Bizarro World and the Israeli-Hamas Conflict

As the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel unfolds, what is most interesting to me is how it is viewed by the larger world. Not to be overly dramatic, but a peaceful and prosperous nation conducting air attacks by uniformed personal vs a violent and poor non-nation launching rocket attacks by men wearing black ski masks should be viewed as a conflict between good guys and bad guys, and treated as such. I know there are underlying issues, and I am sympathetic to them, but clearly this conflict has a clear good guy and bad guy.

Unless you live in bizarro world, that opposite reality that the American left, the main-stream media, and Democrats live in. In Bizarro world, society is ruled by the Bizarro Code which states that you mus do the opposite of all normal things- you must hate beauty and love ugliness and it is a crime to make things right. Inhabitants of Bizarro world believe that our economy must crash for things to be better, and that you must appease all bad guys in the name of peace. Kind and considerate people who are curious about the world around them are the bad guys, and closed minded shouting politically correct individuals who want to control your life are the good guys- that is bizarro world.

So let's look at what bizarro world looks like in relation to the conflict between Hamas and Israel. Much of the controversy in this conflict centers around what is a 'proportionate' response by Israel for unprovoked random rocket attacks by terrorist groups operating in Hamas controlled Gaza Strip. After reading David Aaronovitch's article in the Times Online, I think I have a better idea of what bizarro world would look like here.

In bizarro world, the world of the liberals, it be best if Israel were to manufacture a thousand or so wildly inaccurate missiles and then fire them off in the general direction of Gaza City. Or one of Hama's rockets could manage to hit an Israeli nursery school at the wrong time (or the right time, depending upon how you look at it) and then the proportionality issue would be solved in one explosion. In bizarro world, Hamas is the good guy, and Israel is the bad guy- you know if you're talking to a resident of Htrae (Earth spelled backwards to those unfamiliar with Superman lore) because they'll believe this and cry about genocide or some such nonsense.

Yes, people are dying, and that is bad thing. Innocent civilians are being killed. But I wonder- how innocent are you when you support with your labor and taxes and comforting words the terrorist who is shooting random missiles at a peaceful country? Are you really 'innocent'? This debate is deep and complex, and gets to the very heart of the beast on conflict, war, and terrorism. Solving it will make the world a better place.

"Field of Dishonor" Book Review

Field of Dishonor, by David Weber, was a good book and continued the Honor Harrington series, but didn't wow me like the first two in the series did. There were no space battles, few gun fights, and a lot of secondary characters were introduced. It is a good read though, with interesting political conflicts and a couple of good and memorable scenes.

Early in the book there is a good part- the Kingdom of Manticore (a constitutional monarchy) has just defeated the Peoples Republic of Haven (a communist empire), and they have a good chance to build on their gains. But a group of politicians decides to be against the war for political purposes, and the end result is for the worse. The Opposition group opposes the use of force, believing that this is noble, and not just a gutless inability to fight evil. The Opposition believes that as long as someone else does the fighting, they can be against the war politically to prove their moral superiority over those who they think are beneath them. In the book, the Opposition is a bunch of communists and nobleman. The parallels to our world are striking.

It is a good book to pick up to continue the series, and if you haven't read any of Weber's books, pick up the first one, On Basilisk Station, and give it a read- you won't be disappointed.

What a Joke of a Nation

What a joke of a nation we live in- I mean, when an election is stolen so easily, and people don't even care. I'm talking about the Senate election between the joker Al Franken (joker not because he is funny, but because it is a joke that he is considered a legitimate candidate for public office) and Senator Norm Coleman.

Every year, I do the dutiful thing and spend a whole class day trying to convince my students that their vote does matter, that our elections are the most fair and uncorrupted in the world, and I battle their innate cynicism to try to install pride in our country. But then a situation like this one comes along, and makes a mockery of our election system. I mean, how in the world can Franken's attempt to be Senator be taken seriously when he argues for ballots found in people's cars to be counted, even when counting those ballots means that more people will vote for him than even live in the precinct? Even an foolish hypocrite crack-smoker like Franken knows that is bogus (and those aren't insults, they reference his policy proposals, his history of not paying employees minimum wage and dodging taxes, and his own autobiography description of doing crack).

If it is this easily to steal an election, what hope is there? I heard a rumor that ACORN is now getting federal funding- so now taxpayer money is used to steal elections at the same time phony election fraud goes uncommented on for a Senate seat. I wonder- do you even need a political resume any more? Maybe all you need is good lawyers and then you can steal an election without even making the pretense of winning votes? Good thing there are honest Democrats around blocking the Republicans shady attempts to steal elections, or else who knows how bad it would be? Oh wait, these are all Democrat attempts... but that doesn't fit the narrative...

UPDATE: From Bloomberg.com:

One sample ballot shows a filled-in circle for John McCain and Sarah Palin, indicating the voter’s intent to select the Republican candidates. In the Senate race, the circle next to Norm Coleman’s names is filled in, but there is a faint X through it. This might suggest that the voter intended to cross out, or negate, the vote cast for Coleman. Or it might indicate that the voter made an extra scribble when filling in the circle. That is why the ballot was disputed. In this case, the panel ruled that the vote wasn’t for Coleman because the X indicates intent to cancel the darkened circle.

Consider the next ballot, though, which is almost identical except for two changes. First, the filled-in circle that is crossed out is a potential vote for Franken. Second, the X is much larger and more obvious. And what did the canvassing board decide? It is a vote for Franken. Calling that ballot a vote for Franken is possible in isolation. But taken together, the two decisions are at odds.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! It is the time to spend with family and friends, and so there won't be any more posts until later this week. Take the time to step away from the bizzaro world that the United States has become, and enjoy the time by doing real things with real people that really matter. Don't let your mind be troubled with the accelerating fall of America- don't let yourself be depressed with the magic money and politically connected Scrooges who get it- and don't let yourself worry about the future for a country that values celebrities and nepotism more than hard work and common decency. It is instead time to marvel at the birth of Christ, time to sing songs and play games, time to give presents that bring joy to your loved ones, and time to believe in the true Christmas miracle, that god should love us so much as to let his child be born to live among us. Merry Christmas everyone!

New Business Model: Good Customer Service?

Is it me, or does customer service suck more every year? Hopefully that didn't sound like an old man complain- I mean that I personally feel that the service that goes with my purchases is getting steadily worse. And it's not just rude servers at a restaurant. It's going to Taco Bell and ordering a meal, and then asking to substitute for an item of lesser value, and being told no substitutions- I didn't buy the meal then, and have boycotted Taco Bell ever since. It's going to True Value and buying a 2-pack of lights, and then since they were out of the 2-packs grabbing two individual lights, and being told that I couldn't have the 2-pack price for 2 individual lights- never going to True Value again.

Customer service is the reason why I went go to Jared to buy jewelery, and was the reason why I went to the Ford dealership for all the work on my cars- but I've had a bad run there, so now have to experiment again with finding a good local shop. Where is reputation, loyalty, service in this new business world? Perhaps as our society becomes atomized by secularism and liberalism, and as capitalism is continually attacked, we lose sight of the beauty and joy of a buyer making a transaction with a seller- it is not something to attack, it is not something where someone is winning and the other losing- me buying a product should make me feel good and you feel good- and instead, we both feel angry lately because of 'the system', and that's not right.

Oh well, happy holidays!

Rezko's Lawyer Owns Obama's House?

I'm always fasinated by conspiracies- not because they I buy them, but because I like to take them out and look at them and see if they hold up in the light of day. As I wrote earlier regarding the controversy of whether or not Obama fufills the qualitification of being a natural born citizen (see my post Can you Smell what Barack is Cooking?) , if there was no fire then there shouldn't be all this smoke. Obama seems to be at the center of other controveries too- for example, I wrote here about Obama's Draft Registration Card Raises Serious Questions.

Then, as I was bumming around on the internet, I came across this little fun fact- apparently, according to the assessment records for Cook County, Obama doesn't own the house that he used to live in- the house is owned by a man named William Miceli. This man is a lawyer employed by Rezko, and Obama formerly worked with him. Odd that Obama wouldn't own this house, but it really is that odd, because you might remember that the way that Obama bought this house in the first place was by using fraud, deception, and illegal government kickbacks to Rezko, which is why he is in prision.

Through the wonder of the internet and copy machines and scan machines, the truth could be now known- that Obama is renting his house from the lawyer of a felon. That felon got government kickbacks- and Obama, a former government official, is living in his house? Smells like corruption to me.

If this is true, and if you doubt it email me your evidence, then it looks like Obama is further in trouble, because he was deducting his mortgage payments on his tax returns, and you can't do that for a house that you don't own.

Is there any fire behind this smoke? Is it reasonable to ask questions about this, considering the fact that many people associated with Chicago politics are shady and corrupt, and that Obama has had dealings now with several people who are going to prision for corruption? I think so. Committing mortgage fraud and tax fraud are crimes still in this country, whether they are committed by Obama or Nixon.

UPDATE: Days later, the World Net Daily picks up the scent and is on this one- I wonder how long before the MSM gets involved? Here is what the WND wrote:

WND confirmed the tax bill for the Obama home is mailed to Miceli, not to Obama or the Northern Trust account through which Obama has claimed the home was purchased. Records from the Cook County Treasurer's Office give the PIN number for the Obama property as 20-11-115-037-0000 and list Miceli as the person who receives Obama's property tax invoice by mail.

And here is the commentary over at Vox Propoli, very similar to mine:

So, who really did buy the house? Who owns it now? It's certainly possible that there's an innocent explanation for why Rezko's lawyer should be paying the property taxes on Obama's house, but something smells very, very fishy indeed in Cook County.

A Little Gun History

With the news that U.S. Senate hopeful Caroline Kennedy supports restoring the ban on assault weapons and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley saying that he wants to put into place a comprehensive gun ban for the city of Chicago, here is a little bit of gun history:

• In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control. From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• Germany established gun control in 1938 and from 1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend themselves were rounded up and exterminated.
• China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to 1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975 to 1977, one million educated' people, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated
• Guatemala established gun control in 1964. From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.
• Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971 to 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

What is the lesson here, boys and girls? Good luck Washington DC and Seattle and Los Angeles- I hope your new gun control laws make the world a better place, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

Is Dumbing Down in Schools Purpose Driven?

In my last post, I complained about the use of jargon in education, and speculated that one of the reasons why education in the United States is becoming increasingly poor is the increasing reliance on jargon. As I said, what makes my teaching strong is my rejection of the state-promoted jargon. Read the whole post here. At the time of posting though, I didn't attribute any motive to this.

One of my brothers responded to my post be emailing me and bringing to my attention that the use of jargon and the dumbing down of our students might be not just the work of mindless idiots or misguided government bureaucrats, but rather a plot by elites to dumb us down to control us better. This is not the wild speculations of a raving lunatic- these were the ideas of CS Lewis, as written about in the Abolition of Man, or found online here.

In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Maybe the point is to make us stupid, so that we are able to be controlled more easily? After all, if evil can convince us that it is right to not read, that it is right to mock those who learn, that is is okay to engage in sex with whomever you want, that it is moral to take from those who work for their property and give to those who do not, then right has become wrong, evil has become good, and our natural inclination for freedom and liberty becomes an unnatural desire to go against the wishes of the state. If we become less smart, if we become less educated, if we master the shapes of empty jargon instead of the real of knowledge, then maybe we can become controlled more easily?

Another reader of mine, Howard Towt, also suggest that this might be a plot by liberal Democrats to dumb us down to control us more easily, pointing to evidence in Colorado of teachers inspiring their students to write letters to conservatives about how they are killing the environment, rather than teaching them how to read and write and think critically. He has a whole book on this theme online- check it out here.

Maybe, but it won't work. You can't stop the signal- it is mans natural desire to throw off his chains, not to put them on, whether they be the real chains of slavery or the mental chains of teacher jargon.

Mediocre Teacher + Jargon = Modern Teaching

I read with interest reports on education from other countries, especially if those countries have advanced farther into this giant experiment we now called public education. I look with interest on how progressive they have become, at how modern they have become, at how poor the education has become, and at how stupid the students have become.

For example, I just read this post and took the title and main ideas from it.

One aspect of education that has always pissed me off is the extreme reliance on jargon in the education world. Because teachers study only education (high school to education degree with few credits in other subjects in college to student teaching to education), they become very specialized in it, and forget how to teach math, English, spelling, reading, social studies, gym, music, or anything else. Instead, many teachers cloak their extreme ignorance of real knowledge behind made-up words that supposedly mean stuff- they turn insular and defensive and use alien languages to hide the fact that they are morons.

Not all teachers do this- there are good teachers out there. The truth is that the good teachers are the ones that don't use the jargon, the ones that didn't get indoctrinated in their education colleges, and who still know what the real world is like. They transcend the education world, and don't get sucked into it.

For example, in England, spelling isn't spelling any more- it has become “decoding” and “encoding”. A teacher now will spend time learning about these concepts and mastering what decoding and encoding is, instead of learning how to teach spelling. They will teach children how to decode and encode print, but forget that they are supposed to be teaching students how to read.

Bad teachers will rigorously apply the rules handed down by ministers and officials to groups of baffled children, and stick rigidly to any script they are given, carefully ticking all the little boxes of jargon that they are supposed to do, and it is the kids who suffer the whole time.

My administrator asked me in my last review if I was designing my lessons to appeal to a broad selection of learners of different intelligences and whose learning styles are differentiated. I think I am- I have the highest scores compared to other teachers of the same subjects on our common tests, I have the highest AP scores in the district, and I have students transferring into my class. Do I really care what different intelligences are? Not really. What exactly is a differentiated learner? Not quite sure.

In a way, I feel I am a better teacher because I reject the jargon the state preaches at me.

Salvation, the Movie

After I just got done ripping movies (see post The Day that Movies All Sucked), I see this trailer, and get goosebumps about how good its going to be. Enjoy.

The Coming Conservative Ascendancy

As an elected official, it is my job to rebuild the Republican Party- but you would be surprised at how many Republicans don't want to to rebuild it. When I stood up for a higher party position, the old timers, who oversaw a party that lost the White House and Congress, won positions, and the next generation conservatives, like me, lost (read more about this event here). That's not the way to rebuild the party- that might be a way to win an occasional seat now and then, but let's go back to the Reagan mold of totally remaking our country along conservative principles. Let's fall into line behind the conservative Net Generation.

The DC Examiner posted this excellent article called "The Coming Conservative Ascendancy" a month ago, and I want to bring your attention to it:

NetGeners are the future of the conservative movement because they are the heart and muscle of an historic opportunity to restore and reinvigorate our ideals of individual freedom and limited government. The Net Generation are the approximately 81 million people born between 1977 and 1997.

These eight norms are the dominant values Tapscott found among Net Geners: freedom, customization, scrutiny, integrity, collaboration, entertainment, speed and innovation.

Conservatism is all about individual freedom, decentralizing government and empowering local communities to solve their own problems. Net Geners, Tapscott says, "are natural collaborators, this is the relationship generation." A generation that expects to be free, to be able to customize and to be able to scrutinize authority is also a generation that is discovering a multitude of ways in which the Internet empowers what used to be called the "thousand points of light."

Those principles are important, and I myself hope that my blog reflects them.

Vietnam War Presentation

Last week the US History teachers were teaching about Vietnam, and decided to make it more exciting for the students by inviting in some real Vietnam War veterans to speak to the students. I tell you, the students were really excited for this- they were talking in the classroom before the presentation about how it would be great to see some real heroes, about how it would be a great chance to learn real history and not the modified liberalized version they usually hear. So the students all crowded into the auditorium, full of excited chatter.

And then the speakers will come out to speak to the students. The opening line of the presentation was "We support the troops, but that doesn't mean we support war." It went downhill after there- the speakers were all anti-Vietnam war protesters and anti-Vietnam war veterans.

As the presentation went on, the background chatter and attentive looks on students faces slowly faded away, to be replaced by the usual blank vacant stare that students assume on being brainwashed by leftism. Their natural mental defenses took over, and they began to reject the version of events presented to them by shutting down their mind, the only defense that students who are forced to be there have. Unable to run away physically, their mind flees, and the life fades from their eyes, to be replaced by a glazed look of indifference. I myself went through this process listening to the presentation.

The speakers talked about how the Vietnam War was wrong, about how the nobility was in protesting it, and how students need to always end wars and agitate against any war that we are engaged in. They talked about how it was patriotic to be against America, about how it was right to be wrong, and about how the real heroes were not our troops engaged in battle, but those engaged in battle against our troops.

After the presentation, as students quietly shuffled out, waking up to talk about football or friends and put the bad memory of the liberal brainwashing behind them, I was furious. I approached the teachers who had organized the event to confront them about the speakers they had found, about the impact that it had on the students, and the obvious lack of balance- and found that the speakers who organized it were congratulating themselves with how it went. Their eyes had assumed the fevered cast of a convert who has heard their spiritual leader, and I knew that they would not understand my points, so I turned and left, to once more rejoin the students in the halls and talk of friends and football.

UPDATE: After reading this post, The Designated Conservative asks several important questions-

Who are we as taxpayers that we continue to subsidize a public school system that has failed so completely at responding to the changing needs of our children? Who are we as a nation that we allow such mediocrity and shallowness of thought to be passed on to our children in our public schools? Who are we as parents that we accept the indoctrination of our children by zealous partisans under the guise of education? Who are we as a conservative movement that we continue to meekly yield to the left the high ground of teaching the coming generation about the true principles upon which our country was founded? - that is life, liberty, freedom, and limited government. And who are we as a community that we accept such shoddy and outmoded teaching as described by A Conservative Teacher?

The hearts and minds of our children are indeed under assault every day, from television, to the internet, to school, and if you don't wake up to this fact, you may lose your child to the wasteland of tyranny. Keep reading my blog often for more updates from the world of education.

More Thoughts on the Auto Loan Bailout

Here are some more thoughts on the auto loan bailout, going a little bit further than my last foray into this subject did.

My students keep asking me where I stand on the auto loan situation, and it's a tough position to put me in- I don't want to bias their thoughts, and it's not really about me in my classroom, it's about critical thinking and thought. When pressed though, I tell them that I don't think that the auto companies should get a bailout.

First, I also don't think that the banks should have bailed out either, and by bailing them out, Congress created this whole auto loan mess themselves. Second, the reason I'm not in favor of the bailout is out of principle- it is not fair and morally right that some companies are allowed to go bankrupt by the government, and others are saved with loans. Why one company and not another? The only arguments I ever hear in favor of the auto loan is the the auto companies affect a lot of people- that's true, but if you gave out loans of $1 million to 25,000 small companies (total of $25 billion, same as auto companies), that would probably affect a lot of people too.

And also, why now? Why let past companies fail, and then come in and rescue one now? Were the other companies in the past less deserving- were their works less important than the workers now? My grandpa worked for a steel company, and the US government let it go under- why didn't it rescue that company and provide money for my grandpa's pension and healthcare? Why rescue GM now- because it has better lawyers and lobbyists? That's not how America works- that is how corrupt regimes work.

One more thought on the auto bailout- and that's the role politics play in this whole process. The media is making the Republicans out to be the bad guys for stopping the auto loan. Here is a connection that I just made though- the states that are hurt the most by the auto companies going under are Midwestern states where Democrats are thriving, and the main people hurt by the auto companies going under are Democrats as well, specifically the labor unions who donated $2 million to Democrats last election and only $12K to Republicans. Maybe the chickens are coming home to roost after all. For more on this line of thinking, read Daniel Howes good article today in the Detroit News.

Role of the President: Commander in Chief

As a teacher, eventually I get to a unit on the President (next week my civics students will be on this unit). One of the ways that I teach this unit is by going through all the roles that the President can be said to play in our political system (or the different hats that he wears, if that helps you). Let's take a look at one of these roles today, the role of Commander in Chief. Let's talk about this role, and then evaluate Bush and Obama in their ability to do this role.

Even though the President of the United States is not a member of our armed services, in our country, the President is commander in chief of the military. He controls (primarily through the executive cabinet-level Department of Defense) a military that is very powerful- one of the biggest in numbers, one of the best in training, and certainly the most well-financed (the US accounts for over 50% of all military spending in world). This means that the President is in position to control a very powerful military.

Prior to becoming President, Bush was a member of the military. You can debate the quality of his service, but he did serve, so he was in that environment, and learned the principles of warfare and the honor of sacrifice. He handled military hardware, and was comfortable around their use. His ability to fulfil this part of the Commander in Chief role was not the best, and certainly not as good as McCain's, but it is considerably more so than Obama, who has no military experience, knowledge, or interest in the military to speak of. Again, Obama has little to no experience or known abilities in this part of the role.

Although most President's are rather hands off with the actual strategy, that doesn't mean they have to be- LBJ, FDR, and Lincoln all directed battlefield strategy. The President has the authority to send troops in to other countries for limited amounts of time (limited by War Powers Act, he needs congressional authorization for more than 60 days). The President is in charge of the purchasing of weapons, such as Reagan focusing on SDI, and the President is in charge of the selling of weapons, letting some states purchase surplus/used military hardware while other states can not.

Prior to becoming President, Bush was an officer in the military, so did learn how to order troops into battle, and must have studied or learned about some aspects of this. Again, his ability to fulfil this part of the Commander in Chief role was not the best, and certainly not as good as McCain's, but it is considerably more so than Obama, who has no military experience, knowledge, or interest in the military to speak of. Again, Obama has little to no experience or known abilities in this part of the role.

Lastly, as Commander-in-Chief, our President can be expected in times of great crisis or war to assume emergency powers, such as issuing orders to regulate industry, set price controls, ration food, or take other actions. This is a tough thing to do, but you want a President who is willing to break an egg every now and then to make an omelet- during WWII or the Civil War, civil liberties were broken, but for the good of our nation. Can the President make these tough calls? Can he resist the call of too much power, and not become a dictator, and battle with himself about how much power the President should have?

Bush has continually struggled with this- in that he has tried to fight the War on Terror while keeping us as free as possible. You might contend that he sacrificed too much- but he was willing and able to make the tough calls he thought were necessary for keeping our country great during times of crisis. Obama has denied that we are at war, and has failed to answer the call for every crisis that our country has recently faced, displaying an inability to make tough decisions. One wonder what happens if we do go to war- would he be weak and indecisive, or overcompensate by wielding too much power?

Just some thoughts to think about today.

Newsweek Cover Attack

A lot of people are talking about the recent cover story (not opinion piece) in Newsweek (that is supposed to cover the news), which was a one-sided all out endorsement of gay marriage called "Our Mutal Joy." This article claims that what the Bible teaches about love argues for gay marriages, not against them.

Gay marriage is an interesting topic. When I was wandering around the internet, I came across this blog, which seems to describe a good position to take on it:

As a libertarian, I was unfamiliar with why people thought the state should define marriage, much less why it should be defined in such a way as to limit it to a certain number or sex of people. And what I found is that there is an unbelievable wealth of argument in favor of traditional marriage. And most of it is based (no, not in the fevered imaginations of what Hollywood and the media elite think religious conservatives believe) but in Natural Law. In this way of thinking, society defines marriage as a sexual union between a husband and wife, based around the ideas that babies are created via intercourse, that procreation is necessary for the survival of society and that babies need fathers as well as mothers.

As the years have gone on, I've also decided that the Bible might just have some good ideas in it after all, and here is a passage from the Bible that is of interest here, found in the Gospel of Matthew:

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”

It appears to me that there are valid and honest positions expressed here- positions that many people agree with and which must be treated with respect, not mocked, as the Newsweek cover story does:

Let’s try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

Let's try for a minute to take liberal positions at their word, and think about the kind of respect that they have for people who share different opinions. Is it any wonder that According to a story in Folio yesterday, Newsweek is considering slashing up its rate of publication from 2.6 million to 1.0 million, because people don't want to read liberal attacks in a general news magazine? Take a look here for more analysis on this. Just something for you to think about.

The Day that Movies All Sucked

Admittedly, I haven't seen the new remake of the movie The Day the Earth Stood still. What I know I read in a review here. But I have noticed that movies increasingly are environmentally friendly and liberal, and also have increasingly sucked, and there is probably a correlation there. Seriously, the plot of this movie is that humans are a disease on "Mother Earth", aliens are friends with Mother Earth, and they come down here to wipe us out. But a couple of nice people convince the aliens that we are already doing a good job of that ourselves (one of the heroes is John Cleese's character who won a Nobel Prize for research into "biological altruism", and another is Jennifer Connelly who is an astro-biologist), and so they realize that humans are committing suicide as a race by adopting the Green Religion, and so decide to leave, after smashing the most obnoxious elements of capitalism. This is the stuff that passes for movies now days?

Feds Flex Muscle at Automakers

Today's Detroit News carried a good article by Daniel Howes on the loans for the auto companies, and focused on what I think is the larger implication for the industry and the nature of government in our country. Here are some highlights:

This is what you get, Detroit, when the government becomes your lender of last resort -- a business plan designed to score political points, which means no bonuses for the top execs and no corporate aircraft (leased or owned) for as long as Detroit's beleaguered automakers owe the public money, which could be three years but probably more.

Also required is compliance with federal and state fuel efficiency requirements to develop alternative technology vehicles, no dividends for shareholders, restructured balance sheets, and no legal challenges to strict state greenhouse gas emissions rules. And, my personal favorite, agreement to assess the viability of converting SUV plants to the production of buses and rail cars for use by public transit agencies.

No wonder Ford Motor Co. doesn't want any part of the $15 billion morass taking shape in Washington. It gives new meaning to the term "loan shark," however predictable it all is, considering the political agendas inside Congress and, second, the abject financial weakness of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

I'm not sure which is worse: A federal government presumptuous enough to think it can transform one of the country's most complex industries in a little more than three months. Or one readily prepared to use its emergency financial power to shape an industry and steer it toward political ends that may or may not reflect market demand.

Each step in this process feels more strange than the last -- a first round of congressional hearings that gave new meaning to the term "clueless Detroit," a second round long on detail and even longer on groveling, stunning ignorance in Washington of an industry that accounts for millions of jobs, an uninterested White House and, now, a bailout bill that reads as if is was drafted by Greenpeace and Soviet central planning.

The congressional committees that wrote a $700 billion financial bailout package, lent $150 billion to AIG and pumped $20 billion into Citigroup demand detailed plans from the automakers and four days of hearings for what's shaping up to be $15 billion in loans.

Or the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Chris Dodd, D-Conn., suggests Sunday that GM Chairman Rick Wagoner should "go" and make way for new leadership because the current one led GM off a cliff.

This from the senator who blocked reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac three years ago, was their top recipient of campaign cash, pocketed more than $300,000 in contributions from PACs and executives tied to Citigroup and then spearheaded the legislative effort to craft the financial rescue package.

Yet in the world where Detroit's future lies, such irony doesn't matter. Perception, politics and calculated remarks masquerading as offhanded ones do.

There are some really good points in here. My person favorite piece of analysis was on how the loan bill that Congress is writing looks more like it was produced by a combination of Greenpeace and the Soviet Union. There is actually a lot in there. Think about what Congress is bribing companies to do with taxpayer money- submit the the watermellons of state control. Our government is using our money to put in place a regulatory structure that would make the Nazi's or Soviet's envious, and what is even more sad is that citizens are clammoring for it to be done. When Congress passes this deal with the devil bill, everyone will clap, and the Republicans and people who voted no will look like the bad guys. Bizarro world strikes again!

The only thing that provides me any comfort is that I am not the only one totally pissed off by this whole process. Over at this blog, the blogger is so upset he has basically shut down posting in the face of this relentless environmental-fascist legislation. Is anyone else out there as pissed as me? Email me and let me know that I'm not alone!

Biden's New Economic Advisor Writes Dear Diary for Daily Kos

Looks like the first Kossack has been named to the new administration--if you don't count Barack Obama himself!

Upon hearing that Vice President-elect Joe "Pay Attention to Me!" Biden has added the new post of Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to the Vice President to the VP's Office, I grew curious. I then read that he named today Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute and a member of the CBO's advisory committee, to this post. Interested, I checked out his wikipedia page.

Now, you can do your own research or email me if you have more information on this guy, but from what I can gather, he is a regular columnist for the American Prospect online, and he has published op-eds in the New York Times and the Washington Post.[8] He has also written diaries on the Daily Kos.

If you want to read some of his garbage, here it is.

Farewell Speech Drinking Game

This is the first week of the legislature's lame-duck session, and former State Representative Leon Drolet from the MI Taxpayers Alliance took the time to invent this fun drinking game based on the lame-duck "farewell" speeches delivered by outgoing lawmakers who are completing their final term in office. This game is focused on Michigan legislators, but it could easily be a game you play with elected officials at any level of government:

Wanna play the politician "farewell speech" drinking game? Tune in to Michigan Government TV and watch the speeches. Here's how it goes:

1. The outgoing lawmaker opens his/her speech with reverent, almost religious, statements about how great the institution of the legislature is. They always use words like, "honorable", "cherished", "esteemed" and such. Everyone do a shot.

2. Next, each politician absolutely MUST, without fail, go on to disparage the citizen-imposed constitutional term-limit amendment. Nothing is more important and popular among House chamber members than this. Do another shot.

3. The speechmaker laments the demise of the great statesmen from the halcyon, pre-term limit days of Camelot. In those glorious days, politicians confined themselves to selfless public service resulting in brilliant leadership responsible for everything good in prosperous Michigan's past. The longer these noble statesmen of old held and consolidated political power, the more selfless and brilliant their leadership became. Of course, those meddling citizens with their damn term limits law ruined everything! Do shot.

4. Now, the politician must ALWAYS thank some fellow House member from the opposing party whom hey worked with to create some new law or regulation. This is a warm, fuzzy way of nobly appearing "above the fray" and creating an overall "team spirit" within the political class. Another shot.

5. Finally, a bonus shot if the outgoing House member breaks down and cries, and is surrounded and hugged by colleagues. Like someone died.

Still standing? You'll need the booze in order to withstand the jaw-dropping detachment from reality on display in the House chamber.

The "sucky speech" syndrome is symptomatic of a disease that infects the ego, creating a false sense of self-importance that strikes both Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are expected to worship big government, central planning and politicians as saints. Infected Republicans forget that they're elected to restrain government, so that everyday citizens can lead Michigan forward - each in their own individual, productive ways. They forget that government's primary responsibility is to serve by protecting the liberty of citizens - not to "lead" them with new programs and such.

Conservatives, libertarians and other supporters of constitutionally limited government can help future politicians avoid the sucky speech syndrome by doing our part to keep the political process in its' proper context. We should not deify the institutions of government. We should not teach young people that elective office is some noble calling. America's founders, the real statesmen from our past, understood that government was like fire; something to fear and handle with extreme caution.

As a conservative teacher, I agree with the idea that I should not be teaching students that elected office is some noble calling, but on the other hand, I don't want to continually run down public officials either. The analogy of fire is a good one- fire is not to be feared or run from (unless you're some new super-progressive environmental nut), but can burn you if you're not careful- and government is similar to that- public officials are to be respected and understand, but not deified and idolized. That's a tough balance to strike, and is always a challenge for me in the classroom.

Designated Conservative

Today I checked out a neat site called Designated Conservative. The post that drew me there was a very good roundup of what is going on with Obama's birth certificate. I know that I wrote about it here, but this site pointed out a couple things that I didn't fully bring up.

First, if President-elect Obama was born in Kenya (as rumors and Kenya’s sealing of Obama’s records suggest), then he is ineligible to serve as President.

Second, apparently this blogger thinks that the Supreme Court will very soon take up this issue. This is interesting- I still don't think they'll take it up. The Constitution is quickly becoming ignored in our society, and soon we will be a society not based on laws, but on men, and that's why the Supreme Court will just let the fact that Obama might meet the Constitutional requirements for President slide.

The Anti-Obama Campaign that Didn't Happen

While I was wandering around the internet today I came across this interesting piece in Time Magazine called "The Anti-Obama Campaign that Didn't Happen." You know, to be perfectly honest, I'm still a little stunned that a relative unknown with almost no political experience, no major leadership shown ever, and questionable associations just won the Presidency. The question still needs to be asked- what happened? Well, apparently McCain purposefully ran a bad campaign.

Even after one of his best ads was about how Obama was simply an empty celebrity, McCain still choose not to follow that up with more plays on the celebrity angle. McCain refused to bring up Obama's associations with Ayers, Wright, or Rezko. McCain refused to connect Obama to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This line from McCain's main advertising advisor Fred Davis in particular annoys me:

"One of the big hands that I felt was tied behind my back was [that] so many things — like [Obama's record on] crime — you would logically do were perceived as 'Oh, we can't do that. That was playing the race card,'"

Next time, play it, and let it be called 'the race card', and deal with that. McCain ran a scared campaign, and got thumped because of it, deservedly so. You've got to want to be President- and Obama wanted it more, apparently.

Davis said:

He says the campaign also agonized over the music in the ads, paying special care not to play drum-heavy tracks that could be seen as an African tribal reference.

You've got to be kidding me. Who was talking to Davis and McCain, telling them this stuff? The article ends on this note- 'Obama won because he was the better guy' or 'Obama won because the stars were aligned'. This is garbage- Obama won because McCain was the wrong candidate and ran a bad campaign where he purposefully avoided attacking his opponent. And America is going to suffer for that.

The Tale of Boris' Goat

From Thomas Sowell comes this piece about an old Russian fable and its implications for politics and businesses today:

An old Russian fable tells of two poor peasants - Boris, who had a goat, and Ivan, who didn't. One day, Ivan came upon a strange-looking lamp; when he rubbed it, a genie appeared. She told him that she could grant him just one wish, and it could be anything he wanted. Ivan said, "I want Boris' goat to die."

This fable may tell us something painful about many Americans today, when so many people are preoccupied with the pay of corporate CEOs. It isn't that the CEOs' pay affects them so much. If every oil-company executive in America agreed to work for nothing, that wouldn't be enough to lower the price of a gallon of gasoline by a dime.

But too many people are like Ivan, who wanted Boris' goat to die.

It isn't the general public that singles out CEOs for so much attention. Politicians and the media have focused on business leaders, and the public has been led along, like sheep. The logic is simple: Demonize those whose place or power you plan to usurp.

Politicians who want the power to micro-manage business and the economy know that demonizing those who run businesses is the opening salvo in the battle to take over their roles. Those who want more power know that giving the people somebody to hate and fear is the key.

This isn't just a question of which elites win out in a tug of war in America. It is the people at large who have the most at stake. We have just seen one of the biggest demonstrations of what happens in an economy when politicians tell businesses what decisions to make.

For years, using the powers of the Community Reinvestment Act and other regulatory powers, along with threats of legal action, politicians have pressured banks and other lending institutions into lending to people they would not lend to otherwise.

Yet, when all this blows up in our faces and the economy turns down, what is the answer? To have more economic decisions made by politicians, because they choose to say that "deregulation" is the cause of our problems.

No matter what happens, for politicians it is "heads I win and tails you lose." If we keep listening to them and their media allies, we are all going to keep losing big. Keeping our attention focused on CEO pay - Boris' goat - is all part of this game. We are all goats if we fall for it.

Sowell has a remarkable talent of making material relatable to us all. It appears that the Democrat's hatred of business and profit is going to lead to the death of one of the Big Three- see this story. This will cause thousands of union labors to have no job at all, and evaporate the pensions of many other good union men. I've always wondered why people vote Democrat, including union employees and teachers. They always think that they'll be better off when Democrats are in charge, but then they all lose their jobs.

Teachers are the same way- back when the teacher-hated Republican John Engler was in charge of Michigan, they all got raises and there were many jobs. Now that the teacher-loved Democrat Granhom is in charge, they get pay cutes and lose jobs. They didn't want to improve their own situation by voting Democrat- they just wanted to kill others goats.

Can you Smell what Barack is Cooking?

My mom passed this one on to me- apparently a group called the We the People Foundation has purchased a full-page ad in The Chicago Tribune today and Wednesday, calling their add an "Open Letter to Mr. Obama." It's described by the foundation as an opportunity for Obama to once and for all clarify whether or not he is in fact a natural born citizen of the United States, and thus able to fulfill the 'natural born citizen' clause of the Constitution of the United States of America.

Take a look at the story here at AOL News.

Although most people feel that Obama's birth certificate is authentic, there are a lot of suspicious things swirling around it that do lead people to question its legitimacy. For example, the certificate claims he was born in Hawaii- if that is so, then how come the Hawaii Dept of Health won't confirm Obama's assertion? How come there are legal affidavits stating Obama was actually born in Kenya. How come Obama's grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended his birth in Kenya? And how come the Obama campaign posted on the Internet an "unsigned, forged and thoroughly discredited, computer-generated birth form created in 2007"?

If there was no fire and he is clearly naturally born in America, then there shouldn't be all this smoke. Now, it's probably not a full blaze- he probably is eligible to be President through his mother- but there is probably a spark here- doubts about her citizenship, doubts about her marriage, doubts about when he did acquire citizenship, etc.

There have been people who have brought court challenges over this, hoping Obama would just produce an undoctored original version of his birth certificate to reporters. But he won't, and the court challenges are thrown out of court because asking people to follow the Constitution is considered 'frivolous' by liberal judges. Other similar lawsuits have also been filed.

Here is a Q&A with the We The People Foundation Chairman Bob Schulz:

Q.) What sort of reaction have you received so far to the ads?
A.) We have experienced significant media interest from primarily talk shows and newspapers, including some well-known media entities. We have hoped that our ads would spur public debate on this topic and hopefully, this may have begun. In the end, there is no practical reason why Obama refuses to produce his original birth certificate. He is seeking the Office of President and has a duty to provide evidence that he meets the explicit requirements established by the Constitution.

Do I think there is anything here? Maybe, I do. Obama also falsified his draft card- I wrote about that already in my post here- Obama's Draft Registration Card Raises Serious Questions. Make your own calls on this stuff based on what you read and find out.

Oh, the title of the post refers to the fact that I think Barack is cooking the books and forging fake draft cards and birth certificates. Plus, I was just reading a post about how Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock) might run for Governor of Florida in 2014. Purely a wild unsubstantiated rumor, but I for one want to see him give the peoples elbow to big government.

Orwell's Children

There have been a couple situations in my school over the last month about having pictures of various politicians in school. What prompted this was the sudden appearance of several large Obama pictures in teachers classrooms, days after the election. Students and parents were concerned about having their children gaze on images of our great leader every day, to which those teachers replied that there were pictures of Bush in other teachers classrooms.

The pictures of Obama are meant to be gazed at in worship. The picture of Bush usually serves as a focal point for 2 minutes of hate. In this spirit, I direct you to Bruce Walker's piece over at the American Thinker. It is really good. Here is it in a somewhat edited form:

It has been sixty years since George Orwell wrote his chilling dystopian classic, 1984.

(It is possible for) Americans like you and I, (to) become so decoupled from reality and morality that they could be led to surrender everything, even their lives, intoxicated only with the venom of modern Leftism, (and become) Orwell's Children.

We are drifting into the sort of horrific future he described. Too many of us for comfort or solace have become just like the denizens of Jonestown: Orwell's children -- a new generation of creature enraged into constant militancy against eternal enemies, oblivious to the notion of a Blessed Creator, melded into the consciousness of the party hive, divorced from history, hypnotized by images, inoculated against reason, stripped of family, and existing only to serve the cause.

Orwell did not write his book in a vacuum. 1984 describes the Soviet Union (the book describes Stalinist Russia so well so that subjects of that evil empire wondered when Orwell had lived there, though he had just described what he saw from the outside.) 1984 also describes Nazism and every other odious totalitarianism, which its secret police and propaganda machine and atomized subjects. But Orwell was very much also writing about the democratic western nations. His book was a warning of what could happen here. Oceania, the only totalitarian superstate actually descried in 1984, was largely America and the British Empire.

There were specific elements necessary for nations with a heritage of freedom to slide into the most absolute and abject slavery. These elements existed in Nazi Germany, they existed in Soviet Russia, and they exist in our free democracies today. What are the characteristics of the Orwellian state?

Start with God. He must go. The great Russian novelists knew this: "Without God, everything is permitted." In Oceania, God simply does not exist. The Nazis bragged that they would raise a generation "...without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments." The Soviet persecuted anyone who followed the God of Jews and Christians. God is hounded in our world today. A generation of Orwell's Children are growing up without thinking about God at all or thinking that God is a silly idea cherished by sillier old fogies.

Truth must go too. Nazis embraced the "Big Lie." Soviets denied that honesty, per se, mattered. In Orwell's Oceania, the Inner Party members learn to even lie to themselves and to hold utterly contradictory beliefs at the same time. Truth and honesty have little meaning to Orwell's Children in our world. All truth is relative, all honesty a sham.

Language must be brought to heel. The Nazis did this by inventing meaningless words like "Aryan science." Marxism foisted upon us words like "capitalism," which means nothing at all but which has so infected our minds that we reflexively use this silly nonsense word instead of freedom. Politically correct language is rampant. We come to view words like "discriminate" as inherently evil, and other words like "viable fetal mass" have replaced the reality of murdered babies.

Image and symbols replace words. Hitler, whose disciples seldom recalled what Hitler said, always recalled the raw imagery of their leader. Stalin's portrait was as inescapable in the Soviet Union as the portrait of Big Brother in Oceania. We live in a word of symbols and images. Conservatives succeed in books and talk radio, media that deal in words. Orwell's Children live in the realm of symbols and images.

The books of the Nazis and Soviets were unreadable tomes like Mein Kampf, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (the two Nazi "masterpieces") or vast empty volumes of Marxist-Leninism. Is it an accident that the giant who most resisted this evil, Solzhenitsyn, was a devout Christian who mastered the written word better than any stooge of Hitler or the Politburo ever could?

Immutable oppressors are the final nasty element in dystopia. Hitler blamed Jews for everything. Stalin blamed kulaks and his enemies in the party for everything. Subjects of Orwell's Oceania saw Emmanuel Goldstein as the eternal, immutable enemy of the party. Today there is a drearily predictable list of oppressors. Christians, men, white people, the "rich" (whatever that is supposed to mean), America, and Israel are oppressors and nothing can ever change that.

Orwell even told us, by name, the professionals who would lead us into the nightmare of 1984: "sociologists," "teachers," "bureaucrats," "journalists," "professional politicians," "scientists," "trade union organizers," "publicity experts," and "technicians." (The term "community organizer" was unknown to him.) Those who enslave were those who taught students, who created the news, who sat in the halls of government power, and who defined official "truth" (at least truth de jour.)

Orwell's Children live among us now, not in tiny numbers in weird Marxist cults like Jim Jones' People Temple, but as leaders of Congress, as the establishment of academia, as the producers of news and entertainment, as the administrators of public schools, as the "experts" in a thousand myriad and odd fields of putative "expertise." They infatuate our bored children with the only reality and the only diversion that many can find. They wait for the rest of us to grow older and to die.

Will these children inherit the earth? History, not theology, has shown a single defense against the spreading contagion of Orwell's Children. Solzhenitsyn found God in the godless Gulag. Michael Power in early 1939 wrote: "In the Christianity of the German people, the National Socialist has found the one enemy it could not vanquish" - and Christians in Germany, alone, chose to voluntarily seek death before selling their souls to Nazism.

The Jewish refusniks proved indigestible to the brutal Soviet police state. When all else failed the Jewish people under the Nazis, devout Jews like my wife's mother clung to the Blessed Creator and survived the Holocaust. God can touch us all. God can protect us all from evil (not from harm - we all suffer and we all die - but from the much greater danger of the sort of evil Orwell described.)

Education, science, technological gadgetry, good medical care - all of this can not stop us from sliding into a massive Jonestown, a realized Oceania, a place marked by Dante's grim caution "Abandon hope, all you who enter here." We are all anchored in belief, but it is what we believe that matters. We can believe in the lies of Big Brother, which change each day with the needs of the party or we can believe in the truth of a living God. We can become the children of Orwell or the special creatures of God. Everything -- our nation, our world, our families, our communities -- flows from that choice.

I'm so glad I read 1984 recently- I actually hadn't read it until a couple years ago- in high school, the advanced students didn't read Animal Farm and 1984, and instead read highly intelligent liberal drivel. But my brother and I often talk about these books nowdays, as America sadly descends into the fascism and socialism that was described in them.

UPDATE: One of my brother's disagree's with me- he says it won't be 1984 that we see, but rather a Brave New World- happy, fluffy, smiley-faced fascism. This actually fits with an earlier post of mine called "Happy-Nicing Ourselves into Dictatorship."- Maybe there is something here- doped up kids, random sex, mindless entertainment, no morality or religion. Just gnostic overlords ruling over us stupid masses- a heartless, ghastly prison, with walls painted up with bright murals of MLK and Mother Earth singing kumbya. Kind of like the school I teach at right now!

Beware of the Church of Climate Alarm

The issue of Global Warming has sort of faded away right now- probably because it is the middle of winter, and it is very cold, and when it is cold, it is a tough sell to convince people that the whole planet is uncontrollably warming because of human actions and the only solution is massive government control over every aspect of our lives. Don't worry though- when summer gets really hot, idiots will parrot this idea again and government will take away more of our liberty.

I've written about this twice before- my first post was called Global Warming Melted my Ice Cream Cone, and mocked Global Warming Believers by using some science (in this case, the fact that the ice sheet in Greenland melting was not due to my driving an SUV but rather the emergence of a hot spot of liquid hot magma emerging under Greenland). In this post, I hint that I think that global warming is less about science and more about pagan beliefs in mother nature (with government officials playing the role of shamans!).

To prove that this is not some nutty theory of mine, I also posted several days later an article by Australian writer Arthur Herman called Climate hysterics v heretics in an age of unreason, based on his article of the same name. In his article, he says that the reason why logic and reason is rejected in the global warming debate is that they are believers, not scientists. It's a good article in its entirety- check it out by looking at the post.

Why do I bring these points up today? Over at Ace of Spades there was a link to another Aussie writer talking about global warming, and I really think for some reason down under they understand the nature of the beast. The article is called "Beware the church of climate alarm"- here is a snippet from it:

But the real fear driving climate alarmists wild is that a more rational approach to the fundamentalist religion of global warming may be in the ascendancy.

"We're dealing with dogma and people who, when challenged, become quite vicious and irrational" (said one expert about people who believe in the myth of global warming.) Human-caused climate change is being "promoted with religious zeal … there are fundamentalist organisations which will do anything to silence critics. They have their holy books, their prophet [is] Al Gore. And they are promoting a story which is frightening us witless [using] guilt [and urging] penance."

It is difficult for non-scientists to engage in the debate over what causes climate change and whether or not it can be stopped by new taxes and slower growth, because dissenting voices are shouted down by true believers in the scientific community who claim they alone have the authority to speak.

A couple good books if anyone wants to know more are Science, Politics, And Gnosticism by Eric Voegelin and Blue Planet in Green Shackles by Vaclav Klaus.

UPDATE: Here is a good website that pulls together a lot of stories of those who are skiptical about the claims made about global warming. Check it out!