So, what have those "racist" Tea Partiers been up to lately?

You know some of those left-wing talking points; say it with me in a voice that drips with monotone sing-song: The Tea Party movement is just a bunch of racist shills of the Republican party.

Let's just see some of the scalps the Tea Party has collected:

I don't know, she looks pretty white to me. And what's this? She's a Republican? How can that be? Ah, I see. Lisa Murkowski, Senator from Alaska, was actually what we call a Republican-in-name-only, or RINO for short. There is also DIABLO (Democrat-in-all-but-label-only), but RINO is shorter to say. The good news is that this particular RINO will only be a Senator until January 3, 2011. Just tonight, she conceded defeat to the Tea Party-backed candidate, Joe Miller, in Alaska's Republican senatorial primary. That's just the most recent removal of an incumbent RINO in the primaries. Back in May of this year, the Tea Party ousted this guy:

That's Bob Bennett, longtime Republican senator from Utah, and another RINO. He was elected to the Senate in 1992, but he will be leaving in 2011, as he was not picked at the Utah Republican Convention to be their candidate this year. The convention went with a Tea Party-back candidate instead. See how dark Bob Bennett's skin is? Why that dastardly racist Tea Party.

Where there was no incumbent RINO trying to retain his or her seat, we saw in the Republican primaries the Tea Party-backed candidate defeat the candidate that was favored by the Republican establishment. For instance, Rand Paul defeated this man who was handpicked by the Kentucky Republican Party to be the Bluegrass State's Republican senatorial candidate:

That would be Trey Grayson, another RINO who will not be running in the November election, and another victim of the racist Tea Party.

Let's throw in one more example for good measure, just to make sure you get the point how racist this Tea Party movement is. Here is yet another candidate who didn't make the cut in a Republican primary; in this case a House of Representatives district in South Carolina:

This is Paul Thurmond, son of long-time (he died in office at age 100) South Carolina Senator (and former segregationist) Strom Thurmond. With a name like Thurmond, running for office as a Republican in South Carolina ought to make you a lock. Nuh uh. Instead, Republican voters in this South Carolina district chose the Tea Party-backed candidate. Look who these racist Republican-leaning Tea Partiers chose:

This is Tim Scott, who defeated Paul Thurmond in a runoff election by a vote of 68% to 32%. Scott was endorsed by Sarah Palin, who has also endorsed several other Tea Party-backed candidates, including, of course, Joe Miller, who defeated Lisa Murkowski up in Alaska.

There are some nefarious pundits and peabrains out there who have staked their careers and popularity among the ruling class on calling the Tea Party movement "racist" and "shills for the Republican Party." No matter what the Tea Party does to show this isn't the case is unimportant to them. But instead of the words of these libelous jerks, instead pay attention to the actions of the Tea Partiers. They are working to get rid of these dead-weight Democrat-lite Republicans who have been entrenched for years like ticks on the body politic. And guess what? These incumbents and establishment picks have all pretty much been as white as Whitey McWhiteski.

No matter; the lapdog media has a narrative to push, and the contrary evidence be damned.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

A tale of two crowds

A hat tip to Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit (see blogroll) and others who picked up on this very telling contrast of two events.

It was quite amazing to see the amount of trash left behind by the hundreds of thousands of people who crowded into Washington D.C.'s National Mall on January 20, 2009 to watch Barack Obama sworn in as president,

Even more amazing - yet, not surprising - is the lack of trash left behind by the hundreds of thousands of people who attended the Glenn Beck rally this last weekend.

Here is an overview shot of the crowd on the Mall on Inauguration Day, 2009:



After the festivities, here is what the crowd had wrought:



Now, here is an almost equally impressive crowd shot from the rally on Saturday:

And after the crowd left this party, take a look at the lack of a human footprint:



What was it that Obama said when he won the Democratic nomination? Something about his victory being the moment when the oceans would cease to rise and earth would begin to heal? Looks like the supposedly environmentally-friendly, earth-loving minions of our President didn't share his vision.

On the other hand, the supposedly evil, earth-despising, toxic pollution-loving conservatives who want to kill Bambi left behind a National Mall almost cleaner than they found it.

It's not just about love of the environment, it's about common decency towards our fellow man. Conservatives practice what we preach on an individual level, while statists like those who flocked to the Obama inauguration? They demonstrated that they depend on their fellow man to pick up the slack.

Just think of an issue as simple as welfare. Conservatives believe it is up to us as individuals to help the poor, just like it was up to individuals to clean up after themselves when Glenn Beck's rally had ended. Meanwhile, statists believe it is up to the government to take care of the poor, just like it was apparently up to the government to clean up all the trash left behind on the Mall when the inauguration was over.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Congress and the Commerce Clause

Can you spare 10 minutes? If you can, then watch this highly informative, and highly upsetting, mini-documentary from Reason.tv about the gross misuse by Congress of the Commerce Clause of our Constitution.

What will really get you steaming is listening to that little leftist weasel, UC Irvine law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky - he of the cross-eyed countenance and condescending smirk - wax poetic about how wonderful it is that Congress has been given near-unlimited power to do whatever it wants.

On the other side of the debate is John Eastman, former dean of Chapman University law school, who does an admirable job of pointing out just how out-of-control our Congress and Supreme Court have become in their interpretation of the Commerce Clause.

I do take issue with Eastman's assertion that driving is a privilege rather than a right, but that is but a small tangent from his otherwise brilliant argument for going back to the Founders' original intent of the Commerce Clause.

I often listen to talk radio host Hugh Hewitt on the way home from work, and Hewitt often has his "Smart Guys" segment, where Chemerinsky and Eastman debate the legal topics in the news cycle. It is always a stimulating debate. Chemerinsky may be "smart" in the way he argues his position, but I am always amazed at how not-smart he is in the positions he takes in the first place. In this video, I have never heard Chemerinsky go this far off the rails as when he is trying to justify Congress' supposed power to run every aspect of your life. Chemerinsky's assertion that "you don't have the right not to have health care" just about made my head explode.

Again, just 10 minutes. That's all I ask:



"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

If World War II was waged on Facebook

A friend of mine forwarded the following to me, and I found it to be absolute genius.

Imagine if the major players in World War II each had a Facebook account and could write on each other's walls throughout the War?

Language warning: there are some bad words peppered throughout the exchanges, but it is all contextual.

Please do yourself a favor and read the genius of:

OMG! WWII on Facebook: a modern adaptation of world war II for the american teenager.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

New world record in my favorite track and field event!

I ran track in high school and college. Even though I occasionally ran the 400m (51.7) and the mile (4:27), my favorite and best distance was the 800m, with a time of 1:59.1. This race is two laps of pure torture where it is too short to be a distance race and too long to be a sprint. Hence, you are never comfortable during the approximately two minutes that you are running.

When I first started following track and field in the late 1980s, I quickly discovered my hero, Sebastian Coe of Great Britain, who won the 1500m at both the Moscow Olympics of 1980 and the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, and got silver in the 800 at both games as well. Even more importantly, Coe had set the world record in the 800m (1:41.73) in 1981. A full page magazine cut out of Coe was tacked to my wall.

Coe's record lasted until 1997, when Wilson Kipketer, a Kenyan who had become a citizen of Denmark, shaved a few tenths of a second off Coe's record with a time of 1:41.11.

That record was just broken (barely) the other day by another Kenyan named David Rudisha who broke it in Berlin with a time of 1:41.09. After watching the race, I think Rudisha can run faster, starting with the fact that he had started from an outside lane and had to break for the curb after the first turn. Having someone on his butt at the end of the race could have pushed him harder as well. If everything lines up correctly, I could easily see Rudisha running 1:40.

See for yourself:



The guy is an animal! He came through the first quarter at around 49 flat, and came home in 52. Shave off another tenth of a second, and he breaks 1:41. I love track and field.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Why the dearth of congressional town halls this summer?

Let the brother of Opie Cunningham explain it in a most chuckled-filled manner:



I have always loved Clint Howard. He has made a career of playing small parts in his brother's movies, especially as some sort of comic relief. I wonder if he is a conservative black sheep in the family, or was he just making a quick buck? Either way, it was a fun ad.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

So who was actually in charge of this fiasco?

If you haven't heard about the $578 million dollar K-12 facility that was just recently constructed in the Los Angeles Unified School District, then you don't pay enough attention to the news.

This story has been done to death on the Internets and on the talk radio circuit. I just have one angle to add that I have yet to hear. I was struck by the non-chalant, detached passivity of the comments by district officials and other defenders of the cost of the site in the widely distributed AP article:

"There's no more of the old, windowless cinderblock schools of the '70s where kids felt, 'Oh, back to jail,'" said Joe Agron, editor-in-chief of American School & University, a school construction journal. "Districts want a showpiece for the community, a really impressive environment for learning..."

In Los Angeles, officials say the new schools were planned long before the economic pinch and are funded by $20 billion in voter-approved bonds that do not affect the educational budget... (Oh, that makes me feel much better. I'm glad they cleared that up. -W.R. Chandler)

Still, even LA Unified Superintendent Ramon Cortines derided some of the extravagance, noting that donations should have been sought to fund the RFK project's talking benches commemorating the site's history.

Connie Rice, member of the district's School Bond Oversight Committee, noted the megaschools are only three of 131 that the district is building to alleviate overcrowding. RFK "is an amazing facility," she said. "Is it a lot of money? Yes. We didn't like it, but they got it done..."

James Sohn, the district's chief facilities executive, said the megaschools were built when global raw material shortages caused costs to skyrocket to an average of $600 per square foot in 2006 and 2007 — triple the price from 2002. Costs have since eased to $350 per square foot...

Sohn said LA Unified has reached the end of its Taj Mahal building spree. "These are definitely the exceptions," he said. "We don't anticipate schools costing hundreds of millions of dollars in the future."

All these quotes have an air about them that seems to blame the cost of the facility on some sort of mystical force that was apparently beyond the power of the chief facilities executive, the superintendent, or even the school board to contain or even address. These people are paid how much per year? Who was making the final decisions on all this crap?

These people remind me of the "Not Me" ghost in the Family Circus cartoon strip who is always standing there as the kids point the finger at someone else when a misdeed has been discovered.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

How this guy lived, I will never know

Via Drudge:

Watch a car going over 100mph launch into the air after hitting a guardrail and then disintegrate into three pieces when it slams into the center support of a freeway overpass... all of it caught as it happened on the dash cam of a police car that just happened to be at the right place at the right time. The driver is not visible in the destruction that follows, but he was ejected, and is somehow still alive.

Do I have your interest yet?

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Oath? What oath?

The last time we checked in with Representative Phil Hare (Democrat - Illinois), he was telling a constituent with a camera that, "I don't worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest," in response to the constituent's question about the constitutionality of a health care law that forced Americans to buy health insurance against their will.

Well darned if, just the other day, Phil Hare couldn't keep his stupid trap shut yet again. During some sort of meet and greet, Hare was asked by another constituent with a camera about that pesky issue of constitutionality regarding the health care deform law. Along with marveling at Hare dismissing the Constitution as "silly stuff," watch as Congresscritter Hare first insults and then ignores the man with the camera asking all the inconvenient questions:



What a complete Slimeball.

Allow me to remind Congresscritter Hare of the oath to which we swore (or affirmed) when he undertook the task of becoming a Representative to the state of Illinois:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Here is a little tidbit about the history of that oath from the website of the U.S. Senate. Emphasis is mine:

At the start of each new Congress, in January of every odd-numbered year, the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate performs a solemn and festive constitutional rite that is as old as the Republic. While the oath-taking dates back to the First Congress in 1789, the current oath is a product of the 1860s, drafted by Civil War-era members of Congress intent on ensnaring traitors.

Hmmm, they might have been on to something there. What do you think, Congresscritter Hare? And that goes for all those other members of our federal legislature (and executive branch) who look at our Constitution as some sort of barrier to be driven around, rather than the road map to freedom and prosperity that it truly is.

Remember in November!

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Cool quote of the day

Even though I prefer the term "Free-Market" to "Capitalism," I still thought this was fun to read:

“Capitalism and communism stand at opposite poles. Their essential difference is this: The communist, seeing the rich man and his fine home, says: 'No man should have so much.' The capitalist, seeing the same thing, says: 'All men should have so much.'”

The quote was not attributed to anyone, so kudos to whoever thought it up.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Jerry Brown showing his true colors: Code Pink

This afternoon, California gubernatorial hopeful, Jerry Brown, will be attending a $500-per-plate fundraiser in southern California at the home of one Jodie Evans.

Who is Jodie Evans? Click the link for a fully-sourced profile of her, but in short, she is a co-founder (along with Castro-loving communist agitator Medea Benjamin) of a viciously nasty anti-American protest group called Code Pink. Code Pink especially made a name for themselves during the years of the George W. Bush presidency by showing up at any and all anti-Iraq and anti-Afghanistan war protests, disrupting congressional hearings by screaming at the top of their lungs while wearing their ubiquitous fuzzy pink boas, and perhaps most notoriously by picketing the U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station in Berkeley, California. Read here for the account of one mother who was told by Code Pink members during that Berkeley protest that her son, who was killed in Iraq, deserved to die.

Just to punctuate my point about this evil organization and the evil-loving ladies who run it, here is a photo showing the lovely Cindy Sheehan, Jodie Evans, and Medea Benjamin posing with the Communist, terrorist-supporting, free-speech killing, anti-American Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez. Jodie Evans is the redhead standing second from the left:

In the past, Jodie Evans has sung the praises of the Taliban in Afghanistan; the terrorists in Fallujah, Iraq (and also raised $600,000 to help fund them); the human shield-using terrorists of Hamas; and of course Castro's Cuba.

Knowing all of this, and knowing how easy it is to find out this information, I would love to hear Jerry Brown's justification for actually showing his face at a fundraiser being held today at the home of such a despicable woman who heads such a despicable organization.

Seriously, California, do you really want Jerry Brown as your governor? While the Republicans are fielding another barely-tolerable, politically squishy candidate like Meg Whitman, it is apparent that the Democrats are going all in with a man who is willing to associate and accept money from moral degenerates who hate everything the United States stands for and openly roots for those who kill American soldiers; especially when they referred to the foreign terrorists in Iraq as "freedom fighters."

With this in mind, I urge California voters to pull the lever for Meg Whitman in November. Even though California has a reputation for being a state that leans left, it is pretty obvious that Jerry Brown is too extreme even for the Golden State.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Hey, Union soldier! What have you done for me lately?

During the first week or so of every school year, I have a few requisite lessons that I always conduct. Aside from the usual briefings on rules, routines, and procedures, I also do a lesson on historical fallacies, such as when people use today's moral standards to judge people from the past; B.C. and A.D., and how to compute the two; basic geography; and sources of history, where we discuss the sources that are used to piece together the historical record.

During my sources of history lesson yesterday, I was reminded of a couple things about my students that sometimes disturbs me. The problem is that I don't know if what disturbs me is something about which I should get bent out of shape, or is it one of those things that young people have always done that I simply don't remember doing when I was their age.

I give the Sources of History lesson as a Power Point slide show on the LCD projector. When I get to newspapers, I show a photo of an issue of the Pennsylvania Gazette from 1748. When I discuss letters, I show a photo of a letter written by a Union soldier who wrote to his brother while hunkered down during the Siege of Vicksburg in June, 1863. When I get to photographs, I show the first photo ever taken (which was in 1826, in case you were interested), and I also show this photo:

You have probably seen it before. It shows Union dead on the field a couple days after the end of the Battle of Gettysburg. I show the photo to discuss the impact that photography has had on the way people at the time viewed current events and later how we view the history of the event.

When the photo came up on the screen, the predominant reaction from my students was laughter. Perhaps it was the gaping mouth of the dead soldier in the foreground, but my students' initial reaction was to find humor in the image; and this happened period after period. Each time, I would admonish my students by informing them that the people in this photo were truly dead, and that they were Union soldiers killed during the Battle of Gettysburg. I would then remind them that they would be studying that battle when we get to the Civil War sometime this Spring. I then admonished my students that these were real people and they should show some respect to the dead.

In one of my classes, a black female student piped up when I spoke of showing respect for the dead, and she asked, "Why should I? What did they ever do for me?"

My immediate answer was to tell her, "Well, giving their lives to help free the slaves, for one thing. Those are Union soldiers. The fact that they won this war caused the slaves to be freed at the end of it."

I must admit, my response shut her up. She could only say, "Oh."

What bothers me most about her question to me is that she didn't feel it necessary to show any respect for the dead American soldiers in the photo unless they had "done something" for her. It's not enough that they were American soldiers who had died in battle.

To recap, two aspects of this interaction with my students bothered me greatly: First, the fact that they laughed at a photo of obviously dead people lying on a field. Were they being immature and didn't know how to react, or have young people today become that detached from reality? Second was the entitlement mentality of the student who piped up about the dead soldiers having had to "do something" for her in order for her to show them any respect. Is this how many students dole out their good will, or was she an outlier?

Just another typical day in a middle school classroom.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

You mess with the bull, you get the horns

For this week at least, I have a new hero, and that is the bovine ballbuster who went out in a blaze of glory by going after the misguided Spanish attendees of a bullfighting match who moments earlier, were cheering the imminent torture and demise of the bull in question.

To those people in the stands who received the smackdown, all I can say is: You play, you pay.



Go Bull!

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

This is how you win elections

Use the words of the late, great Ronald Reagan in juxtaposition with the idiotic statements and beliefs of our current ruling class. This is a beautifully done ad:



Like fish in a barrel, my friends.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

There's something in my eye

This video is quickly making the rounds, and I really think you should watch it. Be careful though, because while I was watching it, something weird started going on with my tear ducts. My eyes got all watery. Must have been the bright computer screen or something. Do you have a Kleenex? I can't seem to make it stop:



"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

What will happen if the Republican leadership returns to form?

Lee Cary over at American Thinker wrote a bang-up article in which he voiced his concerns about the downside of the possibility of the Republicans winning back some kind of control of Congress come this November. He articulated concerns that have crossed my mind when I think about the same old squishy schmucks like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner taking over again if the Republicans actually take control of both houses of Congress. These were the same bozos in charge of the Congress when the Republicans got creamed in 2006 and 2008.

Cary is confident that if, after having taken back control of the Legislative Branch, the Republicans in Congress play nice with the Democrats and roll over once again, then the GOP is toast, and conservatives will turn the Tea Party into a true political party instead of a grass-roots movement.

I truly enjoyed Cary's no-BS assessment of the political landscape. Check it out.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

How can our country be saved when they don't even know what a country is?

I have been back teaching since Tuesday, and only three days in, I am already depressed. I did one of my standard first-week-of-school activities where I had my students pair up and interview each other using four questions I wrote up on the whiteboard, and then introduce their partner to the rest of the class, using the information gleaned from the questions.

Question #3 was the following: What country would you like to visit that you have never visited before, and why?

Waaaaay too many times today, I was asked by waaaaay too many of my students, "Mr. Chandler, what's a country?" These are 8th graders, mind you.

Just to verify how off base these confused students were or were not, my standard response was to address their question with one my own: "Well, you live in a country; what is it called?"

The standard responses were either, "I don't know," "California," or "Sacramento." By the time students reach the 8th grade, I don't think I am expecting too much when I expect them to not only know what a country is, but to also know in which country they live!

Think of the millions of American soldiers who have either been killed or grievously wounded fighting for our country, the millions of workers, inventors, and entrepreneurs who have toiled to make this country the envy of the world, and these kids, our future leaders of tomorrow, don't even know what country this is, or that they even live in one. I am quite seriously on the verge of tears as I write this. This is also a moment when I am quite satisfied - and justified - with my new sign-off:

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Stay classy, Harry

The contempt that the Left has for racial and ethnic minorities is put on display for all to see. The showroom model is none other than the majority leader of the Senate, Harry Reid (D-NV). Recall that it was Dirty Harry who previously praised Obama for his light skin and the fact that he didn't speak with a "Negro" accent. This time, Harry is speaking his mind about Hispanics:



What made this moment of candor from Dirty Harry even more delicious was the retort to Reid's remarks from American of Cuban heritage, and REPUBLICAN Senate candidate from Florida, Marco Rubio:



I trust that Reid's election opponent, Sharron Angle, will take full advantage of his idiotic comment.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Pete Stark does it again

The utterances of this poor excuse for a man would be comedy gold if the consequences of his beliefs weren't so frightening.

In this first clip, watch as California congresscritter Fortney "Pete" Stark turns the idea of limited federal power on its head by asserting that there is little that the federal government cannot do, and then once again being a smug, sarcastic jerk toward one of his constituents:



I will admit that the woman trying to back up her argument by invoking the slavery part of the 13th Amendment might be overreaching by the sheer fact that we aren't directly owned by a master or live on a plantation, but the involuntary servitude portion of that same amendment would have been a more logical point to make. In the end thought, the crux of her argument is correct, and Stark's absurd answer to her point illicits righteous boos from the audience.

Stark wasn't done though. Later in the meeting, the subject of illegal immigration came up, and according to Stark, it is unconstitutional to not hire workers who are in this country illegally, and once again, makes his point by mocking his constituents:



Please, please you voters of Stark's East Bay district, I beg you to look past his politics, with which you may agree, and consider the venomous personality of this horrid man.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson

Federal judge gives a big "F-U" to California voters

It was expected, but it still comes as a great disappointment that a federal judge in San Francisco today struck down Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot initiative that wrote into the California Constitution that marriage in this state is to be between one man and one woman. It did not ban "gay marriage" any more than it banned polygamy or marriage between siblings. It simply defined what marriage would be, rather than what it is not.

Prop. 8 passed by a vote of 52% to 48%, which in a leftist state like California is not a very close vote. In a blast of irony, one of the reasons that Prop 8 passed is because a glut of black California voters who had gone to the polls in order to vote for Barack Obama, voted overwhelmingly in favor of Prop 8 on that same ballot. This is rather amusing since one of the first methods that proponents of homosexual marriage use to defend their position is to try to link the issue to the times in our country's past when men and women of different races were not allowed by law to marry.

Another not so amusing aspect of this court decision is the fact that the judge who decided the case, Vaughn Walker (appointed by George H.W. Bush), is openly homosexual. Does this matter? Who knows; but you can't deny that given the subject matter of this court case, it certainly makes people wonder about the judge's state of mind while listening to and deciding the case.

I see this case going to the Supreme Court. We can only guess how the justices will rule, but I think you can guess with quite some accuracy.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." -Thomas Jefferson