Turns Out Mr. Wikileaks is Mentally Unstable

[MikeH]

I think I met C0ckney when he was 19/20ish and I was 27/28ish.

[MOBIUS]

Is that in pounds, shillings or pence...?

[C0ckney]

i'm only 26.

i think the height and weight thing comes from when i young i used to (i was diagnosed with diabetes when i was 10) go to the hospital and get weighed and measured quite a lot, and it was always given to me in imperial. my family also always used imperial. i think the hospitals changed when i was in my late teens, and it was just easier to ask for it in imperial because i understood that, rather than learn another way of thinking about it.

[MikeH]

so I am 8 years older, pretty much spot on.

[MikeH]

amazing you got to be a surgeon so young too.

[C0ckney]

my high IQ helped a lot.

[MikeH]

Do you know that in metric?

[Elok]

BTW. We've had lots of defending it on the basis that "it's not as bad as you are making out", "no-one pays attention to it anyway", "you don't have to say it" etc.

We still haven't had a single positive argument for why it's a good thing and shouldn't just be consigned to history as a worthless stupid idea.

I haven't defended it, I merely attacked your alarmist "brainwashing" nonsense. And pointed out that abolishing it would be more hassle than it's really worth at present. Any attempt to abolish it now would result in a long, vitriolic national discussion in which one side gets labeled traitors or "socialists" or something, the others are labeled fascists and jingoist loons, and in the end nothing would change. In the meantime, it would divert attention from actual issues that need tending to; you haven't presented any evidence that the pledge causes real harm in any way, just vague allegations of cultishness. Oh, and little Johnny in Alabama theoretically gets bullied because he refuses to mumble with the rest of the class, along with the bullying he already gets for not going to church, belonging to a family that listens to NPR, and wanting to aid and abet America's enemies by giving detainees a fair and legal trial. How terrible.

[DriXnaK]

God damn those NPR listening, god hating, terrorist loving Alabama commie kids.

[Elok]

Oh, God won't, necessarily, but no doubt their classmates will, whether they say the pledge or not.

[Hauldren Collider]

I don't think grade schoolers generally care about politics that much.

[Elok]

Generally, no. If bullying occurs, it's probably distrust absorbed from their parents and manifested as plain old xenophobia and exclusion, which children of all ages excel at.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

I don't think grade schoolers generally care about politics that much.

You would be surprised. Some of our friends (ardent Obama supporters) had to pull their kids out of school and home school them due to bullying once it was found out their parents supported Obama. Kids were in 3rd and 5th grade at the time.

[Elok]

Did the children in question have an understanding of, and personal objection to, Obama's policies? I'll wager they didn't, and simply hated anything associated with what their parents hated. I know when I was in third or fourth grade, I had no idea who Bill Clinton was or what he wanted, but I virulently opposed him just because my mother disliked his pro-choice stance. I didn't even question why I hated him.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Did the children in question have an understanding of, and personal objection to, Obama's policies? I'll wager they didn't, and simply hated anything associated with what their parents hated. I know when I was in third or fourth grade, I had no idea who Bill Clinton was or what he wanted, but I virulently opposed him just because my mother disliked his pro-choice stance. I didn't even question why I hated him.

No, I'm pretty sure when my daughter was kicking that kids ass she had no idea why Obama was the antichrist.

Seriously, I don't know. All I know is that the parents were rightly upset and that the school was unresponsive to providing the necessary oversight to prevent the bullying from happening. Thus they decided to homeschool. Shame as ultimately the mom got bored , was thrust reluctantly into a position of having to be a stay at home mom, and ultimately retaliated by having an affair resulting in a dviorce.

All in all the kids were good kids and the situation ended up really sucking for all involved considering the ultimate fallout.