CalvinBall wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:will Wolf actually do anything to help our schools

he is for universal pre-k which has been proven to be a huge help the success of a student.

Not really. The educational benefits disappear over time. The only benefits that have been discovered, and not in every study, is that pre-k students show up in jail less often 25 years later. I'm unconvinced of the causal mechanism.

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/30/5952739/the-research-on-how-pre-k-could-reduce-crime

Soren wrote:So, the GOP has incredibly low approval ratings and they won in a landslide. Someone explain non sarcastically please.

Battle for the Senate: How the GOP Did It - Pretty great behind the scenes blow by blow from the Washington Post

jerseyhoya wrote:

Soren wrote:So, the GOP has incredibly low approval ratings and they won in a landslide. Someone explain non sarcastically please.

Battle for the Senate: How the GOP Did It - Pretty great behind the scenes blow by blow from the Washington Post

this would also help to explain it:

SK790 wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

Soren wrote:So, the GOP has incredibly low approval ratings and they won in a landslide. Someone explain non sarcastically please.

Battle for the Senate: How the GOP Did It - Pretty great behind the scenes blow by blow from the Washington Post

this would also help to explain it:

Yea, Bob Costa displays all the reportorial acumen of a cinder block here. But he's not really a reporter, I guess. "Oh, tell me more, Dave Krone - you don't have any ax to grind. Here, let me buy you another..." It reads like a 2nd-rate SI article

Getting that many top level people to speak on the record is a heck of a thing. And it's an entertaining read. There might be a little post hoc ass covering going on, but it has compelling bits of info and fits the general tenor of the campaign.

I think it does a decent job conveying the answer to Soren's question of how the GOP - broadly unpopular as a brand - was able to win a huge victory in the midterms. The individual candidates nominated in key races were personally more popular than the party. They did a great job of emphasizing the positives of the GOP agenda, avoiding the negatives, and keeping the focus on the unpopular president. The troublesome nominees were torpedoed in the primaries or encoraged not to run, and the more untested or otherwise weakened choices (Ernst, Perdue, Roberts) received support from the national party that was effective.

If you want a bullet point list of why the GOP won a landslide victory in the midterms I'd go:
1) The president is unpopular and incompetent
2) The midterm electorate is more favorable to the GOP than presidential electorates have been in recent years (though the GOP did better among almost all demographic subgroups as well - see 1)
3) The Senate seats up for election this cycle were favorable, and House districts favor the GOP even in neutral years for a number of reasons (though you could note the governors races were anything but favorable and the GOP still added two seats - see 1)
4) The GOP did a fantastic job nominating the candidates capable of winning tough races as noted by some brilliant observers earlier this election season

Dems need to find a way to get their people to vote in midterms. Until then and until we get the money out of politics, the thumb will always be on the scale in favor of the GOP.

the president is 'incompetent' eh

Werthless wrote:

CalvinBall wrote:

Houshphandzadeh wrote:will Wolf actually do anything to help our schools

he is for universal pre-k which has been proven to be a huge help the success of a student.

Not really. The educational benefits disappear over time. The only benefits that have been discovered, and not in every study, is that pre-k students show up in jail less often 25 years later. I'm unconvinced of the causal mechanism.

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/30/5952739/the-research-on-how-pre-k-could-reduce-crime

Did you read that whole thing?

And I'm aware of the data backed benefits, including lower incarceration rates. In saying success, I didn't mean strictly test scores.

Well I mean look at us compared to in 2008 when he took office. Before we elected President Obama the Phillies were WFC, but now after his tyrannical, incompetent ruling we are the joke of the League!

Werthless wrote:

td11 wrote:vote ron paul

What is this, 2008?


Holy crap, Wendy Davis. I didn't realize some of the crazy stuff you've done.

http://michellemalkin.com/2014/10/28/the-spectacular-self-immolation-of-wendy-r-davis/

Malkin is a disgusting, hateful person. Surprised you read her.

Rick Scott, criminal, is still the Florida governor. Amazing to me.

The opening line to his new book How to be a Bad Winner Without Really Trying

Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, proclaimed Wednesday that Republicans may have built a “hundred-year majority” in the House.

Werthless wrote: The only benefits that have been discovered

hmmm. seems improbable, given the relative ease of asserting/evidencing/demonstrating some benefit, and the number of parties standing to gain from doing so

thephan wrote:The opening line to his new book How to be a Bad Winner Without Really Trying

Rep. Greg Walden of Oregon, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, proclaimed Wednesday that Republicans may have built a “hundred-year majority” in the House.

100 is a big number. about 50 bigger than his IQ

pacino wrote:Rick Scott, criminal, is still the Florida governor. Amazing to me.

would have been nice if the dems could have gotten someone better than former republican charlie crist

CalvinBall wrote:

pacino wrote:Rick Scott, criminal, is still the Florida governor. Amazing to me.

would have been nice if the dems could have gotten someone better than former republican charlie crist

they had options in Kentucky, too, but got scared at putting an actual liberal up. a liberal would've done just as well, if not mobilized some new voters. no one likes charlie crist in Florida. it was pathetic to choose him, even if he was better than Scott. At least Crist believed in science.

As far as early childhood stuff--a lot depends on which kids get what kind of early child education and what they would have gotten otherwise. The difficult thing here is that to really see benefits, you'll have to wait 20 years or so. So, if you're saying 25 year olds who got some pre-k education are doing better than those who did not, you'd have to first control for lots of things and second, you'd still be looking at what pre-k was like in 1994 which might not be what it's like now. Second, the effects very well could happen on a more environmental rather than individual level. What I mean by that is if you take one kid who had a good pre-k experience and stick him in a school district where no one else did, I wouldn't be surprised to see little or no effect. But if you say take an entire community and give them pre-k, the effects very well could be there.

Finally, though, I'm not at all convinced that pushing certain competencies on ever younger children is really the way to go. What matters is that a kid learns to read, not that they start kindergarten already reading. I suspect that I might have had a very different education experience had I been forced to try to learn to read at 5, when I mostly wanted to play with blocks and trucks. I really wasn't expected to start learning to read until I was about 7, and I learned rather quickly at that point and became a pretty serious reader.

certainly, different people learn differently. i'm not sure you could argue against that, really. if we truly tried to cater to that, it'd cost a lot of money in hiring more people, in-class assistants, etc.

also, it seemingly pays for itself with that high of an ROI