Meet the real Gary Peters

Henry Payne wrote an editorial called Who Is the Real Gary Peters that appeared in the Detroit News a couple weeks ago that made several important observations regarding Gary Peters, the probably Democratic nominee for US Senate from Michigan:

....In the fall of 2011, major Metro Detroit politicians were conspicuously absent from the Occupy Detroit movement. So noxious was the leftist tantrum that even Detroit City Council members eschewed the protests that had become synonymous with public disorder and anti-capitalist rhetoric. But one area Democrat bucked the trend- Congressman Gary Peters.

The millionaire former Merrill Lynch financial advisor donned a "We are the 99 Percent" button and marched up Woodward Avenue amidst angry unionists, anarchists and class warriors. Last week, the self-described political "moderate" and "independent" launched his campaign to fill the Senate seat of retiring Carl Levin. But if he is a centrist, why does Peters provoke such unusual disdain from even moderate Republicans? His Occupy Detroit alliance is a glimpse at the real Gary Peters — an ideologically liberal politician who will do anything to stay in power...

A Republican candidate who attended Tea Party rallies and took pictures waving signs with tea party slogans would not be able to be portrayed by the media s a moderate and independent- because if they did so they probably would be more truthfully characterized as rightwing and conservative (which is where the Tea Party is viewed). And so a politician that attended Occupy rallies and protests and shouted the communist slogans of these groups is not a moderate and independent, but more truthfully and accurately described as a radical leftist and communist supporter. And that DATA backs it up- we also have voting records to look at-

...He voted in lockstep with Speaker Nancy Pelosi's agenda when Democrats controlled the House. Pro-global warming regulation. Pro-stimulus. Pro-Obamacare. His middle-class Oakland County constituents rebelled against his partisan vote for Obamacare, complaining that he was aloof and unresponsive. Only when the subsequent, tea party tsunami threatened his seat in 2010 did Peters row to America's political mainstream. Overnight, Peters became a small government advocate, condemning Obama's second, $50 billion stimulus and embracing the Bush tax cuts.

Peters temporary flirtation with those "centrist" issues is instructive. Having secured his re-election in 2010, he lurched back left — cheering Obama's agenda for even more spending (never mind $50 billion, now Peters supported Obama's $450 billion Stimulus II) and burying the Bush tax cuts. In a 2012 Detroit News interview, Peters dodged questions about why it was imperative to shield Michigan small business from tax hikes in the difficult 2010 recovery — but not in the difficult 2012 recovery. Peters makes Mitt Romney look like a flip-flop novice.

"Peters has always presented himself as a reasonable business candidate, even as he votes left," says Michigan political analyst Bill Ballenger. "It's a total sham."...

Ballenger is wrong- 'it's' not a sham- Gary Peters is a sham- he is untruthful about his policy positions and pretends to be something that he is not. He's a fake and a phony- and what's more, he employs thugs and questionable campaign tactics to win office-

...His 2010 Congressional campaign was the state's ugliest — tagging tea partiers with the crude sex term "teabaggers" and accusing his opponent, decorated Iraq veteran Rocky Raczkowski, of business malfeasance, a charge so low it provoked a slander suit...

On my own blog I also documented his various thuggish and bullying and ugly tactics that he employs to win elections in our free nation of proud citizens-

...The type of tactics that Peters had his thugs employ when he won his Congressional race in 2008 and 2010 election included the usual picketing, public demonstrations, and harassment of his opponents at public events, but he even ordered his thugs to show up at his opponents' house to continue the harassment. Once, one of the thugs employed by Peters ambushed his 2008 opponent Representative Knollenberg at a local pharmacy to harass him, which got one of the Congressman's employees to ask him to 'go away' and then Pteres ran campaign ad playing up the 'mean old conservative angle'. In 2010, Peters was up to his old tricks again, employing thugs to harass his opponent in that race Rocky Raczkowski- but oddly enough none of the thugs he hired ever appeared on lists of his office staff or campaign staff even though when asked they admitted that they worked for Peters....

There are going to be better choices in this upcoming election for the residents of Michigan- candidates who are honest, upstanding, moderate, independent, decent, and don't regularly vote to spend taxpayer money on abortions and efforts to shut down manufacturing here in Michigan. Terri Lynn Land, for one. We can do better than Gary Peters.

On Benghazi, Obama May Simply Be Inept and Negligent and Bad at Job

In a recent Business Insider editorial titled The Most Convincing Explanation For The White House's Benghazi Debacle, Grace Wyler suggests that all the inept and negligent and partisan Obama administration was trying to do when it lied to the American people was referee some sort of bureaucratic knife-fight:

...But the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler offers an alternative — and in our view, more credible — explanation for why the administration edited down the talking points, suggesting that the emails reveal a "bureaucratic knife fight" that pitted the State Department against the CIA.

As Kessler correctly points out, the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was basically a covert CIA operation — a fact that Congressional investigators have had to dance around as they proceed with their Benghazi witch-hunt.

But the talking points originally developed by the CIA at the request of the House Intelligence Committee downplay the agency's role in Benghazi, and reference past warnings about the threat of extremists in eastern Libya — implying that it was the State Department, rather than the intelligence community, that screwed up...

...In the end, Kessler argues, the White House tried to please both agencies, and the result was that the administration looked like it was trying to hide something...

...To be fair, this bureaucratic explanation for the White House's Benghazi "cover-up" probably doesn't tell the whole story. And it definitely doesn't answer all the questions that Republicans have raised about Benghazi.

But inter-agency finger-pointing is a fact of life in Washington, and it seems clear that both the CIA and the State Department screwed up in Benghazi. So it makes sense that both agencies would want to avoid bearing the full brunt of the blame for the tragic attacks, which left four Americans, including the beloved U.S. Ambassador to Libya, dead.

As more information comes to light about Benghazi, I am increasingly inclined to feel that this explanation is closest to the truth.

It is true that President Obama has no history of ever acting in an executive function, and during his four years so far as President his ability to act as an executive has frequently been called into question. Being an executive is about hiring the right people, managing a budget, avoiding scandals, and getting the job done- and on all these counts over and over again the Obama administration has done a horrible job. Appointments have resigned in disgrace, budgets are bloated and filled with graft and corruption, every week another agency is involved in a major scandal, and the jobs that these agencies are trying to do are not being done well. President Obama, as his his history and our recent experience, is a bad executive- and so what happened in Benghazi was that he did a bad job of running the executive branch.

President Obama's main desire is to look good, have fun, and avoid being personally blamed for anything. That is why he never says anything important- empty rhetoric about hope and change and attacks on straw men don't really count as saying anything. And he never does anything, because if he were to make any actions he might be held accountable. So he just sits there. But just because he sits there, doing nothing, doesn't mean that nothing happens- rather, because he is a radical communist, his appointments, weak directives, and personal advisers who reflect his views implement his radical communist policies. And he exercises no leadership of them, letting them engage in bureaucratic knife fights while Americans die and the American people are lied to about it.

Let us not forget that the State Department and the CIA are under the Executive Branch, managed by the Executive Branch, and are headed by people who the Executive Branch wants, and thus President Obama should be held accountable for their actions. He is not some sort of impartial referee standing above the fray, but rather he is the guy who runs these agencies and hired the people at the top of them and now is doing a bad job of managing them and holding them accountable.

President Obama is a bad President. This is not to insult him or to call him names, but rather to describe his abilities and skills in relation to his job. President Obama may have desired to 'please both agencies'- but pleasing bureaucrats who messed up and whose actions led to the murder of American citizens is not leadership and are the actions of a bad executive.

He can't be fired. But he should not be supported or defended by anyone anymore.

Star Wars - The Jedi Order are the Bad Guys (UPDATED)

This was originally published on 3/16/09... but I revisited it recently... see the update below...

Once upon a time, in an apartment far, far away, I read an article that totally changed my view on Star Wars (which has been on Spike the last couple days). It is Jonathon Vast's article "The Case for Empire." Here are some excerpts-

But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good. It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case....

....Like the United Nations, the Republic has no armed forces of its own, but instead relies on a group of warriors, the Jedi knights, to "keep the peace." The Jedi, while autonomous, often work in tandem with the Senate, trying to smooth over quarrels and avoid conflicts. But the Jedi number only in the thousands--they cannot protect everyone.

What's more, it's not clear that they should be "protecting" anyone. The Jedi are Lucas's great heroes, full of Zen wisdom and righteous power. They encourage people to "use the Force"--the mystical energy which is the source of their power--but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble. The Force comes from midi-chlorians, tiny symbiotic organisms in people's blood, like mitochondria. The Force, it turns out, is an inherited, genetic trait. If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard.

And an arrogant royalist Swiss guard, at that. With one or two notable exceptions, the Jedi we meet in Star Wars are full of themselves. They ignore the counsel of others (often with terrible consequences), and seem honestly to believe that they are at the center of the universe. ...

...Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.

But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."

Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian. ...

...Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In "The Empire Strikes Back" Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor "falls down on the job."...

...So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead, the galaxy will be plunged into chaos.

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back. I'll take the Empire.

Read the whole thing- it's great and there is more great arguments that will forever change your view of Star Wars.

By the way, the reason why I was thinking about Star Wars and the Empire as being the good guy was because I was really bothered by quasi-legislative and quasi-judicial powers that the Jedi Order appears to hold before their fall. The Jedi Order appears to be a regulatory commission, with sweeping powers and few limits, and those violates certain principles about good government that we know are essential, mainly a lack of separation of powers, little responsiveness to the popular sovereignty of the people, and no limits on their powers.

Yes, the Jedi Order is like the FCC or EPA with magical powers- able to come up with rules on what is acceptable and what isn't, able to enforce those rules, and then able to judge whether their rules were followed to their liking. Imagine a government agency with those powers, able to step in and say 'I think what you're doing isn't fair (it isn't balanced, it takes advantage of people, it isn't environmentally friendly, it hurts Ewoks), and I'm going to correct the situation and make it fair (wielding lightsabers or fountain pens or executive orders), and afterwards, punish you (fines, death by force lightening, whatever).' Yes, the Jedi Order are the bad guys.

UPDATE 3/3/13: In the movies, there is not a lot of talk about policy proposals, but one that we do get is from Darth Vader, an 'Empire' man, who says in Episode V "With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict, and bring order to the galaxy." This is as clear a political goal of any, and let's think about what he is proposing here and other places in the movie.

Darth Vader is suggesting that if he and Luke were to team up, they could overthrow the Emperor, end the Rebellion, and bring law and order back to the galaxy. It looks like some sort of dual-monarchy sort of government, sort of like what they ran in the Byzantine Empire for any centuries, where the main job of the government is to keep law and order and stability, provide national defense (against pirates, drug smugglers, or extra-galaxy invasions), and prevent any sort of other dictators from arising. If this is all he was thinking- and there is little in the movies to suggest that his political goals are otherwise- it is a government that I think that we could all live with.

The biggest downside of this political system is that there would be no check on Darth/Luke and that at some point they could go to war with one another (a civil war), but the fact that they are both Jedi and father/son would appear to limit these downsides.

Probably the best thing that could have happened is that Luke and Vader could have teamed up, assassinated the Emperor, taken control of both the Empire and the Rebellion, and slowly transitioned power away from the Vader/Luke dictatorship to some new Republic that was actually republican in nature- no Jedi councils, no all powerful central government, no massive bureaucracy, less trade rules and taxation systems, etc.

But sadly, Luke instead had to turn all whiny and run away, and instead the war went on, to be followed by chaos and anarchy after the murder of the elected Emperor by a bunch of rebels led by deposed nobility (Leia) and drug-runners (Han) and black market energy salesmen (Lando).

Using Executive Agencies to Target Political Enemies is Illegal

Although I am no lawyer, I can't imagine that using executive agencies like the IRS to target and harass political enemies of the administration is legal. And if it isn't legal to as a matter of policy known at the top levels and low levels of the IRS to target tea party groups and conservative organizations and Republican donors for audits and bureaucratic harassment, then people should be put in jail and elected or appointed officials who knew of what was going on should be impeached and put in jail too for engaging in illegal behavior.

This isn't a 'scandal' made up by the media here- this is real misuse of power and government resources of the sort that tyrannical and despotic governments engage in. If a Republican President were power or if the groups who were targeted were Democrats and communists, I'd feel the exact same way- they should go to jail. We're not talking about a President hiring/firing at-will employees based on their political beliefs as is within his right to do- this is the Internal Revenue Service targeting for harassment and possible criminal penalties groups which are politically opposed to President Obama and the Democrats. Their actions are illegal, and those who ordered, knew about, or covered up their actions should go to jail.

This is a serious breach here folks. As the Washington Post states it in their editorial Playing politics with tax records:

...A BEDROCK principle of U.S. democracy is that the coercive powers of government are never used for partisan purpose. The law is blind to political viewpoint, and so are its enforcers, most especially the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service. Any violation of this principle threatens the trust and the voluntary cooperation of citizens upon which this democracy depends.

So it was appalling to learn Friday that the IRS had improperly targeted conservative groups for scrutiny. It was almost as disturbing that President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew have not personally apologized to the American people and promised a full investigation...

It isn't appalling- it has to be illegal and against the law to use the IRS to harass and punish those who have different political beliefs as the administration. It has to be against the law, and before the law all men are equal, and that means that if Democrats or liberals or Republicans or conservatives aided or abetted in these illegal actions they should be fired, fined, and sent to jail. Violation of bedrock principles and inequality before the law and misuse of government power and misuse of taxpayer resources are all offenses that are very very bad. Jail time should follow.

William A. Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection makes the following additional but very important points which I have expanded on and elaborated on-

• You’re not paranoid, they really do hate you. At the highest levels. All your conspiracy theories regarding the administration using federal agencies to target and attack and criminalize their political enemies are correct and true.
• The IRS is the Obamacare enforcer. And if they have a history and tradition of using their powers to selectively attack only conservative, tea-party, libertarian, and Republican groups in an illegal fashion, look out when their power expands drastically under Obamacare (note- Gary Peters voted for this legislation).
• The Chief Counsel of the IRS knew about what was going on, and during an election year in which President Obama narrowly retained power he authorized the expansion of this political and illegal program to target groups educating people on the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That is the target of the government's harassment and attacks- those who educate on our political system, limited government, basic freedoms and liberty, and rule of law. You are now the enemies of the state, my friends- it is now true that being conservative or supporting the Constitution makes you a target by the Obama administration as it illegally abuses its power in a tyrannical and despotic manner.
  
• Recall that Homeland Security as a matter of policy also targeted conservative groups and tea party groups as potential threats, and now we learn that the IRS was too... if several agencies are all implement policies that illegally and unconstitutionally target the political enemies of the Democrats, it is probably a matter of practice and policy directed from the top levels and not just random coincidences.
• Obama owns this. He is the President. The IRS is under his direction. These policies began in 2011, continued in 2012, and were only exposed and ended (yeah, right) in 2013. All of this is President Obama. He owns this. He either fires and jails the head of the IRS and everyone in the organization who knew or supported these policies or he should be impeached.

As Joe Biden said, this is a big f'ing deal. And to the IRS agent reading this post I say "Sic semper evello mortem Tyrannis".

UPDATE: Today Obama addressed this issue in his press conference. Let's take a look at what our chief-executive had to say about illegal behavior in his administration-

..."If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that's outrageous, and there is no place for it," Obama said during a joint question-and-answer session with British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House. "You don't want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased and anything less than neutral in terms of how they operate."

The president said he learned that the Internal Revenue Service may have improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of tea party-related groups when the news broke on Friday....

1. "If, in fact, it is true" is the phrase that he began with, and is designed to question the credibility of internal reports, widely reported complaints, and admissions by IRS agents. It is true, of that there can be NO DOUBT, and yet in his opening statement 'addressing' this issue he begins by suggesting that there is doubt about the truth to the fact that the IRS targeted conservative organizations for illegal government harassment.
2. Outrageous has two meanings- "Shockingly bad or excessive" or "Wildly exaggerated or improbable". In the prior line Obama attempts to suggest that the reports are exaggerated or improbable, and although he does goes on to say 'there is no place for it', this still does not clarify what meaning about meant when he said 'outrageous'.
3. Obama said "you don't want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased'- the key here is that he did not say "you don't want the IRS to be biased" or that "you don't want the IRS being anything less than neutral"- he said quite specifically and clearly that the goal is to avoid the perception of being biased. His main goal is not being caught, not having the appearance of being illegal, and avoiding people noticing that his administration is engaged in criminal behavior. A good president from either party would desire no bias, no criminal acts, no illegal behavior- not the absence of the perception of it.
4. President Obama is badly out of touch and unaware of what is going on in his own administration. I knew about the IRS actions last year, and others knew about it the year before that- and yet our President knew of nothing before Friday. Reports were issued, complaints were filed, the media was on the verge of breaking a major scandal- and yet Obama was ignorant to all of this. His lack of control of his own administration, if not his outright support of these illegal activities, calls into question everything that his administration is doing. He probably can't (and shouldn't) be impeached- but voters need to destroy any politician from any party who supports or defends this administration.
5. President Obama's statement was thus weak and vague and ambiguous. In my response above I had stronger and harsher language, perhaps because it was people like me who were being targeted by this administration for harassment, fines, and potential jail time. The media should take question this President harshly for his weak response here at this joke of a 'press conference.'

Are you Personally (but Inadvertently) raising a Liberal?

In a recent article on RealClearPolitics called The University Utopia, Robert Tracinski, former securities analyst for Morningstar and now the publisher of The Tracinski Letter, tackled a very important question- Why do the young vote for dependency—when the essence of youth is a quest for independence?

...So take a look at the college experience, particularly for a liberal arts major, from this perspective. You study topics in which the answers are subjective, no one is too concerned about whether it has any practical application or economic value, and everyone is pretty much expected to repeat the conventional wisdom. You express abstract concern for the poor and for the starving masses of the Third World, while never actually mixing with anyone from outside the prosperous First World middle class. Someone else, off at a distance, provides for your material needs, paying for your housing, food, clothing, and condoms. But at the same time, no one pokes into your personal life or asks too many questions about who you’re sleeping with, what you’re smoking, or what you do with your free time. Finally, this whole lifestyle is paid for with huge amounts of debt, and it is considered bad form to ask too many questions about how big the debt is or how you’re ever going to pay it all back.

Does any of this sound familiar? Put it all together, and college life is the contemporary left’s ideal. The universities are liberal utopias...

From my own experiences in education (teaching in several school districts around Detroit and Flint and their suburbs), I would also suggest that this same dynamic also applies to students in high school and middle school as well.

High school students, and to a lesser extent middle school students, are cared for and financially supported by their parents, who never talk about how much money it is costing them- the majority of students in my classes can't even venture a guess at how much their parents make or where the money goes in their family, and asking these questions appears to be discouraged by parents today.

Separated from the reality of money and discouraged from discovering how everything is paid for in their family, they live in an uncomfortable bubble- aware that they are freeloading on the system and guilty because of that, but unable to help out or even know how much of a freeloader they are. Four to seven years of their formative life they are raised in this environment, not having to contribute anything financially to their family and yet eating and sleeping and watching TV and talking on the phone and driving a car paid for by the family. This sort of communism only exists in the family because parents love and care for their children, yet this point is never even made to the children because to voice this sort of reality is apparently not good form anymore in our society.

And after leaving school, students go home, where they can turn on the television or go on the internet or hang out at friends houses and learn about and observe and live in a world where social choices apparently have no consequences. Sleeping around before marriage, smoking pot and doing drugs, engaging in socially deviant behavior, bullying others via facebook or email, and getting caught up in fake drama about fake controversies is the sort of unsupervised freedom that students will continue in college.

I'm not blaming the parents for this- many parents in today's economy are working longer and longer hours just to make ends meet and even when they get home they have to work on side jobs or freelance contracts or worry about money, and that is time that they can't supervise and raise their children. And parents are competing for time and attention with a range of competitors. The media is chief of these competitors- with slick marketing and high production values- but teachers are also to blame for the increasingly amount of schoolwork that inefficient and poor teachers send home with children to compensate for their lack of teaching ability. It's tough for both parents and students today, and in this tough environment students are given increasingly personal freedom without knowing about or anyone ever talking to them about the responsibility that goes along with this freedom.

Children therefore have an utter lack of financial and economic liberty buy yet extensive social and personal liberty. And when you combine these two, you produce a liberal. This is exactly what a liberal is- someone who wants someone else to provide for their economic needs while wanting total freedom to engage in their own personal desires.

To create a conservative child you would need to reverse this dynamic- you would need to teach your child about economic issues and the cost of goods and services and what sort of fiscal challenges your family faces and even how much the parents earn and what the family budget is, while putting limits on and teaching about the consequences of and showing the downsides of total personal freedom and how wrong it is to embrace hedonism.

Robert Tracinski says:

...A person’s view of life isn’t just influenced from the top down, from the ideas they are taught. It is also learned from the bottom up, from their actual experiences of life. The most powerful combination is when ideas and life experience coincide, and that is what happens in college. Young people learn the same lessons from their professors’ lectures as they do from the lifestyle of the dorm room. This also explains why college graduates tend to move to the right as they get older. They move to the right as they get out into the world, start businesses, start families, and take on the task of becoming truly independent and self-supporting....

...One way we can change the youth culture is to hasten the ed-tech revolution, breaking down the role of the traditional universities in favor of an alternative that, in addition to being a lot less expensive, gets students out of the dorm room and out into the economy sooner. I suspect that this would also hasten the decoupling of scientific and technological education from the humanities, depriving the leftist indoctrinators of the captive audience handed over to them in a traditional university system. It would also help break down the cultural class division between the college-educated and the non-college-educated, and perhaps most important of all, it has the potential to change the educational experience of young people so that education becomes associated, not with a four-year holiday and puttering around in the subjective humanities, but with a young person’s first steps toward real independence in the world of work. It would change the message young people hear from higher education, while also changing the kind of life experience they get....

In order for our nation to become more conservative- and by this I mean productive and creating wealth and understanding the importance of money in shaping choices and values, while at the same time recognizing the important role that society and culture and values and morals play- then we need to start creating more conservative children. And to aid in this, I suggest you read the whole article and start looking after your own children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews and begin to go to work on them teaching them economic liberty and social responsibility.

UPDATE: Another idea that I have on how you can help create a more conservative future is by purchasing the board game The Game of Life. This board game will help teach your children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren important values. Buy it and play it with them at some time and start making a difference.

A Conservative Teacher is Refreshing to Students

Last week was parent-teacher conferences at my school and it occurred to me that the reason why other teachers, so many of whom are liberal, dread parent-teacher conferences is because it really has to be tough on them.

If a liberal parent approaches and talks with a liberal teacher, all they can have is a very short and shallow session where they thank the teacher for using their classroom to promote the same worldview that they promote at home- for using their classroom to push for no value system in children's personal lives and yet an all-powerful government controlling all their economic decisions. I'm sure these sorts of discussions about the evil rich or why it is important to talk about thinking about doing something for some disadvantaged group are light and easy enough.

But if a conservative parent approaches and talks with a liberal teacher, it has to be really hard on the teacher- I mean, how do you respond to a parent accusing you of polluting their child's mind with their false values or teaching your children wrong and incorrect information? I'm sure that these parents come in ready to tear into the teacher for doing a bad job at their job, and these liberal teachers know that they have been misusing their position- which is to teach children- to promote their worldviews, and so they have to play angry guilty defense. It's gotta be rough on them.

As a conservative teacher, conferences are rather easy for me. Both liberal and conservative parents appreciate the fact that I teach students critical thinking, writing skills, facts, data, have balanced and fair discussions, give every side equal time, and generally help prepare their children to be successful citizens in America. Parents usually feel me out in conferences, unsure whether or not I am just a liberal who is bad at pushing values at students and uncommonly good at teaching them, or some sort of rare and secretive conservative teacher.

Eventually, parents simply tell me how 'refreshing' it is for their students to take my class. That's the word I hear over and over at conferences- 'refreshing'. I wonder why they tell me this? Refreshing means to reinvigorate someone or to stimulate them because it is new or different. That's an odd way to describe my class, don't you think?

The reason why parents tell me that my class is refreshing is that because after years of their students struggling with the judgement and criticism and values pushed on them by liberal teachers, it is new or different or reinvigorating for them to simply be in a class which doesn't do these things. Students spend their time in my classroom engaged in fair and balanced discussion, lectures and video's designed to elaborate and expand on what they read in the textbook, themes which challenge them from the right and left and up and down, random and wild bias on my part that keeps them guessing and challenged with their own views, essay writing and reflection on their essays, and question and answer periods that enlighten and inform.

For at least my class at least, students can take a break from the constant and purposeful assault that liberal and leftist teachers engage on their value system and beliefs, and they can simply focus on learning. It has to be refreshing to them, I imagine, being in a safe intellectual space after the bullying that they have to undergo for twelve years of public school dominated by communist and fascist leftist teachers.

Conferences are therefore easy for me and for any conservative teacher, because parents simply want to tell us how refreshing our class is and how much their child is learning, and it doesn't matter if they are conservative or liberal. But for liberal teachers, I do imagine it has to be tough.

Startling Story on Disability in America... Stunning and Sad

From a very well researched NPR story Unfit for Work: The Startling Rise in Disability in America (excerpts only from a much longer sotry, with emphasis added by me):

...In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.

The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. The vast majority of people on federal disability do not work.[1] Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.

In other words, people on disability don't show up in any of the places we usually look to see how the economy is doing. But the story of these programs -- who goes on them, and why, and what happens after that -- is, to a large extent, the story of the U.S. economy. It's the story not only of an aging workforce, but also of a hidden, increasingly expensive safety net....

...People don't seem to be faking this pain, but it gets confusing. I have back pain. My editor has a herniated disc, and he works harder than anyone I know. There must be millions of people with asthma and diabetes who go to work every day. Who gets to decide whether, say, back pain makes someone disabled?

As far as the federal government is concerned, you're disabled if you have a medical condition that makes it impossible to work. In practice, it's a judgment call made in doctors' offices and courtrooms around the country. The health problems where there is most latitude for judgment -- back pain, mental illness -- are among the fastest growing causes of disability....

...Part of the rise in the number of people on disability is simply driven by the fact that the workforce is getting older, and older people tend to have more health problems.

But disability has also become a de facto welfare program for people without a lot of education or job skills. But it wasn't supposed to serve this purpose; it's not a retraining program designed to get people back onto their feet. Once people go onto disability, they almost never go back to work. Fewer than 1 percent of those who were on the federal program for disabled workers at the beginning of 2011 have returned to the workforce since then, one economist told me.

People who leave the workforce and go on disability qualify for Medicare, the government health care program that also covers the elderly. They also get disability payments from the government of about $13,000 a year. This isn't great. But if your alternative is a minimum wage job that will pay you at most $15,000 a year, and probably does not include health insurance, disability may be a better option.

But, in most cases, going on disability means you will not work, you will not get a raise, you will not get whatever meaning people get from work.[2] Going on disability means, assuming you rely only on those disability payments, you will be poor for the rest of your life. That's the deal. And it's a deal 14 million Americans have signed up for....

...A person on welfare costs a state money. That same resident on disability doesn't cost the state a cent, because the federal government covers the entire bill for people on disability. So states can save money by shifting people from welfare to disability. And the Public Consulting Group is glad to help. PCG is a private company that states pay to comb their welfare rolls and move as many people as possible onto disability....

...n the past few decades, an entire disability-industrial complex has emerged. It has just one goal: Push more people onto disability. And, sometimes, it seems like the government is outmatched. This is especially true in the legal system....

...."You might imagine a courtroom where on one side there's the claimant and on the other side there's a government attorney who is saying, 'We need to protect the public interest and your client is not sufficiently deserving,'" the economist David Autor says. "Actually, it doesn't work like that. There is no government lawyer on the other side of the room."...

...Politicians pay lip service to this problem during election cycles, but American leaders have not sat down and come up with a comprehensive plan.

In the meantime, federal disability programs became our extremely expensive default plan. The two big disability programs, including health care for disabled workers, cost some $260 billion a year.

People at the Social Security Administration, which runs the federal disability programs, say we cannot afford this. The reserves in the disability insurance program are on track to run out in 2016, Steve Goss, the chief actuary at Social Security, told me.

Goss is confident that Congress will act to keep disability payments flowing, probably by taking money from the Social Security retirement fund. Of course, the retirement fund itself is on track to run out of money by 2035...

This is a stunning report. Whomever wrote this poorly designed legislation should pay for chaining millions of people in soul-dragging poverty, whomever runs these poorly run programs should pay for degrading the condition of free people by sticking them in these programs, and whomever is judging on the proper use of taxpayer money in such a way should be impeached. They're all criminal in their duty.

This is a very sad story, but one which we must all hear before we vote again for politicians who promise to put more people on government programs to 'help' more people, and instead simply enslave these poor people into a degrading government program that keeps them fed but in permanent poverty.

There are real systematic problems in our nation right now, and policy makers are robbing left and right from various funds to shore up these problems and will continue to shift and borrow and print money as long as possible, but in about 10 years the whole thing is going to come crashing down in an epic collapse. You have been warned.

Rash of Retirements of Major Military Commanders a Sign of Something?

Max Boot's well researched and insightful essay How America Lost Its Four Great Generals about the recent exodus of four-star commanders such as David Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal, John Allen, and James Mattis ends with his biggest point:

...We do not have such a surplus of brilliant commanders that we can afford to wave away those like Petraeus and McChrystal and Allen and Mattis, who have demonstrated a mastery of the modern battlefield. We can only hope that President Obama’s cavalier attitude toward the loss of their institutional knowledge, their leadership abilities, and their complex understanding of a dangerous world does not prove to be a tragedy for the nation.

Indeed, after reading this essay I am now much more aware of the contributions that these four generals made to our efforts in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan- and now that I am more aware of their contributions I am afraid that their retirements will mean the loss of more American soldiers and a less effective foreign policy. And the worst part about these losses is that two of them stemmed from simply displeasing the Obama administration for stating the truth and the other two came from all the hoopla surrounding an extra-marital affair, none of which were performance related or broke any laws or committed any crimes (although for the record, I do think that Petraeus did wrong and was correct to resign).

Today the biggest battle that is being waged in our nation is a battle between those who believe in and learn about and study the reality of the situation- that there are facts, data, morals, values, society, results, real work, etc- and those who believe in and learn about and study the unreality of the situation- that all facts are meaningless, that data is twisted, that morality is just made up, that values are irrelevant, that society can just collapse, that results don't matter, that talking about work is just as good as really working, etc. And this battle spills over into the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan too.

The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the rest of the War on Terror, and the preparation for further wars to protect the United States and our interests, are important and it is meaningful to take time to learn about them and our efforts. It is important to know what actions our top generals choose, to study their methods, and to reward them for their innovative and good policy decisions. It is vital that our nation fight these wars with minimum loss of life yet maximum success in achieving our policy goals. And the American people and the world must know that our goals in these wars is and always has been the greater protection of individuals lives, liberty, and property in regions where these rights were formally not respected.

Perhaps the reason though that America does not recognize and reward and remember and treasure the successes and efforts that America has made around the world in our attempt to achieve these goals is because America is turning away from those very goals here at home. It is tough to reward and celebrate generals who protect people's lives and increase their liberties and work to promote property rights when at home, here in America, we have democratically elected a regime that is encouraging taxpayer money to be used to increase abortions, that is restricting choices that free citizens can make in healthcare and banking, and that is increasingly taking more of the property from its citizens in a steadily increasing number of ways.

The reality of our efforts in the War on Terror increasingly doesn't match the reality of America. Read some of these passages and try to compare them with the actions of our leaders at the national level- Congress, the President, the Supreme Court, cabinet members, and bureaucrats:

...This was only one of many “lines of operation” that Petraeus pursued in contrast with the less ambitious and less successful approach of his predecessors. He and General Ray Odierno, then the day-to-day commander in Iraq, pushed U.S. troops off the massive “forward operating bases” on which they had secured and isolated themselves. Troops were directed instead to live in population centers so they could provide security to the Iraqis around the clock, seven days a week. Petraeus also pressured Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (a Shiite) to approach the Sunnis, and to remove the most notorious anti-Sunni ethno-sectarians from his government. Petraeus oversaw the detention and killing of more insurgents than ever before without causing a backlash among the Sunni population, because his troops acted on precisely targeted intelligence. He instituted “counterinsurgency behind the wire” in detention facilities, to make sure that hard-core detainees in coalition custody were not able to cultivate new recruits behind bars. He targeted Iranian intelligence operatives who were supporting insurgent groups (among them the notorious Mahdi Army) fighting coalition forces. He also communicated clearly and without spin to the American public and Congress about the extent of the success he was achieving and the problems that still remained. And on and on. The scale and scope of Petraeus’s activities as commander of Multi-National Force–Iraq were exhaustive and exhausting....

...McChrystal has been credited with four innovations. First, he invited other intelligence agencies, such as the CIA and NSA, to send liaison officers to his headquarters, where he shared information generously with them—a radical change for the secretive culture of the special-operations forces. Those agencies, in turn, reciprocated by sharing more intelligence with JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command) than in the past. Second, he improved JSOC’s interrogation facilities and trained interrogators to extract useful information without the use of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that became so controversial and notorious. Third, he emphasized “sensitive site exploitation,” ordering his men to take the time to gather up all the hard drives, papers, and other information they could grab at a target site. Fourth, McChrystal wrangled more manned and unmanned aircraft and more Internet bandwidth for JSOC, vastly increasing its ability to monitor potential targets. All this made it possible for JSOC to ramp up its operations, often launching a dozen missions a night in Iraq and Afghanistan similar to the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. In some instances, new missions would be planned and executed within minutes to take advantage of intelligence generated at a target site...

...Allen is a courtly, cerebral Southerner who graduated from the Naval Academy and later became a professor and commandant of midshipmen there—the first Marine to fill that position. He made a name for himself as the deputy commander of Multi-National Forces in Iraq’s Anbar Province in 2007–2008, when he undertook the delicate negotiations that helped to wean the Sunni sheikhs from Al-Qaeda in Iraq. He later served as Petraeus’s deputy at Centcom before becoming his successor in Afghanistan, which made him (again) the first Marine to command an entire theater of war. Although this was his first major battlefield command, Allen performed more than capably in dealing with difficult challenges such as “Green on Blue” attacks by Afghan troops on their coalition counterparts. He oversaw the withdrawal of 33,000 surge forces while maintaining momentum in the south and expanding the size and capacity of the Afghan Security Forces. Just as important, Allen managed to get along with two prickly presidents whose support was essential for progress, Hamid Karzai and Barack Obama...

...Mattis first gained public attention as the one-star commander of a Marine task force that entered Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 to help Special Operations Forces mop up the remnants of the Taliban. His ability to push his Marines far inland, to the maximum extent of their helicopter range, was impressive. Even more impressive was his ability, as a two-star general, to lead the First Marine Division from Kuwait to Baghdad in a matter of weeks in the spring of 2003. So determined was Mattis to maintain this rate of advance that he fired a colonel whose regiment had been slowed by irregular attacks in the town of Nasiriya. The Marines’ assault helped make mincemeat out of Saddam Hussein’s defenses and allowed the American forces to reach Baghdad faster and with fewer losses than anticipated. As soon as Saddam fell, Mattis moved from conventional combat to conducting counterinsurgency and stabilization operations in southern Iraq with a minimum of firepower. “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet,” he told his men, and he warned Iraqis that the Marines would be “no better friend, no worse enemy.”...

The entire article is great and reading it made me proud to be an American. I suggest you check it out.

Useful Idiots Pushing Earth Day Just the Outer Circle of Death: A Conversation with my Daughter and an Angry Mob of Teachers

When I asked my daughter today what she learned in school today she said

Daddy, today we learned about how people are cutting down all the rain forests to make stuff. And that driving our cars is causing the ice caps to melt and all the polar bears to die. And that it is only going to get worse until we start doing things different.

Notice she didn't talk to me about how she learned math, reading, or history- and she didn't mention learning a new sports game, learning about values or morals, or learning how to write computer code. In her first grade class she learned as fact a bunch of propaganda pushed on her by her public school system. And when I talked to a couple other parents about this, they told me to just keep my mouth shut and go along to get along and just accept that this is now what they teach in schools. It isn't- those sorts of political views and opinions are not in the state standards- but this is what is happening to our next generation- they are being taught to be useful idiots and tools of the communists and pagans who would destroy the traditional America culture and traditions.

This effort must be a systematic effort- my 1st grader in one public school talked this way and also this week I got involved in an email exchange with another teacher at my school who was involved in similar effort to push communism and paganism at our public school.

On Monday our entire staff at our public school was sent an email during the workday over the school email system from another teacher- "Hoping you all have a happy Earth Day and hug a tree today!"

Earth Day is morally and intellectually wrong- the worship of some sort of pagan green God and the pushing of government policies which take away our liberty and property both are offensive to me. Earth Day is just a way for the inner circle of pagan and communist manipulators- evil people- to get the useful idiots in the outer circle to support their agenda, and so any effort to encourage people to engage in this worship and celebration should be rejected. And pagan rituals- hugging a tree- are also to be rejected as they run counter to my faith.

While friends and family suggest that I just keep my mouth shut about stuff like this and go along with it by just nodding along and admitting that 2+2=5, I refuse to. So I replied back to the other teacher at my school- "Please do not email me any more emails pushing this pagan and communist 'holiday'."

Apparently I made the other teacher cry with this email, and she showed my email around to the building to other teachers. The next day during my prep hour an angry mob of useful idiots cornered me in my classroom and demanded that I apologize to the teacher and email the entire staff wishing them a Happy Earth Day. They believed that they were morally superior to me and that their faith in the green god gave them a higher calling and that I should recant my questioning of their holiday and do some publicly.

These teachers are useful idiots of the outer circle- unwitting tools and promoters of intellectual ideas that they are clueless about. When I began to talk to them about the intellectual and historical background and reasoning behind their 'holiday', they told me that I was just taking it too seriously and that I was wrong for doubting and should just recant and chant with them their slogans. And in the past I may have taken this subject less seriously- see my post Earth Day: A Communist Plot? where I treat as more of a joke their efforts. But in the face of this mob of fools I was struck by how unserious this actually was- that there was a larger and darker and much more serious movement here.

In The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (Penguin Classics), the famous author G.K. Chesterton described anarchists this way-

This is a vast philosophic movement, consisting of an outer and inner ring. The outer ring- the main mass of their supporters- are merely anarchists; that is, men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness. They believe that all the evil results of human crime are the results of the system that has called it a punishment. They do not believe that the crime creates the punishment. They believe that the punishment has created the crime. These people talk about 'a happy time coming,' 'the paradise of the future,' 'mankind freed from the bondage of vice and the bondage of virtue,' and so on.

And so also the men of the inner circle speak. But in their mouths these happy phrases have a horrible meaning. They are under no illusions; they are too intellectual to think that man upon this earth can ever be quite free of original sin and the struggle. And they mean death. When they say that mankind shall be free at last, they mean that mankind shall commit suicide. When they talk of a paradise without right or wrong, they mean the grave. They have but two objects, to destroy first humanity and then themselves.

Chesterton may well have been describing these useful idiots of the outer circle in my school and other schools around the nation who push their 'Earth Day' movement at young children and staff members, pushing formula's ('hug a tree', say 'happy earth day,' recycle, etc) and rules that destroy human freedom and property, believing that if we just change our system and practices and give up our freedom and liberties that sin will be ended and that the green god will be happier, and that we can achieve a brighter future through these actions. These pushers of Earth Day are the outer circle.

But the inner circle is the one to fear, for they are the intellectual and moral center, and they know that the goal is not to erode property rights and human liberty to achieve any sort of higher calling, but rather to erode property rights and human liberty. They desire control over others, property of others, and want to control the lives of their fellow men- and have the ability to kill them if they go against their desires and wishes. The inner circle knows that mankind was born free and able to build buildings and harvest goods and mine for metals and work chemicals and have children and live in liberty- and they hate this and so push the worship of 'Earth Day' and other days which have as their goal darkness, control, and less human life. They are the inner circle because they know what they seek and why they seek it- the outer circle are just the large pool of useful idiots who take their message and push it without knowing what they do or why they do it.

In the face of this mob of idiots, outnumbered and threatened, I retreated physically by making up some sort of excuse to leave and promising to address the matter with them further in the future. Another day or two has passed and nothing further has come up and I suppose they hope that now I have dropped it and been cowed by their show of force. And in public schools right now I doubt I have any real ability to fight back- administration, the union, and other teachers likely would side with the inner circle over me- and it is probably safer for me to simply appear to give in. But in my own mind and in my heart they will not force me to ever give in.

Human liberty, property rights, and the love of life all are now too much a part of who I am, and so I reject the worship of Earth Day here and forever, and suggest you do so as well. And so I viewed my daughter's comments as a good time to begin a real conversation with her about human action, historical variations in temperature, opinions of authority figures, critical thinking, and the wonders of progress. I intend on being my own inner circle of good and raising my children to be the same- and so should we all.

70% of Taxpayer Money for Katrina Relief is Missing, Report Shows

From an ABC News story:

...A inspector general's report found that about $700 million awarded to help Hurricane Katrina victims fortify their homes from future floods is unaccounted for, which Congressional leaders say is a troubling sign of the need for tighter controls as Superstorm Sandy rebuilding efforts intensify this spring.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is pressing the state of Louisiana to recover the money given to homeowners to elevate their houses. But David Montoya, the inspector general of the agency, told ABC News that the likelihood of reclaiming the money was "slim, at best."

"We have $700 million that we can't account for and that certainly did not go to elevating homes and preventing future damage from storms," Montoya said in an interview in his office in Washington.

The cases of government waste and fraud have steadily piled up since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005. Federal prosecutors are pursuing criminal charges in New Orleans, including one instance last week in which a New Orleans woman pleaded guilty to making false statements after taking government grants and failing to fix her home.

The Louisiana Road Home program, which allocated $1 billion to elevate and repair homes to protect them from flooding and storms, was part of the $29 billion Hurricane Katrina relief effort approved at the time by Congress. The government investigation found that 70 percent of the money has not been accounted for. More than 24,000 homeowners who each accepted grants of $30,000 were unable to show they used the money to fix their houses.

"There is fault all the way around. Clearly the homeowner accepting up to $30,000 to elevate their home is at fault for not using the money that it was intended for," HUD's Montoya said. He added, "Clearly the state's at fault for not doing a better job of due diligence if you will for ensuring that these homes were being elevated."

The state of Louisiana acknowledges that hundreds of millions of dollars from the program have not been accounted for...

THIS IS WHAT THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT DOES. Do you all understand that? Because the national government is so removed from taxpayers and because the national government is run by unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats protected by powerful labor unions, the national government is not a responsible steward of taxpayer money nor an efficient spender of it. Increasing national government spending and increasing the powers and responsibilities of the national government only leads to greater and greater and greater waste, fraud, abuse, misuse, malfeasance, and criminal corruption.

This is why it is so important to resist efforts to grant the national government more spending authority, more powers and responsibilities, and more revenues- because the greater good of society is promoted when you OPPOSE this nationalization of resources and powers and life, liberty, and property is better protected when you RESIST the federalization of our lives.

UPDATE: 700000 out of 1000000 is indeed 70%. This sort of incompetence is criminal. The Louisiana Road Home program is funded and run by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development. The head of HUD, an Obama appointee, is Shaun Donovan. Contact information can be found at http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/contact. Also contact your Congressman and demand an investigation into the waste and abuse of taxpayer money over at HUD that this program demonstrates.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev- 9/11 Denier, Against War on Terror, Ignorant- Product of the Intellectual Left?

From the Detroit News article For Boston bombing suspects, question may be who led whom:

...(Alyssa Kilzer) said the mother (of the terrorists) also expressed some rather strident views about the U.S. government. "(When my mother went to their house to get a facial treatment) (the mother of the terrorists) started quoting a conspiracy theory, telling me that she thought 9-11 was purposefully created by the American government to make America hate Muslims. 'It's real,' (the mother of the terrorists) said, 'My son knows all about it. You can read on the internet.'"...

...Tsarni (who is the uncle) told The Associated Press from his home in Maryland that a deep rift opened between him and his sister-in-law, but that he tried to maintain a relationship with the boys. However, that effort began to fall apart several years ago, he said, when Tamerlan "started carrying all this nonsense associated with religion, with Islamic religion."

Tamerlan would throw out foreign words like "jihad" and "Inshallah" — Arabic for "God willing" — without really understanding their meaning, he said...

...One of the brothers' neighbors, Albrecht Ammon, said he had a bizarre encounter with Tamerlan in a pizza shop about three months ago. The older brother argued with him about U.S. foreign policy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and religion. He said Tamerlan referred to the Bible as a "cheap copy" of the Quran, and that many of this country's wars "are based upon the Bible — how it's an excuse to invade other countries."

"He had nothing against the American people," Ammon said. "He had something against the American government."...

There are those who are going to try to spin some sort of alternative narrative about these terrorists- that they were just an innocent family that didn't integrate to American culture because American culture is wrong or something, that these people were poor and desperate and so we need to increase welfare programs, that this event has nothing at all to do with Muslim or the Muslim religion, that this is a conspiracy theory involving the FBI, that somehow these terrorists were lone-wolves whose actions say nothing further about society or the environment that they've lived in, or that somehow it was Bush's fault.

But the above quotes paint a different picture. We can see here two young individuals who accepted left-wing indoctrination regarding two major events that took place over the last several years- 9/11 and the War on Terror. The left- liberals, communists, progressives, socialists, fascists- have been for years attempting to spin conspiracy theories about 9/11 that put the blame for these events on America. And these groups have also for years been agitating against the War on Terror- in fact these groups united behind the Democrats and Barack Obama and helped to elect them on the argument that the War on Terror was wrong and just an excuse to invade other countries. And the older brother was ignorant- using language and words for which he didn't really understand and which really didn't even apply- the sort of misuse and abuse of language that is more characteristic of the left than it is with the right.

Barack Obama and the Democrats are not to blame for these events- the actions of evil people are- but the political environment, rhetoric, intellectual thought, and systems of support that the left has been at work building contributed to and aided these evil people in their efforts.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother were not students of the Constitution and our Founding Fathers, they did not quote John Locke and talk about a new American Revolution, they were not supportive of our efforts overseas to degrade terror networks and remove regimes from power who supported and cheered on the 9/11 attacks, they did not curse the terrorists who committed 9/11, they were not supportive of the free market, they were not raised believing in human freedom and personal liberty and the responsibilities and consequences of their actions for the larger society, they were not interested in business and producing goods and services, they didn't discuss any Ron Paul conspiracy theories about the gold standard or the government taken over by communists, they did not love human life, they did not believe in the protection of private property, and they did not believe that wordsmithing and image and fancy rhetoric are just crap. They are not associated in their actions, thoughts, beliefs, or values with the 'right'- conservatives, tea partiers, libertarians, constitutionalists, republicans, Republicans, independents, etc.

It is to the left of the political spectrum that we must look to see who intellectually gave these terrorists purpose and direction to commit their evil acts. This might not be the politically correct thing to say- but let it be said here regardless.

For Shame! Democrats Ruin Opportunity to Pass Meaningful Legislation on Gun Violence

John over at Powerlineblog wrote in a post called ON GUN CONTROL, THE DEMS DON’T HAVE THE VOTES:

...One difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals like to propose new legislation without giving any thought to what laws already exist. Conservatives generally start by asking what the law is currently, and whether the solution to a given problem might be better enforcement. The current gun control debate is a good example: Obama is self-righteous “after what we saw happen in Newtown,” but he was president for four years before Newtown. What is his record with respect to enforcing the myriad of gun laws that have long existed? His record is terrible. The Obama administration has prosecuted 30% to 35% fewer gun cases annually than the Bush administration. Criminals are already violating lots of gun laws, but President Obama never cared, or made it a priority, until he saw an opportunity for political gain.

Another difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals favor legislation based on emotion, i.e., how it makes them feel about themselves. Conservatives–how old-fashioned can you get?–evaluate proposed legislation based on whether it will do any good. Again, the present background check proposal is a case in point. Compared with banning average-sized magazines, which would, overnight, make it illegal to use many millions of firearms–perhaps more than half of all pistols owned by Americans–the expansion of background checks is relatively benign. But it would also be completely ineffective....

...Meanwhile, the well-informed side of the gun debate, as exemplified by the National Rifle Association, is firing back against the ignorance being propagated by the Left. This NRA video, which deconstructs an ad on which Michael Bloomberg spent a great deal of money, is priceless. It turns out that the “gun owner” in the Bloomberg ad–now, supposedly, an enthusiastic advocate of gun control–has no idea how to handle a firearm and is, in all likelihood, an actor hired from a New York agency.

So the debate goes on, between the well-informed, who want to fight crime and promote firearms safety, and the ill-informed, who want to score meaningless psychic and political victories.

And that increasingly describes the difference between conservatives/Republicans and liberals/Democrats. On one hand you have largely a group of ill-informed people who shout slogans, use emotional attacks, rarely rely on logical arguments, arbitrarily cite random 'data' to support their 'arguments,' and seek to pass policies which are pleasing and make them feel better about themselves because they don't give to charity or go to church- troll through their blogs and websites and organizations and go to their events and rallies if you doubt my characterization of them as so.

And on the other side you have largely a group of better-informed people who talk about 'crazy' stuff like the Founding Fathers and the purposes of government and political philosophy, who rely on logical arguments, who rarely use emotional appeals even when doing so would probably help them out, who spend a lot of time actually debating points of policy and the merits of legislation, and who seek to pass policies which actually achieve good and better protect the life, liberty, and property of free citizens because they honestly care about people as evidenced by their giving to charity and going to churches- troll through their blogs and websites and organizations and go to their events and rallies if you doubt my characterization of them as so.

There are real ways to combat gun violence- I myself detailed 6 Ways to Help Prevent School Shootings. I am sure these policy proposals have their flaws, but they should have formed the basis of the conversation and not what the Democrats and liberals focused on. There was a great moment in our nation to actually take steps to combat gun violence and school shootings- and the Democrats and Obama and liberals instead used these tragedies in an attempt to take legal guns away from non-violent citizens out of a greater desire to control them and their lives.

'For shame!' I would cry at these liberals and Democrats who wrecked a great opportunity to do good by pushing for legislation such as that which was advanced in the Senate. For shame indeed.

Is the Boston Marathon Bomber Being Offered a Job as a Professor to Teach at Major University?

Speculation is swirling that Columbia University, University of Illinois in Chicago, and Northwestern Law School are all preparing to offer the Boston Marathon terrorist bomber (or bombers) jobs teaching in their schools, if only the bomber would come forward and produce a syllabus that conforms with modern progressive classroom indoctrination.

Before reports such as this one are dismissed, it is worth noting that University of Illinois employed for many years admitted and unrepentant terrorist bomber Bill Ayers, that convicted murderer and terrorist Kathy Boudin is currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University, and that former member of the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list because she was a terrorist Bernardine Dohrn now teaches at Northwestern Law School.

So clearly these schools have a history of giving jobs to terrorists and bombers and murderers. Kathy Boudin killed 3 people in her terrorist attack- that's the same many as were killed at the Boston Marathon attack- and that didn't seem to be any sort of barrier for her being hired. Bill Ayers built a nail bomb- maybe even a pressure cooker mail bomb- that killed 3 people, and he became best friends with President Obama and advised Obama on education policy and has spoken widely on the subject. Dohrn's was a committed Marxism-Leninist and supported the brutal murder of millions by these regimes and married Bill Ayers.

Honestly, our educational establishment funded by taxpayer dollars appears to have no problems employing mass murderers and terrorists and putting them in front of children to speak. These universities welcome and support terrorists and want them to guide the youth of the future, even if they are evil people who murdered others in cold blood.

Theses three were murdering terrorists and were given jobs teaching- so why not the the person (or persons) who murdered and maimed all of those people at the Boston Marathon? Of course they'll have to serve some jail time, but it appears as long as they come out of this jail time committed communists who hate America, they'll be given lucrative jobs in a university teaching children about something someday.

Obama's Bizarro World Nuclear Policies

A running joke on this blog is that Obama is actually from the Bizarro World (also known as Htrae), which is a fictional planet in the DC comics universe. Introduced in the early 1960s, Htrae is home to Bizarro and his companions, who are ruled by the Bizarro Code. This code states that you should do the opposite of all Earthly things, such as hate beauty, love ugliness, make it a crime to make anything perfect, criminalize doing right, attempt to lose money on business, etc. It was referenced notably in the Seinfeld episode "The Bizarro Jerry". See, the important point here is that the results of the actions of Bizarro world are the exact opposite of what is desirable, and sometimes is the results are even the opposite of what the residents of Bizarro world might even say.

President Obama may have stated clearly and with conviction his desire to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, but the realities are that during his time as President more nations have more ever closer to having more nuclear weapons. And it isn't even that these states have built nuclear weapons- it is that over the last four short years multiple states have moved to the point where they could easily build and launch nuclear missiles on short notice- some are within only a couple weeks of preparation from going from 'non-nuclear' to 'nuclear' if they so desired.

Over the last several years, North Korea has expanded its nuclear capabilities with a second and third successful test which clearly demonstrated nuclear capabilities, India and Pakistan have greatly expanded their nuclear stockpiles and increased the sophistication of their missiles, Egypt may be working on building nuclear stockpiles, and Iran has moved to a point where it could possibly within a month be capable of delivering a nuclear strike on other states in the region. South Korea and Japan have both recently discussed the possibility of expanding their capabilities. And China has continued to develop it's capabilities to deliver its nuclear warheads greater distances and with greater accuracy.

So another the United States greatly decreased its nuclear capabilities, the steady increase in fissionable material and the steady spread of knowledge on how to build nuclear weapons has increased, and at some point in the future- probably nearer rather than farther with Obama's bumbling and inept leadership- the genie will be out of the bottle and critical mass will be reached and we'll go from a world where only a few states control nuclear weapons to a world where every state has them or the capability to have them. And that won't be a better world.

From the Belmont Club's post Bootleggers and Fleets-in-Being:

... Henri Solski at the National Review online notes that “Japan may open a plant that can produce eight tons of plutonium a year — enough to make 1,000 to 2,000 nuclear weapons annually. That’s at least as many weapons as are in the entire U.S. operationally deployed nuclear force. … Japan already has ten tons of nuclear explosive plutonium stockpiled on its soil from previous reprocessing activities.” Not to be outdone South Korea is joining the game- South Korea also wants to make plutonium-based nuclear fuels from imported U.S. power-reactor assemblies....

...Neither Japan nor Korea may have an actually assembled bomb. But given their technological and industrial prowess the Japanese and Koreans can turn these materials into actual nuclear weapons in a very short period. How short a period? The Institute for Science and International Security estimates that given 25 kg of material, Iran could “sprint” to an actual bomb in 2 to 3 weeks....

....Currently, the IAEA inspects two Iranian enrichment facilities on average once a week, and a third facility every two weeks on average. With this rate of inspections, Iran would need to produce 25 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium (enough for one bomb) from its stockpiles of lower enriched uranium in less than one week. The window might be widened to two or three weeks if Tehran blocked one or two inspections on the pretext of an “accident” or a “protest.”...

...The Obama administration is in the ironic position of having to undo the results of its own feckless policy. The arms race is at least partially of its own making; the result of the breakdown of US hegemony. Obama’s efforts to reduce US military dominance, to defund “unproven missile defense systems”; never to build future combat systems and create a “world without nuclear weapons” have created a a vacuum, i.e. a Japan and the Republic of Korea that no longer believe in the Administration’s nuclear guarantee. And therefore they are looking to themselves for security guarantees....

...The world had a choice of two security models. In the first only the cops could carry the guns; the “Scotland Yard Model”. In the second, the cops refuse to come out of the precinct house. With the Scotland Yard model dead everyone is forced to carry. This can be called the “Tombstone Territory” model where “your future’s just as good as your draw.” Perhaps the Obama administration meant well by declaring a World Without Nuclear Weapons and starting by melting down it’s shootin’ irons. But instead of Scotland Yard, we are now on the way to Tombstone Territory....

...If Obama cannot stop proliferation by rogue states then inevitably countries like France and perhaps other pacifist European countries will start selling nuclear materials technology to China, Taiwan, Singapore and others. If you can’t beat them, join them....

...For years people complained about the cost of maintaining the peace. But maybe the cost of being the hegemon wasn’t really so big when you consider the alternative.

President Obama and his Democratic supports might have meant well- I still give them the benefit of the doubt- but their policies may have not only weakened America but weakened the world order and moved our world one step closer to nuclear armageddon, which would be ironic because they spent years arguing that Bush and his policies were doing that very thing. Irony is funny and reality bites.

FYI, as the sidebar on my blog says- You can tell who the real denizens of Bizarro world are because they argue the opposite of good: that our economy must crash for things to be better, that the more people who are on unemployment the better the economy is, that you must appease all bad guys in the name of peace, that having few wealthy people is a good thing, that kind and considerate people who are curious about the world around them are the bad guys, that closed minded individuals who want to control your life are the good guys, that taking property from others is protecting property, that removing choice from others is helping to liberate them, that the middle class is supported by empowering elites to transfer wealth to the poor, that Israel is the bad guy and Hamas the good guy, that the US killed lots of innocent people in Iraq, that you must bully others in order to stop bullying, that cyber-attacks against those who you disagree with are important to protecting free speech, that liberty is best protected by controlling others, etc. All good Americans should resist these Bizarro's and their Bizarro agenda.

A Rebellious Nation

A Rebellious Nation

Isaiah 1 New International Version (NIV)

² Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth!
    For the Lord has spoken:
“I reared children and brought them up,
    but they have rebelled against me.
³ The ox knows its master,
    the donkey its owner’s manger,
but Israel does not know,
    my people do not understand.”

⁴ Woe to the sinful nation,
    a people whose guilt is great,
a brood of evildoers,
    children given to corruption!
They have forsaken the Lord;
    they have spurned the Holy One of Israel
    and turned their backs on him.

⁵ Why should you be beaten anymore?
    Why do you persist in rebellion?
Your whole head is injured,
    your whole heart afflicted.
⁶ From the sole of your foot to the top of your head
    there is no soundness—
only wounds and welts
    and open sores,
not cleansed or bandaged
    or soothed with olive oil.

⁷ Your country is desolate,
    your cities burned with fire;
your fields are being stripped by foreigners
    right before you,
    laid waste as when overthrown by strangers.
⁸ Daughter Zion is left
    like a shelter in a vineyard,
like a hut in a cucumber field,
    like a city under siege.
⁹ Unless the Lord Almighty
    had left us some survivors,
we would have become like Sodom,
    we would have been like Gomorrah.

¹⁰ Hear the word of the Lord,
    you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
    you people of Gomorrah!
¹¹ “The multitude of your sacrifices—
    what are they to me?” says the Lord.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
    of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
    in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
¹² When you come to appear before me,
    who has asked this of you,
    this trampling of my courts?
¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
    Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
    I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
¹⁴ Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
    I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer,
    I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
    I am not listening.

Your hands are full of blood!

¹⁶ Wash and make yourselves clean.
    Take your evil deeds out of my sight;
    stop doing wrong.
¹⁷ Learn to do right; seek justice.
    Defend the oppressed.^[a]
Take up the cause of the fatherless;
    plead the case of the widow.

¹⁸ “Come now, let us settle the matter,”
    says the Lord.
“Though your sins are like scarlet,
    they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red as crimson,
    they shall be like wool.
¹⁹ If you are willing and obedient,
    you will eat the good things of the land;
²⁰ but if you resist and rebel,
    you will be devoured by the sword.”
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

²¹ See how the faithful city
    has become a prostitute!
She once was full of justice;
    righteousness used to dwell in her—
    but now murderers!
²² Your silver has become dross,
    your choice wine is diluted with water.
²³ Your rulers are rebels,
    partners with thieves;
they all love bribes
    and chase after gifts.
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
    the widow’s case does not come before them.

²⁴ Therefore the Lord, the Lord Almighty,
    the Mighty One of Israel, declares:
“Ah! I will vent my wrath on my foes
    and avenge myself on my enemies.
²⁵ I will turn my hand against you;^[b]
    I will thoroughly purge away your dross
    and remove all your impurities.
²⁶ I will restore your leaders as in days of old,
    your rulers as at the beginning.
Afterward you will be called
    the City of Righteousness,
    the Faithful City.”

²⁷ Zion will be delivered with justice,
    her penitent ones with righteousness.
²⁸ But rebels and sinners will both be broken,
    and those who forsake the Lord will perish.

²⁹ “You will be ashamed because of the sacred oaks
    in which you have delighted;
you will be disgraced because of the gardens
    that you have chosen.
³⁰ You will be like an oak with fading leaves,
    like a garden without water.
³¹ The mighty man will become tinder
    and his work a spark;
both will burn together,
    with no one to quench the fire.”