Welcome to the Richardson High School Message Forum.
The Message Forum is an ongoing dialogue among classmates. The goal is to encourage friendly interaction, including interaction among classmates who really didn't know each other. Experience on the site has revealed that certain topics tend to cause friction and hard feelings, especially politics and religion.
Although politics and religion are not completely off-limits, classmates are asked to be positive in their posts and not to be too repetitive or allow a dialog to degenerate into an argument.
Forums work when people participate - so don't be bashful! Click the "Post Response" button to add your entry to the forum.
Jan -- I'm curious, are you proudly asserting your status as someone who replies to disagreement with one of her opinions with personal invective or is something else going on, like battling imaginary enemies?
When scanning posts and one sees dialogue such as yours , how do you expect anyone to want to come to the table and discuss different points of view? And on a grand scale , this is exactly what is happening in our country today.
I am an independent when it comes to recognizing bad behaviors and attacking words whether it comes from one side or any side......... I hear hate and bitterness.........
A large part of the beauty of Colorado National Monumnent is the absolute Quiet. You can' t argue with someone in the face of the geologic wonder of red rock and azure sky with desert wildflowers eroding cracks in the sandstone in Spring with the cold nights and warm days. There are no daffodils to tromp and care must be taken if you stomp a crimson cactus flower or you get thorns in your foot. No one is cruel enough to stomp a blossom on a wildflower with a 15 foot tap root that may take 30 years before it first blooms and might actually be older than the hiker. 🦉🌼🌺🌻
From the Babylon Bee, and for my liberal friends (and I do have a few):
9 Signs You're Watching Too Much Fox News
1. You give your wife the "Tucker Carlson" look while she's talking. If you've ever gotten in trouble for staring at your wife with Carlson's patented Resting Baffled Face™, you might be watching too much Fox News.
2. You start thinking maybe you need SeaBond denture cream. Those commercials start to sound pretty good late at night.
3. Sean Hannity is starting to look attractive. Oh no. Turn it off immediately!
4. The other people in the old folks' home say, "Hey, Gilbert! Turn off the Fox News already!" If your fellow members of the Greatest Generation think you're watching too much, turn the ol' tube off and go play some shuffleboard.
5. You instinctively add the phrase "may he live forever" every time you say "Donald Trump". Like a kneejerk reaction.
6. Your crazy uncle's rants at Thanksgiving are starting to make a lot of sense. You start thinking, "You know what? Uncle Fred actually makes some really good points."
7. You're not aware of a single good thing Biden has done. Well, to be fair...
8. You call everything you don't like "woke" or "cancel culture". Morning traffic? Woke. Decaf coffee? Cancel culture! Marvel movies? Woke AND cancel culture!
9. Your bedroom pillow, your throw pillows, and your couch cushions are all MyPillows. Oh no! You've been brainwashed!
9 Signs You're Watching Too Much CNN
Are you watching too much CNN? Know the warning signs:
1. You think the pandemic is still going on. If you find yourself saying "When the pandemic is over..." or "the new normal," you might be watching too much CNN.
2. You still think one of these investigations is going to “get” Trump. The walls are closing in. Any day now.
3. You haven't left your house in two years. Time to turn off the CNN and go outside, people.
4. You haven't heard of any of Biden's foreign or domestic failures. You think the president's doing a "pretty good job" and haven't caught wind of any kind of disasters.
5. You still call ivermectin "horse medicine". Oh no! Your brain has been infected!
6. You walk by a fiery riot and think to yourself, "Ah, what a peaceful protest. Mostly, anyway." If this is your immediate instinct, check with a medical professional. You may have an oversaturation of CNN.
7. You're at the airport a lot. This is less a symptom and more a root cause, but if you're at the airport, you're probably watching lots of CNN.
8. You drop to the floor and convulse any time you see a MAGA hat. The longer you roll around in the fetal position, the more CNN you probably watch.
9. You watch any CNN at all. Even one second is too much. Just say no.
Lots of lance....Excuse em wa ! I should have not scanned your post so quickly...
Lance says :
"I realize that like most aging Hippie Chics...you have a resilient faith of nature, science, and some measured doses of religion."
I say... you have no idea what my "measured doses of religion" are.. I don't wear my religion on my sleeve like you do... sounds like your ego needs to feel more superior than I; right now.
When some of us on this forum talk of Far-Leftists, we are speaking of the radical group of Progressives and Marxists who are WAY to the left of middle-center. We are speaking of Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, . Speaker Pelosi and the late Harry Reid, Pres. Obama (on most issues) Senator Schumer, and Mr. Podesta, (Hillary's good buddy,) Rep. Schiff, and many others.
If you consider yourself an Independent, then we are not speaking to you.
It is that simple.
Independents are generally considered "fence-sitters." As such, they are thought to be people who don't want to commit, since they usually enjoy waiting to see which way the wind is blowing, on each issue. It's perfectly acceptable to be that way if that is what you wish..... and you are allowed your choice of being such in this country. Independents are sometimes considered "wishy-washy," though not always, because they can't commit to one of the two main parties in our current system.
From what I've seen you write, you seem to lean most often, toward the Democrat's platform of goals, but you seem to agree with the older ideas of the Dem Party, as if you liked what was done in the JFK, RFK and Johnson years, so you probably are more of a moderate Democrat, if you vote in their primaries, etc. The moderates of that party are being swallowed-up by the Progressives and Far-Leftists, it appears to many who watch current events regularly.
The Far-Leftists have taken hold of the Democrat Party; and there seems to be no turning back for most of the Democrat Congress. Therefore, when Speaker Pelosi "sides" with them and let's no one in her caucus vote in any way but in the way she insists upon, the Party gets a label of being "controlled by the Far-Leftists," and any moderates in the party appear to have no voice or no vote counted that they would like to have counted. Miss AOC, Ms. Omar, Ms.Tlaib, Ms. A. Pressley, Ms. Cori Bush and others, are the ones who currently are pulling the Dem Party WAY to the left, and only Senator Manchin and Senator Senema are speaking out as "moderates" in the Senate; the Senate having the final say towards confirmation of bills. If there are indeed more moderates in that party, then why don't they speak up and voice the opinions they have?
Do you have an opinion about the direction of the Democrat Party, or do you still insist you are Independent, indicating that you might vote as a Republican, if there was a candidate you might like, or vote as an Independent?
It might be productive to compare political views on an issue-by-issue basis. Here is a non-exhaustive list for me.
Immigration - Shut down the border from all illegal immigration. No path to citizenship for anyone who arrived illegally, even if there is some sort of amnesty. No "immigration reform" until the border is closed to illegal immigration.
Student debt - If you took out a loan, you have to pay it back.
U.S. government budget - Reduce the annual deficit. Create a glidepath to a balanced budet
Defense spending - At least keep up with inflation.
Foreign entanglements - Tread carefully
Health care - I vacillate on this. Hesitant to make revolutionary changes, but sometimes think a single payer or Medicare-for-all system would be more efficient.
Law and order - I support police. Laws must be enforced, including quality-of-life laws. Believe in the broken windows theory.District attorneys should not be allowed to decide that they will no longer prosecute categories of crimes, although they should be able to make judgments on a case-by-case basis. Violent offenders and repeat offenders should receive meaningful penalties. The bail system should be maintained, and violators while on bail should be jailed without bail.
Education - Standards must be set, maintained, and enforced. No meaningless diplomas. The pattern must be set in elementary school. Failure is an option, but tutoring help should be provided.
Environment - Make reasonable changes in transportation and industry to reduce the impact of global warming, but no massive, immediate changes.
Energy - Recognize that fossil fuels are critical and will continue to be so for decades. Create policies that reduce the environmental impact of fossil fuels. Allow drilling on U.S. government property. Re-start work on the Keystone pipeline. Reevaluate nuclear energy to accommodate additional need from electrical vehicles.
Welfare - Strict requirements. Move toward workfare, Greater use of work-from-home opportunities. "Make-work" is better than no work
Voting - Require government issued ID. No non-citizen voting. Allow two weeks of voting before the election date. No ballots accepted via mail after the election date. Mail-in ballots must be requested and must have valid identification.
That was an excellent list, except for the single-payer Medicare stuff. I would prefer other ideas, possibly.
As for education, I think as soon as a student shows themselves to be getting behind or not understanding a concept, tutoring needs to be given immediately, to nip the problem in the bud. Top students could be used for tutoring sessions, but I've seen so many students start falling behind with no intervention, and so often those students just fall further and further behind, then begin to think they can't succeed at all. Tutoring can be a godsend for many.
David, have you read the book RIGGED, by Molly Hemingway?
I'm about half way through the book, and it tells of how the election was "rigged," before the actual event, so that the election could be said to have been affected in favor of the Democrats in many ways. One could say it was death for Republicans by a thousand little cuts; cuts that were just enough to accomplish what indeed was accomplished.
One of the biggest ways the election was affected, was by thousands of ballots being mailed out to addresses that were not correct addresses, yet were mailed back by mysterious people, and some states even got back more ballots than they said they had mailed out to certain districts.....which of course begs the question of "What the heck was going on in those districts?" And then there was ballot harvesting going on that was down-right dirty pool, as was even shown on TV, by investigators who were "tipped off." Also, the money donated by Zuckerberg, known as Zuckerbucks, was definitely a rigging, no doubt!
Also, there are videos of "hired" ballot depositors, putting into those "placed" mail boxes (Moveable boxes) where a "hired-hand depositor" fanned out his collected ballots before dropping them in the mailboxes, because for each of those ballots, he was given $10.00. So, since he knew he was being recorded, he fanned out the ballots like a card player might do, to indictate how many ballots he was depositing, in order to receive his money. These videos are in the thousands, and ballots deposited by these folks are believed to be ballots that are illegal ballots, or ballots that have been tampered with.
I'm just speaking of a few of those "little cuts" that indeed did happen. After I finish the book, I'll have more to tell, I'm sure. It seems that if mail-in ballots are what is coming down the road, those ballots need to be requested ballots that have a deliberate path of re-entry to election headquarters, so that there is a known trail of security hand-offs along the way, and signatures have to be verified along the pathway. Just mailing out thousands of ballots turned out to be a disaster in the making, and post offices were unprepared to handle it all, resulting in many fouled ballots, with even a substantial number being lost in the mayhem.
Thank you for volunteering to tutor young minds. I think you would be an excellent mentor for the millenial and pre millenial generations. I would be glad to assist you as a guest speaker on occasion. Your location near Austin makes you invaluable, because in Texas that is the area with the greatest need for the truth.
I believe you knew Nancy Warrington from our graduating class....
Her father tutored students at Richardson West for several years after he retired. He was a brilliant man in many ways, and was especially good at tutoring kids with math problems. I've heard that he was an invaluable guy to have at the school, and was a super nice gentleman for kids to work with.
I am not good with math, but I can help with other subjects.
The very young kids are my specialty. I have little tricks-of-the-trade to help young minds understand. I can hold their attention with humor and fun competition games, etc.
Older kids try my patience.
Now YOU would be good with all ages, wouldn't you? But you are still a working man, aren't you?
David -- I pretty much agree with your list. I also think the federal government is out of control and needs to be severely reigned in. I'd like to see the federal regs cut way, way back, the bureaucracy moved out of D.C. as much as possible, and the staff of the various agencies chopped to bare bones, along with their salaries and perks.
Something I once mentioned before is the tendency of people to live in the past. I think a lot of democrats are democrats only because they remember what they thought that party was in the past. Ben Stein wrote a wonderful book in the 70s called California Dreems. It's a memoir of his transition from a government lawyer to a Hollywood scriptwriter. One of the thing that left an impression on me was how the shows are always a generation or so behind reality. One of his examples was Ozzie and Harriet, where 1960s teenagers in Southern California hung out at a malt shop. Obviously, since there were not any malt shops around anywhere but on TV, Ricky and David hung out at a mall or the beach, but the writer, Ozzie, hung out at a malt shop in the 1930s when he was growing up and projected it into his kids. Another is how they show rebellious kids as little hippies in times way past the hippie era. sssssssssss
Jan -- I wasn't trying to be mean to you when I questioned your reaction to my other post; I was trying to get you to explain why you reacted the way you did. My guess is, if you honestly looked at your political opinions, you would see that they are like Ozzie's malt shop -- part of who you think you are, but not necessarily part of the current reality. Since the Democrats control the TV news and entertainment, newspapers, movies, music, education, and the other levers of information in our society, they deliberately propagandize the populace about what they are, what they do, and what they believe. That makes it easy for people to accept them as a name brand, without much else.
Thanks for the additional thoughts related to the list I offered. I encourage more comments and additional issues.
The following was emailed to me by a lurker: I deleted small parts
There are three basic objections to Medicare-for-All. The first is that taxes would go up, so it would not receive bipartisan support. The second is that it's a vote loser. When Americans are polled, 70% say that they approve of Medicare-for-All. However, when a follow-up question is asked, in which it is made clear that this means everybody would be required to have it, support drops to 38%. The third and perhaps most important objection is that many experienced doctors would simply leave the profession, and this problem is not solved by retaining the commercial insurance corporations, since this is merely retaining a system that needs to change.
Physicians are the single most important service provider in any healthcare system, and we are facing a shortage. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects that this shortage will worsen, even without the negative influence of Medicare-for-All. And doctors face the highest burnout rate among all professions -- as many as 46% of doctors in the U.S. have suffered from burnout at some time in their careers, according to Dr. Dike Drummond in his article from Family Practice Management Journal.
Hi David, I agree with everything you mentioned on the forum except for medicare for all. When people think they get something for free, they abuse it. A good friend of mine that lives in Canada (socialized medicine), says if you need some serious health care, the wealthy and upper middle class come to the states and get it done. By the way, he is upper middle class and pays over 50% of his paycheck for taxes. I think doctors would quit in droves here, students would not want a health care career, because a lot of people choose it because of how lucrative it can be. I know someone who was a nurse for 45 years at various hospitals. Parkland, Medical City and Presbyterian. If she worked 36 hours a week, she would have made over 100K/year here in Dallas. I do believe that health care eats up over 19.7% of the GNP. In 2020, health care spending grew 9.7%, reaching $4.1 trillion dollars or $12,530 per person. Having worked for 8.5 years with the biggest medicare exchange company in the U.S., I learned a lot about Medicare Fraud. Over 250 billion dollars a year and they say for $1 they catch, there are 2 more dollars they don't. Need more competition. My neighbor who is 78 years old, just went into Baylor for hernia surgery as a day patient. Hospital billed medicare $49,000. Medicare only paid $3100. My neighbor didn't pay a penny. We also need more transparency with hospital and doctor billing.
We need more doctors. My doctor, of 20 years, sees 32-36 patients a day. He told me he is seriously burned out. Works for Baylor Health Care.
David, you are doing a fine job on the forum! I love the way you think. You are fair to everyone. Keep the faith, and keep doing the great job that you are doing. Even the people that you put in time out, know that you are fair!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry for not deleting that last paragraph, but I couldn't help myself.
My initial post regarding “stomping on daffodils “ etc.(25223), was a general observation of what I see on some of you all’s posts. I guess, I do take offense at the descriptive words you throw around without any thought of your arrogance and lack of respect for half of American who identify themselves as Democrats or other than Republicans.. I have to re read sometimes to see if I am reading correctly and how we or I , “ might be decent enough but still one of those empty souls deep in their withered little hearts... who hold similar views of leftists who are even left of most leftists... AND don't have” the moral compass” .
How do you all ever expect to have anyone want to jump in and discuss points of view on this forum , if you speak like you do in your posts?
I certainly don’t want to jump in.. and like yesterday , I can only keep my little trap shut for so long… and I guess like so many others, I need to vow not to even go to the RHS site.
I bet you would have thrown hamburgers at me , at Burger Chef. Just kidding.. or am I ?
Racial Issues: I agree with Chief Justice Roberts: "“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” While there certainly is racial discrimination, the concept of "systemic racism" is way overblown, but the media, for the most part, are unwilling to contest it for fear of being called racists. In fact, there are numerous ways in which minorities, especially Blacks, are given preference, e.g. employment, government contracts, college admissions, etc. The biggest problem for Black people is not the police, "the system", or white people. It comes from other Black people -- unmarried parents, peer pressure, black-on-black crime, low emphasis on education.
Here is an article from 2005 by one of my favorites, Walter E Williams, who died in 2020. I have mentioned before that he lived near me in suburban Philly, even though he was a professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
Simple steps are the key to avoiding long-term poverty
Ministers Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Washington, D.C.'s Mayor Anthony Williams and others recently met to discuss plans to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the October 1995 Million Man March. While reading about the plans, I thought of an excellent topic for the event: how not to be poor.
Avoiding long-term poverty is not rocket science. First, graduate from high school. Second, get married before you have children, and stay married. Third, work at any kind of job, even one that starts out paying the minimum wage. And, finally, avoid engaging in criminal behavior. If you graduate from high school today with a B or C average, in most places in our country there's a low-cost or financially assisted post-high-school education program available to increase your skills.
Most jobs start with wages higher than the minimum wage, which is currently $5.15. A man and his wife, even earning the minimum wage, would earn $21,000 annually. According to the Bureau of Census, in 2003, the poverty threshold for one person was $9,393, for a two-person household it was $12,015, and for a family of four it was $18,810. Taking a minimum-wage job is no great shakes, but it produces an income higher than the Bureau of Census' poverty threshold. Plus, having a job in the first place increases one's prospects for a better job.
The Children's Defense Fund and civil rights organizations frequently whine about the number of black children living in poverty. In 1999, the Bureau of the Census reported that 33.1 percent of black children lived in poverty compared with 13.5 percent of white children. It turns out that race per se has little to do with the difference. Instead, it's welfare and single parenthood. When black children are compared to white children living in identical circumstances, mainly in a two-parent household, both children will have the same probability of being poor.
How much does racial discrimination explain? So far as black poverty is concerned, I'd say little or nothing, which is not to say that every vestige of racial discrimination has been eliminated. But let's pose a few questions. Is it racial discrimination that stops black students from studying and completing high school? Is it racial discrimination that's responsible for the 68 percent illegitimacy rate among blacks?
The 1999 Bureau of Census report might raise another racial discrimination question. Among black households that included a married couple, over 50 percent were middle class earning above $50,000, and 26 percent earned more than $75,000. How in the world did these black families manage not to be poor? Did America's racists cut them some slack?
The civil rights struggle is over, and it has been won. At one time, black Americans did not have the same constitutional protections as whites. Now, we do, because the civil rights struggle is over and won is not the same as saying that there are not major problems for a large segment of the black community. What it does say is that they're not civil rights problems, and to act as if they are leads to a serious misallocation of resources.
Rotten education is a severe handicap to upward mobility, but is it a civil rights problem? Let's look at it. Washington, D.C., public schools, as well as many other big city schools, are little more than educational cesspools. Per student spending in Washington, D.C., is just about the highest in the nation. D.C.'s mayors have been black, and so have a large percentage of the City Council, school principals, teachers and superintendents. Suggesting that racial discrimination plays any part in the education calamity in Washington, D.C., is near madness and diverts attention away from possible solutions.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.
Jan -- Arrogant? Gosh, I see myself, like Rush Limbaugh did, as a sort of loveable little fuzzball.
I felt bad for Wayne, who is, to me, obviously a person of good will, being hurt in his dealings with Tommy, and was trying to explain to Wayne what he is dealing with when he receives the unwarranted, often shocking, abuse. I thought the absoultely key distinction in what I said was the difference between lefty people who support their opinions by citing facts (like Lowell and sort of like Sandra) and those who support their opinions by calling people who disagree with them some slightly more mature variation of "poopoo head," like Tommy. If you only state an opinion and don't back it up, someone disagreeing, pointing out that you haven't given reasons for your opinion, or citing contrary facts is not calling you names or directing abuse at you and something is really wrong when someone can't tell the difference.
[Incidentally, I don't remember Wayne from school -- my impression of him is from the fora and is a positive one. Tommy was in a number of my classes in high school and in the same small program in college: I always thought he was a particularly nice guy with a very good sense of humor -- the same thing I thought about his friend David Cordell. Of course, both of them are and were highly intelligent. You I remember particularly for having really pretty hair and being likeable.]
I know I tend to state things fairly forcefully -- I argue for a living against some very, very mean assholes, of course -- but pull my punches so much when I opine around here that I usually feel like a wimp with just a light touch of mild sarcasm.
Besides, I was the shy, quiet hamburgista way back then. There is no way in the world I would have thrown a hamburger at one of the pretty girls -- I was occupied with hoping I wouldn't blush too much when they teased me. (I remember all of the Burger Chef girls as being pretty.)
After being banned from accessing Tommy's website, I see you are faced with the split personalities of Tommy. Reading his site this morning was particularly satisfying after I was banned from doing so. Under the nom dep plume Ron S., !/3 of Tommy loves you. While Tommy and Sue do not. How does one respond to a mixed message like that? You have my support in this difficult task. I will try not to poke the bear unless I catch him posting something really aggregious. He still does not get the fact that by changing my post to say that I wanted to kill Pelosi, he put me at serious risk. Not to worry though, I have copied and filed away numerous threats to Ex President Trump that may become relevant when the new regime is installed Jan 20, 2023.
You and I could not be more different. I am probably moving from Carl's Corner because it has gotten overpopulated and I can see my neighbors, a mix of meth heads and illegal aliens. I buy my coffee in Italy at McDonalds where the senior rate is 62 cents with tax. I get four large unsweet ice teas at Chicken Express which sells the four for $1.99 during Happy Hour from 2 till 5pm. They will also give you three sweet and lows per tea and I use one and bring the others home for home consumption. I buy groceries at Brookshires on Tuesdays and Thursdays when there is a 5% discount for seniors. I utilize the out of date meat tray which has perfectly good meat which can be eaten right away or frozen for later at a substantial discount, sometimes half price, I buy many items at Walmart or Bass Pro Shop where I take advantage of my reward card or Walmart's buying power.. I attend a mix of churches, but mainly study on the internet and tv. I am looking to move to a northern New Mexico ranch of at least a thousand acres where the antelope roam and the skies are not cloudy all day. The Bible says "Woe unto them who join house to house and lay field to field until there is not a place that they may be alone in the midst of the earth."
THE END
