on race. He may not share the life experiences of his peers, but that doesmean he can't learn from them.
And as far as community goes, the black community is one that's sometimes defined by nothing else than skin color. People who cheekily ask why there's no "White History Month" take for granted the fact that their heritage is often well-documented going back several centuries. For many black Americans, their known family and cultural history begins on a Southern plantation. Some of their oldest geneological documents are records from slave auctions. THAT'S something that Kaepernick likely has in common with his peers. Obviously that doesn't fully define him now, it seems he's trying to make an honest attempt at honoring his racial identity despite his privileged upbringing. I get that it doesn't make much sense to the outside observer, myself included, but I think it's important to respect the cultural identity of people who had their culture ripped away from them in the early days of our country's history.
I'd argue that there's probably at least a small amount of correlation between racism borne of stupidity and racism borne of genuine malice and hate. Ignorance and stupidity are often the seeds that grow into hate and prejudice, and I think it could be argued that the former often encourages and enables the latter. It's true that stupidity and racism will never be erased from society, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to correct it when we see it.

I wasn't necessarily talking about Kaepernick specifically in that part of my post. A better "rags to riches" story would be Lebron James, raised in a poor household by a single mother who was 16 when he was born. And there are a myriad of other professional athletes with similar backgrounds. If nothing else, Kaepernick has probably used the life experiences of some of his NFL peers to hone his views on race. He may not share the life experiences of his peers, but that doesmean he can't learn from them.
And as far as community goes, the black community is one that's sometimes defined by nothing else than skin color. People who cheekily ask why there's no "White History Month" take for granted the fact that their heritage is often well-documented going back several centuries. For many black Americans, their known family and cultural history begins on a Southern plantation. Some of their oldest geneological documents are records from slave auctions. THAT'S something that Kaepernick likely has in common with his peers. Obviously that doesn't fully define him now, it seems he's trying to make an honest attempt at honoring his racial identity despite his privileged upbringing. I get that it doesn't make much sense to the outside observer, myself included, but I think it's important to respect the cultural identity of people who had their culture ripped away from them in the early days of our country's history.
I'd argue that there's probably at least a small amount of correlation between racism borne of stupidity and racism borne of genuine malice and hate. Ignorance and stupidity are often the seeds that grow into hate and prejudice, and I think it could be argued that the former often encourages and enables the latter. It's true that stupidity and racism will never be erased from society, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to correct it when we see it.

I wasn't necessarily talking about Kaepernick specifically in that part of my post. A better "rags to riches" story would be Lebron James, raised in a poor household by a single mother who was 16 when he was born. And there are a myriad of other professional athletes with similar backgrounds. If nothing else, Kaepernick has probably used the life experiences of some of his NFL peers to hone his views on race. He may not share the life experiences of his peers, but that doesmean he can't learn from them.
And as far as community goes, the black community is one that's sometimes defined by nothing else than skin color. People who cheekily ask why there's no "White History Month" take for granted the fact that their heritage is often well-documented going back several centuries. For many black Americans, their known family and cultural history begins on a Southern plantation. Some of their oldest geneological documents are records from slave auctions. THAT'S something that Kaepernick likely has in common with his peers. Obviously that doesn't fully define him now, it seems he's trying to make an honest attempt at honoring his racial identity despite his privileged upbringing. I get that it doesn't make much sense to the outside observer, myself included, but I think it's important to respect the cultural identity of people who had their culture ripped away from them in the early days of our country's history.
I'd argue that there's probably at least a small amount of correlation between racism borne of stupidity and racism borne of genuine malice and hate. Ignorance and stupidity are often the seeds that grow into hate and prejudice, and I think it could be argued that the former often encourages and enables the latter. It's true that stupidity and racism will never be erased from society, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to correct it when we see it.

We have no way of knowing what his activism is "about".  We don't really know his motivations.  What we know is his history, his current status, and his current actions and words.  From there all we can do is interpret based on logic and reasoning.
Being an NFL star is always winning the lottery.  But it isn't completely random.  It is largely  based on merit.  And for some reason liberals think there is something wrong with hiring someone because they can perform well at a given job. (Side note: Due to wokeness, an Ivy League school just voted to drop standard test scores as a criterion for admission).
I haven't really been able to find what "poverty" he lived in as a child.  He was adopted in Wisconsin.  But they moved to Turlock, CA after four years.  Turlock has lower than average income.  But it is also home to some of the highest home prices in the country.  What part of Turlock did he grow up in?  I don't know. 
Another parallel.  Not only was I raised for several years in Korea (which was much poorer than the vast majority of the US), but I also spent the first few years in America sleeping in an attic with living conditions that probably wouldn't meet residential code today.  Then my parents had saved enough to move into a "real" (middle class) home less than a mile away in the same city.  And that's where I grew up.
It seems that Colin had a similar upbringing.  The major difference was that his natural talents were in his body, while mine were in my head.  And we were placed in an environment where we were both allowed to hone those talents to our benefit.  And because we could develop our God-given talents, we became top dogs in our chosen fields.
There is no evidence that there was any kind of "black community" which he identified with growing up.  The city has less than 1% black people.  Given the overall population at the time he was in high school, there weren't even enough black people to call a "community."  So, just where did he get these friends who were so "oppressed"?  Who was he fighting for?  Who were the impoverished black people who helped him get there?  All I can tell is that his parents worked really hard to give him a better life, and he took advantage of that.  That's what intact families do.
The same result would have been possible regardless of his race or the race of his parents.  It is the intact family with the goal of generational growth and prosperity that got him where he is.  A mother and a father who were both dedicated to making sacrifices for their children's fuutre that got him where he is.
And that is why I have to wonder why, after all this time, he's still complaining about corn-rows when his parents sacrificed for him in order to get him where he is today. 
 
Vignette: I believe I posted about this a long time ago, but it bears repeating.
I was in a specific location where a bunch of "white boys" were being extremely rowdy at late hours.  I yelled at them to shut it down and go home.  Most of them felt enough shame to leave without complaint.  One boy yelled back, "Why don't you just go back Japan where you belong!"  The thing about that was that I was more upset that he got the wrong nation than I was about the racism.  I figured that both issues were about stupidity more than about hate. 
Later, one of the boys came to me personally and apologized for the comment the other boy made.  He wanted me to know that this other boy was the only one who felt that way, and all the others told him so.
Racism in this scenario is just plain stupidity.  You can't legislate against stupidity. And you can't really erase it from society.  And the truth is that every single individual is guilty of some kind of stupid behavior.  Are we really supposed to get up in arms and have protests and activism whenever anyone is just being stupid?  We'd spend our entire lives in a never-ending state of anger.
There are plenty of examples where it goes beyond just plain stupidity.  And the vast majority of the time, it is prosecuted by law as it should be.  But it seems that most of the time, people get up in arms about simple stupidity -- or less.