We’ve completed the first week back for Comment of the Week, and it is time for readers and commenters to choose a winner. I’ve selected one comment from each of the past seven days (Mon-Sun) and included them below for you to review before you vote.
The winner, as selected by the Grokosphere, will have the option of contacting me (steve@granitegrok.com) to provide an address to which I will ship a ‘Grok goody. We will announce the winner on Wednesday morning.
I have provided a link to the post where you can find the comment and one to the commenter’s Disqus profile. Feel free to click and review for context if you feel it necessary.
When voting, you will select the Disqus Handle of the commenter you’d like to win this week in the poll below. The poll closes Tuesday at 6 pm.
Comments are as originally submitted.
This week’s “Contestants.”
The Post: G.E.T. R.E.A.L! – E: Education Reform
The Commenter: Publius
The schools aren’t perfect and share a portion of blame for sure, spending all their spare money on additional useless admin that don’t discipline, don’t give classroom support, don’t do their job of iep compliance, just sit there and try and enforce DEI and useless PD rather than trying to attract the best and brightest teachers with attractive salaries.
But we can’t forget to blame what we know to be the largest driver of student success.
Parents
Parents aren’t reading to their kids anymore, they aren’t fostering a love of learning, a sense of discipline, and a sense of respect
The parents plop their kids down in front of a screen for hours at a time, the almighty tablet has become their one stop shop for entertainment on demand. They then get a smart phone with all the quick-dopamine hits that give them easy highs and terrible lows when comparing themselves to everyone else. This constant connection to everything enables round the clock bullying too, and not to mention how that affects their attention span in the classroom, where they are truly addicted to the screen.
It’s an old comic at this point demonstrating the generational gap where a kid gets bad grades and the older generation asks the child what they did wrong, where the modern generation asks the teacher what they did wrong.
The covid years showed us how many parents don’t even care about the school teaching their kids anything but so many just care about it being free daycare.
As a society we once greatly valued education, but that has slowly been chipped away to ensure a generation of obedient, mindless slaves.
The Post: Dartmouth Health Ignores the Evidence
The Commenter: Brian W
“Evidence-based medicine” is a good philosophy but has morphed into the phrase they use when they think they can dazzle us with BS. Notice how little the phrase was used to support all the COVID measures taken, and when discussing treatments especially the clot-shots.
But it is interesting to follow the NHS (UK) travails through the evidence. When they finally shook off the blinders of the ideologues, this is what they did:
In January 2020, a Policy Working Group (PWG) was established by NHS England to undertake a review of the published evidence on the use of puberty blockers and feminising/masculinising hormones in children and young people with gender dysphoria to inform a policy position on their future use. Given the increasingly evident polarisation among clinical professionals, Dr Cass was asked to chair the group as a senior clinician with no prior involvement or fixed views in this area.
The evidence reviews were published in March 2021. Unfortunately, the available evidence was not deemed strong enough to form the basis of a policy position.
https://cass.independent-re…
One observer noted about some testimony in front of a state legislature in the US: When we asked for evidence to support the position for “gender affirming care” for children, the practitioners pointed to WPATH, which is not evidence but a Standard of Care (SOC). Specifically, they point to a paragraph in the WPATH literature where they claim that the SOC is based on a “cross-disciplinary consensus of the leading researchers, doctors, psychologists, and advocates.” Where else have we heard that “consensus” was evidence? The argument became a circular reference never referencing actual evidence. (I should try to find that again – I’m sure I butchered it) WPATH isn’s a professional society – most of its members are activists, so it can’t really even be a “Standard of Care” in the medical sense.
WPATH had a leak of internal messages a couple of years ago. From an article in “The Guardian”:
In one video, doctors acknowledge that patients are sometimes too young to fully understand the consequences of puberty blockers and hormones for their fertility. “It’s always a good theory that you talk about fertility preservation with a 14-year-old, but I know I’m talking to a blank wall,” one Canadian endocrinologist says.
WPATH’s president, Dr Marci Bowers, comments on the impact of early blocking of puberty on sexual function in adulthood. “To date,” she writes, “I’m unaware of an individual claiming ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner 2.” Tanner stage 2 is the beginning of puberty. It can be as young as nine in girls.
https://www.theguardian.com…
In all, this is an insidious attack on children and future generations. If they can sterilize 15-20% of today’s youth, that’s more unborn children than Planned Parenthood could even dream about. We must fight it.
The Post: Did State Reps Know What They Were Voting For?
The Commenter: Houmid
The New Hampshire House (and Senate to be frank) suffer from an epidemic of, “have to do something-ism”. It’s an unfortunate fact that most of those representatives were indoctrinated with leftism by our public education system, and hence, are largely unable to apply logic and reason to government, and the effects that legislation has on our social and financial environments (and not just secondary and tertiary effects, but far too often even primary ones.)
The truth is, the more bills passed, the more the state version of the federal register grows. The more it grows, the more it costs to implement and maintain. And the more liberty is chipped away, denying actual rights of self determination to the people of this state.
If our representatives in Concord really want to do something that is of great benefit to the people, I suggest all 400+ of them each pick a single piece of existing legislation or regulation, and either reduce it, or eliminate it completely.
The Post: So, When They “Cheat on You,” You’re Supposed to Say, Thank You
The Commenter: tenbuckulus
Sadly it isn’t true that “Democrats will always be worse” because it really depends on what your hot-button issues are. On the trans issue, we have progressive “Republicans” that think gender is a social construct and centrist “Democrats” that recognize we are a sexually dimorphic species.
The Post: Jason Osborne’s Self-Serving, Nonsensical Definition Of Tyranny
The Commenter: NewHampshire
Your government in Concord has created many unelected boards and commissions to promote this stuff. Some are basically taxpayer-funded lobbies!!! It’s corruption at the core.
Gov. Sununu’s State Office of Planning and Development
Gov. Sununu’s Housing Appeals Board (appointees)
Legislative Establishment of a Land Court
State Legislature’s Housing Commission (created by Speaker Sherman Packard)
House Special Committee on Housing (created by Speaker Sherman Packard in 2024 which hears bills that normally would go to House Municipal and County Government)
The Post: 62% of Americans are Wrong
The Commenter: Tombstone Gabby
I think it’s high time the government had a ‘little chat’ with various unions, plumbers, electricians, etc, about apprenticeships in their respective trades. Some new Trade Schools would also help. The concept that “You have to have a collage degree to succeed” is not true for every youngster.
When the elites have managed to exterminate the ‘least useful’ members of the world’s population, they might just have a real problem with a water leak at 10PM on a Sat10 pmy night.
The Post: Rights, or Permissions?
The Commenter: Mike Remski
I don’t disagree with you but my reading/rereading is “That’s not what Ian is asking”.
Don’t focus on the MJ, focus on the reasoning.
That is what I tried to do.
My reading is:
Ian is saying “this is the reasoning/logic they are using to veto X. What is stopping them from using that same reasoning to veto Y”.
That is all. Nothing to do with the merits of X or Y. Just “If you use this reason to disallow X that same reason can be used to disallow Y. Is that what you want?”
Please just one vote for each. The poll will remain open until 6 pm Tuesday 6 pming ET. Results will be announced on Wed. Morning. If you have multiple voters using the same IP address, you will have to wait 8 hours between votes. We can see multiple votes from the same IP.
[yop_poll id=”44″]
