jundp

There is nothing wrong with choosing to be a member of an organization like the mormons and forking over the 10% of income they demand. What makes this interesting is that either he is more willing to overpay his church or his actual income in the eyes of his church was a LOT more than the 13M he came up with on his 1040.

Another issue is the characterization of this money as 'charity'! It may qualify as tax-deductible but the mormon church does relatively little in the way of charity. I have heard that less than 1% of their budget can honestly be deemed charity.

In the Bible Jesus is reported to have said "Where your treasure is, there shall your heart be also". Mitt's heart is much more with his church than with his country. Nothing wrong with that for the average citizen but I don't like voting for someone to be president with such mixed allegiance!

Amen!

The Catholics crack me up...as do most Christian cults. I mean where else can you break every rule in the book, confess to another living human being and be absolved of your sins by paying a penance of X amount of "Our Fathers" and "Hail Mary's". It's like a free pass and then some.

Gosh, I'm so glad you have total understanding of the inner workings of the Catholic church!!!!1111

I split my younger years living with my dads family which meant attending a Quaker church. They aren't anything like they were during my grandparents day but if you look at the two branches related to the Quaker church which is the Mennonite and the Amish you get a gist of what trying to live by the Bible is all about. It's too much for me to handle. That's just their take on it though.

The Bible comes right out against homosexuality...no gray area there and no real way to try and twist the meaning of it. I mean that's one of the few black and white versus in the bible.

Prove it or shut it.

The Amish and the Mennonites are both Anabaptists. The Quakers are not. Neither the Amish, nor the Mennonites are "branches" of the Quaker church. The Quakers are similar but they aren't related at all.

Also, the Anabaptists are an extreme example (though the Amish I've met are actually awesome people -- I just don't believe in their lifestyle).

As for the Chik-Fil-A thing...there are plenty of companies I refuse to support because of my ethical beliefs. And there are plenty of people who will still support the companies I choose to boycott. Who cares?

She should just be prepared to show ties to her country (as well as telling the truth). Lease/rent agreement for a flat, letter from her employer stating that she is being granted leave but will return to her job, etc. But it's a bad idea to lie to the CBP officer. Ever.

I blame it on the pre-school atmosphere that is allowed to run rampid here and that the mods don't seem to be able to see the forest through the trees.

There's so much about this sentence that needs fixing, but I'm afraid it wouldn't do any good.

Also, what's with the Nazi reference earlier?

Defending this sheriff is ridiculous. He isn't a "tough sheriff" at all -- he is a racist using his position of authority for his own racist agenda. Do you really think for a moment that any white person would be asked for proof of legal residence?

Arpaio is currently being sued by the Department of Justice for multiple civil rights violations. He also admitted to using taxpayer resources to pursue an investigation into President Obama’s birth certificate, a widely debunked conspiracy theory.

He's a nutter. Anyone who believes that our president isn't a US Citizen who is qualified to be president is a nutter. He's also a racist scumbag, but that doesn't solely qualify him to be a nutter.

I have. I just.

Speechless.

Back to the OP:

LMFAO is often satirical. Therefore, I do not find this song offensive to women.

No, I don't think this child should have been suspended for sexual harassment. I'll say it again: I don't think this song is offensive to women. Do I think some music denigrates women? Yes, yes I do. (However, I also think some posters on here are offensive to women in their speech.)

A woman can find SATIRICAL music amusing without being a supporter of hate speech against women. Actually, a woman can find lots of music good and/or amusing without being a hater of women herself.

Also, the plural of feminazi is "feminazis" not "feminazi's."

I don't eat catfish, but I disagree. I would not like that scenario. Prices are already increasing enough as is. Could you imagine having to pay workers double, etc which thereby will more than double if not triple the cost of fruit, catfish, cheeseburgers, hotel rooms, etc. I prefer the efficient latinos have the jobs at low wages keeping the cost of goods and services low for society in general, versus very inefficient lazy Americans having the jobs at high wages which will multiply the cost of so many goods and services for us all. The day that happens is the day we'll start importing even more and more fruits, goods, etc from overseas (China and Mexico). Making it so illegals can't work will absolutely destroy farming as we know it in the US.

So you'd rather save some money and perpetuate poor working conditions? It's this exact reasoning that has led to such working conditions. Why should unskilled laborers not make a living wage?

I actually agree with Gary here. Many Americans (myself included) complain about the horrid working conditions of people in other countries, but do nothing about the same conditions here in the US. Of course there are people who won't take the jobs being offered when the pay doesn't even cover the gas money or public transportation costs (if that's even available) to get to the job site. It has less to do with lazy and soft Americans and more to do with people not willing to break their backs to not break even once the paycheck arrives.

1. It's Ann Coulter (yes, I'm attacking the author). When she has a degree in biological sciences, anthropology, or even divinity/theology, rather than degrees in history and law, I might take her position more seriously.

2. It is possible to be both Christian and a believer in evolution. The two are not mutually exclusive.

3. Also, the title of this article is ridiculous.

12 year olds should be able to bring guns to school. If they're allowed to ride bikes and use scissors, why not guns?

This is, quite possibly, the most hilarious thing I have ever read on VJ. And I've read some dang funny stuff on here.

You are joking, right? Kids can ride bikes and use scissors, therefore they should be allowed to bring guns to school?!

Where is the logic in that thinking?

Our cares are not about what is happening in UK, but moreover, what's happening here.

This comment doesn't make any sense in the context of my question. Summary: "clearly not many people care about the UK"/"Then why post here?"/"Our cares are not about what is happening in UK, but moreover, what's happening here."

"Here" being the US?

But this is a thread on what's happening in the UK.

If you don't care about what's happening in the UK then why are you even commenting in this thread?

You like national standards, but you think standardized tests are a joke?

Just from my personal experience in the last 12 years, and I've only taught in two states so my opinion is skewed by that experience: The national standards are a starting point for state standards. In my school district we use standards determined by our state to direct our curriculum development. The national standards are a starting point -- the minimum, if you will. There should be some minimum requirement of classes and subjects for graduation from a public high school across the nation (4 years of Language Arts, 4 years of science, 3 years of math, etc) for the purposes of proper preparation for college. Then of course each state should be allowed to set their own state curriculum standards based on those national standards. That way you don't have the majority of students from one state graduating without a minimal background needed to work/go to school anywhere in the US.

But a one-size-fits-all national standardized testing -- no I don't agree with it. We already have PSAT, SAT, ACT tests for determining college admissions. Teachers are often so pressured to 'teach to the test' that they aren't actually achieving the curriculum requirements for the state standards for their grade level, because (shocking) the standardized test isn't an accurate representation of the understanding of the state standards.

If one of my standards is:

Transfer knowledge of vocabulary learned in content areas to comprehend other grade-level informational/expository

text and literary/narrative text (e.g.,the concept of parallel in mathematics to understand parallelism).

And I (as a teacher) have a list of vocabulary words relevant to this test, but say not relevant to the curricular material for that year/grade/class then what do I do? I must either scrap the curriculum that has been best determined by educators in my state to represent the needs for that grade level and instead teach what someone is telling me I must teach for a test (written by people not in a classroom, definitely not in my district) or I must find a way in the time I have to teach ALL of it. Therein lies one of the problems -- the national standardized tests don't always match up to the curriculum determined by the state/district.

Did that make any sense? It's hard for me to convey what I mean, I guess.

Clearly a few people could care less about the UK.

Then why post in this thread if you don't care? Clearly many people care about the UK.

It seems that this is more about social/economic class rather than race. But I am not familiar with the areas in which the rioting is happening -- I am basing that solely on reading/watching news accounts and stories from British friends.

It's called national standards. You can't have one state specializing in tree hugging while the rest of the nation worries about math and science.

Right on.

Also, the people making up laws about education should be people who are actively involved in classrooms. NCLB was and is a joke. Every single dedicated and qualified teacher knows this to be fact. You cannot rate a school/classroom/pod/team/teacher based on standardized test scores. Well, you CAN, but it's ridiculous.

For everyone who complains about public education and who blame the teachers -- would you do their jobs? Best case scenario: you have 35 to 150 students a day (depending on whether you are primary or secondary), you have text books, and ample supplies (but you bought most of the supplies yourself), you have actively involved parents, and you have students who want to learn.

Normal scenario: same numbers, you are still providing your own supplies and sometimes you have to figure out how to get textbooks, the percentage of involved parents is very limited, students are either not interested, can't stay awake (for whatever reason), are interested but need additional help they can't get and you can't provide, you have administrators breathing down your neck to fall into line on matters that take up far too much of your teaching time and have no benefit for the classroom, you rarely have time for a bathroom break, much less a lunch break, you bring your work home with you in the evenings and work late into the night, you arrive early to prepare before school, you have -- on average in the nation -- a Master's degree in your subject area and/or M.Ed or MAT, you get little to no respect and you are paid ####### wages. AND people think you don't do a good enough job and you get paid too much (or, if you're in Wisconsin -- they just take away all your collective bargaining rights).

Is it any wonder that public schools are in dire shape? Is it any wonder that many excellent, qualified, dedicated teachers either leave the profession or leave public education?

Instead of having a 100% passing rate on a BS standardized test that does nothing to adequately monitor or measure our students' knowledge and does nothing to prepare them for college or life after high school -- how about let parents and teachers work together to find solutions to these issues? How about letting people who are in the classroom have a say in what the Dept of Education does?

/rant over

jundp exists because every forum needs a meta poster.

It is possible to plan and have a traditional American wedding but you have to let places know and make the plans so things can be changed at any point in time. A lot of our wedding things we did by ourselves. I found a caterer through a restaurant several months before but didn't finalize anything until within the two weeks before. The photographer I started looking for when it was close to my fiance's wedding date. The DJ I found a week before. Everything went very well and it was a beautiful wedding. Let me know if I can help any with sharing some ideas of what we did.

That is what we did as well. It is very possible to plan an intimate wedding that guests can attend if you set the date once the visa is in hand. My husband received his visa in April, and we set our wedding date for August (after the visa was received). His family and friends were able to get plane tickets from Europe to the US with no problems.

Or if you want more time for out-of-town/country guests, go the route people have suggested and do a celebration after the legal ceremony.