Obama is losing it

Our Dear Leader was in Connecticut today, stumping for that blithering idiot, Richard Blumenthal, who is running for the senate seat being vacated by that blithering corruptocrat, Christopher Dodd. During Obama's speech, he totally lost control of the audience. Watch:



Obama's problem is that he tried - as usual - to talk his way out of the situation. He should have taken a cue from Ronald Reagan, who had a much more effective - and entertaining - way of dealing with his hecklers. If the embedded YouTube link doesn't work, just double-click on it. Watch and learn, Barack:



Gawd, I miss the Gipper.

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

Ah, the good old days of politics

When people nowadays want to impress everyone and make themselves sound reasonable and honorable by complaining about the rancorous mood of the electorate and the politicians for whom they vote, they often try to use the olden days of politics as their example:

"Why can't we have election campaigns like those around the time of our country's founding, when the eloquent men who founded this country were running for office?" Oh, they may have been eloquent in their writings, but on the campaign trail? No, no, they played for keeps. Watch this video where modern political ad techniques are married with actual quotes from politicians of the past, where they are speaking about their opponents:



If only today's mealy-mouthed milquetoasts were as candid.

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

And to think this retread is leading in the polls

Remember (or try to remember) all the stuff that Jerry Brown said to get elected governor of California back in the 1970s? Apparently it was all a lie according to him. Hey wait, Jerry Brown is currently running for governor of California again. Which makes everything he is currently saying to get elected...?



That clip was from 1992 when Brown was laughably running for President. I guess he never dreamed his candidness would come back to haunt him in this regard.

Meg Whitman is a seriously flawed candidate, I will freely admit that; too far to the Left. However, if you put Brown the Clown back in office, this late great state is finished.

One week to go.

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

The state of race relations today according to my six year-old son

SCROLL FOR UPDATE:

We now enter touchy territory...

Often, when I am checking the news in the newspaper, on the Internet, or watching the news on television, my son (and increasingly, my four year-old daughter) will take an interest in viewing the day's events, whether they be local, state, national, or international.

Today was a strange one. A "transient," as the KCRA reporter called him, walked into a GameStop store at the Roseville Galleria, which is the largest mall in the Sacramento area. Details are still a little sketchy, but apparently the transient announced he was armed, ushered the GameStop employees out of the store, locked himself in and then set the store on fire. He also had a backpack with him that authorities worried might contain an explosive, so firefighters had trouble attacking the blaze only from the outside. The fire spread from there. A major portion of the mall is now gutted, and the roof collapsed over the burned area. It will take months to repair.

Before my kids came into the living room to watch the live footage with me, the news showed some footage of the arrested suspect sitting in the back seat of a patrol car as the cruiser pulled in to the local police station. A minute or so after that, my kids started watching the news report with me, and my wife joined us as soon as she got home from work.

As we were watching helicopter footage of the fire and the firefighters' efforts to extinguish it, my wife asked me if they have shown the man who did it. I told her she had just missed footage of him being brought to the police station. That is when my son matter-of-factly and innocently asked me the following question:

"Did he have dark skin?"

I froze for a moment and shot my wife a furtive glance of surprise, but quickly regained my composure and asked my son,

"Why do you ask?"

He, again, very matter-of-factly and innocently said,

"Well, I have noticed that whenever we watch the news and they show a picture of a guy who did something bad, he usually has dark skin. Why is that?"

Wow. First, an important disclaimer: Never in his 6 years on this earth have I ever had a conversation with my son about the vagaries of race issues in this country. I don't remember that I have ever brought up the subject in any way when he is around. Yet he noticed something is amiss... all on his own.

What a sad indictment of our society when, just like the story of the Emperor's New Clothes, it takes a child to point out the painfully obvious, and not be paralyzed with fear of ridicule or charges of racism to do so. That obvious fact is that our country's black population commits violent crime way out of all proportion to their numbers. I didn't make it this way, I wish it wasn't this way, but that is the way it is. Tell me I am wrong that the majority of you who read my statement two sentences ago winced or raised your eyebrows when you read it. We are not supposed to say such things - to point out these disproportionate crime rates among our black citizens - because to do so instantly makes one a racist in the eyes of many.

But how can society continue to turn a blind eye to this national problem when even my six year-old son recognizes it with not one iota of prompt or taint from me?

This is when you can predictably cue the bleeding hearts out there who will shriek that my son's observation is proof that the news is biased against blacks in their coverage of crime. I'm sorry, but this just isn't so. The reason the news displays so many black faces when they show suspect photos is that, unfortunately, it is blacks (mostly young males) who commit a majority of our nation's violent crimes - and not in per-capita either; in raw numbers.

Even our own government statistics bear this out. Detailed reports of the race of crime victims and suspects are compiled every year by federal, state, and local officials in the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting program. These UCR statistics bear out what my son so innocently observed. Nationally in 2009, 51.6% of murder suspects for whom the race was known were black. Keep in mind that the demographic responsible for almost all of those murders - young black males - makes up only about maybe 6% or so of our population. Also never forget that statistics show that 48% of the time, the victims of these murders were black as well.

Anyone, especially in the news media, has access to those statistics, but only a few courageous souls have the fortitude to report them, especially when local circumstances make the numbers more lopsided than what one sees on the national level. For instance, according to Heather McDonald of City Journal, blacks in New York make up about 24% of the city's population, yet they commit just under 69% of the city's murders. This means that when the local New York news reports show a photo of a murder suspect, 7 out of 10 times, it will be a suspect who is black.

So what did I tell my son in response to his question? I wasn't going to lie to him. I told him essentially what I wrote above, however in a much more simplified and gentle manner. My wife and I told him that plenty of people with lighter skin commit bad crimes too, but that he often sees more bad guys on the news with dark skin because many people in that community are having problems they are trying to deal with. I mean, what can you say to a six year old boy in response to a question like that, especially when you aren't expecting it? After explaining all this to him, I didn't have the heart to tell my son that the suspect in this arson did indeed have dark skin.

I feel like my son took a small bite of God's fruit tree today, and came that much closer to eventually leaving the Garden of Eden.

And I wept.

**UPDATE - Just to prove my point about the touchiness of this topic, look at what just happened to two judges in Washington state - supreme court justices no less - when they pointed out some of the same statistics I did.

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

Trust me, I just taught my 8th graders about this last week!

I am the first to admit that I have some reservations about Sarah Palin as a serious political candidate. However, I also have to admit, I love watching Palin drive the statists out there stark raving mad; so mad, that in their effort to torpedo any political aspirations Palin may have, their efforts often backfire on them.

Today was a prime example. Palin gave a speech at a Tea Party rally, and told the attendees to not get too overconfident about victory in the upcoming election. She told them not to "party like it's 1773 just yet." Yes, 1773. This was, after all, a TEA PARTY rally. This is a rather important point as you will soon see.

Soon, smug and sanctimonious idiots on the left, such as Markos Moulitsas of the far-left blog DailyKos and Obama cultist Gwen Ifill of PBS began Tweeting to their followers about how Palin had committed another gaffe. Exactly what kind of gaffe they thought Palin had committed, I am not exactly sure. Perhaps they thought she should have mentioned the year 1776 when we declared independence?

However, I instantly recognized that Palin was talking about the Boston Tea Party, which took place on December 16, 1773. I really did teach my 8th graders about this event just last week, and we graded the test yesterday. I say again, the Boston TEA PARTY!

Now that the shock and horror has set in that the bucket of urine that she flung at Palin splashed right back in her face, Gwen Ifill is trying to throw her comments down the memory hole. C'mon Gwen, you can admit you were wrong. It's OK. We can guide you through the process.

'Tis especially sweet for Palin to get one over on Ifill, because I will never forget Gwen Ifill's condescending little snit fit of a reaction to Palin's wonderful speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention. Seriously, watch this :50 of video to find out what waste of oxygen Gwen Ifill is.

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

Shoeless Me

When I was a kid growing up in the mountains, I spent a good part of my summer barefoot. By the end of summer, the bottoms of my feet had toughened up so much, that they were impervious even to the heat of the blacktop roadways saturated by the sun.

Fast forward to adulthood, and shoes are a professional necessity now. However, my wife and I both enjoy going barefoot as much as possible; my wife even more so. When we get home from work, she can't get her shoes off her feet fast enough. I eventually get around to it, but she is absolutely religious about it.

Perhaps my wife is on to something. Wearing shoes is something we are so used to doing, it is very easy to not even think about the fact that we were not born with shoes on our feet. Perhaps God wanted us to go barefoot?

I tripped across the writings of a professor who says wearing shoes does nothing but expose your feet to fungus, deformation, and blisters, along with knocking the rest of your posture out of wack.

Here is a link to his website. On there, you will find a Prezi (a more improved version of PowerPoint) where he explains his views on shoes.

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

Finally! A World War I movie worth watching

Plenty of movies have been made about World War II, the U.S. Civil War, the Vietnam War. However, World War I has mostly gotten the shaft. The most recent attempt was Flyboys, which left me underwhelmed. I still await the day that Hollywood announces a movie about the Argonne Offensive - a two month bloodletting in the autumn of 1918 that killed more U.S. soldiers than the Battle of the Bulge and Iwo Jima, combined.

Until then, we can thank the Canadians for making their own movie about the defining battle for their country in the Great War.

The Battle of Passchendaele was fought in 1917, with the Canadians doing much of the heavy lifting against their German foe. This 9-minute scene is easily the most realistic combat scene I have ever viewed that showcases World War I, and is also one of the most realistic combat scenes I have ever viewed in any war movie.

I must warn you about extreme violence and language. C'mon, it's a combat scene for crying out loud:



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

The First Lady knows better than this

Via Drudge:

Illinois state law — Sec. 17-29 (a) — “No judge of election, pollwatcher, or other person shall, at any primary or election, do any electioneering or soliciting of votes or engage in any political discussion within any polling place, within 100 feet of any polling place.”

That means YOU, Michelle Obama!

Remember though, following laws is only for the little people out there. Stuff like this just pisses me off.

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

Jan Schakowsky and staff obviously aren't used to being challenged on their socialist B.S.

Two mid-western bloggers attended a press forum between socialist Democrat Congresscritter Jan Schakowsky, and her Republican challenger, Joel Pollak.

After the event, the two bloggers attempted to get Schakowsky to answer some questions that she is obviously not used to be being asked. Watch the inevitable meltdown of Schakowsky (and her bizarre-looking campaign manager). They both seemed absolutely befuddled when two of the "little people" out there dared to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes:



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

Rescue in Chile: The Greatest Show on Earth

*UPDATE: Here is another live video feed from MSNBC.com that works better. The WSJ feed freezes too often.

I have been spending the last hour watching the rescue of one of the 33 Chilean miners who are currently being pulled from their tomb of the last 70 days.

The Wall Street Journal has a live video feed from the rescue site, and the best part is that not only are there cameras trained on the winch where the rescue capsule comes to the surface, but there is also a camera set up 2,000 feet below the surface in the chamber where the men have been trapped all this time. You actually get to watch the rescued miner get suited up for the journey, and then the capsule ascends into the ceiling to the world above.

Hollywood, eat your heart out; these scenes are truly worth watching!

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

The sky is blue, the sun rises in the east, the CTA urges you to vote for Democrats and bigger government

Several years ago, I quit the California Teachers Association (CTA), and became what is called an Agency Fee Payer. This means that, as California is a non-right-to-work state, I still have to pay dues to the CTA for actual union work, but I get a refund of the part of my dues that would have been spent by the CTA on political activity; activity with which, for the most part, I wholly disagree.

The other day, my wife, who is also a teacher, brought home a packet that had been put not only in her mailbox, but the mailbox of all her fellow teachers as well. I took the time to scan the pages of this packet and let you see just how one-sided the CTA really is, and remember that you click on any of these images to enlarge them:

Well, well - so far, we have Democrats across the board; even old washed up bizarre ones like Jerry Brown, and dense, abrasive, statist ones like Barbara Boxer.

On side two, the cavalcade of crappy candidates continues, with more of the same stale statists who have put California on the road to ruin for decades now, going all the way back to... well... Jerry Brown.

Just in case the first flyer didn't make it clear that the CTA wants Jerry Brown, this one seals the deal. Do I agree with everything Meg Whitman wants to do as Governor of California? That would be a big fat No. However, whatever it is that Jerry Brown wants to do has been tried; he has truly been there and done that, and it didn't work. He set the state on the road to ruin, and the CTA wants him back to wreak even more havoc.

Now, on to the propositions on the ballot. As you read through some of these initiatives, you don't even have to wonder about whether or not you agree with the CTA's position. What you have to wonder is why the CTA is even taking a position on some of these initiatives in the first place. What does climate cha... er... climate disruption have to do with teacher pay and benefits? Yet there is the CTA urging its members to vote against Prop 23.


If you are a California teacher, and you don't want your dues money spent on one-sided claptrap such as this, then by all means, look into other avenues of approach. You can start by visiting the California Teachers Empowerment Network (ctenhome.org), and the Association of American Educators (aaeteachers.org). These two organizations will lay out all your options regarding teacher union membership. You won't get the same kind of comprehensive explanations from the CTA.

And remember to vote in November. If you are not sure for whom or what to vote, you can pretty much take this voting guide and just vote the opposite of whatever the CTA urges you to do.

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

99% of social studies teachers give the other 1% a bad name

The statistics are not quite that bad, but they are pretty bad. Let's just say that with my views, I would not say that I am your typical social studies teacher, according to this article from American Thinker.

Read:

Nearly half of American history teachers believe it is less important that their students understand the common history, ideas, rights, and responsibilities that tie the country together as Americans than that they learn to celebrate the unique identities and experiences of its different ethnic, religious, and immigrant groups.

Advocates of radical "social-justice" multiculturalism in many university schools of education -- the places where most K-12 teachers are trained -- continue to oppose assimilation with a common culture while instead seeking to radically transform an "oppressive" America.

A new survey of public high-school social-studies teachers done for the American Enterprise Institute indicates that they have gained a strong foothold in high schools.

Another sign of the indoctrination of this radical strain of multiculturalism was the finding that 37 percent of the history teachers believed it was "absolutely essential" that they teach their students "to be activists who challenge the status quo of our political system and seek to remedy injustices..."

Of all the issues about which I teach, the one I think of which I am most proud is when I explain, illustrate, or demonstrate how destructive government can be to our freedom. Oh don't worry, all you statists out there, the textbook and the curriculum does more than enough to give my students the "Yay Government" side of the story. When it comes to these social injustices of which these indoctrinating social studies teachers speak, there is only so much injustice that one private citizen can do to another before it will be remedied one way or another. It is when the overreaching force of government becomes unjust; when government, with its monopoly on legal, deadly force begins to ride roughshod over the rights and freedoms of the people; that is when the greatest injustices can occur.

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

How about we just waive ObamaCare for everyone?

Wow, we didn't see this one coming. /sarc. Now that the Obama administration is figuring out that enforcing the mandates of ObamaCare will upend American businesses and the American economy like a stranded swimmer bitten in half by a shark, they are starting to roll out the waivers for companies like McDonalds, who have made it clear that if they have to follow the ObamaCare law to the letter, then more people will lose their health insurance. Funny, I thought ObamaCare was going to enable more people to get or keep their health insurance.

The problem is that once out come waivers, then out come the favors. Companies are treated differently, the law is not applied equally, and the ObamaCare law, which was already an unworkable leviathan, becomes an even more tangled mess that only thousands of more taxpayer-funded bureaucrats can attempt to unravel (but only make worse).

Of course, this is what happens when the federal government once again sticks its power-hungry snout where it doesn't belong and tells private businesses how they should run. In this case, it's very simple: If you tell insurance companies that they have to cover certain people - such as children with preexisting conditions - then the insurance companies will just drop their coverage options for children. That goes for any group of people. Companies aren't stupid; they will just drop the option rather than let it break the company.

This reminds me of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). The ADA was supposed to help stop discrimination against people with handicaps. One of the ways ADA was to do that was to make it much more difficult for an employer to fire a handicapped person. Well, that's an easy fix: Employers became much more reluctant to hire people with handicaps in the first place. If you were a person with a handicap, it was now much more difficult to find a job... thanks to the "help" of the federal government.

Then there's the minimum wage, which did the same thing for people with minimal job skills. Employers who would have taken a chance on prospective employees with few marketable skills now often pass these people up because the employer is unwilling or unable to pay what the worker isn't worth. If a worker is capable of producing only $4.00 worth of goods and services in an hour, why in the world would an employer want to pay that worker $5.15, or whatever the federal minimum wage is nowadays?

ObamaCare is just the latest example of government thinking it can just dump all kinds of arbitrary mandates on private business, and then expect the hiring and spending behavior of these businesses to remain exactly the same as before. I am constantly amused by these many Congresscritters who have never run a business in their lives, let alone an insurance company, yet they pass these laws and act like they know better than the business owner how the business should be run.

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

RIP Joseph Sobran

When I first discovered the Internet in a big way, roundabout 1997 or 1998, I immediately began to discover political pundits who had previously been unknown to me. One of my early discoveries was former National Review editor and columnist, Joe Sobran. I devoured his every word, and spent hours catching up with his archives. His explanations of the abandonment of our Constitution that has been taking place for decades was made more clear to me than I ever dreamed possible.

I eventually stopped reading Joe Sobran's columns when I noticed that he had begun to write much more infrequently, and when he did write, it became more and more about what dastardly deeds the Jews were up to.

As long as Sobran stuck to talking about the Constitution and the wonders of individual freedom and limited government, he had few equals.

Joe Sobran died the other day, at the way-too-young age of 64. I will always be grateful to him for the political and philosophical wisdom that he offered for the taking, and I took it all in.

Instead of my usual signoff quote, I will leave you with my favorite Sobran quote:

"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other peoples money - only for wanting to keep your own money."

...consent of the governed, and all that stuff

Representative Jan Schakowsky of Ohio is a member of the House Progessive Caucus, and is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). She is a congresscritter who, in order to hold her current job, has taken an oath to uphold, protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. After you hear how she talks about the Constitution during a radio interview with lefty nut Stephanie Miller, I believe Schakowsky goes into the domestic category.

Note her condescending tone as she disparages the founding philosophies of our country, the 10th Amendment, and the Tea Partiers who wish to uphold it all:



To quote Miller, "OY!"

Again, this woman is a member of the U.S. Congress. More and more, those on the statist side of the aisle are finding it harder and harder to hold their tongue and keep their true feelings under wraps. That's what happens when your power starts slipping from your grasp, and there is very little you can do about it.

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

The enviro-whacko Left tells us what they really think

Remember that whack-job environmentalist who took hostages at the Discovery Channel HQ? His manifesto was heavy on his hatred for humankind and the damage that they do to mother earth. He made it perfectly clear that he wanted the human race to die rather than the earth be polluted by our activity.
This person was dismissed as a lone whack-a-doodle, but believe me, there are many more out there with his outlook, and they hold far higher positions in society than our lone hostage taker.

There is a campaign that I had never heard of until today called the 10:10 Campaign, where people are being urged by the Global Warm... er.... Climate Cha... er... Climate Disruption true believers to reduce their carbon footprint by 10%.The 10:10 Campaign produced a promotional video for their cause, and in so doing, tipped their hand just a bit as to what they would love to do to people like me who are not buying into their quasi-religious cult called the Church of Global Warming. This video is their wet dream. Watch it if you dare, but I warn you: This video shows some highly disturbing images:



Right out of the totalitarian playbook: If you disagree with us, if you rebel against us, we eliminate you. The Soviets starved the Kulaks; the Khmer Rouge murdered the educated class; the Chinese execute dissenters. The "Greens" make it clear with this video what they would like to do to you - even if you are a child - if you don't get on board with their agenda. This is some scary stuff, folks. Truly scary.

As British author James Delingpole says as only he could in his wonderfully blunt and articulate fashion, "With No Pressure, the environmental movement has revealed the snarling, wicked, homicidal misanthropy beneath its cloak of gentle, bunny-hugging righteousness..."

And to paraphrase someone who commented on Delingpole's article:

I'm Josef Stalin/Mao Tse Tung/Adolf Hitler/Pol Pot/Che Guevara/Kim Jong Il, and I approve this message.

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