[Severian]

Originally Posted by evollove

Two Hillary signs with a red X across the name. These have popped up across the street because a row of simple Trump signs doesn't get the message across, I guess. Where did they get the signs, by the way? I know for a fact the office has been out for a while.

____

Pointless prediction: she wins electoral, loses popular and her "legitimacy" will be questioned her entire term.

That happened W. as we all know, and though yeah his legitimacy was questioned, he went on to serve two terms. And now, all these years later, talking about his loss of the popular vote prompts little more than an eye roll in response.

Family Guy has a semi-running joke about Brain — who knows nothing but political buzz words — bitching about Bush's win and making an ass of himself. Just a stupid cartoon, but it does seem to have a finger on the pulse of the country much of the time.

Still, Trump winning the popular vote isn't really comparable to Gore. If a majority of the nation's voters choose Trump, that means a majority of the nation's voters are completely unhinged. I mentioned rioting in the streets before, and this scenario (Hillary winning the electorate, Trump the popular) is one of the ways I can see that happening. Unlike Gore in '00, a Trump loss after a popular vote win would place a live grenade in the hands of a nation of morons with no fear or apprehension about going apeshit crazy and mobbing out.

Would be great if this didn't happen and HRC won both.

[Shaka Moloch]

Clinton may be older, yet her party was kept under pained revolt most of the time her husband toured to smooth international relations; Trump deserves it and will pay the better homebody and excuse foreign relations eeking for Obama to gain a third term.

[Shaka Moloch]

Originally Posted by Shaka Moloch

Clinton may be older, yet her party was kept under pained revolt most of the time her husband toured to smooth international relations; Trump deserves it and will pay the better homebody and excuse foreign relations eeking for Obama to gain a third term.

In a dream I'd awhile ago, Hillary (& co.) were forced to sea battle after sea battle if she should take the election seat, then it follows seas could rise afterward (if she takes ticket based on incumbent force?) and land loss goes beyond gradual world-wide; when I worked to escape inside of a limousine Obama may've driven he showed me an obliterated world and that we are all lost in a Matrix of some kind or a torn apart future that fears nuclear radiation so bad we're all eventually set to lose a battle to automation; Donald has always been kind to his neighbors, respects his mom and campaigned to be jovial, is well beyond stresses; a Sea Captain whom now works exclusively for the U.S. Coast Guard said he thought we should throw Donald the ticket because he is interested in doing what Japan did for themselves when they became one of the best nations to visit for half a millennia[-a+um]...I'd cast my vote for a joint-party union wherein McCain, Trump, the Clinton gang and the Obama gang are all able to cooperate and establish what needs to set forth in order to enact the capability of earth (Earth; our planet) to travel into another dimension...affecting toward a stance alikened to Parliament now would be wise because the punk-rakyaki movement divorced a lot of our old-time soldiers from dead reckoning during the Reagan years that set the U.S. into super-debt, and for more information raise your dead and set them free.

[Shaka Moloch]

^Have I said this already?


I think I typed this \/ after a six-hour session in 2004:

Print This Post Print This Post
Dec 27, 2015 No Comments ›› admin


Let’s say that FBI Director James Comey decides that there is no case against Hillary Clinton for her various crimes. With a clean bill of health, Clinton should, by all conventional wisdom, wipe the floor with the Republican nominee no matter who it is. The reason is that there are too many non-white votes, too much dependence on government welfare, and too many left leaning states.

Audio Player
00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
There are two ways to beat Hillary.

One way is state-by-state, hoping that the GOP can retain all of Romney’s wins and add four or five states. Republicans would then try to up their game in Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado – and it would be a very close race. Failing that, Republicans have to nationalize the race and prove that Hillary is incompetent, failed as Secretary of State, is self-centered, and is a pathological liar.



Video: Hillary Clinton’s debate lies

State-by-state.

Republicans will be counting electoral votes. Even with the above four mentioned states – assuming they all move to the Republican side – it will be touch and go. The Republicans can’t afford to lose any states that typically vote Republican to Hillary. As the Bush-Gore race proved, every state is important in these days when the country is so split.

It all comes down to getting four or more additional states to turn red.
It all comes down to getting four or more additional states to turn red.
That means, in order to win, the Republicans will have to up their ground game.

They must play retail politics at its best. The nominee must be everywhere as much as possible, shaking hands, doing TV interviews, and articulating a strong set of policies on how to make the country better – things like job creation, fixing the Income Tax, reforming immigration and securing our borders, and explaining how to defeat radical Islam. He or she will have to take on Hillary on these issues and more – and will have to get dirty from time to time. God knows the Clintons will.

The Republicans will have to master the internet as Obama did.

Newspapers are almost dead and radio and TV (while still vital) have to share the spotlight with social media. Fewer people watch live TV now, and the 5:30 national newscast are still watched by senior citizens – but are dead to younger voters.

Talk Radio is still a kingmaker. Rush, the Frontbencher, and a few others — and local hosts are far more important than TV to a conservative candidate. State-by-state, the nominee must do a lot of talk shows. Of course, the message must be right.

Nationalizing the election.

Again, assuming Comey lets Hillary slip out of an indictment, it is most fortunate that she will be the nominee for the Donkeys. Her past is a treasure trove of criminal activity and lies. Her tenure as Secretary of State is a national embarrassment.

Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton
She is unleashing Bill Clinton now as a campaign surrogate. This is good. Bill is a racist, sexist pig – and he will do or say something that could change the election. He played the race card against Obama – and Obama used that to his advantage.

Even if Bill behaves, Hillary’s past is a golden resource and must be used. She must be painted as a self-centered, incompetent, lying, corrupt politician. Which should not be hard because that is precisely what she is.

Donald Trump would be best suited to run this campaign because this is what he does. For the state-by-state method, Ted Cruz would be awesome. He understands the ground game and he knows how to use social media and the internet. There are a few other candidates that would do well at either strategy.

The GOP MUST unite!

It is true that the Republican National Committee has become irrelevant. But it still controls the structure of the party. Establishment writers like George Will and Charles Krauthammer have been diminished with their criticism of Trump that borders on hysteria. Smoke-filled-room power brokers like Karl Rove are not in control either.

The people have chosen Trump and Cruz. The establishment’s best hope is likely Marco Rubio – who has a BIG problem with his past support of comprehensive immigration reform when he threw in with the Democrats. But it doesn’t matter.

HILLARY CLINTON MUST NOT BECOME PRESIDENT.

She represents old-style corrupt politics of the 80’s and 90’s. America MUST move on without the Clintons or the Bushes. This is America in the 21st Century and the people want someone that doesn’t lie. They want someone who can get the job done.

The winning combination will include the outsiders.

Imagine a Cruz-Carson ticket with Ted’s communications abilities and Ben Carson being put in charge of healing American’s racial divide. Donald Trump as chief negotiator for trade agreements – and even for big-ticket items like nuclear deals. Or put Carly Fiorina on the ticket to negate Hillary’s “being a woman” advantage and make Carson a part of the cabinet. Even as Surgeon General, he could be in charge of improving race relations. I would put Mike Huckabee in charge of fixing the Income Tax.

And I would announce all these things as soon as the nominee is selected. This ought to unite us. But it’s not what’s happening. Instead, Republicans and conservatives are killing each other instead of going after the real enemy, which is liberals.

I am not enamored with Rubio, Christie, or Kasich. But with the single exception of Jeb Bush (due to the issue of family dynasties) any of the GOP candidates are far better than putting a despicable woman in the White House whose name is Clinton.

Let’s pick one of these strategies—or do them both simultaneously – but let do them together as a single movement. If we lose to the Clintons – and they are BOTH running – this country is in trouble and the Republican Party might never recover. If we win we can fix a lot of things with a President Cruz or a President Trump. If we get a President Rubio, we can apply political pressure on him and work on getting the RNC on the side of conservatism.

But if we lose…

That’s an outcome almost too terrible to contemplate.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by Shaka Moloch

Clinton may be older, yet her party was kept under pained revolt most of the time her husband toured to smooth international relations; Trump deserves it and will pay the better homebody and excuse foreign relations eeking for Obama to gain a third term.

Wait... what?

[ilduclo]

couple of good things from Electoralvote.com

1) There Will Not Be a Surge of Hidden Trump Voters

Donald Trump has repeatedly said that he will win the election due to a surprise surge of previously hidden conservative white voters who didn't vote in 2012. However, for this to happen, these hidden voters would first have to register to vote. Voter registration data show that it is not happening. Stronger yet, an analysis of voter registrations since 2012 show the opposite. Polls of voters in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida show that newly-registered voters are going for Hillary Clinton 47% to 31%, in part because the new voters are disproportionately young and non-white. Even among new white voters, Trump is having trouble, barely leading 40% to 34%.

The polling data show that the people who are not registered aren't conservative populists, either. Many of them are fed up with the system and don't like any of the candidates. Finally, there are more missing non-white voters than white voters, so if all the unregistered voters were to have registered, it would have helped Clinton more than Trump. (V)

2)Early Voting in Nevada Dominated by Democrats

Early voting in Nevada is looking good for Hillary Clinton. Of the people voting early, 47% are registered Democrats, 34% are registered Republicans, and 19% are "other." Jon Ralston, long-time dean of Nevada political journalism, made the following calculation, based on the assumption that both Clinton and Donald Trump each get 90% of their respective bases:

If the independents split 50-50, Clinton wins by 29,000 votes.
If independents go for Trump by 10 points, Clinton wins by 17,000 votes.
If independents go for Trump by 20 points, Clinton wins by 3,000 votes.
However, there is a caveat: Early voting is new in Nevada and many people don't know about it, so the sample size is small. Nevertheless, getting a lead in early voting is better than trailing in early voting. Nevada polling shows the race to be close, but Nevada polling is iffy because the state has a large transient population. (V)

[PLips]

The lizard vote from the Saurian System is the Trump card.

[The Soup Nazi]

The nuttiness of polling models, sorta explained: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/1...8-right-230734

[!@#$%!]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/...s-not-so-much/

[d.sound]

long rant: i want to address the false equivalency that clinton is just as bad a choice as trump. this election is going to determine to a large degree how our country is going to be run for a number of years.
tl, dr: clinton is the only wise choice.

what's so bad about clinton? she used a private email server which looks bad, but wasn't illegal, and after an investigation had no case pursued against her. keep in mind she was a 60 year old when she became secretary of state. most likely, she didn't know technology well like most 60 year olds and made a dumb mistake. the deletion of thousands of emails? could be something, could be benign, we'll never know. it looks bad. maybe it's classified documents, maybe it's embarrassing personal correspondence like sexting with bill. anyway, are her emails really that much more exposed than on a state department server? i'm not sure. if it's networked, it can be hacked. i think the state dept is a bigger target to hackers than a server for clinton's website and email.
then there is benghazi. 7 or so investigations found nothing. why the heck is it controversial anyway? there are innumerous terrorist attacks. she said it was retaliation for an inflammatory video. then a couple days later said my bad it was actually a planned attack. big fucking whoop. sure a few good men died, but compare that to global terrorism as a whole and it seems pretty mild.
all the other conspiracies are straight up lies.
she is more likely to propose military intervention as shown by her iraq war vote, push to intervene in syria (given the humanitarian crisis, it might have actually been the prudent choice), and she wanted to support the arab spring, which at the time was wonderful, and turned out to be not so good. democracy in the middle east is not an evil ambition. for fucks sake we're embroiled there and there is no easy answer.
she is more likely to work with republicans. at least she will get shit done. imagine a democratic white house, senate, and supreme court. a liberal's wet dream.
if you want a better america, her domestic policy is on point. if you liked the policies of bernie sanders, you should like clinton. saving students from a crippling lifetime of debt, overturning citizens united, making the tax code more fair, regulating wall street, regulating big business and advocating policies to fight global climate change which is the #1 threat to human existance, introducing more public sector jobs to fix our infrastructure problems, fixing obamacare which can be fixed if done right (universal healthcare should be a basic human right), opposing globalism with better trade deals, fixing our immigration problem, common sense gun regulation that all of america agrees on, i know i'm forgetting some other positives.

and what about trump? let's start with his positives. he might be right about trade. i honestly don't know what the answer to globalism is. it's happening, nothing can stop it from happening. is isolationism the answer? exactly what is going to incentivize business to keep jobs here? okay that's maybe one thing and i don't know if it's a positive or not.
and what about his detriments? you could go on for days about his temperament. insulting POWs, fallen veterans, the handicapped, latinos, african americans, women, etc. he is a sexual predator, he has the reactions of a toddler. he literally takes the position of "i know you are but what am i?".
and his policies that attract voters? kick out mexicans: not going to happen and would be a downward spiral of debt build a wall: not going to happen (the border is pretty secure in the first place) also a spiral of debt. prevent immigration based on religion: totally unconstitutional. he will not get republicans in the house on his side. no one will work with him to pass legislation. he shits on america so much you think he would leave the country.
his tax policy: egregious benefits to the rich at the expense of the middle and lower classes. he opposes a living wage, and actually a minimum wage at all.
what about his foreign policy? who knows what he thinks about interventionism. he has said we need to engage the middle east, not pull out. he thinks more people should be thrown in guantanamo and full blown tortured, thinks terrorists families should be killed (which is a war crime by the way), he praises and quotes dictators. he asked russia to hack the dnc which they did. he thinks nuclear weapons should be spread to our allies and used.
who supports him? the little guy he will fuck over. evangelical christians that excuse his multiple wives, infidelity, money hoarding, and lack of knowledge of the bible (two corinthians? really? at least hill dog grew up methodist). he wants to overturn progress like gay marriage and a woman's right to choose. he espouses so many lies he has torn our country apart. he is for deregulation and tax breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes. he wants to fix our debt the same way he did in his personal life and business: renig on our debt.
he stiffs people that work for him. he bankrupted casinos! the house is always supposed to win. he admits to bribing politicians. he pretends to give to charity but either renigs or uses someone else's money. he started an expensive college that didn't give an actual education.
what would a racist, thin skinned, egomaniac do when he is in office? well first the volatility would crash world financial markets. and then there is the unthinkable: he takes over like the dictators he praises. he already throws out journalists he disagrees with, i imagine those white house briefings could get pretty sparse. who do you want to answer that phone call at 3 in the morning? won't be trump, he'll be busy tweeting insults at rosy o'donnel.

and somehow people say they are equally crooked. the differences between them are so stark and it will affect the lives of all americans for years to come. this election is that important.

jill stein is a vote for trump and has some pretty stupid views, johnson is a total idiot and a vote for trump.

fuck's sake vote for clinton.

[!@#$%!]

d.sound-- i have some ideas as the answer to globalism

i don't believe that retrenching behind a moat like tesla said many pages back is the answer. this isn't the middle ages.

we live in a networked world. we can't put the cat back into the bag. the way to "win" is to become an efficient network operator. there are first-world countries that are getting ahead of the game in such an environment.

germany is one big example. germany is well connected with the global economy. and they're prospering instead of losing ground. why? they're huge exporters-- prosperity abroad is good for their industries.

why do the have such great industries? one big reason is their focus on high technology and quality free education. we have jobs in the u.s. that can't be filled because people lack the qualifications. and to get an education, you have to go into massive debt. this is fucked up. so we have a large uneducated workforce that longs for a return to the 1950s. this isn't possible.

the other thing is that germans have a social model of consensus where business, labor and government seek to collaborate for everyone's benefit. here we have business against government, business against labor, labor left hanging to fend for itself. it's supposed to be a free market but it's not. so, while the germans work together, we fight with each other.

germany's challenge if anything is to keep the population going up. they need immigrants, but qualified ones.

here in the u.s. we give foreign students a phd in science and then send them back home. as people have been saying for a long time, a green card should come stapled to your phd diploma. but we make it hard instead. and after 9/11 a lot of qualified people started going elsewhere instead of staying here after graduation-- places like singapore for example have been attracting a lot of scientists. when dubya banned stem cell research, singapore made leaps.

lastly, there are going to be people left behind in any transition and we need better social safety networks. republicans oppose this. democrats don't champion them enough. and everyone thinks we're creating mooches with "entitlements". so people applying for welfare, or food stamps or now medicaid are made to jump through a million hoops and shamed and their benefits can cease as severian said earlier at the drop of a hat.

here's an example: we have a german friend who is a bit of a boho guy, had a bunch of sidejobs as an a/v tech guy plus other gigs. then he got a letter from the government telling him that he was making too little money and they were going to start giving him extra income. so he was "put" on welfare without asking. i don't know how this is connected but he's now a full-time store manager and came to visit us this past summer during his month-long vacation.

this shows you that it's possible to have a social democracy and a strong welfare state and take care of the people while making massive profits. the problem is here in the USA we have come to believe that consensus is a dirty word, that government is evil, that business and labor cant' work together, that free education is a waste of money, that taxes ruin the economy, that the poor deserve shame and suffering, that only the rich are winners,etc etc

there's a lot more but basically yeah-- globalization has increased competition. which means we have to compete and not just wish for the past when europe was decimated and the us was the only large developed economy left. things are changing. but competition doesn't mean throwing regular people into the wood chipper while wall street gets rich.

the us is a center-right country though so it's hard to sell bernie sanders to the general public. but eventually that's going to have to be it. we either go that route or we become brazilified.

in the meantime hillary is our only choice to prevent a descent into barbarism at this point.

[d.sound]

that's a great post. i disagree about having an under qualified work force. where are the jobs looking for the highly educated? we live in a service industry that caters to the rich folks who can afford to spend their money. people spend 4, 6, 8 years in college and end up working in service. i find most people with masters degrees end up at a disadvantage in the work force. my sister has been over qualified to get jobs because they have to pay her more. two friends got their jobs BECAUSE they didn't finish college and so they can pay them less. the financial boom of the mid to late 90s is over. we pioneered tech and internet companies, but now india, china, and south korea to name a few are taking away from that. industry is cheaper in less developed countries. i think part of the answer is bringing in more immigrants and rasing wages. we need someone to buy all those products. we need people to replace the baby boomers. it is likely that social security will be gone within our lifetimes.

i whole heartedly believe in a democratic socialist hybrid system. we need government to regulate industries and banking. the capitalist system rewards fucking over the little guy and all businesses eventually swing that way.

like you said, globalism is inevitable. and its goal is coming to fruition. global poverty is down. however in the USA the lower class is growing and the middle class is shrinking. rural america has no jobs. wal mart is the largest employer in those areas and they royally fuck their employees.

[!@#$%!]

the unfulfilled jobs are usually in technical fields though. i have an MA in the humanities and it's pretty fucking useless outside of the education field. a lot of baristas with art history degrees etc.

this is what pays:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/karstens.../#28fcdead3201

but even in things like the trades-- my wife has a cousin who is a qualified diesel mechanic and he gets offers from every place (works on diesel powerplants not vehicles)

welders can make a ton of money these days if they have the right skills

eg look http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-140-...job-1420659586

other stuff

http://advice.careerbuilder.com/post...-jobs-for-2016

ETA: more on that-- shows that education (not closing borders) is key:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/22/up...ered.html?_r=0

more on the salary gap (5 years ago, fresh out of the recession)

http://www.businessinsider.com/gap-b...educate-2011-2

[!@#$%!]

oh, i found it at last!

5 million job openings but not enough skilled workers to fill them last year

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/07/news...ob-skills-gap/

--

another one:

http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/09/news...-job-openings/

^^ includes mention of a 50,000 truck driver shortage

[!@#$%!]

right, there's a huge mismatch between job offerings, educational offerings, and worker supply.

i dropped out of the doctorate too but mine was a certified dead end so it was smart to cut my losses and move on. the MA i could use to be a schoolteacher but i have no appetite for that.

you (severian) could have been a STEM high school teacher with those qualifications, as there is massive demand for that actually. but it takes a certain temperament to enjoy that.

there are a lot of useless bachelor's degrees, megatons of debt for it, and in the meantime there is huge unfulfilled demand for skilled trades.

so education in the us is a crapshoot and totally uncoordinated with industry with the exception of some co-op programs and things like that.

on the other hand, the germans channel a lot of people in the educational system through apprenticeships and develop a skilled workforce at basic levels. from what i understand, a german plumber is capable of designing a whole industrial plumbing system. master plumbers like that in the USA are scarce.

a) http://lifehacker.com/career-spotlig...ber-1760572480

b) http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-...ters.htm#tab-6

[Severian]

Sorry I deleted my post (which you must have been replying to) because it seems like I mention grad school a bit too much on here and it made me sick for a second, so I had to get rid of it, leaving you with nothing to respond to.

But because you replied, I'll give a regurgitated version:

I have the equivalent of a master's in science -- I say equivalent because I skipped out on a doctorate program. Point is, I have the kind of degrees everyone tells you you should get, and it still took me almost a year to find good work after I was laid off in '14. And the work I found is not even in that field (neither the math/actuarial "field" I'd been in prior to being laid off, nor the science/research/teaching field my education was in).

The job market is CHAOS. A lot of people don't know what skills they actually have, or they have an unrealistic idea of the breadth of their skill set. To get any education at all (Bachelor's being really the bare minimum of what you need to have a "good" job) you need to go into pretty serious debt.


Republicans In the Midwest are trying to push people to consider vocational schools and stop seeing college as the only opinion, only way to success. But there are certain things that can't be learned by "doing." For example, how to learn and think more effectively. The US will have free higher education over he cold dead carcass of the republican electorate.

[!@#$%!]

^^ i gotta get out of here for the night but about "learn by doing"--- read then link "a)" i provided about the master plumber from florida and the kind of work he does and how he approaches things. it might blow your mind.

also regarding walmart underpaying employees: not if you're a truck driver, apparently!

http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/highe...trucking-jobs/

[Severian]

Originally Posted by !@#$%!

right, there's a huge mismatch between job offerings, educational offerings, and worker supply.

i dropped out of the doctorate too but mine was a certified dead end so it was smart to cut my losses and move on. the MA i could use to be a schoolteacher but i have no appetite for that.

you (severian) could have been a STEM high school teacher with those qualifications, as there is massive demand for that actually. but it takes a certain temperament to enjoy that.

there are a lot of useless bachelor's degrees, megatons of debt for it, and in the meantime there is huge unfulfilled demand for skilled trades.

so education in the us is a crapshoot and totally uncoordinate with industry with the exception of some co-op programs and things like that.

on the other hand, the germans channel a lot of people in the educational system through apprenticeships and develop a skilled workforce at basic levels. from what i understand, a german plumber is capable of designing a whole industrial plumbing system. master plumbers like that in the USA are scarce.

a) http://lifehacker.com/career-spotlig...ber-1760572480

b) http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-...ters.htm#tab-6

Well, in the US the "master tradesman" label is entirely non-academic about 90% of the time. I know a few photographers who went to 4-year universities and received degrees in art of photography or photojournalism, then opened up a business and worked privately and somehow achieved "master" status after so many years of working under another "master" and teaching some non-accredited (or free) community photography classes at the YMCA. Kind of like a Journeyman Electrician mixed with a hint of academic flavor here and there.

Not sure about other countries, but it would be interesting to see these things taught under the same umbrella. Like, Architecture. Why is that not a "liberal studies" approved field? Seems academic enough. Same could be said, though to a lesser extent I'd imagine, for a lot of technical jobs like computer repair, carpentry, etc.

And yes, when I first moved out of the city I was subbing in the local public school system, and I had plans to get in on the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics if anyone doesn't know) teaching gig, but then I remembered that I spent a LOT of time in college, and had acquired 3/4 of a journalism degree along the way, and got my current gig at the paper. Where, interestingly, I got to report on teacher wages at the high school which are ABISMALLY low. Meanwhile there are ex-corrections officers serving as guidance counselors at the charter schools. How the hell does that work?

I am glad I went to college though. Always. And I'm glad I went to graduate school even if it didn't pan out and I didn't finish.

[ilduclo]

I didn't go to grad school since I was so far in debt & needed $ badly. The only openings in my field were oil exploration in Mideast & mineral geologist in South America, neither of which appealed to me. Working in construction had been OK as summer work, so I took a job as a heavy construction surveyor. It was great except for the travel.

Woo-hoo --Republican circular firing squad is locked and loaded

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/06/mich...gop-has-begun/

 

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by ilduclo

I didn't go to grad school since I was so far in debt & needed $ badly. The only openings in my field were oil exploration in Mideast & mineral geologist in South America, neither of which appealed to me. Working in construction had been OK as summer work, so I took a job as a heavy construction surveyor. It was great except for the travel.

see, your construction "apprenticeship" served you well! congrats.

a lot of people end up with college and even graduate degrees and no idea whatsoever about what to do with them--except the loans are now staring down at them.

youth jobs are what provide the experience but there isn't always a match and many internships in one's field are unpaid-- which not everyone can afford to have.

the germans seems to be much more organized about it though:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...orkers/381550/

and now looks like we're finally learning

http://getschooled.blog.myajc.com/20...iceship-model/

HURRY UP, REST OF THE COUNTRY!