Just in case you missed it...

[_moksha]

Warren might come up with a stray stupid statement. Biden has them more frequently. Trump makes stupid statements on nearly a 24/7 basis. Buttigieg says smart things because he is smart.

[_Jersey Girl]

Hey EA,

Do you let a nine year old make a choice on who to hire?

READ Warren's words. THINK about what she said. I know that's asking too much of you but, until you do read her statements, you're not in any position to take a position on this.

[_Jersey Girl]

Jersey Girl,

Look. I don’t know how to explain to someone like yourself who believes giving vetting authority for a national-level appointment to a 9-year-old doesn’t makes sense beyond what I’ve done. Perhaps the adult will just ask the child what they want implemented in the country, and agree to it while telling the child something like, “Good job. Thank you for being so brave.” The kangaroo interview is over, Warren gets a nice photo op, and people kvetch online. If you feel comfortable giving veto authority to a child who has no concept of the job and all it entails, then that’s what you are. I think it’s bad policy, bad optics, and makes the Left look insane.*shrugs*

- Doc

Well, okay. Let me just make a statement and then we can bag this if you'd like.

I think you underestimate the ability of a 9 year old to know when they're being what shall we call it--condescended to. There's no reason at all to respond/pander to a 9 year old with "Good job. Thank you for being so brave" as you suggest. That's how we might address a 2-3 year old and to speak that way to a 9 year old is demeaning to the child and constitutes meaningless messaging.

(FTR: I wouldn't even speak that way to a 3 year old. Maybe 2 years old who needs affirmation in brief form. )

I get the feeling that you haven't been around a ton of elementary age students on a regular basis long enough to assess what they're capable of knowing and thinking about. Believe it or not, 9 year olds are capable of actual intellectual engagement.
Let's see what 9 year old Jacob had to say because in my view, the questions he posed regarding civil rights of a vulnerable population of students of which he is a part, are NO different than an adult interviewer would pose.

“What will you do in your first week as president to make sure kids like me feel safer in schools?” Lemay asked alongside his mom from the live audience at the Los Angeles event. “And what do you think schools should do better so that I don’t have to worry about anything but my homework?”

So yeah. Good job, Jacob. Thank you for being so brave.

Anecdote: I sat in a service Christmas eve beside a 6 year old child. I had heard this pastor present previously but this time he completely went off the rails to the point that the adults I was with (and myself) thought he must've been drinking. He knew he had children in the congregation because it was a family service. He started to talk about how mad Joseph was when he found out Mary was pregnant and how he thought about divorcing her. He went on and on and on about this, totally ignoring the core group of children scattered throughout the service who he continued to address directly off and on during the sermon. When he called up the children for the children's message, he brought out his 2 new puppies from his own dog's litter. As the children were leaving the altar, he let everyone know that the puppies were for sale. Near the end of the service, he called the children up one more time. When the got there, he told them it was time to light their candles and did they bring them up, and don't forget to turn the bulb to light the battery operated candle not noticing that some of the children (including the 6 year old I was with) were carrying real candles that needed real fire to light them. He called for help from adults to light the real candles and then................he sent a group of about I'd say 40 children, some carrying real lit candles back to their families, when the entire group of adults were standing so children couldn't find them IN THE DARK.

That's someone who is careless and ill informed about children.

Okay back to what I wanted to say. When the guy went off the rails about the conception and all the confusing talk about how Joseph was so mad at Mary that he wanted to divorce her (Kid translation: Why wasn't he happy about the baby? Does a husband get so mad at his wife because she's having a baby that he wants to divorce her? Will my dad divorce my mom if she is going to have a baby? Will I lose my family?)

At one point he started off on another tangent and he started with "I know you're going to think I'm crazy for saying this"...

And the 6 year old turned to me and said, "We already do".

That's a 6 year old listening to and evaluating how crappy a job the pastor was doing in telling the Christmas Story on Christmas Eve.

6 years old.

Back to Jacob's questions.

“What will you do in your first week as president to make sure kids like me feel safer in schools?” Lemay asked alongside his mom from the live audience at the Los Angeles event. “And what do you think schools should do better so that I don’t have to worry about anything but my homework?”

If you were one of say, 2 final candidates for the position of Sec. of Ed. How might you answer that question? I'm not asking you to answer that here. Just mull over how you might answer that if you were the adult being interviewed with your potential boss (Warren) sitting in on the interview.

Because that 9 year old kid wants an answer.

His academic life and overall sense of well being, his personal safety depends on your answer.

His ass and his future are both on the line here.

Cam, all you have to do is shove all the paperwork, studies, forms, resume, achievements,and BS off the desk and and answer the question.

Because that's part of the damn job you're after.

(Get away from me Jersey Girl. Okay, I'm gettin')

[_Jersey Girl]

I think you might underestimate what they are capable of or misunderstand what the interview is trying to establish.

I think he underestimates what a 9 year old is capable of as well.

In any case, he's misreporting what Warren proposed so any discussion is mangled from the get go.

[_Jersey Girl]

Hey EA,

Do you let a nine year old make a choice on who to hire?

So, when I’m president, she’ll be gone. (applause) And here’s my plan, Jacob: I’m gonna find just the right Secretary of Education, but here’s what I plan to do. I want to make sure that the person that I think is the right Secretary of Education meets you and hears your story and then I want you to tell me if you think that’s the right person and then we’ll make the deal.

[_Chap]

Hey EAllusion,

Do you let a nine year old make a choice on who to hire?

So, when I’m president, she’ll be gone. (applause) And here’s my plan, Jacob: I’m gonna find just the right Secretary of Education, but here’s what I plan to do. I want to make sure that the person that I think is the right Secretary of Education meets you and hears your story and then I want you to tell me if you think that’s the right person and then we’ll make the deal.

Er... like I just said ....

viewtopic.php?p=1214459#p1214459

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'm not ignoring your post, Jersey Girl, but I just think we're at a bridge too far on this particular issue. I don't feel the need to win, as a guest I just saw comment on the Bill Maher show say, "a boutique issue." Though his entire quote was along the lines of, "You don't run a campaign on a boutique issue in a WalMart nation."

The weird thing was I kinda came around on Warren as a potential nominee due to her composure, and track record at winning campaigns. This certainly didn't help her with me, and I'm a fairly open-minded Democrat who supports egalitarianism when it comes to LGBTQA+ rights. This was a HUGE blunder on her part, and won't win her many votes in the Midwest. Bill Maher mentioned two things that are relevant to this discussion:

1) We're so divided within this nation that ANYTHING someone says if they're on the Left or the Right will automatically go in the Blue or Red bin. Much like moderate Republicans are forced to own, say, Alt-Right fascists and their Ajaxy crap shows, us moderate Democrats are forced to own Marxists and their postmodernism views on virtually everything. While you and others may be good with a child being the ultimate arbiter for the Secretary of Education appointment, I suspect most Democrats would not, and in fact find the concept absolutely crazy crazy and intolerable. I guess we'll see how it pans out in the voting booth.

2) “Now Obama said people just don’t want crazy stuff, Is this not crazy stuff?” Maher asked. “Is she running for president of Berkeley?” Woke people can tut tut all they want at Maher and centrists, shaming us for our intolerance of a bananas policy, but this is a national campaign. The problem with purity tests for fringe politics, or even calling fringe politics mainstream and the rest of us are basically Nazis, is that you do, in fact, lose the middle who will either stay home or jump ship.

We Democrats may win the popular vote, but that doesn't matter. We need the Midwest and Florida. I hope Democratic nominees keep this in mind next time they want to pander to their town hall audiences.

Hrm. Now that I'm at the end of this post, maybe I'll take a crack at the child's questions:

“What will you do in your first week as president to make sure kids like me feel safer in schools?”

I'll encourage school districts to promote respect, acceptance, and punish bullying with suspension and if needed expulsion to an alternative school.

“And what do you think schools should do better so that I don’t have to worry about anything but my homework?”

Promote open door policies where parents and students can talk to administrators where they can work together to promote an environment conducive to learning and maturation.

- Doc

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I'll just offer up an insane interaction I just witnessed where someone posted a misleading topic about a DA supporting murderin' cops, which was promptly debunked, but it didn't stop some All Cops are Bad (ACAB) types from chiming in. A poster suggested they participate on a civilian review board to help keep things in check and was met with this post:

No, you'd be a collaborator. You'd be a functionary of a genocidal system who is enabling human rights abusers. No one joined the Nazi party to change it from the inside. No one joined the Soviet communist party to change it from the inside. No one joined the Southern rebellion to fight against slavery from the inside. Saying you can change things from inside a system when the problem is the existence of the system itself is the worst kind of concern trolling.

The people who changed Nazism, Soviet Communism, and American Slavery are the ones that took up arms against those systems because it was those systems that were themselves the problem. Just like with all the other examples the problem here is not some review process the problem is the existence of police. The solution to the the existence of police is the same as the solution to any other genocidal tyranny: it is violence against them. People who are so depraved that they would become cops won't be stopped by review boards or newspapers or comments. They are stopped by bullets.

Stop concern trolling and stop promoting the idea that it is okay for cops to exist. No one buys it. You are spewing hate speech. Support for cops is hate speech and you know that. You are a racist and a liar and absolutely no one is fooled by your BS.

So. Yeah. Everytime someone like that shoots off their cockholster it goes into the Blue bin. But I think that's where we're at.

- Doc

[_Jersey Girl]

In the spirit of fairness, I'm going to answer Jacob's question myself as candidate for the position of Sec. of Education. I'm substituting a name, but the story is real and so is what I said about myself real.

Here are Jacob's questions.

“What will you do in your first week as president to make sure kids like me feel safer in schools?” Lemay asked alongside his mom from the live audience at the Los Angeles event. “And what do you think schools should do better so that I don’t have to worry about anything but my homework?”

Jacob, I want you to know something. You are the first trans student that I've ever met with. I've only met one trans adult before. Her name was Shawn. She was in a psychiatric hospital being treated for mental illness because she tried to kill herself. Her problems as I understand it were about not feeling accepted by her family and friends after she came out as trans.

Jacob, I don't want that to be you. I don't want it to be any trans person young or old in the United States. I don't want you to feel unsafe in your own school. I don't want you to be unable to do your school work because you feel like Shawn did about the way people treated her.

Now, I don't know a lot about being trans but I've read quite a lot of stories like yours, watched interviews with trans people and their families, and I've read studies about suicide rates in the trans community. I think think it's a huge problem and one that needs changing.

I mean, we could just say that it's as easy as making school policies where bullying isn't tolerated. We already have that. We already have rules that students and adults break. We know that, you know that, that's why you don't feel safe in school. So I think this isn't about making rules to change behavior, I think it's about changing people's minds.

I think that the key to changing peoples minds about how trans people are viewed and treated is, in fact, education.

My job is going to be how to bring that education to our schools for our students, teachers and their parents. I'm going to need figure out how to bring people together with each other. So the question I have to ask myself is how I do I get my ideas into the schools.

I'll have to start with meetings so I can hear from everyone about what they need. I need to meet with more trans students like yourself. I need to meet with trans adults and families with trans family members. I need to hear their stories. I think I need to meet with experts like psychologists and doctors.

I need to meet with police experts who respond to crimes against trans people. I need to fully understand all sides and all perspectives. And, when I have done that, I need to hear from the Department of Education in every single state about what is going on in their schools. I think I need to find out what their school district psychologists can do to bring education into the schools.

And, I need to figure out how to get the money to do it all. For example, let's say that a good school psychologist has a great plan for a program to reach students, parents and teachers in his or her school, but they need more psychologists to run the program and hiring more psychologists means paying more people.

Honestly, Jacob, the ideas are easy, the money is the hard part.

The Federal Government sends money to the states. The states use that money and the state tax money to do what they need in each state. Then you see things like fund raisers in say, your own school to get more stuff done for the school where people raise even more money to help out. We might need to see if we can move money around or if we need more money, we have to figure out how to get it. Again, that's the hardest part.

Jacob will you help me? If it's okay with your parents will you be someone who I can speak with as I am going through this process and will you tell me exactly what you think and how you feel about it? If you think it's going well, tell me. If you are getting fed up or frustrated, tell me. If you think of another idea or an issue I haven't thought about, tell me. If your parents have something I need to know, I want them to tell me.

They say the wheels of government turn slowly. That's because there are so many problems to solve and like I said, finding the money or moving it around so we can solve the problems. People in government have to investigate things, they have to talk together, people have to vote. It takes a long time to move these wheels. I want you to know it's going to take a long time to get things changing.

I want you to know it's going to take a long time so you don't lose hope. Don't lose hope in me, Jacob. I will be working on this with President Warren and my staff. When you don't hear from me, you can know I'll be working on it.

I won't stop working on it, Jacob.

I want you to feel safe and respected in your school. I want you to learn. I want you to have a good future in this world. I'm not going to stop working on this, Jacob.

You have my word.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay people. That's the best I can do on short notice. If you don't think a 9 year old can understand the answers I gave, then you don't understand why he posed the questions to start with. He understands. He lives it every day of his life and that's why he's asking and why he expects an answer.

[_Jersey Girl]

Cam I saw your above new reply but I don't have time to read it through right now. I will read it later. I think that ultimately I want to bag the exchanges we're having. But I'll see.

And I do appreciate that you replied. Later, buddy.