Jump to content

Menu
Giving You and Your Child a Road Map to the Best Possible Education
The Well-Trained Mind Community

kokotg

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    4,850

  • Joined

 Content Type 

Everything posted by kokotg

  1. kokotg
    The president writes the budget and submits it to congress. And the 9/11 commission takes a different view of the attacks than you do. You can read their report online, but the Bush administration doesn't come off as blameless (nor does Clinton).
  2. kokotg
    Thanks everyone! I think I kind of needed someone to give me permission to skip it. Now that I have it, I will gladly do exactly that :) that's an excellent point. It seems obvious now that it's spelled out that way, but I don't think I had made the connection in my mind that money values isn't a concept that anything else builds on, and he won't be mathematically crippled if he doesn't get it yet. We have gotten out play money and messed around it with it, but he really doesn't seem to be anywhere near grasping the whole thing. I think it's just putting too many things together at once--he has to remember to link the name of the coin with the visual and then assign the correct value to it on top of that, and his brain just overloads. We'll keep pulling them out periodically and playing around, though.
  3. kokotg
    Definitely. I thought this quote from Jon Stewart in an interview with Entertainment Weekly (this isn't where I get ALL my news, I promise) was really perceptive: I see a big difference in both candidates from even a few months ago, but certainly from a few years ago. McCain's transformation has become the stuff of legends, but I see it in Obama, too. I read his first book and found it really fascinating because it's a rare glimpse inside the mind of a politician who doesn't yet know that he's a politician. He could never write that book today. It's really disheartening, but what can you do? I don't see any going back. We live in the age of Wikipedia--the democratization of knowledge and all that, and it's a blessing and a curse.
  4. kokotg
    My 5 year old is finishing up Singapore Earlybird. We just got to the section on money, and we've hit a complete standstill. I don't know what it is, but he seems to have some sort of mental block when it comes to keeping money values straight. I can go over them with him and 2 minutes later he's completely clueless. This is the first real trouble he's had with the books...he flew through the first three books, and the last one has been slower going. He's just mastered counting to 100, and he still has some trouble counting by 5s, so we spent some extra time on those things. But this is the first topic that he's just completely not getting. I printed out some extra worksheets from Teacher Filebox, in hopes that a slightly different approach would help things click for him, but no luck. So...what do I do now? Do I stick with it until he gets it, or do I just skip it and hope he'll get it the next time it comes around (I can't remember, but I'm assuming they review money in Singapore 1)?
  5. kokotg
    If I were in your position, including the part about how you live in Idaho (a state McCain is virtually assured of winning), I would look into third party candidates and vote for the one I liked the best.
  6. kokotg
    err, I see this went back and forth for a long time already...sorry if I'm beating a dead horse--I was in bed when you all were doing this last night!
  7. kokotg
    I'm afraid I'm not following your logic here, either. Given that all except for 3 countries on that map are blue, couldn't one just as easily argue that it's problematic that nearly all of our ALLIES are against a John McCain presidency? Wouldn't they be interested in seeing a stronger America, and therefore, by your reasoning, think John McCain would bring about a weaker one? Certainly Israel has a great stake in maintaining a strong America, yet they strongly support Obama on that map. Similarly, if you want to use Obama's lack of a flag pin as evidence that he's not like other Americans, then you'll need to apply the same criticism to McCain, as he wears one infrequently as well. In fact, he wasn't wearing one in the first debate (Obama was).
  8. kokotg
    I was quoting from the WaPo article that was linked to (in response to your post) before you re-asserted that you believed the reports to be all speculation.
  9. kokotg
    Well, no. The news stories I've seen are all quoting McCain strategists. Like this one from the WaPo story linked above:
  10. kokotg
    It's not a huge amount...actually, I'm not clear on where most of the 4.5 million is supposed to have gone, since it only shows a bit over $8,000 from PAC contributions (1% of total funds).
  11. kokotg
    According to the Opensecrets site, Bob Barr actually has more PAC money than Obama and a poorer record of disclosure about where his funds come from than either major party candidate.
  12. kokotg
    and here's an interesting non partisan look at factual errors from both candidates in the debate. I prefer my fact checking without spin. http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_biden-palin_debate.html
  13. kokotg
    Snap circuits was going to be my suggestion, too!
  14. kokotg
    Apparently, there is a scandalous shortage of Obama yard signs. For real. http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/09/breaking-obama-campaign-organizers.html I don't do yard signs, only because no one else in our neighborhood does, and I like it that way. I have a bumper sticker, though.
  15. kokotg
    I've never understood this. To me it seems incredibly clear that the much greater financial incentive is in denying global warming, since, you know...oil and all that. So, sincere question....what is the line of reasoning that scientists have a greater stake in perpetrating a fraud about man-made climate change than oil companies have in denying it? Is there any evidence for the charge that scientists are conspiring in this way?
  16. kokotg
    We're only on chapter 3, but we're really enjoying it so far! My kids love the games, and the text is well written and easy to understand. I add in experiments from other sources (though there are some included) and some other reading, and we'll probably stretch it through the whole year that way.
  17. kokotg
    "all numbers in thousands" nevermind!
  18. kokotg
    Okay, I've checked like 3 times, and the link to Exxon's financial stats has 3 fewer zeros on the "income tax expense" than the blog post is listing. million, not billion. Am I missing something?
  19. kokotg
    I think it's unlikely that McCain's hiding anything. My guess is that he hasn't released the records because it would mean the press spending days pouring over them and writing about anything vaguely interesting in them. And when you're a 72 year old candidate for president (particularly when your opponent is 47), you never want your health to be the story. I don't think Obama's hiding anything either. There hasn't really been much of a call for him to release his records, so he hasn't needed to. Really, I'm surprised it's not considered mandatory for all the candidates to release their records after what happened with President Bartlet. Oh, wait...I guess that was just on TV. Incidentally, I wonder if the constant campaigning for the past 20 months or so has had any effect on Obama's freakishly good blood pressure. Have I mentioned my Obama vs. McCain equals Howie Kemp vs. Ramona Quimby thing here yet?
  20. kokotg
    right. He probably wouldn't die in office. There's "only" a 1 in 6 chance, statistically speaking. Whether 1 in 6 is too high for you or not is likely to be influenced by how qualified you think his running mate is. There is, I would say, a great deal of disagreement on that issue ;).
  21. kokotg
    I was hoping Georgia would be a swing state this year. Maybe if Obama had gone with Sam Nunn for a running mate.... the senate race here is looking very interesting, though!
  22. kokotg
    He ran in 96, too...he just didn't have nearly as much of an impact that time.
  23. kokotg
    In general, teacher salaries are much lower and benefits not as good at private schools.
  24. kokotg
    100% Mainline to Liberal Protestant, which is what I am. followed by liberal Quaker and then Orthodox Quaker. I've seen these before, and there's always a huge number of people who are supposed to be Quakers, despite how relatively few actual Quakers there are (I've tried out Quaker congregations, FWIW, but found them a little too...quiet for my tastes). I think it's because Quakers are so completely non-creedal that you can espouse a much wider range of beliefs and still fairly call yourself a Quaker than in most other religions and denominations.
  25. kokotg
    :grouphug: Oh, I'm so sorry!
×
×
  • Create New...