On the note of your ideas in post #14 what are your thoughts about this: http://lighthousepatriotjournal.word...sty/#more-2750

About a week ago Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates testified before Congress requesting that there is a need for high-tech, skilled foreign worker visas. House leaders are reporting that HR 5630, sponsored by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), will increase the annual cap for high-tech H-1B visas from 65,000 to 130,000 starting this year, and up to 180,000 by the year 2010. This legislation will also make it easier for foreign students who are graduates in high-tech fields to enter or stay in the US and compete with US graduates. [Congress Now, March 18th 2008]

If we are truely interested in improving things here, shouldn't we focus on our own educational values to improve the system and encourage and reward those who seek to enter higher levels of education in science so they can contribute to our own society vs allowing a flood of others in to do the job we should do?

Remember what our treaty-bound allies were saying before the Iraqi debacle? The standing army game isn't working right now. The Executive branch is unable to resist attempting to remake the world when it has vast resources. I suspect most of our treaty obligations are in the form of defending allies territory, when was the last time we were called on to do that?

Most of those treaties grew out of the aftermath of the post WW2 era and Korea. People feared their big neighbor and wanted us to take them under their wing in exchange for access to ports and resources. Very little has changed in that respect other than now there is competition for those essential resources and large powers are now looking to get at them. Competition is good for us as a country. Few countries will ever need to call in that card with the exception of Israel or Taiwan. And in both of those treaties we would be in a hornet nest ten times the complication of our current situation.

My perspective is evolving with what I am seeing working with urban kids from deprived backgrounds. It came out this week that the new regulations for Head Start, which are apparently well thought out, are going to be expensive to implement. This is going to cost a lot of seats because no money was set aside for it. We have a lot of American born kids cycling back into the poverty of their ancestors. Some of these families have been working the system forever, other's just have no idea how to work out of poverty, while others are doing what needs to be done working, going to school, and raising kids as best they can. My perspective is that the children of the poor should be put in the position of getting an equalized opportunity if they are to ever exercise liberty. We have a large segment of our population who could be educated to the jobs of the future.

Gates is looking for a stop gap to protect his industry now, but I don't see how we can do this stuff on a permanent basis. In an ideal world, we'd have open borders and a free market but our market isn't free. We seem to want socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor. That isn't sustainable. If we're going to protect investors from themselves, we can hardly justify throwing Head Start 3 and 4 year olds out of a program that feeds them and enriches some pretty desperate lives.

I have to admit that I am a bit further from that issue now that my kids are in their teens and twenties. My father was an educator all his life so I understand some of the issues. Head Start and NCLB have all had merits but like most feel good things that come out of Washington they are unfunded mandatest that in the end make us pick and choose among those who are most likely to succeed, not who needs it the most. Georgia's Hope Scholarship program is one of the things that kept us here and so far it is working for many kids who could never have afforded to go to college.

I see things differently on the socialism thing. I feel that the masses want Socialism for everyone and wealth redistribution in an effort to gain parity the easy way, tax those who busted ass to make it good and give it back to those on the dole so things don't have to be so tough for them. I say becareful what you wish for, in the end no one will be happy.

I thought Che was really cool in Evita.

Actually, we're probably pretty close together on this. I just see it as upper, middle, and lower class fighting for control, protection, and a free ride. The danger we need to recognize is that any one of them would destroy the economy given the opportunity.

Che was certainly a scumbag murderer. It makes me sick when I see kids wearing a t-shirt with his likeness. I ask, do you even know who that is? Very few do, and those that do are the pseudo-intellectual kids who think communism is a great idea and free markets where no force or coercion is used is evil.

I need a shirt like THIS one.

http://www.bant-shirts.com/images/ph...-women-300.jpg



Revolution, good.
Murder, bad.

Is that the old guy from the 6-flags commercials?

Yeah, I bet Ghandi was against wearing bras, too.

They need to draw Gandhi better: that picture looks like Ayman al-Zawahri in glasses.

The Reaganauts can sport a "Ronnie" t-shirt in that graphic style too.

Thoseshirts.com