Nice try.
How many American students speak ANY second language?
Hell, how many can speak fundamental English ?

I rather suspect Chicago - where there are many WHOLE schools where NOBODY is reading, writing, or arithmatic'ing at grade level - probably has students who can't speak (nor especially read) english as well as those Japanese students.

Any idea why?

My kid teaches at a rural unified school district. 75% of the kids have whatever the "action" plan folder is called- Jimmy gets scared near windows; Janie can't sit near the door; Mary has trouble concentrating so needs extra time; etc.
About 10-20% of kids in every class have paras, essentially shit-paid workers that shadow billy because he likes to stab other kids when there are scissors.

I'm not kidding about that last; there was one kid who just liked stabing things. With pencils, with scissors, anything with an edge or point, he'd use to stab. Chairs, cushions, other kids. His last para quit because she took her attention off him for a second and he *almost* got her in the eyeball (nasty scar on her cheek tho). So without a para to mind him, the school in desperation made her seat him next to his best friend, the only kid in his class he hasn't tried to stab - I believe the "friends" parents might have objected...had anyone told them.

Are you kidding?
The Bakken Shale produces nearly the lightest sweetest crude there is.

You have it backward - US refineries are built to process shitty Venezuelan and Canadian crude, while ours needs nearly no processing at all.

So you're asserting that the US can't get its oil domestically?

There's no doubt some infringement going on, it's probably legally actionable. I played PA and liked it very much, but ended up at Turtle Wow because it was a little less financially aggressive and just did a better job with the parts I enjoyed.

That said, I'm reasonably sure PA doesn't distribute the 1.12 wow client themselves, so that assertion by Blizzard is narrowly mistaken.

So mmos never would have existed?

Before the inevitable "it's because we don't fund the schools enough" let's keep in mind: the city of Minneapolis as an example of a metro area in a high tax, school-supporting state.
Spent $25345 per student
Reading Proficiency
Students perform below the 49.6% statewide proficiency average.
Elementary: Roughly \(38\%\) test at or above proficient.
Middle School: Around \(30\%\) test at or above proficient.
High School: Approximately \(43\%\) test at or above proficient.

Math Proficiency Breakdown - state 45% :Elementary: About \(33\%\) test at or above proficient.
Middle School: Only \(20\%\) test at or above proficient.
High School: Around \(21\%\) test at or above proficient.

Japan $10993 per student
Germany $17996 per student

PISA Scores and Approximate Rankings
(Out of ~70+ participating education systems; OECD averages: Math ~490, Science ~493, Reading ~493)

Mathematics:
Japan: 532 (rank ~5thâ"6th)
Germany: 475 (rank ~24thâ"25th)
United States: 470 (rank ~34thâ"40th)
Japan led with a substantial gap (~57â"62 points over Germany/US).

Science (main focus domain in 2015):
Japan: 538 (rank ~2ndâ"3rd)
Germany: 492â"500 (rank ~16thâ"22nd)
United States: 496 (rank ~16thâ"20th)
Japan again dominant; US and Germany closer but below top performers.

Reading:
Japan: 516 (rank ~3rdâ"8th)
Germany: 480â"506 (rank ~16thâ"21st)
United States: 497â"504 (rank ~9thâ"16th)
Japan strong; US slightly ahead of Germany here.

Approximate Combined Average (for illustration):
Japan: ~529
Germany: ~489â"502
United States: ~488â"490

Probably shouldn't even talk about Japanese scores unless we want to humiliate American educators.
Why does it cost 25% more per student to get scores than Germany ?

Hey, it was Barney Frank et al who perfected the practice of folding shit investments together while wrapping them in AAA ratings. Or, at least turning a blind eye to it so lenders would comply with his literal orders to sell more loans to high risk clients.

Hilariously, it was Bush II that famously warned everyone about it (https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081009-10.html)

I've heard this repeatedly from those with TDS.

Yet, it doesn't actually seem to work?

Has Trump pardoned a bunch of shitty people? Yep.
Then again, he didn't issue 'pre-emptive' pardons for his family, friends, crackhead son, etc yet, so there's that. Or how about 1500 commutations and 39 pardons on a single day? https://news.wttw.com/2024/12/...
I mean Kaboni Savage is a particularly awful person. I mean, "burnt a family alive and laughed about it" not "misvalued his commercial property" bad, amirite?

I see them *BOTH* as wrong. Do you? Presidential power has been growing grossly out of hand since LBJ.

Are you stupid enough to think there are what, unpaid invoices?

NATO allies gathered at the Wales Summit in 2014 and signed the Defense Investment Pledge.

The commitment was explicit: All allies spending less than 2% of their GDP on defense promised to "move toward" that 2% target within a decade (by 2024). They also committed to spending at least 20% of their defense budgets on major new equipment and research.

For the first seven years of that decade, Europe largely dragged its feet. The numbers tell a story of persistent shortfall:
- According to European Commission data, if EU member states had actually met the 2% threshold between 2006 and 2020, it would have injected an extra â1.1 trillion into European defense.
- By 2021â"just three years before the deadlineâ"only 7 out of the 21 EU countries that were NATO members at the time were actually meeting the 2% target. Major economies like Germany, Italy, and Spain were hovering between 1.2% and 1.4%

You're retarded, by the way.

Shall we ask where inflation came from?
We had well over a decade, nearly two with near-zero interest rates (which was partly government jiggering the numbers but it was low) that seemingly exploded a handful a years ago.

Right, it's PERFECTLY RATIONAL to base your spending models on the sole circumstance of not one, but two successive global wars that reduced every other competitive western industrial economy to ashes and decimated their working age populations for a generation but left the US nearly unscathed.

That's absolutely reasonable to assume that's "normal", of course. The change of economic context came from TAX POLICY. Perfectly sane answer.

European leaders good enough?
European leaders and officials have acknowledged or admitted shortfalls in meeting NATO's defense spending guidelines (the 2% of GDP target agreed in 2014).
Key Examples

Angela Merkel (former German Chancellor): In reflections tied to her memoir and discussions around Trump's criticisms, Merkel admitted that Germany's inability to meet the NATO defense spending targets set in 2014 was a "weak point" for Berlin. Germany long spent well below 2% (often around 1.3â"1.5%), and this was a recurring point of tension.
Broader European admissions and acknowledgments:
Multiple leaders and NATO officials have publicly recognized that many European allies fell short for years after the 2014 Wales Summit pledge. For instance, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg (and later Mark Rutte) repeatedly noted that European allies and Canada had under-invested, describing U.S. criticisms (including from Trump) as "fair" on this issue, while highlighting post-2022 increases due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Countries like Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and others were frequently cited as not meeting the target until recent years. By 2024, a record number (23 out of 32 members) reached or exceeded 2%, but this came after prolonged shortfalls that leaders implicitly or explicitly accepted.

Context from summits and statements: At various NATO meetings (e.g., under Trump pressure), European politicians admitted the need to "prove reliability" and increase spending, with some German officials in 2017 acknowledging underinvestment post-Cold War. Spain and others have openly discussed delays or stretched definitions of "defense spending" while committing to eventual compliance.

Somehow Europe REFUSING to pay its bills (let's remember that even Obama insisted they should - they simply ignored him) is the US's fault?

Yes, Trump destroyed the 'gentlemens agreement' that the US would pay for everything?

We apparently have different definitions of 'gentlemen'?

This is asinine. The US is $39 TRILLION in debt.
Every dollar the US spends is 20-25% borrowed from the future.
This is the wealthiest society that has ever existed, and we cannot pay for everything we want.

In fact, I agree with you; in the immediate aftermath of WW2 the US was *fantastically* wealthy and could afford to pay for everything. That's what happens when you have 2 global wars wreck every other competitive industrial economy - you kind of end up on top.
Yes, we could afford to buy everyone else's lunches. For 75 years. Not any more.
But the moment we started to say "hey, um, guys, remember how this is about COLLECTIVE defense? Maybe... maybe you could perhaps pitch in a LITTLE?" everyone shit themselves complaining.

What's hilarious is that now the first people to complain that the US threw its weight around, that the US acted like the global police, that the US always was sticking its nose where it didn't belong - THESE are the people bitching that the US isn't willing to continue to pay for everything.