Stop it. I am tired of you calling me stupid because I do not believe in your socialist vision. Do not call be an extremist for wanting lower taxes. Stop insulting my intelligence by insisting I need the government to make my health care choices. I am not being obstinate when I insist Congress stops wasting money on projects designed only to garner votes. I am not being bitter when I cling to my 2nd amendment rights. I certainly don't need your wife telling me what to eat. In short, your continued badgering and demeaning of me and others who think like me is beneath the office of the President of the United States. Stop it.

I've just about had it with reading posts of stupid liberals and leftists. I'm tired of hearing how Fox News is "Faux News" because they have conservative opinion commentators. I swear, Fox could report that the sun had risen in the morning and the left would jump all over Fox for being so geocentric, along with a host of so-called experts braying about Fox being wrong about the time. There would even be comments from Al Gore blasting Fox for distracting people from the true cause of global warming for even mentioning that there is a sun.

I can't wait until Nancy Pelosi gets fired. She will go down in history as the worst Speaker of the House ever inflicted upon this country. Suggesting that we pass a bill to find out what is in it is the height of arrogance.

I am certainly tired of being called an extremist by President Obama and his Democratic Attack Goons. Just what the **** is extremist about wanting a balanced budget, enforcement of laws, lower taxes, and less business stifling government intrusion? Why am I an extremist for wanting the President and Congress to actually follow the Constitution of the United States?

I really am beginning to believe that there is an organized effort to destroy the United States of America. Hollywood used to make movies with Real Men as heroes and now they celebrate losers while denigrating all conservative thought. The Boy Scouts of America stood strong against all attackers but the organization has been demonized and marginalized to the point that very few boys are willing to learn how to survive in the world. Indoctrination by the prophets of liberal thought aside, America's public schools are no longer places where achieving excellence is demanded. Instead, education is all about making the individual feel good rather than learn. When you take all of these and many other observations about America all together, one could see a conspiracy to make America into a nation of helpless losers with no will, ability or intellect to fight off the inevitable invasion.

Last, I am weary of the lies by the liberal left. It also makes me sad that so many fools have been taken in by their lies. Those useful idiots have no idea of the future they could be dooming themselves and their children to if the enemies of Western Civilization are allowed to win. The first ones to be executed by the conquerors are usually the idiots whose tolerance allowed the conquest to take place.

The intentions behind merit pay plans for Teachers are understandable and should be lauded for a desire to improve student performance in public schools. However, such plans are flawed and are doomed to fail in their objectives. These attempts to implement merit pay plans ultimately create more problems than are solved, mainly due to the fact that all merit pay plans can do nothing to solve for the problem of improving student performance.

Most plans revolve around the concept of judging teachers based on student performance on standardized tests. Since not all subjects have a standardized test by which students are measured, some plans allow for those teachers to be reviewed by peers and/or administration to determine whether or not the teacher will receive merit pay. This breaks the entire system as it creates a disparity in how teachers are judged. The standard by which those academic teachers are judged will be mostly objective while the standard for the rest of the teachers will be purely subjective.

For academic teachers with a standardized test in their subject, everything will depend on the test scores. While this may seem simple and fair on the outside, one must realize that teachers ultimately have little control of how a student actually performs on a test. Students may be apathetic, tired, distracted, or absent due to circumstances outside of the classroom. A student may decide to perform poorly to “punish” the teacher for disciplining him or her. The only thing under the control of the teacher is the content of what is taught during the 1 hour in the classroom against the 23 hours spent elsewhere.

It would also be simple for these academic teachers to game the system. A teacher could choose to teach only those students who want learn and want to perform well on those standardized tests being used in judgment of merit. It is common for all of the students in an honors level class to meet expectations on End-of-Course tests with upwards of 90% exceeding in certain subject areas. Even using student growth for those teachers is problematic since honors students are usually already performing at the top of the scale.

There is also a further inequality between subject areas and their respective standardized tests that make any system of judgment based on them unfair. Math scores often lag behind the scores in other subject areas, especially when one considers the recent implementation of the new math curriculum in the state of Georgia. (There is also the NCLB initiative that demands all students enter high school already proficient in Algebra.) Yet math teachers certainly work as hard as any other subject area to teach their students. Why should they be punished for teaching a subject that can be the most difficult one to master for most students?

The rest of the teachers do not have it any better for lack of a standardized test. Lacking an objective standard, all other measurements are purely subjective and can be based on issues beyond a teacher’s control. Peer review and/or administrative reviews depend more on likeability and interpersonal skills than they do on what actually happens in the classroom. Beyond the simple quid pro quo, school based evaluators might be motivated to either award or not award merit pay for all sorts of reasons, good and bad. It is impossible to insure that an objective set of standards would be used consistently and fairly throughout each state implementing merit pay plans for those teachers of subjects without standardized tests.

 In the end, one must realize that teachers are simply government employees, contracted to provide a service. As government employees, teachers have little control over what the public chooses to do with the services they provide. While the existing system of teacher compensation has issues, there is no other system that would work as well. It would be far better to address how teachers are hired and fired instead of manipulating teacher compensation with artificial bonuses. Teachers cannot force a student to learn in class or perform on tests. If any teacher really had the answer to conquering the current problem of teen apathy, he or she would quit teaching and make millions selling that answer to parents across the world!

In case you haven't noticed, our First Lady would like you to know that American school children are fat and obese. She has a solution to save us from ourselves. See if you can come to the same conclusion as our wonderful FLOTUS by following the chain of events.

Over the past couple of decades, schools have eliminated recess from elementary schools as the time is needed for additional time to prepare for mandated standardized tests. States have also limited Physical Education credit requirements to the point where most students only get a single semester of real PE during their four years of high school, and not even that much in middle school or junior high.

Additionally, several school systems have eliminated dodgeball and other extremely physical activities from the school yard for being too damaging to self esteem. Playground equipment has also been removed from many school sites for being too much of a liability. Instead, children are limited to activities where everybody wins and gets a trophy for showing up.

The obvious conclusion that one should reach, according to our political class, is that chocolate milk is to blame. Removing flavored milks from the lunchroom will instantly solve the problem!

Really? Why do we continue to put up with this nonsense? When will we take America back and implement real changes in our public schools that actually address the problem? Children are getting fat because they do not exercise enough, plain and simple. The solution is even easier, local school districts need to bring back recess and require Physical Education for all 13 years to graduate.(Including home-schooled children.)

America's Public Schools are failing to make the grade. No new news there. Unfortunately, few are willing to look at the real cause of the problem, instead choosing to pontificate, posture and point. Many conservatives here are fond of placing all of the blame on teacher's unions, teachers, administrations, teacher's unions, underfunded pension plans, teacher's unions, poor textbooks, teachers, teacher's unions, multicultural education, teacher's unions, teachers, and finally teacher's unions. The leftists merely bleat about how underfunded schools are and demand more money be spent on funding studies on what study would be most effective at improving the study skills of minority students studying how students study.

The first step to fixing America's Public Schools is simple, everyone needs to mind their own darn business.

We can start with the Federal Government by dissolving the Federal Department of Education. Since the founding of the Department, the more involved the Federal Government has been in public education, the worse our schools have done. There is not one single action taken at the national level that has improved schools. Besides, there is no Constitutional mandate for any Federal involvement in public schools.

Next, we can get the states to mind their own business by letting the local schools boards and school advisory committees determine what is best for the children at their schools. The state should only concern itself with the bureaucratic tasks such as distributing funding, regulating extra-curricular activities (sports), setting (but not enforcing) curriculum standards, generating very general graduation requirements, creating End-Of-Course-Tests and supervising student transportation. Everything else should be up to the local school to decide under the direction of the local school board.

(The perfect ideal would be to centralize all purchasing and payroll to the state level while giving total autonomy to administrators on the school level.)

I plan to continue my posting of a series of blogs on the state of education in America from a real public school teacher's point of view so stay tuned for more.

Corporations do not nor have they ever really paid taxes. The money always comes from the consumer, stockholders or employees. To meet a "corporate tax obligation," a corporation will either reduce dividends (not likely), cut salaries (always from the bottom first), or raise prices (the most likely).

These liberal fools on the left who persist in thinking of corporations as bottomless wells of tax revenue are dooming America to economic ruin. The typical Democratic plan to tax the rich to help the poor is actually far more damaging to the lowest income earners. The end result of high taxes on corporations is to create more of a burden for the bottom tax bracket AND for those who don't even pay taxes than to make things more "equitable" as the Democrats claim!

The ink was scarcely dry after Republican Christine O’Donnell’s victory over Mike Castle in the Republican Senatorial Primary in Delaware before Republican supporters of Mike Castle began blasting and denigrating O’Donnell. Karl Rove led the charge with his comments on Sean Hannity’s show, questioning O’Donnell’s past and declaring her to have serious character flaws. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has stated that they will not support O’Donnell’s campaign. Dr. Charles Krauthammer had weighed several times with harsh criticism of Sarah Palin for her “disruptive and capricious” endorsement for a candidate he believes as unelectable..

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch is called upon to defend a black man in a case that cannot be won. When called upon to explain why, Atticus simply states that “it is the right thing to do” even though he knows he will lose the case. One would assume that the right thing to do after a Republican Primary would be to support the winner in his or her bid in the general election. Christine O’Donnell is the Republican nominee for Delaware’s upcoming Senatorial election. She should have the full support of all Republicans, yet she doesn’t.

All of these so-called conservative pundits who are attacking O’Donnell have failed the Atticus test. They are unwilling to do the right thing by not being willing to support the conservative candidate who won the Republican primary. Krauthammer declared that he supports the most electable candidate over the most conservative, showing he has no principles that cannot be set aside for convenience sake. Rove is continuing his attack on Christine O’Donnell (much to the delight of the Democrat Party), showing he is more concerned with being right than doing the right thing. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has shown that they have no faith in Delaware’s Republicans by their lack of financial support for the Republican candidate they did not anoint. (Yet they certainly want the donations from Delaware to continue to flow into the national fund.)

What is even more nauseating about the whole situation is not just that they have given up on the fight in Delaware but they have done everything they can to aid the opposition with their comments. Krauthammer has given every Big Government Liberal in Delaware hope again with his dire predictions of an overwhelming Republican defeat in November. Karl Rove might as well sign a contract with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. We can certainly expect that all of their comments will appear in ads for the Democratic nominee.

Overall, the criticism of O’Donnell can only be viewed in two ways. For some, it is nothing more than whining and crying from children who didn’t get their way. For others, it is a look under the thin veneer of unprincipled pragmatists who don’t really believe making any real conservative changes in Washington. They would rather make a deal with the devil than have the patience of Job

I am growing tired of living in a culture of judgment. It is happening more and more from both sides of the political fence. From Bill O’Reilly to Cooper Anderson, we have pundits telling us how we must live. The NeoLiberals claim we must be unhappy if we have less wealth than someone else, demanding that the earnings of capitalists and conservatives is redistributed to make things fair. (Of course, the “deserved” wealth of Hollywood elites and the Democratic leadership is exempted from this redistribution.) Meanwhile, various conservative groups clamor about graduation rates, library books, drug use, and alternative lifestyles, criticizing the choices being made by their fellow Americans.
    
I thought America was founded on the principle of individual freedom, not the freedom of the groupthink to tell the individual how to live. If we are to truly be a country that believes in freedom for the individual, we must respect the right of the individual to choose how to live that free life. Obviously, the rights and freedoms of the individual end where the rights and freedoms of another individual begin. The issues of which I write are those that do not directly affect anyone other than the individual.

The tired and trite mantra of the NeoLiberals that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer is based on several faulty premises. One, it assumes that to be happy, one must have wealth and luxury. It belittles any sense of accomplishment or satisfaction one can derive from the simpler pleasures in life. Henry David Thoreau is rolling over in his grave over the hypocrisy of the left. This mantra also assumes that life is meant to be fair and that everyone must get the same things, the better same things being reserved for the NeoLiberals. That destroys any need for the individual to work to achieve success, disparaging the ability of the individual to make it without help from the Nanny State of the NeoLiberals.

Another one is that the NeoLiberals interpret the statistics to fit their own views of the world. Basically, they lie or change the rules to suit the mantra. The sob stories they attempt to produce or more often discredited that proven true. When exactly does one stop living in poverty and how does yearly income have anything to do with that? There are some very wealthy individuals in America who earned no income this year but are certainly not living in squallor.

Last of all is the blatant hypocrisy of the left regarding wealth redistribution. Another important mantra of the Neoliberals is "Do as I say, not as I do." (Great book, by the way.) They call for others to do things they themselves are unwilling to do. Just how much food is wasted by Hollywood at their awards ceremonies or movie location? How many "homeless" or "poor" people get invited to Democratic fundraiser dinners? Why didn't Bill Clinton invite some of those sleeping on the street in front of the White House in for a stay in the Lincoln Bedroom?

Things are just as bad on the right side of the political fence. Neocons make the assumption that everyone must be able to meet the same standard to be successful and must accomplish those tasks in a preordained manner and timeline. Countless conservative pundits have criticized public schools over graduation rates and test scores without ever acknowledging the responsibility of the individual. If a school teaches world geography yet a student is unable to identify world locations for wither a lack of effort and study in class or no interest in retaining the information AFTER the test, how is the school at fault? If a student decides to work as a teenager instead of graduating, why is it anyone else’s business?

Conservatives claim to support individual rights and freedoms but are quick to offer judgment on how the individual chooses to exercise those freedoms. Freedom means that the individual is free to make bad choices as well as good ones. Thinking that everyone must get a high school diploma by age 18 or even at all is the antithesis to freedom. So is keeping certain books out of public libraries, filtering the Internet in schools, criminalizing drug use instead of addressing the negative actions as a result of drug use, or condemning alternative lifestyles. If Americans are to truly be free, we must be free to be stupid. 

I fully support publicly funded education, controlled by local school boards, with graduation standards set by the state. One has better odds at being successful in life with a high school diploma. Every American should have a chance to receive a free public education. But do not judge the teachers or the students, allow the free market and the school of hard knocks to do so. I also find alternative lifestyles to be in opposition of my own religious beliefs, but I will not act the part of God by condemning anyone else for making a different choice.

The overall problem is that the left tries to use laws and activist judges to force personal beliefs and agendas on the public while the right tries to use laws to force common sense, decency, and religious morals on every aspect of individual life. While the NeoLiberals will never be convinced to give up their goal of destroying individualism, capitalism, and religion, I would hope that Conservatives would realize that the right of the individual to make poor choices must be upheld, as hard as it is to let someone make a mistake. For some, that is the only way they can learn.

Critics of public education often cite business models as a means by which all of the woes of education can be solved. They claim that free market forces should rule the academic arena, promoting vouchers, charter schools and even the total elimination of public schools. The problem with this view is that education is not a product, it is an ideal; and ideals do not translate well to the marketplace.

In a free market, a customer is free to purchase goods and/or services from whomever the customer chooses. This competition in the marketplace encourages the producers of goods and/or services to meet the needs of the customer better than anyone else. Of course, the most important part of this transaction is that the customer places value on whatever is being produced. If the customer places no value on the product, there is nothing the producer can do to require the customer to take part in a transaction.

Analogies drawn between education and business fail in their comparisons because education has little or no value in today’s America. Conservatives constantly deride public schools as being totally worthless and unnecessary while liberals have no use for facts and knowledge if they do not further the left’s campaign of indoctrination. If the so-called leaders from both sides of the political divide cannot place any value on the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake, how can one expect parents and students to do so?

 

The world of business is driven by profit margins and the law of supply and demand. The most successful businesses are those that can supply what customer demand, maximizing profit while minimizing costs. Schools today, both public and private, are charged with supplying a service, and education, that is not always in demand by the customers, the students. How can one determine profit margin or minimize costs without being able to adjust supply for something not in demand? It is impossible for schools to establish a free market business relationship with a captive customer base.

There are a multitude of problems in public schools today but solutions will not be found in the free market models being proposed. American society must undergo a fundamental change that starts placing value on education and the pursuit of knowledge. The conservative right must give up its insistence on a direct practical application to everything that is taught in a classroom while the liberal left need to stop letting “feeling good” get in the way the facts. Perhaps the best answer would be to eliminate compulsory education laws but still provide a public education for those who want one. Only then would one truly see the free market at work when Americans realize how little can be done without a high school education.

In reviewing the Golden Compass and the rest of the Dark Materials trilogy (Courtesy of the public library), I am left with a burning question. Why does Pullman only kill the Judeo-Christian God? Do aetheists believe in Allah? Why are the muslims left out of this anti-theology screed of Pullman's? He also makes no reference to the Hindu or Buddha  yet by his very words he holds any belief in a diety to be contemptible. Could it be that he believes those religions to be of little consequence?

Muslims particularly should find the entire Dark Materials trilogy worthy of condemnation, not only for the slights aimed at the People of the Book, but its denial of the teachings of his Prophet, Muhammad, peace be upon him. According to Pullman, Allah is nothing more than a tortured angel, a sham. There is no heaven, no glory in the Afterlife. One would think that the Mullahs would make some sort of public statement, especially those residing in Britain.

 

Personally, I hope the film flops. It is not worthy of the comparisons being made to the Lord of the Rings nor the Chronicles of Narnia (ironic, that.) I will look elsewhere for entertainment and I urge my two or three readers to do the same.

Walmart is an evil place to shop. It pretties up its inferior products and pimps them out to an unsuspecting public. I would no sooner purchase durable goods at a Walmart then stab myself in the eye with a pen. I can’t wait for the day when the rest of America realizes that quality is always the better value and Walmart goes the way of Woolco, Jefferson Ward, and other relics.

 

Personally, I deplore Walmart’s Business Model, not because of any misplaced liberal notions of wages or benefits, but because it is a model that favors short term profit over offering quality goods for sale or even allowing some of its suppliers to remain in business. Huffy is one case of how Walmart destroyed one of its suppliers, something Sam Walton would have abhorred.

 

I also find fault with most of the durable goods Walmart sells. Clothing items sold by Walmart tend to wear faster than other brands and rarely fit me well. I can never find slacks or khakis that are long enough in the leg and shirts from Walmart are too short on my torso. I have has similar poor experiences with appliances, electronics, hardware, and even plants sold at Walmart.

 

So, as a result of my intense dislike for Walmart, I exercise my rights by not shopping at Walmart. Instead, I bargain hunt elsewhere or pay a slightly higher price for better quality goods. Walmart Apologists may call me a fool for not taking advantage of the great bargains offered at Walmart but I do not see them as bargains. I see them as a trap for the unwary and uneducated.   

I am shocked and saddened by the lack of Townhall columns regarding the current situation of UK citizen Gillian Gibbons. The poor woman is facing a fate of 40 lashes and jail time along with death threats from mobs of "peaceful" Muslims demanding her death. All because she dared name a Teddy Bear Muhammad, named for one of the students in the class.

Instead we get round umpteen million and one of columns about the presidential candidates for an election still 11 months from now. One would think that the regular readers of Townhall already get it and don't need to hear from every single supporter of Candidate X every single day.

Where is the outrage over this latest act of the "Religion of Peace?" Would it take for her to be in a brain-dead vegetative state to warrant an article or three here on TH? Would she need to first be kidnapped in Aruba and dumped in a trashbag (carried by a mentally deranged step-brother) in the San Francisco Bay?

 

A wider variety of column topics would be a refreshing change. 

I ran across the following posting by Sedonaman in a comments section. It is too good to be lost so I am posting it here. Sedonaman does not seem to have a blog here. It is a list of items that comprise the Democratic Vision for America

Sedonaman’s List

Abortion

Abolition of private property

Abolition of tradition

Adultery

"Alternative lifestyles"

Anti-Americanism

Anti-democracy

Anti-subsidiarity

Assisted suicide

Death taxes

Defiance of legitimate authority

Distribution of condoms in K-12

Diversity (except viewpoint)

Euthanasia

Female masturbation workshops in universities

Fornication

Glorification of debauchery

Godless Marxism

"Hate" crimes laws

Hate for religion (except Islam)

Hate for those of faith (except Islamics and Islamic bombers)

Homosexual special rights

Intolerance of the good

Isolationism

K-12 Indoctrination into Godless Marxism

K-12 Indoctrination into homosexuality

K-12 sex education

Lack of moral clarity

Moral equivalency

Moral Relativism

Nietzscheism

Obliteration of God from the public square

Parole of vicious criminals

Pedophilia (except by Catholic priests and Republicans)

Polylogism

Pro-Europeanism

Racial quotas

Radical egalitarianism

Redistribution of OTHER peoples’ money

Release of known terrorists

Same-sex "marriage"

Sodomy

Speech codes

The individual human will (will to power)

Tolerance of evil

Tolerance Über Alles

UN one-world government

Unlimited government

Unlimited taxation

"Victimless" crimes

Voting rights for aliens (legal or otherwise)

Voting rights for felons   

The Chickenhawk Fallacy

 

            The blogosphere is teaming with articles regarding Barbara Boxer’s latest faux pas so I felt it important to throw something into the fire to further fan the flames. The latest argument against the war in Iraq to come out of the Left is that the decision to go to war is being made by those who have no personal stake, nothing to sacrifice, because their children are not serving in the military. Furthermore, the lack of any military service on the part of these “Chickenhawks,” disqualifies them authorizing any use of the American Armed Forces. The only individuals qualified to make decisions on how to conduct the war in Iraq are Democrats who previously served in the military, Generals waited until retirement to voice their “true” opinions (Instead of resigning their commissions when asked to act against what they now say was their better judgment), and political pundits who failed to make it in talk radio.

            The fallacy here is so ridiculous one may be overwhelmed at where to start in the deconstruction. The first and most obvious place is the United States Constitution. I don’t recall reading a single clause in which military service was required to serve in any higher office. Yet the President of the United States and Congress are given specific roles and responsibilities over the United States Armed Forces. It should then be concluded that since the Framers never intended military service to be a requirement for directing the use of the United States Armed Forces, it is silly and unconstitutional to do so now. Any Senator or Representative making official remarks about Chickenhawks is actually in violation of the Constitution and should be duly censured.

            Legalities aside, there is such an amazing hypocrisy to these remarks that would send any sane person into hysterical laughter upon hearing such statements. If we were to actually hold our elected officials to this sort of standard across the board in all legislative decisions, we find some glaring inconsistencies between the actions of the Neo-Liberals and their deeds.

• What right does Ted Kennedy have to make decisions regarding taxes? He certainly doesn’t pay his fair share, choosing instead to hide his wealth in offshore trust funds.
• What right does Nancy Pelosi have to make decisions regarding welfare? Neither she nor her children collect.
• What right does Hillary Clinton or anyone else in Congress have to make decisions regarding Universal Health Care? They will receive the best Health Care the tax payers can provide for the rest of their lives and would certainly not authorize the same level of health care for all of America.
• What right do the male members of Congress in FAVOR of keeping abortion LEGAL have to make any decisions regarding abortion since they have no personal stake in it?
• What right does John Kerry have to make legislation affecting public education since he has no children in public schools?

I could go on and on about the pronouncements of the entire Democratic Party where they have opined and made legislative decisions about subjects in which they have no personal stake. However, I would be guilt of my own fallacy. They have been elected to make such decisions. That is what the United States Constitution is all about. I may not agree with the actions of Hillary Clinton, but the people of New York have entrusted her to be their voice in the Senate. I must respect no matter how much I question the wisdom of Hillary’s legislative actions.

Somebody correct me if I am wrong but I do not recall anyone questioning President Clinton’s use of the military based on his lack of past service. There were other arguments offered but nobody called him a chickenhawk.