A group of rogue US soldiers that referred to themselves as a “kill team” allegedly killed innocent civilians in Afghanistan and then posed for photographs with their victims. The US Army has now apologized for the incident after the German magazine SPIEGEL published several images from the “kill team” in its new issue on March 21, 2011. The Army has issued a statement declaring that the actions depicted in the photos as ” . . . repugnant to us as human beings and contrary to the standards and values of the United States.” The photos were among several seized by Army investigators looking into the deaths of three unarmed Afghans last year.

Last year–on Obama’s watch.

This is definitely Obama’s Abu Ghraib or, simply, Obama Ghraib.  So why are so few people talking about it?

I’ve been waiting for the predominantly left wing media (LWM) to unanimously condemn the atrocities allegedly committed by the soldiers implicated in these horrendous crimes. I found a brief article in the New York Times buried in the “World” section under “Asia Pacific.”  I wonder how many people actually saw it.

There is a slightly more detailed article in the Wall Street Journal,  and Yahoo News posted a article with a surprisingly negative hook (A U.S. kill team’s trophy photos: More damaging than Abu Ghraib?).  An article in the Anchorage Daily News revealed one of the alleged members of the “Kill Team” was an enthusiastic hockey player who was on the same team as Sarah Palin’s son, Track. But compared to the LWM’s frenzied coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal, so far the media coverage on this atrocity has been muted, indifferent.  Hot Air points out that

[w]hen the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in 2003, the mainstream media and liberal blogosphere couldn’t find enough column inches to express adequately their shock and revulsion. The New York Times alone published 56 stories on the hideous revelation that members of the U.S. Army Reserve had tortured prisoners of war and posed for “trophy pictures”—inexcusable acts that the Times placed squarely at the feet of then-president George W. Bush.

I suspected back then that the aforementioned “shock” and “revulsion” expressed by the LWM was insincere and opportunistic. My suspicions have been validated.

A very unscientific Google search for ‘government education grants’ yields over 4,000,000 hits.  There are all manner of scholarships, grants, and loans available for every conceivable category of person, with the possible exception of politically conservative religious white heterosexual males.  There is no room on college campuses for hate-filled superstitious racist homophobes.

Not unless they are hate-filled Islamofascist racist homophobes, that is.  They apparently go to the front of the Financial Aid line at University.   But I digress.

Federal, state, and local governments subsidize higher education with billions of our taxpayer dollars every year.  And every year, costs go up.  Tuition, textbooks, housing, parking fees . . . you name it.  The rate of increase far exceeds the rate of inflation.

(Source: InflationData.com)

But it does not exceed what the market will bear.

When Uncle Sam opened the floodgates to government-backed student loans without parent income restrictions in 1992, colleges welcomed the news with open arms.  The sudden injection of millions of additional aid dollars only furthered tuition increases.

When the government made it exceptionally easy for students to borrow massive amounts of money, the colleges followed the lead by increasing their tuition rates.  This combination led to record-level borrowing.  (Source: InflationData.com)

This reminds me of a scene in one of my all-time favorite movies, Raising Arizona, in which tracker and bounty hunter Leonard Smalls (aka Biker of the Apocalypse)  and Nathan Arizona Sr. are negotiating a price for the return of one of the Arizona quintuplets who had been kidnapped:

Nathan Arizona Sr.: You want that $25,000 reward, you go ahead and claim it.  What’s there to talk about?
Leonard Smalls: Price.  A fair price.  That’s not what you say it is, and it’s not what I say it is . . .  It’s what the market will bear.  Now there’s people – and I know ‘em – who’ll pay a lot more than $25,000 for a healthy baby.  Why, I myself fetched $30,000 on the black market.  And that was in 1954 dollars.

The price is what the market will bear.  That is the reason why textbooks that cost perhaps $25 each to publish will fetch upwards of $300 at checkout.  And the main reason why higher education costs have skyrocketed over the past 50 years is because – you guessed it – the government subsidizes much of it.  There are other contributing factors, but by far the biggest reason why tuition costs have skyrocketed is because everyone (well, everyone outside government) knows that no matter how ridiculously high costs soar, there will be some government subsidy to pay for most or all of it.  Favored populations who qualify for these subsidies take for granted that the subsidies will be available semester after semester, year after year.  Expectation leads to entitlement, and when a deeply ingrained sense of entitlement is combined with radical leftist pedagogy, you have a timebomb on your hands.  This is what is happening in Great Britain, right now.

The once-great British university system has been slowly degenerating thanks to the progressive socialist agenda since the 1960s.

State interference affects the daily attitudes of students and professors.  After the Education Act of 1962, University education was subsidized entirely by the taxpayer (or “free,” as the left like to call it) until 1997, when minimal tuition fees were introduced for students — fees that were eventually expanded to allow institutions to charge up to £3,290 in 2006.

So-called “free,” or at least cheap, university education has led to an attitude of apathy and confusion as to what the institution of a university is for.  The traditional understanding of a university as an institution of learning has been replaced by the view that university is a place where one has an “experience” or discovers oneself.

With little or no cost to the student, the university attracts many people who would not normally go, but who choose it because it offers a fun way to spend a few years and come away with a qualification at the end. Although there are a number of students who wish to learn, train, and come away with a good degree, the spirit of apathy toward education at even some of the best universities is overwhelming.

Over time, student life has focused more on drink, drugs, and casual sex (assisted by state funded “safe-sex” schemes) than on lectures.  Less time in the library and more time in the Student Union bar means more opportunities to be roped into left-wing-controlled “activism,” whether it is fair-trade, animal rights, eco-extremism, or plain old Marxism and anti-Americanism.  As I write, news is filtering through that this week’s Stockholm bomber graduated from a British University, just like the “Christmas Day bomber,” Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab.  One does not have to look far to see where their anti-Western attitudes may have been formed.

The current university system also allows for lazy lecturing.  (Source: Britain’s Left Are Panicking, by Adam Shaw in American Thinker)

The solution to the soaring costs associated with higher education is less government subsidization, thus reducing the amount the market will bear.   Other added benefits include more studious students, better teachers, and degrees that actually mean something.

Somewhere, Leonard Smalls grunts in agreement.

UPDATE: I was proofreading the article one last time and noticed this ad at the very bottom of the page:

How apt can you get!  An apparently very fetching young woman seductively flutters her long and luscious lashes at you while each sign slowly reveals itself to you – self-exploration, meditation, sustainability, natural health.  Party time!  Where do I sign up?  What a hoot!

-Chris

Like many Americans, I am a sucker for technology in education. I even won the Texas State Technology Teacher of the Year Award in 1995 for my efforts integrating technology into the classroom.

But technology is no substitute for good teaching.  There is no magical computer-to-student ratio that will guarantee student success.  Throwing money at schools to purchase more and more computers and other associated techno-gadgetry will not necessarily produce successful students.  But it is easier to throw money at a problem rather than grapple with its underlying causes.  Institutional change is painful, and if there is anything that aging baby boomers want to avoid it is PAIN in any shape, manner, or form.  And baby boomers are in charge now, at least for the next decade or so.

We already know that the best classrooms are low-tech.  We already know what the best classrooms in the world look like:

Classrooms in countries with the highest-performing students contain very little tech wizardry, generally speaking. They look, in fact, a lot like American ones—circa 1989 or 1959. Children sit at rows of desks, staring up at a teacher who stands in front of a well-worn chalkboard.

Technology, like most anything, can be used well just as much as it can be used poorly. Technology is no panacea and does not guarantee student success. For hundreds of years, people have emerged from technology-free schools and have achieved great things. Students are not getting a better education today just because there are laptops, iPads, and electronic white boards  in classrooms.

We know this to be true; namely, that hundreds of millions of dollars are dumped into a seemingly bottomless pit of waste, fraud, and abuse every single year to put more computers in classrooms and connect more schools to the Internet, with scant evidence proving a statistically significant causal relationship between technology in schools and student achievement.  So why do we do it?

Because it is easy.

It is easier to throw money at the problem rather than admit to ourselves that our failed educational system is symptomatic of a systemic failure, a cancer spawned of leftist ideology that took hold in American colleges and universities in the 1960′s and slowly but surely spread throughout our entire society and culture.

There really is a sucker born every minute.  That is why people buy snake oil.  And it is the same reason why taxpayers shell out billions to buy the silicon equivalent of snake oil, year after year.

Jonah Goldberg defines Fascism as:

. . . a religion of the state.  It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people.  It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good.  It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure.  Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives.  Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy.
- Liberal Fascism, p. 23

Eco-fascism is a variant of Fascism that is also totalitarian in the sense that any action by the state to achieve some ecologically-worthy goal is justified. No aspect of human life is off limits. Examples range from bans on smoking in public and the use of cell phones in cars to recent attempts by Congress and the EPA to impose a tax and/or regulatory regimen on our exhalations and emissions made by the burning of fossil fuels. Now it seems we are going to be taxed for the little plastic grocery bags we use to transport our groceries from the supermarket to our cars.

The rationale for the ban is dubious, at best. The cynic in me views the ban as yet one more statist bureaucratic scheme to separate me from my money.

This past January, the City Council of Brownsville, Texas, unanimously passed a ban on retailer-provided, single-use, sanitary, disposable, plastic grocery bags. The ban is voluntary for now, but becomes mandatory with exceptions for bagging fish, meat, and poultry in 2011. Paper bags were not offered as an alternative. The main reason for the ban was to address a litter problem associated with the little plastic “tumbleweeds” that seem to be everywhere – vacant lots, fences, roads, parking lots. Very unsightly.

We had facts and figures to show that, yeah, Brownsville was sick of litter, and the biggest thing we litter are plastic bags.
- Rose Timmer, Healthy Communities of Brownsville

The Brownsville City Commission also pointed out that sewers and drainage systems are being clogged with the plastic bags, and the community’s waterways are similarly polluted. They further claimed that the plastic bags are difficult to recycle and contaminate materials processed through the city’s composting program.  A local newspaper reported:

The ordinance the commission approved notes the city has a duty to protect the natural environment, the economy and the health of the city’s residents.

Let’s take a closer look at these assertions, shall we?

Jonah Goldberg defines Fascism as:

. . . a religion of the state.  It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people.  It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good.  It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure.  Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives.  Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy.
- Liberal Fascism, p. 23

Eco-fascism is a variant of Fascism that is also totalitarian in the sense that any action by the state to achieve some ecologically-worthy goal is justified. No aspect of human life is off limits. Examples range from bans on smoking in public and the use of cell phones in cars to recent attempts by Congress and the EPA to impose a tax and/or regulatory regimen on our exhalations and emissions made by the burning of fossil fuels. Now it seems we are going to be taxed for the little plastic grocery bags we use to transport our groceries from the supermarket to our cars.

The rationale for the ban is dubious, at best. The cynic in me views the ban as yet one more statist bureaucratic scheme to separate me from my money.

This past January, the City Council of Brownsville, Texas, unanimously passed a ban on retailer-provided, single-use, sanitary, disposable, plastic grocery bags. The ban is voluntary for now, but becomes mandatory with exceptions for bagging fish, meat, and poultry in 2011. Paper bags were not offered as an alternative. The main reason for the ban was to address a litter problem associated with the little plastic “tumbleweeds” that seem to be everywhere – vacant lots, fences, roads, parking lots. Very unsightly.

We had facts and figures to show that, yeah, Brownsville was sick of litter, and the biggest thing we litter are plastic bags.
- Rose Timmer, Healthy Communities of Brownsville

The Brownsville City Commission also pointed out that sewers and drainage systems are being clogged with the plastic bags, and the community’s waterways are similarly polluted. They further claimed that the plastic bags are difficult to recycle and contaminate materials processed through the city’s composting program.  A local newspaper reported:

The ordinance the commission approved notes the city has a duty to protect the natural environment, the economy and the health of the city’s residents.

Let’s take a closer look at these assertions, shall we?

Barack Obama is the nation’s first-ever Affirmative Action President.  It should come as no surprise that President Obama’s pick for Attorney General, Eric Holder,  would dispense Affirmative Justice.

Affirmative Action, simply put, seeks to correct past negative discrimination with positive discrimination.  Call it “racial preference,”  “employment equity,”  “smiley-face discrimination,” or whatever, but Affirmative Action is basically a form of government-sanctioned discrimination that favors a particular group of people on the basis of some quality other than merit.  This is not necessarily bad.  Private employers do it all the time.  My own father hired me on the basis of some quality other than merit – namely, the fact that I was his son.  But he was not forced to hire me on the basis of some arbitrary federal quota, goal, or “guideline.”  Such coercive measures are inevitably harmful both to people and institutions.  The rule of unintended consequences applies.

Jack Cashill explains in “How Obama got into Harvard” at WorldNetDaily.com that both Barack and Michelle Obama benefitted so greatly from Affirmative Action programs that they would never have been admitted to an Ivy League school without such intervention.  Cashill writes

Obama was an ‘unspectacular’ student in his two years at Columbia and at every stop before that going back to grade school.

Michelle’s SAT scores and grades were so low that she was counseled against applying to an Ivy League school.  She applied to Princeton and Harvard anyway and was, of course,  accepted.  Getting accepted into Harvard did not improve Michelle’s writing ability, however.  Christopher Hitchens read her thesis and observed

To describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be ‘read’ at all, in the strict sense of the verb.  This is because it wasn’t written in any known language.

There is no doubt that the Obamas would not be where they are today without Affirmative Action.  Barack Obama is without a doubt the first Affirmative Action President.

Central to Affirmative Action is the belief that the best way – perhaps the ONLY way – to address negative discrimination in the workplace, academia, and all other aspects of American life, is through government.  Whether it be through forced busing, federalization of the National Guard, or legislative action, over the past 50 years the idea has taken root that the best way to address negative discrimination is through direct government intervention (i.e., coersion and punishment).  The end result is government picking winners (i.e., those who ultimately get admitted or hired) and losers (i.e., those who do not get admitted or hired).

Once you accept the premise that it is appropriate for government to pick winners and losers, it is not a huge leap to Affirmative Justice. Barack Obama has benefitted from Affirmative Action policies throughout his life, and is obviously very comfortable with the notion of government picking winners and losers.  It would have been extremely awkward for Obama to have picked an Attorney General who did not share the same sentiment.

One of the more comforting aspects of the major religions is the belief that there is justice in the hereafter and the wicked are ultimately punished.  One of the reasons why so many people are willing to risk everything to come to the United States is the belief that we have a system of justice that is fair and impartial, so that even the very poor and politically unconnected can expect a modicum of justice in this country.

At least, that’s what I would like to believe.  More importantly, that is what I would like to convey – with conviction - to my children.  But it is getting harder and harder to suspend disbelief about our “impartial” judicial system.

Take, for example, the curious case of unrepentant homegrown terrorist turned college professor and ghost writer (1, 2, 3, 4) William Ayers.  Regular visitors of David Horowitz’s NewsReal Blog know all about William Ayers and his involvement with the Weathermen during the 1960′s.  This is part of what you see when you look up “William Ayers” at discoverthenetworks.org:

• Leader of the 1960s and 70s domestic terrorist group Weatherman
• “Kill all the rich people. … Bring the revolution home. Kill your parents.”
• Participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972
• Currently a professor of education at the University of Illinois

…along with a lot of other damning information about this detestable troll.  It is hard to believe that Ayers was never incarcerated for his terrorist acts.  It is even more difficult to believe that he became a “respectable” college professor who authored numerous books that were actually published, distributed, and purchased, but it is mind-numbingly incomprehensible that university education programs would incorporate books authored by Ayers into their course syllabi.  But they do.  Teachers are being taught how to teach by a repellent slug of a human being, an amoral coward who (along with the Weathermen) is responsible for setting off at least 30 bombs.   Ayers is quoted for saying or writing:

There’s something about a good bomb … Night after night, day after day, each majestic scene I witnessed was so terrible and so unexpected that no city would ever again stand innocently fixed in my mind. Big buildings and wide streets, cement and steel were no longer permanent. They, too, were fragile and destructible. A torch, a bomb, a strong enough wind, and they, too, would come undone or get knocked down.

—

What a country (i.e., the United States.)   It makes me want to puke.

—

I don’t regret setting bombs.  I feel we didn’t do enough.

—

Our job is to tap the discontent seething in many sectors of the population, to find allies everywhere people are hungry or angry, to mobilize poor and working people against imperialism.

—

Socialism is the total opposite of capitalism/imperialism. It is the rejection of empire and white supremacy. Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit.

It is bad enough that Ayers was never punished for his despicable and cowardly crimes.  But it is deeply unsettling to ponder the long term effects of the venom he has injected into our educational system.  How many young teachers’ minds have been forever infected by the insidious rantings of this marxist revlutionary lunatic?  By extension, how many thousands and thousands of young children’s minds have been similarly polluted by this bile?  The damage done may be so profound and widespread as to never be undone.

That is why I was not overwhelmed with joy when I learned that Ayers had been denied professor emeritus status.  The damage done to our nation by this detestable troll is deep and lasting.  The denial of professor emeritus status is not what I would consider “justice.”

It hasn’t even affected sales of his indoctrination manuals at college bookstores.

David Aikman of Townhall.com posted a 1-minute podcast commentary today that should be of great interest to conservative moms and dads out there – “Alinsky: In Your Child’s Classroom?“

According to Aikman,

. . . the nation’s largest teacher organization, the National Education Association, has sent an email to all its teacher members advising them to use Alinsky’s teaching in educating their students – OUR children and OUR grandchildren.  Considering that one of Alinsky’s ethical principles was that the end justifies the means, American parents ought to think long and hard whether they want their children brainwashed by followers of Alinsky.

This is, of course, old news to some.  WorldNetDaily posted an excellent article about this back in November 2009 titled “NEA raves to teachers about Alinsky ‘guidebook’.” It is well worth your while to read the entire article.  Here is an excerpt:

In ‘Alinsky for Teacher Organizers,’ a 1972 document written for use in training teachers, NEA training consultant J. Michael Arisman explained that Alinsky believed the teacher association’s real power base was in the community. He advocated organizing the community by using the natural interest in the children to send teachers into children’s homes so they could develop relationships with parents.

‘He would assert that if the teacher association is successful in organizing the community for education ends, it would have no problem getting or maintaining its membership,’ Arisman wrote. ‘At the same time, the allies made by a multi-issue association will be valuable at contract time.’ (emphasis added)

In the mind of an Alinsky-ite, the Struggle is All.  Teachers should be organized not to improve their craft or even secure better benefits for themselves, but to increase their political power.  The power thus acquired by a Alinsky-ized teacher’s union can be used as a bludgeon to agitate and aggravate, to “rub raw the sores of discontent,” as Alinsky put it.

This is what should be gleaned from any “teaching method” advocated by Alinsky or any of his followers.  The end game for Alinsky was revolution, and education was just one aspect of American life that he sought to organize in order to achieve his ultimate goal – the radicalization of the American middle class and the transformation of America’s social and economic structure.

Such tactics are divisive, pitting parents against their own children in many cases.  How many parents have been scolded by their children for “wasting” electricity or polluting the planet?  And think of the depths of cynicism one must sink in order to willfully deploy Alinsky tactics in education!  All curricula is evaluated not on the basis of worth (“Is subject X worth teaching/learning?”), but rather on the basis of how the curricula can be utilized to achieve the ultimate goal of “transformational change.”  The insinuation of such cryptomarxist ideas and methodologies by the NEA into our educational system is corrosive to the fabric of our constitutional republic.

What’s a parent to do?

1. Join your local Parent/Teacher Organization (PTO).
2. Ask to be placed on a textbook selection committee.
3. Read your children’s textbooks with them.
4. Meet with your children’s teachers and ask about their educational background.
5. Meet with the campus principal and express your concerns about the NEA’s fascination with radical extremists like Saul Alinsky and William Ayers.
6. Speak out at the next scheduled School Board Meeting.
7. Insist on a balanced curriculum.  If your child’s teacher shows Al Gore’s ecostatist propoganda film “An Inconvenient Truth,” demand that Bjorn Lomborg’s film “Cool It” be shown as well.
8. Above all, GET INVOLVED. Your children are well worth the effort.

I went to high school in the 70′s, and spent many a night at my friend’s apartment watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus on “late night” PBS.  Many of their skits and movies are comedy classics – The Parrot Sketch, The Cheese Shop Sketch, Argument Clinic, plus many others.  But one sketch in particular  – The Hospital Sketch – has a rather prescient resonance that is both hilarious and haunting.

John Cleese and Graham Chapman are two witless doctors who are more concerned with impressing the Hospital Administrator (played by Eric Idle) by arranging expensive-looking equipment in the delivery room than they are in the welfare of their terrified pregnant patient.  I’ve seen the sketch many times over the years, and it has never failed to evoke guffaws of laughter. The Monty Python crew, satirizing the state of (socialized) medical care in Great Britain at the time.

But lately, it just doesn’t seem very funny.

When cost is the single overriding concern, patient care becomes secondary or even incidental.  And in a socialized health care system, cost is the overriding concern.  When resources are finite and demand is ever-increasing, the only option available is rationing.  That’s why Eric Idle’s appearance in the sketch is so funny – and so ominous.  No one clapped for the successful delivery of the infant.  But they sure clapped when the “Hospital Administrator” bragged about how much money he had saved by leasing the machine that goes “BING!” back to the company they sold it to.

Funny stuff, but there is a serious undercurrent to all this that is downright frightening.  When cost is the overriding factor, rationing is inevitable.  When care is rationed, people suffer and die.  It’s really that simple.

Obamacare rationing is expected to begin this week, when the Food and Drug Administration revokes approval of the drug Avastin for the treatment of advanced breast cancer.

Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter has described the anticipated move as ‘the beginning of a slippery slope leading to more and more rationing under the government takeover of health care.’

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Senate minority leader John Boehner a few days ago, and could not get Boehner to commit to a rapid legislative agenda to repeal and reverse the democrat’s leftist legislative cramdown after the midterms in November. Boehner hemmed and hawed, sounding every bit like the establishment inside-the-beltway career politicians that got us into the dire economic mess that we’re in now.

To make matters worse, Bill Kristol related to Hewitt on yesterday’s podcast that he asked a “high-ranking GOP leader” what their plans were, what they intended to do should the GOP take control of one or both Houses of Congress, and this unnamed source said that they were trying to get members to sign off on a “No Earmarks” pledge, but said it was very tough going. Kristol was incredulous.

In this election year, with this blatantly obvious tidal wave of resentment and outright anger rushing toward establishment politicians (and quasi-socialist redistributionist Democrats), there are not enough Republican lawmakers with the backbone and moral courage to sign a pledge banning pork barrel spending?

The Beltway elite professional political class is neither Democrat nor Republican. They are, as coined by Mark Levin, STATISTS first and foremost. What’s good for the state is ultimately good for them, the elite professional political ruling class.

Watch for it. Obamacare should be repealed, completely, every single provision, rule, and regulation GONE, stricken from the public record and expunged from public consciousness.

But it won’t happen. Why?  Because state control of health care is the ultimate power grab.  Boehner and those who comprise the ruling class elite realize that as long as Obamacare exists, they will have a windmill to tilt against, a cause to rally the troops around, an issue to rail against.

Think about it.  Imagine the seductive appeal of that kind of power over the lives of others.  Think your congressman can resist the urge to use his new authority as one of 435 quasi-health care administrators to ensure his re-election?  Doubtful, right?

Stealth statist Republicans will nip at the edges of Obamacare, but will never repeal it because they have as much to lose (and, ironically, as much to gain) as the radical leftist Democrats who crammed it down our throats.

Obamacare is here to stay.

Phrenology was all the rage in the early 1800s.  It is considered pseudoscience now, but back in the day it was given serious consideration in the scientific community.  The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was established in 1820.  American phrenologists had their own scientific journal, the American Phrenology Journal.   Many important and influential people believed that phrenology was an established science.

Many prominent public figures such as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher (a college classmate and initial partner of Orson Fowler) promoted phrenology actively as a source of psychological insight and self-knowledge. British Prime Minister David Lloyd George was known to have a keen interest in the subject, once contriving a meeting with C.P. Snow after noticing that the author had “an interestingly shaped head.”  (Source)

The idea that you can derive the essential nature of a person simply by feeling the bumps on his head is laughable today, but it was serious and weighty stuff back then.  Fast forward 50 years and we will be just as dismissive of contemporary global warming alarmism. 

An Investor’s Business Daily editorial entitled “Cool-Down Phase” reports on the results of a review of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by the Amsterdam-based InterAcademy Council, an association of the world’s top national science academies.

Its criticism of the IPCC, held up as the divine and inerrant voice on climate change, irrevocably tarnishes the panel’s credibility and weakens the case for man-made global warming. While the Inter-Academy Council did not ‘redo the science,’ as its chairman said, it did scrutinize IPCC practices and methodologies and recommended a ‘fundamental reform’ of its management structure.

Harold T. Shapiro, chairman of the InterAcademy Council committee that wrote the report, identified two kinds of errors in the IPCC’s work:

One is the kind where they place high confidence in something where there is very little evidence.  The other is the kind where you make a statement … with no substantive value.

Hmm.  What do you call it when someone places high confidence in something with no evidence to support it?  Isn’t that called guessing? And what do you call someone who makes a statement with no substantive value?  Isn’t that person considered a liar?

The IBD editorial concludes:

Just as fears over Alar toxicity, destruction of the Amazon rain forest, a new ice age and other apocalyptic warnings lost their relevance, the global warming scare is destined to fade entirely from the public mind.

Though still with us, it’s already cracking under the pressure and won’t be able to withstand deeper inquiry or the evidence that’s obvious to anyone who’s paying attention.

I’ll bet there are a lot of climate scientists today who can empathize with the phrenologists of  the early 19th century.  It must be a bummer to realize that the sum total of your life’s work is an exercise in how not to study nature, test hypotheses, and interpret results.

For the first time in our nation’s history, the State Department has submitted a report to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights about  human rights issues in this country.  The United States is now on the same level as North Korea, Cuba, Libya, and Iran.  We are just one nation among many, no better or worse.

Well, not exactly.  The United States is apparently a horrible place to live, a festering stinkhole of racsists, bigots, sexists, homophobes, Islamophobes, and xenophobes.  According to an editorial in the Washington Times, the report

. . . describes how the United States discriminates against the disabled, homosexuals, women, Native Americans, blacks, Hispanics and those who don’t speak English. There is the expected pandering to Muslims, noting that the government is committed to ‘challenge misperceptions and discriminatory stereotypes, to prevent acts of vandalism and to combat hate crimes,’ offenses that the American people evidently keep committing. And the current economic woes are blamed on the housing crisis, which itself was the result of ‘discriminatory lending practices.’ The implication is that if Americans had only been less racist, they would be enjoying prosperity today.

The report notes that until recently, the U.S. engaged in torture, unlawfully detained terrorist suspects and illegally spied on Americans communicating with terrorists – but the report assures readers that Mr. Obama has been putting a stop to all that.

This report should come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention over the past several years.  It is well known that Mr. Obama sat through 20 years of anti-American diatribe and invective at the feet of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a man who considers the U.S. to be a nation rife with racism and even blames American racism for provoking the 9/11 attacks.  It is common knowledge that Mr. Obama served alongside unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers on the Woods Fund of Chicago.  As noted by David Horowitz,

On the morning of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, along with a million other readers of the New York Times including many who would never be able to read the paper again, I opened its pages to be confronted by a color photo showing a middle-aged couple holding hands and affecting a defiant look at the camera.  The article was headlined in an irony that could not have been more poignant, “No Regrets For A Love Of Explosives.”  The couple pictured were Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, former leaders of the 1960s’ Weather Underground, America’s first terrorist cult.  One of their bombing targets, as it happened, was the Pentagon.

With friends and mentors like these, is it any wonder that President Obama would seek to humiliate his own country in such a fashion?  The roster of  “Consultants” that participated in the collection of relevant human-rights data for this report reads like a Who’s Who of America-hating leftists.  Joe Wolverton, in his excellent piece for New American, writes:

Miley Cyrus

Another child star grows up, to the shock and horror of fans everywhere.

Give me a break.

Apparently, Perez Hilton tweeted a doctored photo of Miley Cyrus that suggested she was not wearing underwear.  Predictably, ABC pulled advertising from Hilton’s website over the “scandal.”  Hilton has since tweeted other photos, generating more buzz and faux outrage over what has become a standard rite of passage in the entertainment business.

Miley Cyrus has been a very successful child star/pop singer.  She is 17 years old.  One assumes that she wants to continue a career in show business and transition to more “adult” roles. She tested the waters last August when she did a little pole dancing at the Teen Choice Awards and then seemed to kiss a female dancer during a performance of Britian’s Got Talent a few weeks ago.

We are witness to the unfolding of a coordinated media strategy to generate buzz about the “almost legal” Miley Cyrus, and it is working like a charm.  It’s a win-win situation.  Perez Hilton gets interviewed and has numerous articles written about him.  Fame is fleeting, but when you’re up, you’re relevant.  And when you’re relevant in the entertainment business, you can sell ad space.  The buzz is good for Miley Cyrus, too.  Her legions of young fans (many of whom are on the cusp of adulthood themselves) will come to her defense as their parents express their “shock” and “outrage” at the orchestrated antics of the famous pop singer, which will only increase their devotion while at the same time alienating them from their parents. Cyrus will sell more CDs, concert tickets, and t-shirts, and will probably start her own line of Revlon mascara and Victoria’s Secret lace lingerie suitable for pole dancing.

Michael Medved thinks conservatives should stop engaging in “angry conservative rhetoric” with regard to illegal immigration:

He is most likely referring to the political fallout surrounding SB1070, Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act that goes into effect in a few weeks.

Most Americans support the law.  A search for “Arizona” on the polling site rasmussen.com yielded the following results:

Click to view

Clearly, there is widespread public support for Arizon’s anti-illegal immigration law.

But that doesn’t mean that Medved is wrong. A few days ago, Harold Meyerson wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post in which he credited Latino political advocacy groups for their “get out the vote” efforts over the years, which probably accounts for the dramatic shift away from the GOP in California. The Left, always on the lookout for the next cudgel with which to pummel conservatives, was handed the Holy Grail of political truncheons by the citizens of Arizona – SB1070.

Opposition to the law was swift and decidely left-of-center. The velocity and sheer volume of intentional misrepresentations, unabashed demagoguery, and outright lies concocted by New Media Propogandists on the Left is mind boggling. It is the willful self-propogandization of a huge proportion of the American electorate. We are, in effect, brainwashing ourselves.

People today have easy, instant access to news and information, but many either cannot or will not analyze it critically. Information is useless, even dangerous, in the absence of meaningful context. The reason why so many people are unfazed by President Obama’s manic lurch toward socialism is because they have no frame of reference.  As a result, seemingly rational people decry the enforcement of federal immigration law in Arizona as “racist,” “anti-immigrant,” and even “fascist.”

Since many do not have a historical perspective that is fact-based and ideologically-neutral, the Left is free to frame the narrative thusly: You are either a bigoted fascist who supports the racist anti-immigrant law in Arizona, or you are an enlightened humanitarian who fights against the racist anti-immigrant law in Arizona.

Facts and figures illustrating the negative effects of illegal immigration are boring.  Accusations of racism, however, elicit a raw and visceral reaction. Conservatives can drone on about the violent crimes committed by illegals; the moral abyss of human trafficking; the huge burden to taxpayers associated with caring for and educating the children of illegals; the threat to life and property posed by the endless stream of illegals – many armed, dangerous, and desperate; the gaming of the welfare system; and so on, but all of it is drowned out by the Left’s debate-ending charge of  ”RACISM!”

That’s why conservatives should focus on securing the border. Regularization of illegals can be discussed later, but right now the border needs to be secured.  Texas Congressman John Carter wrote an article for the Texas Insider recently that explains how this could be done immediately, referencing occasions on which this was done successfully in the past.

Medved, then, is right: It’s not about how to secure the border, but rather whether we should.  Conservatives can easily win that argument, and should not allow themselves to be drawn into a discussion about “comprehensive immigration reform” until after the border is secured.

In order to get the full effect of this post, you’ll need to download this mp3 and have it playing in the background. Come on – do it.  It only takes a couple of minutes.  As soon as the music starts playing, continue reading the post below.

According to the Associated Press, unemployment rose from 9.7 to 9.9% as a result of a strengthening economy.

The economy got what it needed in April: A burst of hiring that added a net 290,000 jobs, the biggest monthly total in four years. It showed employers are gaining confidence as the recovery takes deeper root.

But people who had given up on finding jobs are gaining confidence, too, and are now looking for work. That’s why the unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent to 9.9 percent and will likely go higher.

Unemployment edges near 10% after we have pumped hundreds of billions of dollars (money that we did not have, by the way) into the economy, an act that was supposed to keep unemplyment from topping 8%, but don’t worry – the AP reports that Happy Days Are Here Again!  Rising unemployment is a good thing, don’t you know?

It doesn’t bother me that the AP and the rest of the establishment media are shills for the Obama Administration in particular and the Democratic Party in general.  That’s not revelatory.  What bothers me is that they think we’re as dumb as a box of rocks.  They really think we’re stupid.

Mark Levin devoted his entire opening monologue this past Friday to this contralogical statist propoganda put out by the AP and others that rising unemployment is a good thing, in the face of:

• massive national debt imposed on us by the Obama administration
• the impending collapse of the Euro with Greece as the proverbal canary in the coal mine
• looming oppressive taxation to support the most massive entitlement (Obamacare) in American history
• inevitablity of some form of cap-and-tax scheme to smother the last vestiges of free market capitalism in this country
• instability of the stock market, as evidenced by the DOW’s recent 1,000 point plunge last week
• government takeover of the world’s largest auto maker
• government takeover of student loans
• government takeover of the home mortgage market
• government takeover of the financial markets

…and on and on and on.  Statists are trying to convince us that down is up, loss is gain, and bad is good.  It’s almost as though they believe words have a magical power all their own, that all one needs to do is say that such-and-such is, and -voila! – it happens.  All Obama has to do is say that rising unemployment is a good thing, and – voila! – it is. It’s George Orwell’s famous Newspeak, but then not in a book (or film) but in reality.

Everybody SING:

Happy days are here again
The skies above are clear again
So let’s sing a song of cheer again
Happy days are here again!

-Chris

And it didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

I’m left wondering if it wasn’t all for nothing, if we were all gamed or “pwned” by the political and media elites.  Ratings, you know.

We are no longer a representative Republic.  The deeply cynical side of me thinks that Obamacare was a done deal from the moment The One was inaugurated.  All the wailing and gnashing of teeth over its passage by so-called “moderate” and “blue dog” democrats was manufactured for a viewing audience addicted to drama.  It would have been anticlimactic without some sort of valiant struggle that ended with a clear victor.

I’m glad that a few Republicans have emerged to be stalwart and articulate defenders of the Constitution, free markets, and individual responsibility, but I wonder WHERE IN THE HELL WERE YOU GUYS OVER THE PAST 50 YEARS?  Why did it take the passing of this great Republic for you to man up?

Too little, too late, I’m afraid.  Too little, too late.

So, what now?  What do we do now?

Millions of us have voiced our opposition to the transformation of this nation from representative Republic into some form of statism or socialism.  We called, emailed, FB’d, tweeted, marched, voted.  Didn’t seem to matter much.  I guess we can continue to do these things and hope for the best.  We’ll elect some like-minded peope to office, probably, but so what?  Can any of this be walked back?  Obama opened Pandora’s Box of socialist entitlements and slavering Democrat incumbents have taken a long, adoring look inside.  They like what they see.

There are millions and millions of Obama voters just south of the Rio Grande, tense as sprinters at the starting line.  Reminds me of Wayne Hoobler, a simple-minded ex-con in the Kurt Vonnegut novel “Breakfast of Champions,” and his dreams of one day reaching Fairyland.  There was no Fairyland for Wayne, and there will be no Fairyland for the millions of illegals that will stream across the border once democrats set to work on an amnesty bill.  And why not?  A bunch of them won’t be re-elected in November, anyway.  They know that.  So why not grant amnesty to all those Obama voters?  What do they have to lose?

Chris Rowan lives and works in a district in deep South Texas that has never elected a Republican to Congress.

The February 10, 2010, broadcast of NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook, Europe’s Debt, Global Crisis?, analyzes the growing debt crisis of the five PIIGS of the European Union – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain.  Little Greece has the worst credibility problem.  The reason why this matters is due to fears that Greece could default on its sovereign debt.  That fear has spread to other struggling countries in the European Union (EU).  Investors question whether Greece will be able to refinance large amounts of debt that come due this year and if so, at what price.  If Greece defaults on its debt, investors may balk at the prospect of buying up debt of the other little PIIGS, thus slowing down or even reversing the global economic recovery.

Surely the EU will intervene to avoid another global financial crisis that might even precipitate a worldwide depression, right?  Not necessarily.  Unlike sovereign nations like the United States, Germany, and Japan, The EU does not have a central bank or a Federal Reserve.  The EU would have to go hat in hand to countries like Germany and have their central bank agree to a bailout for, say, Greece. It is an open question whether Germany would do so, let alone face the German taxpayer for the higher interest rates that would inevitably result.  If the EU cannot resolve the debt crisis of the five little PIIGS, the entire experiment in economic unity that is the EU may come to an abrupt end.  And if the EU disintegrates along with the Euro, a worldwide financial meltdown would ensue.

Ashbrook and his guests described the problem well enough, but failed to identify the cause – economic socialism.  The PIIGS acronym is apt because it succintly describes both the nature and the cause of the economic problems facing Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain.   One of Ashbrook’s guests actually blamed the blatantly obvious failure of the socialist economic model on “financial capitalism.”  Another guest blamed unscrupulous investors and creditors.  Another blamed many of the citizenry who are in debt up to their eyeballs.  None of Ashbrook’s guests even mentioned the word “socialism.”

But if the worst happens, and the collapse of the EU follows the default of the sovereign debt of one or more of the five little PIIGS, it won’t be due to an overabundance of Capitalism.  The root cause will be economic socialism itself.  This should serve as a warning to all those who favor big government solutions (e.g., Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and most of the Democrat majority in Congress) to to all the world’s ills, but it probably won’t.  After all, it can’t happen here, right?

The January 20 broadcast of NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook has a very obvious double meaning: Massachusetts Revolt and Mass Revolt.  NPR is soooooo clever.  Good to know that my tax dollars are not being wasted.

So, does NPR consider the election of ostensibly conservative Republican Scott Brown to the Senate seat owned (as in “bought and paid for”) by Ted Kennedy and the democrat machine in Massachusetts for the past 50 years to be primarily a local phenomenon (i.e., “It was Democrat challenger Martha Coakley’s fault”), or was it a national referendum on both the content and the manner in which the legislative agenda was so aggressively pursued by Obama and the Democrat majority over the past year?

Ashbrook asked Monica Brady-Myerov, a NPR reporter for WBUR Boston,

“What happened here?”

Well, that’s it then.  The Democrats think it was all Coakley’s fault.  Another Democrat gets thrown under the Obama bus.  It sure is getting crowded under there.

Ashbrook:  “Martha Coakley, Democrat Attorney General in the state, looked as though, for a long time during the short campaign period that she would swan straight into it…What was it – 53 to 47?”

Coakley “went down in flames” alright, but it really was not much of a surprise to anyone who was paying attention.  Brown had been leading in the polls since mid-January.  What  Brady-Myerov was really saying was that she and her leftist friends that comprise the echo chamber that is the establishment media today were shocked that Brown won by such a wide margin.  Leftist conventional wisdom was completely ripped apart with the election of Scott Brown.  Massachusetts was supposed to be a Democrat stronghold, a safe and reliable vote.  Why, everyone knew that Brown and Coakley were competing for Ted Kennedy’s seat.  It was Ted Kennedy’s seat, for heaven’s sake.  Did I mention it was Ted Kennedy’s seat?

Ashbrook:  “Monica, what is the country going to get to know as they get to know Scott Brown?  A lot of his support came in from around the country, from Republicans, from Tea Party movement members elsewhere, but what kind of guy is this, what kind of politician?”

The assertion that Brown was a conservative masquerading as a moderate is ridiculous.  Brown openly campaigned against Obamacare and vowed to be the 41st vote in the Senate to defeat it.

The establishment media are trying to come to terms with what happened in Massachusetts.  It will take time because leftists tend not to accept the world as it is and filter objective reality through a filter of assumptions, half-truths, and preconceived notions that support their worldview.

Related posts:

1. Republican Candidate Competitive in Mass.?
2. Critical Mass!
3. Rasmussen: Mass. Senate Race ‘Stunning’

NPR’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook has an agenda: Promote and protect Barack Obama.  And like all good statists, Ashbrook filters objective reality through a filter – a template of leftist assumptions, distortions, half-truths, and outright lies.

On Wednesday, January 13, 2010, Ashbrook ambushed two Tea Party activists.  One of the reasons why these particular activists were chosen must have been their inability to clearly articulate the purpose and goals of the Tea Party movement.  Lorie Medina, a leader in the Dallas Tea Party organization, seemed competent enough but completely out of her depth.  Jeffrey McQueen, founder of USRevolution2.com, came across as an inarticulate, militant nut-case.

Time is money.  In the world of broadcast (or, in the case of NPR, advocacy) journalism, nothing is left to chance.  Ashbrook did not wake up on the morning of January 13 and decide to interview a couple of random Tea Party activists.  Every second of every NPR broadcast is carefully planned and scripted, from the opening monologue to the closing segue to the next day’s broadcast. Medina and McQueen were deliberately selected.  They met NPR’s preconceived notions of Tea Partiers as dim-witted,  hate-filled racists and were therefore useful in promoting the agenda: Promote and protect Barack Obama.

The first question Ashbrook asks Medina is “What are you against, and what are you for?”  thus setting the stage, portraying the Tea Party movement as primarily antagonistic and oppositional.  Ashbrook’s tone is disarmingly warm and conversational, which seems to confuse Medina as she stumbles through a response.  Silly woman must have thought she was being invited to an interview and not an inquisition.  Listen:

Ashbrook then asks Medina if she is Republican (“Yes”) and whether the Tea Party is Republican (“No”), thereby associating “Republican” and “Tea Party” in the mind of the listener.  “Then what is it?” he asks glibly.  Medina is forced to disprove a logical syllogism.  If you are a Republican, and you are also a Tea Party activist, then the Tea Party must also be Republican.  Ashbrook is not interested in what Medina says in response because he has an agenda, and that is to promote and protect Barack Obama.

Ashbrook then turns his attention to McQueen, asking him why he is involved in Tea Party parades.  McQueen immediately starts promoting his flag which he hopes will become the symbol for Tea Parties all over America.  He is, of course, selling these flags via his website.  Listen carefully.  At 39 seconds into the clip, you can hear a soft chuckle in the background as McQueen describes his flag.

Now the interview takes an insidious turn.  Ashbrook asks McQueen what he MEANS by a “second American revolution.”  And just as Ashbrook was disinterested in Medina’s response earlier, he ignores McQueen’s response, too.  Ashbrook has an agenda, conducting the interview from a prepared template, moving from one loaded question to the next.  On the heels of McQueen’s response, Ashbrook asks Medina why the Tea Party movement has taken on so much heat since the inauguration of Barack Obama, thus associating “revolution” with “inauguration of Obama” in the mind of the listener.  Medina seems to sense – finally – that this is no friendly interview.

Ashbrook ignores Medina’s answer and states matter-of-factly that it was Obama’s inauguration that propelled Tea Party activists into the streets.  “Why?  Why now, Lorie?”  he asks.  A more savvy interviewee such as Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin would not have been drawn into such a rhetorical trap, but Medina blunders right into it.  Medina’s pathetic attempt to prove that the Tea Party movement is NOT a response to the inauguration of Obama is truly cringe-worthy.

Ashbrook turns back to McQueen and asks him about the signs at Tea Party rallies, putting forth the notion that the events were motivated by fear, race, and a longing for a time in the past where whites were “large and in charge.”  In other words, Tea Party activists are racist.

Ashbrook then turns to Medina and asks about the “nazi talk and nazi symbols” and signs portraying Obama with a Hitler moustache, omitting reference to all the nazi signs and symbols associated with George Bush during the eight years he was in office.  No attempt is made to place those signs in some proportional context.  How many nazi signs were there in comparison to all other signs?  How about some sort of comparison to signs carried by protesters of George W. Bush?  It doesn’t matter. Ashbrook has an agenda, and that is to promote and protect Barack Obama.

Barely ten minutes into a 45 minute broadcast, Ashbrook has managed to portray the Tea Party movement as primarily

1. antagonostic
2. oppositional
3. Republican
4. profit-driven
5. loony
6. violent
7. anti-Obama
8. racist, and
9. fascist

Classic Alinsky attack strategy.  The inept and clumsy responses by Medina and McQueen make this hit job as easy for Ashbrook as shooting fish in a barrel.  And, to make matters worse (or better, from Ashbrook’s perspective), at the very end of the interview McQueen talks about the Four Boxes – the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the bullet box.

Ah, the veritable coup de grace.  If this were an episode of The Soprano’s, this would be the point when a Soprano rival gets shot in the back of the head with a .22 caliber pistol.  I’ll bet there were some enthusiastic high-fives exchanged at this point in the broadcast around the Ashbrook office.  Let this be a lesson to anyone in the Tea Party movement invited to an interview by any of the establishment or “state-run” media, as coined by Limbaugh.

Related posts:

1. Tea Party Movement Picks Up Steam
2. David Horowitz's Advice to the Tea Party Movement
3. Why Is Sarah Palin Associating with the Tea Party Nation?

Leftists are SOOOOOOOOO depressing.

The January 4th broadcast of PBS’s On Point with Tom Ashbrook - 2010: The Year Ahead – included guest Jack Beatty, news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic, a notoriously leftist publication.  Remember, it was The Atlantic who hired crazed photographer Jill Greenberg to take photos of John McCain.   Greenberg manipulated the photo shoot to make McCain appear dark and sinister and then photoshopped the images to make him appear like a blood-sucking ghoul.  Those images will circulate the Internet forever.  Google “jill greenberg mccain” and see for yourself.

And who can forget when The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan cast aside his journalistic integrity in support of liar extraordinaire Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the so-called Baghdad Diarist?  The Atlantic has a much-deserved reputation for towing the leftist line.

Ashbrook had just asked his two other guests their predictions for the coming year, and they each predicted 2010 would be better, perhaps even fantastic.  He then turned his attention to Beatty:

Ashbrook: Jack, it’s going to be better, it’s going to be fantastic…What if it’s not?  Is there a backslide thing here, Jack?  I mean, we’ve got terrorism on the radar screen again, all of a sudden, just as the year ends; we’ve got challenges from all over the world.  Who knows?  Maybe a new battlefront in Yemen.  Are we going to have to whole arc from  – I don’t know  – where to where, as part of a war zone?  Do you see a better year, Jack?

Beatty: I don’t see a better year.  I see a year of perhaps greater realism, but also sort of informed pessimism.  I really think that by the year’s end people will be talking about a crisis in capitalism.  Consider the jobs dearth.  Over the 90’s, something like 20 million new jobs were created.  Over the “oughts” (2000 to 2009), net ZERO, according to the New York Times.  No new jobs created.  And, of course, over the same period, the average family’s income has gone down.  A country, a democracy, a country premised at least someplace, somewhere on the notion of Equal Chances can’t sustain itself on that kind of economic performance.

Assuming it is true that the number of jobs lost over the last decade exceeded the number of jobs created, Beatty conveniently ignores the fact that the vast majority of jobs were lost after the Democrats assumed power in 2006.  Job loss only accelerated on Obama’s watch.  Across-the-board tax cuts for both large and small businesses would jump start job creation, but that will not take place under an Obama-Reid-Pelosi triumverate, anyway.  Best not to mention it.

And then it gets weird.  Beatty starts interviewing HIMSELF.

Is it cyclical?

Doesn’t sound like it.  It’s a looooong cycle.

Is it structural?

It could be, I mean note that we did have the China trade deal in the 90’s.

Did that have such a deleterious effect?

We had the wrong macroeconomic policies, I would suggest, tax cuts for rich people, deregulation, that didn’t seem to work.

Can new policies make a difference?

I don’t know, but I think that we’re really up against something in the nature of our system that is not working for the average person.

It is so tiresome to listen to the same old harangues by the same old leftists about the evils of capitalism. It is a lie, no matter how often it is repeated. Capitalism has created more prosperity for more people than any other economic model at any other time in history.  PERIOD. Capitalism unlocks potential and inspires innovation. Capitalism lifts people out of poverty and hopelessness.  The tired “tax cuts for rich people” meme is supposed to make the poor envious and resentful of the very people who could provide them with jobs.  Fact is, imposing high taxes on the rich never created a single job.  Blaming the current recession on deregulation is like blaming war on bullets.  It’s not just stupid; it’s asinine.  It was the metastacization of Progressive anti-capitalist economic policies initiated by Woodrow Wilson and perpetuated by every succeeding administration that were responsible for this (and every other) recession.

Leftist ideology breeds pessimism.  Leftist economic policy always results in the collective misery of millions.  Leftist political strategy hinges on deception, subterfuge, half-truths, and outright lies.  Why in the world do we pay any attention to them?

Related posts:

1. Bill O’Reilly: McCain is the Person of the Year
2. George F. Will: A Clunker of a Year
3. 2010: The Final Year of the Obama Administration