Wednesday, March 31, 2010

It's all over

A learned professor says the world is doomed. There is no way to stop global warming, so we should not bother to try, he says.
Professor James Lovelock is one of the alarmists who believe humans are destroying the planet by driving SUVs and burning electric lights instead of kerosene lamps. He is just a bit more alarmed than others.
Basically, he told BBC, we should just give up and enjoy life the best we can until the world comes to an end, which he implied would be sooner rather than later.
Hell's bells: Isn't that what we're doing?
Liberals are spending the legacy of future generations as if there is no tomorrow.
So, if there isn't, what's the diff?
And why are they proposing legislation to prevent the inevitable? I mean, this guy is a scientist, for heaven's sake. His theory can't be questioned.

Monday, March 29, 2010

There he goes again

Joe "Gaffe-a-minute" Biden is at it again.
When he whispered to President Obama about how big a deal health care was, the Biden Damage Control Team in the Lame Stream Media went to Defcon 2.
Had it been Dan Quayle, of course, there would have been headlines for a week.
Biden says more stupid things in one day than Quayle did in his entire career. Toss in George W. Bush, for that matter.
The difference is that it worked then. It doesn't anymore.
People aren't stuck with the New York Times and a few emulators. They have Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, Fox News, (a-hem) Cowford Commentary and others to bring them the truth, varnished and unvarnished.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Topsy-turvy logic

The navel-gazers at one local newspaper are fixated on a single statistic.
It is alleged that Florida is last among states in spending on schools as a percentage of income.
This brings cries to raise taxes immediately and pour more money into the salaries of the adults who run the school system, which is where most spending goes.
Meanwhile, people who live in the real world look at that statistic and think to themselves: "If we are educating kids as well as, or better than, other states that are spending a lot more money, we're doing a pretty good job."
Now, let's see what School Superintendent Ed Pratt-Dannals says:
"Last year 45 of our schools increased their school grades by at least one letter grade over the previous year. The progress over the last 10 years is even more encouraging, as the number of “A” and “B” schools has increased more than 500 percent, with 102 of our 166 schools receiving an “A” or “B” last year. In 2009, for the second consecutive year, Duval County Public Schools earned a district grade of “B” from the state of Florida.
"Our district is making gains in spite of our budget being significantly cut each year."
Let's recap. Since school reform began under Gov. Jeb Bush, Jacksonville has seen significant improvement in its schools, according to the school superintendent. Currently, it has a grade of B (which is above average).
What Pratt-Dannals did not mention in this particular message is this:
In the past three years, the local school operating budget has increased from $994,243,295 to $1,006,172,080 this year.
Thus, the navel-gazer's logic goes like this: Schools are making significant gains in education, while spending more money, therefore we must have a tax increase -- NOW! -- because other states spend more money than we do!!
Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Friday, March 26, 2010

They aren't finished

Liberals are just getting warmed up with the takeover of the health care industry.
Still to come:
Amnesty for millions of people who are in this country illegally. Democrats know they will need their votes in November.
Takeover and shut down conservative talk radio and Fox News. If they can do it, they will silence the Wall Street Journal, too. Like the Chinese, Obamanation doesn't need any dissent.
In that same vein, some kind of government regulation of the Internet.
Inevitably, a crushing new tax burden. This, however, will be after the election, not before.
Right to work laws will be stricken.
Welfare will return, bigger than ever.
The Supreme Court will be packed with liberals, like the nut case just appointed to the Ninth Circuit.
Trust me. All of this and more is on the agenda. What's more, it is the domestic agenda that matters. If we lose in Afghanistan and cities in Israel are destroyed with nuclear weapons, too bad but it can't interfere with the important business at hand: turning America into a welfare state, cradle to grave.
Elections have consequences, and there was a game-changing election in 2008.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Malfeasance

Like the vast majority of Jacksonville residents, I don't read the Florida Times-Union. It is so lightweight, literally and figuratively, I have better things to do with my time.
But I asked someone who does (it's a job requirement) whether the paper had ever interviewed someone locally who (a) had no health insurance and (b) was unable to get health care. He could not cite an example.
Think about it.
Health care has been the No. 1 issue in the nation for more than a year. Those favoring the liberal plan that was enacted have been saying millions of Americans have been going without health care -- and even dying.
And the local paper couldn't find a single example?
Or, perhaps, it didn't even occur to them?
As someone who spent nearly 50 years in the business, this is incredible to me.
Localizing a major national story is Journalism 101.
But the paper is so busy with its liberal agenda, and fluff and stuff stories, it doesn't have time to provide readers with useful information. While constantly trying to figure out why readers are leaving in droves, maybe it could consider its content.

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Don't ask, don't tell

President Obama's health secretary was boasting recently that because of the health care takeover, drug companies will see their profits reduced $90 billion over the next 10 years.
When the cheers subside, will someone answer this question:
How many people will die because they didn't get the new drugs that would have been developed had that money been put into research?
Who will develop and produce new life-saving drugs?
The French?
Perhaps the Obama administration will issue an executive order directing drug companies to produce new drugs, at no cost, because that is their duty to society.
That should do the trick.

None for me, thanks

If national health care is the greatest thing since sliced bread, don't you wonder why President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want no part of it?
Here's the story.
Well, Joe Biden says it is for "ordinary Americans." Not the extraordinary.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

More dirty tricks

Critical Condition - National Review Online
Just one more example of the duplicitous tactics used to enact health care "reform."
Remember this?
Barack Obama. "I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits -- either now or in the future."
He signed that bill today. It is law.

Stupid Stupak's stupendous surrender

If John F. Kennedy's ghost writes another edition of Profiles in Courage, we now know one person who won't be in it: Bart Stupak.
Stupak is a Democrat, which means he is a liberal and not to be trusted. Yet, some people believed that he would be true to his word and vote against the health care bill because it allows government funding of abortions.
Instead, he caved, and provided the votes needed to pass the atrocious bill.
Here's his payoff.
That's the icing on the cake that was the sleaziest chapter in American political history.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Elegy written in a kayak

Last weekend, while paddling my kayak around in the marshes, a great blue heron swooped overhead and dropped some guano on my head.
I thought to myself: This must be heaven.
As I combed it out of my beard, I thought to myself, “Self, why are you intruding on nature this way?
“This beautiful expanse of nature should be preserved for the bugs and weeds Gaia has put here. Homos, sapiens and otherwise, should not be here despoiling it.”
This brilliant bit of philosophy inspired me to write a column. So I took out some organic weed, rolled one and lit up. It makes me think more clearly.
I also fired up my laptop and began typing: “The solution to pollution is dilution; the solution to pollution is dilution …”
It was one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever written and it reminded me of a tune by the Rolling Stones. That led me to write a brilliant aphorism: “A rolling stone gathers momentum.”
Then an osprey swooped overhead.
I took out my parasol and opened it up. I can always wash the parasol.
But I’ll never wash my beard.
Nature’s most sublime work must be kept pristine.
Forever.
And ever.
Amen.

Government docs in Britain make a slight mistake

How appropriate on the day of the health care takeover vote: An example of national health care efficacy.
Yes, doctors make mistakes in this country. But isn't Liberalcare supposed to be better than what the president calls "the status quo?"
If they succeed today, or ever, we will be trading the status quo for the statist quo.

Friday, March 19, 2010

Poor politicians

I'm so glad I'm not one of the holdout Democrats.
Sure, I could have anything I wanted. Move the Washington Monument to Florida? No problem.
But the pressure!
Rep. Nancy Pelosi is a vote-getter, no question about it. She gets them the same way Lyndon Johnson did. "Grab them by their ... and their hearts and minds will follow."
My guess is they will get the votes to pass the abominable health care takeover bill.
When Johnson passed his civil rights bill, he told other senators that there would never be another Democrat elected to the Senate from Texas, his close friend Bobby Baker once told me.
Pelosi is asking House Democrats to give up their jobs to save Obama's, and apparently they are willing.

Typo trouble

Being one who has experienced many problems with typographical errors in my lifetime, I wouldn't make too much of one.
But a typo in the American History curriculum of the local public schools is too good to ignore.
Students in the 11th grade spend weeks 16 and 17 studying the Progressive Era. Anyone familiar with the extent of liberal (progressive) influence in the public schools will appreciate the need for this area of study.
An essential question: "How was imperialism a continuation of Manifesto Destiny and how was it different?"
Would that be the destiny of the Communist Manifesto? They were a pretty progressive bunch.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

What lies ahead

If the Democrats succeed in taking the major step toward socialized medicine they are proposing, it will be the beginning, not the end.
Fred Barnes sees nothing but trouble for years ahead.
He is right on.
Walgreens stores in Washington state will no long provide drugs for Medicaid patients because the government will not pay for it, and that is what will happen in the new plan.
The phony numbers and cheap tricks liberals are using to pass the bill have a majority of the people opposed to the plan, and Idaho already is threatening a law suit, with dozens of other states to follow.
Many states are exempting themselves from the plan's unconstitutional requirement that people buy health insurance.
Many Democrats expect to lose their jobs if they vote for the bill.
They will. And they should.

The money thing, again

Pulitzer Prize winner George Will has a good column about Washington's latest foray into public education.
The money quote: "Abundant evidence demonstrates that money is not an Archimedean lever for moving the world of education. Inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending tripled over four decades; pupil-teacher ratios were substantially reduced as the number of teachers increased 61 percent while enrollments rose about 10 percent. Yet test scores stagnated or declined."
The idea of measuring public schools by the amount of money you throw at them is thoroughly discredited, but liberals continue their attempts to revive this myth. Therefore, it is necessary to counter them each time in order to drive a stake through the heart of their theory.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

A Times reporter writes the truth

When a writer for the liberal icon New York Times acknowledges that the health care bill being rammed through Congress by liberals is "fundamentally imbalanced," you have to wonder what more it would take to make the point.
David Brooks:
"There is the doc fix dodge. The legislation pretends that Congress is about to cut Medicare reimbursements by 21 percent. Everyone knows that will never happen, so over the next decade actual spending will be $300 billion higher than paper projections.
There is the long-term care dodge. The bill creates a $72 billion trust fund to pay for a new long-term care program. The sponsors count that money as cost-saving, even though it will eventually be paid back out when the program comes on line.
There is the subsidy dodge. Workers making $60,000 and in the health exchanges would receive $4,500 more in subsidies in 2016 than workers making $60,000 and not in the exchanges. There is no way future Congresses will allow that disparity to persist. Soon, everybody will get the subsidy.
There is the excise tax dodge. The primary cost-control mechanism and long-term revenue source for the program is the tax on high-cost plans. But Democrats aren’t willing to levy this tax for eight years. The fiscal sustainability of the whole bill rests on the naïve hope that a future Congress will have the guts to accept a trillion-dollar tax when the current Congress wouldn’t accept an increase of a few billion.
There is the 10-6 dodge. One of the reasons the bill appears deficit-neutral in the first decade is that it begins collecting revenue right away but doesn’t have to pay for most benefits until 2014. That’s 10 years of revenues to pay for 6 years of benefits, something unlikely to happen again unless the country agrees to go without health care for four years every decade.
There is the Social Security dodge. The bill uses $52 billion in higher Social Security taxes to pay for health care expansion. But if Social Security taxes pay for health care, what pays for Social Security?
There is the pilot program dodge. Admirably, the bill includes pilot programs designed to help find ways to control costs. But it’s not clear that the bill includes mechanisms to actually implement the results. This is exactly what happened to undermine previous pilot program efforts."
Brooks goes on to say that the Democrats have not been totally irresponsible.
How one could arrive at that conclusion from the predicate Brooks set is inexplicable.
With all this political prevarication prevailing, no wonder economist Robert Samuelson writes: "Almost everything you think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong."

Watchdogs gnaw the bones they are thrown

This is Sunshine Week in Florida and the old media are all gushing about their important role as "watchdogs," yadda, yadda.
Meanwhile, they have lost a major source of important information, surrendering without a fight.
When I was a police reporter during most of the 1960s the media roamed the police station at will. I spent most of my day there, when I wasn't out chasing police calls to robberies and murders.
Now, the press is not even allowed in the police station except under carefully controlled circumstances. They have to wear I.D. badges and can read whatever offense reports are left in a special room just inside the front door of the station.
Reporters never talk to the cops on the beat. I knew every cop in town and talked with them constantly, including detectives working on cases. I rode with them, at times. They let me into crime scenes and in return I didn't mess up the scene and I gave them copies of photos I took. Evidence technicians were scarce in those days.
The first designated public information person was J.T. Lowe, a nice guy who just died recently. He asked what he could do for me and I told him I'd call him if I couldn't get any information on my own, a problem that never arose.
Now, the reporters are spoon-fed by public information officers and get only what they are told or allowed to see.
If they ever bother to ask, they probably are told non-access is about security. It's about control.

Quote of the day

Worth noting as we move in that direction...
"Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity." -- William Howard Taft

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Un-revising history

Liberal bloggers are in a snit over the textbook review by the Texas Board of Education.
They claim the board was "revising history."
History is supposed to be a collection of facts. Facts don't change unless new information is obtained.
Children in public schools in America were, until a few years ago, taught that the Founding Fathers and history-changing people such as Christopher Columbus were important persons. That changed as liberals in government and academia managed to change school curricula and textbooks.
The changes weren't based on any new information. It simply reflected the hatred liberals have for America and American values.
Texas made it possible for children in public schools to learn more about history. This will give them a better foundation for the indoctrination they face later in college from liberal professors.

Here's a howler

Howell Raines, former editor of the New York Times, is making a post-career career out of bashing Fox News, which is bashing most of the liberal media in the ratings, including the New York Times.
Here's the latest from Raines. In an op ed piece he says, "For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party."
This from the guy who ran Jayson Blair's fiction and crusaded against the Masters Tournament over some fictional "womens' rights" issue in a way that made even other liberals blush.
Raines is the print equivalent of disgraced TV talking head Dan Rather.
The Times, as everyone in America knows, has been the quasi-official mouthpiece of the Democrat Party and continues to be, even with Raines gone.
Liberals cannot compete in the marketplace of ideas. They hate Fox because it presents both sides of issues, which responsible news organizations are supposed to do.

Monday, March 15, 2010

Damn the Constitution

In Nancy Pelosi's world, the U.S. Constitution does not matter.
She is getting ready to enact an unconstitutional bill, unconstitutionally.
Pelosi plans, according to news reports, to pass the health care takeover bill through the House without voting on it.
The Senate version of the bill is itself unconstitutional, because it would require Americans to buy a product (which most of them don't want). This never has been done before.
But the Constitution clearly requires a vote on bills.
As stated here a number of times before, Pelosi is hellbent on passing this bill, by whatever means necessary. Reluctant Democrats are being bribed and browbeaten to fall into line even now.
Remember the period 2000-2008 when Democrats constantly were complaining that the president was "shredding the Constitution"?
Ignoring it is better, I suppose.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Campaign promise review

China is calling the Americans "hypocrites" on human rights.
France's premier is lashing the U.S. for protectionism.
Iran's head continues to berate the U.S.
Hugo Chavez scoffs at the U.S. (to applause by "actor" Sean Penn).
Israel is not happy about Joe Biden's lectures on its housing construction.
Wasn't the ascension of the Chosen One, Barack Obama, to the presidency supposed to bring harmony throughout the world and renewed respect for the United States from every nation?
Just wondering how that hopey changey thing was working.

A victory for public education in Texas

Thanks to the Texas Board of Education, public school students in the Lone Star State will be learning ideas that students are not allowed to learn in other states.
For example, textbooks in Texas will no longer use the loaded word "capitalism," which is equated with evil by the left. Instead, they will use "free-enterprise system."
Two champions of the free-enterprise system, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Von Hayek, will be mentioned in the books.
These changes are the result of a “textbook war” that took place recently. Every 10 years, textbooks used in the public schools are reviewed by the board, and changes ordered. This time, the conservatives on the board prevailed and some of the left-wing ideology was purged from the books. (Hat tip to Greg Halvorson at American Thinker for listing some of the changes.) Other topics Texas children have not been allowed to hear in school: the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s: Phyllis Schlafly, the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation, and the Contract with America.
Dangerous things, these. But now children will know they exist.
Black Panther agitation in the civil rights era will be addressed, rather than hidden. Also, the inclusion of congressional vote-tallies on civil rights legislation, from which children will learn which party had the largest percentage voting in favor of the Civil Rights Act. (If you said Republican, you get an A.)
One more heretical thought will be added by teaching the importance of personal responsibility. Students will have to learn that the world owes them a living from watching the news on TV, from any network other than Fox, which merely reports the news.
There will be a clarification on "separation of church and state" as intended by the Founding Fathers. Texas students may even learn than these were great men, not evil conspirators.
It is entirely possible that the public schools in Texas will get more students, as fewer parents resort to private schools and homeschooling in order to get a full education for their children. Controlling the minds of children is one way those who do not like America have been able to gain political power. But indoctrination is not education.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

Reinventing the wheel, and making it square

Liberal Democrats are in the fight of their lives with less-liberal Democrats over health care and are using insurance companies as their whipping boys to distract from the ugly details of their plan.
This is a popular tactic. Trial lawyers have managed to whip up a sizeable segment of the public to hate insurance companies.
The libs want three things in their plan: guaranteed issue, which means companies must insure anybody; “pre-existing conditions,” which mans companies cannot screen anyone out for being sick; and community rating, which means everyone pays the same.
Sounds fair, right? Sure, if you want to wreck another industry the way liberal policies wrecked banking and auto manufacturing.
As someone said recently, liberals have managed to concoct a plan no rational person would buy, and now they plan to force everyone to buy it.
Being forced to insure someone who already has cancer means that irresponsible people – and there are a lot of them – won’t buy insurance until they get cancer. So they won’t pay any of the costs, but everybody else will, including responsible people who have been paying premiums all along.
It isn’t as if these brilliant ideas haven’t been tried.
Heritage Foundation scholars looked at several states that tried such reforms in the 1990s and found the results were “nothing short of catastrophic.”
New Jersey's experience with community rating and guaranteed issue found "a precipitous decline in enrollment, a corresponding increase in premiums, and a change in enrollment composition toward older and potentially more expensive enrollees."
In New York, community-rating was tried. "In the first year," Ed Rubenstein wrote in National Review, "25-year-old males were hit with premium hikes of over $500, while 55-year-olds paid about $415 less than under the risk-rated system. Not surprisingly many young people decided to drop their coverage. With fewer young, healthy policyholders available to subsidize older ones, insurance premiums skyrocketed..."
Slow-learners in Maine enacted these same insurance rules in 2003. After being in effect for five years a healthy 30-year-old male had a monthly premium of $762 in the individual market. In New Hampshire, which shunned community rating and guaranteed issue, similar coverage costs $222 a month, Heritage said.
There are ways to lower the costs of health care, and health insurance, such as tort reform, tax credits, and cutting insurance loose from employment. Liberals aren’t interested in those ideas. They propose to give away “free” to everyone something that is expensive by its very nature.
Hey, while you’re at it, could I have a 30-foot sailboat?

Friday, March 12, 2010

Absolutely astounding

There is much to be amazed about in the full-court press by Democrats to ram through the health care takeover bill.
They are not going to be hampered by any rules, including the rules of decency.
But this sets some kind of record.
Rep. Bart Stupak is a holdout Democrat, fighting to keep out federal funding of abortions, which is in the Senate bill. He is not optimistic. Nancy Pelosi and company have been able to peel away a couple of the 12 votes pledged to his stance.
What is the argument the Democrat leadership offers?
“If you pass the Stupak amendment, more children will be born, and therefore it will cost us millions more. That’s one of the arguments I’ve been hearing,” Stupak told National Review.
That is, if more unborn children are not killed it will increase the costs. Hiding the cost is a major part of the Democrat strategy.
This is the ugliest political fight ever. If the liberals succeed, there will be an enormous backlash as people learn what has been done to them.

Obama spurs the sale of books

According to a 1991 survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club, Atlas Shrugged was second only to the Bible as the book that made the most difference in the lives of Americans.
It's making more difference to a lot more Americans now.
Last year, sales shot through the roof. During Year One of Obama, the book sold more than 500,000 copies, a record according to the Ayn Rand Institute. Not bad for a book written more than a half-century ago, and one that is far from being a quick read.
For the first time, Ayn Rand's four novels sold more than 1 million copies.
As most people know, Rand's magnum opus Atlas Shrugged poses the question of what would happen if producers rebel against government over-regulation and just quit producing.
Imagine. Without businesses to create wealth and collect taxes for the government, liberals would be dead in the water.
People have to be wondering, as the fist of government closes on them, just how long it will be until that scenario unfolds.

Puzzling paradigms

Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal plan to start selling their content on the Web, rather than giving it away free.
That should be interesting.
Representing the left and the right, these two papers are likely to have different outcomes.
Liberals who think you are entitled to have whatever you want whether you can pay for it or not, may not want to pay for the Times. For heaven's sake, they might make a profit!
On the other hand, people who believe in free enterprise probably will pay to read the Wall Street Journal, which is one of the few papers left that presents the news objectively.
The question remains what all the other newspaper are going to do. They are giving away their product now, but are afraid people won't pay for it on the Web. But, then, fewer and fewer are paying for the increasingly thin paper product either.
Maybe some will go back to offering content.

Water, water everywhere

When the liberal pundits wring their hands and cry crocodile tears over Florida's lack of water, why don't they ask the obvious questions?
Such as: Why does the state persist in dumping 1.7 billion gallons of perfectly good water into the ocean every day?
Does the media have any curiosity, or do they just write by rote these days?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Don't confuse us with facts

Because the debate over school funding is so one-sided and fact-deficient, I'm linking to a commentary I wrote for Examiner on this topic, in advance of tonight's "community meeting" on the school budget.

Promises, promises

A few people are backing the Democrat health "reform" bill because health care costs are rising.
President Obama says health insurance premiums would go down if the bill passes.
A leading Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin just said premiums would go up, not down.
What Durbin says makes sense.
The proposal would increase the number of people who are insured, and create incentives for them to use more health care. How could that "bend the cost curve down" as Obama has said?
Also, on savings, the Joint Tax Committee says taxes will go up for those earning less than $200,000 a year.
That takes care of the Obama promise that anyone making less than $250,000 a year would not see their taxes go up as much as "one dime."

Time to turn around

Having taken note of a stupid comment (see Finding the Middle below), let me acknowledge a profound observation by way of comparison.
"People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.
"Educational institutions created to pass on to the next generation the knowledge, experience, and culture of the generations that went before them have instead been turned into indoctrination centers to promote whatever notions, fashions, or ideologies happen to be in vogue among today’s intelligentsia."
That is from economist Thomas Sowell's insightful essay in National Review.
We need to get away from indoctrination and back to education.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Elections have consequences

Every day seems to bring a new horror story as the encroachment of the federal government continues.
1. The government is taking over the student loan business, driving out the private sector, which is the preferred choice of most universities.
2. The government is redefining poverty, and the new definition will assure that poverty is never eliminated. It is being set up so that it is a proportion of the total population.
3. The government has singled out Florida for punitive EPA regulations that will classify pristine lakes, rivers and streams in the state as polluted. By one estimate, water and sewer bills for the average Floridian will go up $60 a month as a result.
4. The government has not taken overt action yet, but fishing enthusiasts believe that it is heading toward restricting or banning recreational fishing in many lakes, rivers and coastal waters throughout America.
As the growing Tea Party movement shows, Americans are not going to take it lying down, but there is still an incredible amount of apathy. As Edmund Burke said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
The problem is that liberals, socialists, fascists, communists and others on the left don't think government control is evil. They think private property and individual freedom are the evils.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Trotting out the usual blarney

Those who want to continue throwing money at the public schools are revved up good this year.
What has them on edge is another proposal for meaningful school reform.
State Sen. John Thrasher wants to reward good teachers for doing good work.
Teacher union bosses are outraged. They think it is the ruination of the public schools.
The usual nitwit argument is being posed: Florida taxpayers aren't doing their civic duty because they spend less money on schools than taxpayers in some other states.
As if there was some connection between throwing money at the schools and educating children.
Do these knee-jerk liberals really think people buy that lame argument anymore?
It isn't as if that method hasn't been tried. Public schools by any measure have had funding increased substantially. But there has not been a commensurate increase in education.
Florida children began getting better educations when conservatives in the Legislature demanded competition and accountability in the public schools.
Getting into a race with other states to see who can throw the most money at schools helps teacher unions and the liberal politicians they support. It doesn't help kids, families or taxpayers.

Another Ratherism

Disgraced ex-talking head Dan Rather says Barack Obama "couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic."
Watch what happens -- or doesn't happen -- next.
MSNBC talking head David Shuster just accused Republicans of being racists for calling Charlie Rangel "a Harlem Democrat." (Hat tip to Media Research Center.)
Harlem is in Rangel's district. Yet, Shuster accused them of injecting race into the issue of Rangel's ethical transgressions by mentioning his district.
But is Rather going to be called a racist by Shuster for linking Obama with "watermelons"?
Wait and see. But don't hold your breath.

Monday, March 8, 2010

Finding the middle

This has to be the most moronic statement written in the past year:
"Mr. Obama is not a socialist; he’s a centrist."
This is from the flat-earther Tom Friedman of the New York Times.
Centrist? A guy who is taking over not only private companies but entire industries? A guy piling up debt as far as the eye can see, and pushing for the largest entitlement in 75 years?
If that is the center of America, God help us.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Elections have consequences

From the New York Times:
"To meet the Obama administration’s targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, some researchers say, Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon."
That will be one the nut cases can't blame on Big Oil.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Thanks, Al Gore

From the U.K. Telegraph: A couple in Argentina killed themselves and their 2-year-old son and shot their 7-month-old daughter, who lived.
They left a suicide note explaining that they were afraid of global warming.
This serves as merely one example of why people who believe humans are toasting the world are called "alarmists."
The worst of the alarmists is the former vice president who is trying to become a billionaire by needlessly scaring people with junk science.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Tit for tat

As predicted here, the socialists in Congress and the White House are going to use the Jonestown solution to their problem of taking over the health care industry.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was quoted by Fox News as saying, "We're not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress," she said. "We're here to do the job for the American people."
She meant to say "do a job ON the American people."
The free translation for Democrat underlings is this: Drink up that purple Koolaid. Your jobs are less important than advancing our ideology.
President Obama, Pelosi and Harry Reid plan to use the budget reconciliation process to get a majority vote for Obama's health care takeover. That has been used by both parties before but, as the name implies, only for budget issues.
If they do it, there will be a precedent. So if they sacrifice their jobs, and their majority, a new Republican majority can feel free to use the same method to take apart the Democrat plan, and to begin dismantling the rest of the welfare state.
If Republicans make clear that is their intention, it should increase their chances of obtaining that majority.
Hardball begets hardball.