Vocal Minority

More Tea Party Violence and Racism: Milwaukee

Oh wait, that's not the Tea Party. It's Obama-supporting Democrat-voting* public union teacher protesters -- again.

Yes, the Democrat-media complex still smear the Tea Party and anti-Obama conservative Americans as vitriolic and racist, and most recently "the real enemy" who can "go straight to hell." Meanwhile in the real world, actual vitriol and (by the left's own standards) racism occurred at the hands of union protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin both Thursday and Friday.

As reported by Milwaukee's local Fox-TV affiliate:

Vandals super glued the locks of several doors and a parking gate at Messmer Preparatory School in Milwaukee. School officials believe the people responsible for the vandalism were protesting the visit of Gov. Scott Walker Friday afternoon.

Gov. Walker was expected to arrive at 1 p.m. to speak to kindergarten and first grade students about reading.

Late Thursday night, school officials were informed that building alarms had been set off. Then, Friday morning, they discovered that nine locks on the property's exterior doors had been sealed with glue. The doors tampered with included a parking gate, several doors to the building and even a church building door.

That was Thursday. Then on Friday, a throng of protesters converged on the school while reviled Republican Governor Scott Walker was inside. The protesters shouted such intolerant things as for the school to get out of their neighborhood (specifically Christians; Messmer is a Catholic school).

This is bone-chilling. Here is a throng of left-wing Democrats intimating children while at school and shouting that they should get out of town. You know what that kind of activity is called? (Used to be at least): Terrorizing. And it's the Tea Party that's compared to the KKK and Jim Crow-era bigots?? Puh-lease!

So, where does the racism part come in? Well, the president and CEO of the Messmer schools, Br. Bob Smith, is black. One of the principals of the three schools (who I don't believe was present at the protest) is also black. And, at least according to these online images -- I couldn't find ethnic data on their website -- most of Messmer's student body are black or another ethnic minority. When Brother Bob came out of the school (as you will see in the video below), he was quite obnoxiously harrassed. (You might say he was given the John Lewis treatment. Hey, who's to say Brother Bob wasn't spat upon by a racist white public union teacher protester?)

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air links to this video below and goes on to explain that Messmer is a “choice school,” it operates outside the clutches of public teacher union and boasts a +85% graduation rate. By alarmingly stark contrast the public school graduation rate of blacks and Hispanics, is 49% and 54%, respectively. No wonder Wisconsin's left-wing Democrats hate this school and seek to demonize and eliminate it!

Bret Healy at Big Government also writes about this protest, saying:

The event was a perfect storm for the unhinged Left: A chance to combine their absolute hatred of the Republican governor with their complete disdain for the nation’s longest running school choice program.

SEIU, AFSCME and Milwaukee Public School officials combined forces with Students for a Democratic Society, self-professed Hippies and others to march, sing, chant and yell at not only the governor, but the students and staff of Messmer Preparatory School.

The Messmer story is inspiring, and one I’ll tell in greater detail here soon. What’s really striking to me is this obnoxious display of thuggery comes onthe heels of the release of the MacIver Educational Choice Census, which shows that throughout Wisconsin, parents are embracing educational options. In Milwaukee, nearly 4 out of 5 children attend a school other than the one geographically assigned to them by the public school bureaucrats.

By the way, other than local Wisconsin affiliates, have any mainstream news media outlets covered this blatant videotaped exhibit of violence, vandalism, and racism? Of course not. It doesn't fit the liberal lie that it's the Tea Party that's violent, destructive and racist and that it's liberals/Democrats who aren't.

Spread stories like this far and wide, dear readers. The real documentable truth is out there; more people just need to see it.

*How do I know these violent protesters were Obama-supporting Democrats? Believe me, I know.

End The Occupation! Why Johnny Can't Locate Iraq

A little over a year ago, I posted about discovering man-made global warming climate change propaganda at a public school in my town. A poster using Dr. Seuss characters to indoctrinate kids to help "save the planet" was displayed prominently in the foyer of the school. I noticed this poster last July at that school where my then-4-year-old was attending rec camp.

One year later I am happy to report that this poster no longer graces the walls of that school.

That's the good news.

Now for the bad news ...

On the way to pick up my son, now 5, from the same school today, I had New Jersey 101.5 on. On that station they were reporting about a recent study showing that U.S. students are embarrassingly non-proficient in geography. My blood was boiling while I listened to this. It was only a few weeks ago that were reporting that U.S. students score dismally in history!

When people hear news like this, there are always different explanations and excuses. Liberals will blame conservatives for fostering anti-intellectualism, for pushing the dominance of religion over science, and for our incessant and callous attempts to reduce spending on education (three arguments which are completely and utterly without substance, but then again, what liberal argument is? OK, yes, conservatives do want to lower education spending, but not because we're callous but because we're practical, and also because money does nothing to improve the schools but rather enriches greedy powerful public teachers unions and their political butt buddies.)

I prefer the conservative side's explanation as to why, despite throwing billions and billions into the public school system year after year, U.S. students seem to grow stupider and stupider: Liberals who have dominated the schools for decades now have replaced merit with self-esteem, cold hard facts with political correctness and propaganda.

What a coincidence that I heard this latest story about poor U.S. academic performance just minutes before picking up my son from camp. After I checked him out, he led me to the cafeteria where he had some art projects to pick up. As soon as I entered the large room, I immediately saw a disturbing trace of the recently completed school year. The following humongous hand-cut and colored letters appeared on the wall:

M U L T I C U L T U R A L     D A Y

Is it really any wonder why our children know less than they should? Our public schools are too busy filling their impressionable minds with garbage like man-made global warming climate change and multiculturalism. The proof is right there in a Crayola rainbow. 

Liberals sanctimoniously lament the anti-intellectual culture allegedly spread by conservatism. But they ought to look in the mirror. The public school system has been run by liberals for nearly 50 years. The money keeps flowing more and more each year, and our children seem to learn less and less.

END THE OCCUPATION! LIBERALS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS NOW!!!

Noam Chomsky Gets Half a Clue

The world's most renowned "intellectual" actually learns something? From Selwyn Duke at AT.

Of all idiots, none is so useful as he who can masquerade as a genius. ...

... [S]ocialism has only failed every time it's been tried, but I guess Chomsky's renowned intellect has finally figured out a way to do the same thing over and over again and achieve different results.

But some people never learn, and in our time they're known as leftists.  It's bad enough when a starry-eyed teenager gloms onto a demagogue and then registers surprise when the scorpion acts in accordance with his nature, but it's downright pathetic when an old man behaves as if he has been born yesterday. 

And Chomsky, it seems, is continually born again yesterday.  In the late 1970s, he defended the Khmer Rouge at the very time that those Cambodian communists were in the midst of a genocidal campaign that ultimately claimed 30 percent of their nation's population.  He steadfastly refused to believe reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities, calling them part of a "disinformation" campaign targeting a group that, he said, could usher in not only "national liberation but also ... a new era of economic development and social justice." ...

Admittedly, today Chomsky acknowledges reports of Khmer Rouge atrocities.  He just denies reports of Chomsky Khmer Rouge support.  He has his own Year Zero, I suppose, and it started when reality became sufficiently heavy to make rationalization seem like Holocaust denial.  Hey, that fellow in 1977 was a different Chomsky.  Renowned intellectuals just don't make such mistakes. ...

The great Roman orator and statesman Cicero once said, "Any man is liable to err; only a fool persists in error."  Chomsky exhibits that typical leftist inability to discern good from evil, friend from foe.  If he'd been a rabbit, he would have hopped into the fox's lair well before getting so long in the tooth.  And if he didn't live in the West's cocoon of safety and comfort, he would ages ago have been swept away in a whirlwind of his own design.  He just doesn't learn.

Of course, we all can learn.  But it requires that you're humble and sincere enough to admit error (at least to yourself) and are receptive to Truth.  It also helps if you realize that, no matter how many people call you a "renowned" intellectual, you're perhaps not all that smart.

 

 

 

Progressivism Masquerading as Education

From Arnold Ahlert at JWR.

This country is in serious trouble. We are producing legions of semi-educated kids with marginal abilities in math, reading, history and Constitutionalism. We're being forced to import engineers and scientists because we don't graduate enough people with those abilities domestically. American students are getting clobbered on international tests, scoring below some students from Third World countries. Three-out-of-four high schools graduates from some states require remedial courses in reading and math before they can do college level work.

Why I Left Liberalism #16 - They Reward Failure: Obama's Genius Economists

El Rushbo has mentioned this many times in the past, and today it is worth repeating: The Democrat Party rewards failure.

For instance, when Howard “Yaarrrrrgggghhhh!” Dean lost the 2004 presidential candidacy to John Kerry, he was rewarded by being made the DNC chair, at which post he boosted the integrity of his party by accusing the Republicans of being racists, sexists, homophobes, xenophobes, etc., etc., who want women back in the kitchen and blacks in the back of the bus. (This illustrious tradition, incidentally, is now continued by the new DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but that’s another story for another blog post.)

Another example is when Hillary lost the nomination to President Hope&Change in 2008. For this she was rewarded by being appointed to Secretary of State, a position she shows to be grossly unqualified for on a frequent basis.

These are just party-internal failures. But what happens when the failures of Democrats translate to big problems for the American people at large?

Arguably the most egregious example of this is Al Gore. Soon after the man who “used to be the next president of the United States” lost the presidential race in 2000 to W., he began embarking on his man-made global warming climate change campaign full force. Within just a few years, Gore had become a celebrated “ambassador for the planet” to the Democrat-media(-Hollywood-academia) complex. For this role Gore is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars and currently sits in a humongous Tennessee mansion with multiple plasma screen TV’s, SUV’s private jets, and an Oscar award for a movie deceptively billed a documentary.

And what do we, the American people, get? We’re being threatened by draconian, oppressive environ-mental-ist regulations. We have toilets that need to be flushed three times because there’s not enough water in them anymore. A gaggle of unaccountable lawyers in black robes known as the Supreme Court has declared CO₂—a gas exhaled from every breathing creature and needed by plant life to survive—a freaking pollutant. In just a few short months the incandescent lightbulb will be banned. The oil and coal industry, which fuels our entire economy and ensures our comfortable modern lifestyle, is under governmental attack. Our children from grade school through college are being indoctrinated to “go green” and to demonize anyone who refuses to hop on the environ-mental-ist bandwagon.

Another salient example of the liberal/Democrat being rewarded for failure and concomitantly having disaster upon our nation: The many members of President Hope&Change’s economic advisory team. All these people who have gone in and out of this position like it’s a revolving door from academia to Obama’s Washington and then back to academia again. These people are, we are told, the best and the brightest. They hail from, we are also told, the most prestigious universities in the nation, for which parents pay tens of thousands of dollars to send their children to be educated by them.

But look at the economy right now. Has it improved one whit since Obama took office in January, 2009? No, just the opposite. Has the employement rate improved since then? No, just the opposite. Has federal spending been reined in? No, just the opposite. Have the debt and the deficit been reduced? No, just the opposite. Has the nearly trillion dollar “stimulus” package worked? No, just the opposite?

Yet the architects of every failed scheme and policy imposed by Obama at the advice of this crack squad of economic geniuses are still considered geniuses. They are still revered as experts despite the utter destruction they have wrought on this nation and its economy. And every one who has left the Obama administration is welcomed back with open arms by the prestigious universities they had left. To do what? To teach Marxist-socialist crap to unwitting college students. And get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars a year plus cushy benefits to do it.

Isn’t being a liberal/Democrat great? Get paid craploads of money to teach young people wrong things.

This week Obama’s current economic advisory chair, Austan Goolsbee, announced his resignation. This utter failure came from the University of Chicago School of Business where Michelle Malkin reports “He also pulled in a University of Chicago salary of $465,000 and additional wages and honoraria worth $93,000 …” This is in addition to “assets valued at between $1,146,000 and $2,715,000.” So, at least Goolsbee is good about making money for himself, just not for everyone else. So much for the liberal/Democrat claim to care about the little guy, spread the wealth around, pay your fair share, blah blah blah. The disgustingly rich Goolsbee joined Obama’s advisory committee when the employment rate was at 6%. He’s leaving when it’s at 9.5%, to return to a job that will pay him nearly a half a million dollars.

Isn’t being a liberal/Democrat great?

Here’s El Rushbo yesterday announcing the exit of Goolsbee:

So a failed economic advisor quits so he can return to academe and teach young skulls full of mush how to destroy jobs and run up the deficit. And we wonder why the country's in trouble. Failed liberals in government go back to their overpriced universities to teach liberalism to young skulls full of mush who don't know squat about the real world. These failed intellectual idiots are running what's called higher learning. … Goolsbee is fleeing his abject failure and is being welcomed with open arms back into the American academy. What is the old saying, those who can, do, and those who can't, teach.

Indeed. (Not to say all teachers aren’t capable of being doers. It just seems there are too many of them in our hallowed university classrooms, and definitely too many who are invited to join failed Democrat presidents’ failed administrations.)

But in the aforementioned Malkin piece demonstrates, Goolsbee is merely the last in a long list of intellectual morons who had a high-paid cushy university job before coming to Washington, who certainly had a well-paying job while totally screwing up things in Washington, and then return to that same high-paid cushy university job after fleeing Washington. There’s Christina Romer (UC Berkeley), allan Kreuger (Princeton), and Larry Summers (who would have still been president of Harvard had he not violated a sacrament of feminazi political correctness). Other geniuses who didn’t come from / return to academia but nevertheless are still sitting pretty in well-paid positions of various sorts: Peter Orszag and (Biden advisor) Jared Bernstein.

Isn’t being a liberal/Democrat great?

Why do Goolsbee, Romer, Summers, Orszag, and Bernstein even have jobs? If ours is truly a nation where success is rewarded, and not failure—and these days it is definitely not—then Goolsbee, Romer, Summers, Orszag, and Bernstein should be hanging their heads in disgrace and unemployed. Why do these people even still have jobs, let alone prestigious and high paying ones? Why would anyone who runs a university even want these people within 100 yards of a single student???

Why does Al Gore even have two dimes to rub together? Why are the names Howard Dean and Hillary Clinton not simply relegated to the ash heaps of American history?

Because liberals/Democrats take care of their own. It’s not how well you do; it’s what you believe, and it’s how much you do to further the agenda of the Left. Success be damned. And the American people be damned.

Related reading: Goolsbee Gone: Obama’s Economic ‘Dream Team’ Evaporates (Richard Pollock at Pajamas Media)

Kids 'Scared Straight' to Climate Activism

By Anthony J. Sadar and JoAnn Truchan at American Thinker:

Oscar Wilde once said, "In America, the young are always ready to give those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience." What was true in 1887 is still true today, as those with limited or non-existent adult responsibilities can find the time to take up causes. However, there is a reason why 13-year-olds are not allowed to drive, purchase alcohol, vote, or hold elected office -- they simply lack the experience to do so intelligently and with maturity.

Children especially are susceptible to outside influences such as the manufactured entertainment of "organized" activities and video games, manufactured celebrities (think Justin Bieber and Khloe Kardashian), and now manufactured causes. Adults can look at the claims of the climate-change activists and contrast the activists' assertions with factual revelations such as the Climategate scandal, biased atmospheric science studies, and cartoonish distortions of scientific realities presented in political propaganda films like An Inconvenient Truth.

Children, on the other hand, typically lack perspective and discernment. Therefore, it is unfair, even unethical, for adult activists to target the young when the activists have been unable to convince more-informed, less-gullible adults of a coming global-warming catastrophe attributable to human activity.

Nevertheless, from their earliest age, children are indoctrinated to these fabricated oncoming disasters by activist progressive educators. The kids then take the manufactured causes home to their parents -- or in the case of the iMatter March, bypass their parents completely in order to teach them. As Oscar Wilde continued, "Indeed, they spare no pains at all to bring up their parents properly and to give them a suitable, if somewhat late, education."

As adults continue to "learn" from the children, and as another school year "progresses," what is needed to improve education is to teach the children to be critical thinkers and help them become more-reasoning individuals. This will assist them with the skills necessary to evaluate complex concepts like global climate change and keep them from falling prey to adults with big, scary, unsubstantiated ideas. Otherwise, the kids may grow up to be the new promoters of such ideas.

Then again, isn't that the ultimate objective of the purveyors of the global-warming goblin?

Is the Jewish State Dividing American Jewry?

On this, the 63rd birthday of the State of Israel, some provocative words from Jonathan Rosenblum at JWR.

That American Jews can no longer rally around Israel is a tragedy. But it would be a far greater tragedy if those Jews who identify with the Jewish state and are comfortable defending it continued to let ineffectual communal organizations speak for them.

Video of the Day (4/21/11): Eco-Hitler Youth Come to D.C. -- at the Invite of Your Favorite Dem Leaders

Yes, you read that right: Eco-Hitler Youth. What else do you call 10,000 teenagers brought to D.C. rallying in the streets donning green helmets, gas masks, and ... what is that at 0:50? underwear? bathing suits? spandex?

What else do you call youths who make statements like these:

"[W]hat we need is a complete revolution -- social, economic, political, cultural ... The change becomes we force it. And I don't think that's about going to lobby politicians, to be honest. It's about blockading en masse."

"It's a revolution. It's a climate justice revolution." 

"This is our revolution that we have take hold of."

And just who brought these mind-numbed robots to D.C. for this gathering? Why, members of our liberal America- and capitalism-hating leadership, of course. These instigators include the Obama White House via the EPA, former VP and world's first enviro-billionaire Al Gore, former disgraced whatever czar and avowed Marxist Van Jones, and sitting Congressperson and former House freaking Speaker. See:

"You need to know: the EPA is counting on Power Shift." -- EPA Speaker

"Hello, Power Shift, and thank you! ... Thank you for your leadership. I hope to see you again on Capitol Hill." -- Congresswoman and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, addressing the attendees of Power Shift on an enormous screen, eerily similar to Big Brother in 1984.

People, can you wake up, please? 

Think about it: power shift = revolution. (It's slightly clearer than the faux cross hairs on Sarah Palin's obscure election map that supposedly caused a deranged stalker who most likely never even heard Palin to shoot at a Democrat Congresswoman in Tucson.)

Here's a three minute video [h/t Breitbart] of these young skulls full of mush displaying a level of stunning ignorance and dangerous stupidity that only decades of liberal "education" could produce:

This is truly the most frightening display of indoctrination of the stupid and easily malleable by dangerous radicals since the Hitler youth and Soviet pioneers. Hell, these teenagers are being encouraged to become this era's Hitler youth and Soviet pioneers. (But remember, it's the Tea Party that's "extremist", it's conservative Republicans that are "radical," it's the likes of Beck and Palin and Limbaugh that are poisining the public discourse. Riiiight.)

Oh, sorry, too vitrolic and mean-spirited? Tough! Get your head out your freaking tuchas and pay attention to what's going on for once.

Liberal Lie #14: The Right Is Violent, the Left Is Civil - Katherine Windels

Oh, you never heard of Katherine Windels? That means the nation’s most prominent Democrat politicians and mainstream media—those bastions of the New Civility—have done their job of suppressing the inconvenient truth that yet another instance of violence from the left.

For weeks now, the cheerleading mainstream media has sympathetically portrayed Wisconsin’s union protesters as some sort of modern day oppressed plebs. Yet, most intelligent American people saw them for what they were: Spoiled, overpaid, over-privileged, foul-mouthed thugs who think they have a “right” to siphon as much as they can get from already cash-strapped Wisconsiners. Americans who were paying attention saw the violent and destructive protests, complete with damaged property, as well as signs comparing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker to Hitler and recently-ousted Egyptian dictator Mubarak for the sin of lightening the load of the Badger State taxpayer.

Speaking of vitriol, violence, destruction, and profanity, one very scarcely reported event was a certain vivid death threat emailed to 15 Republican Wisconsin state senators. It read in part:

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it's going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. ...

How could this have happened? After all, throughout January, we were informed that this was the era of the New Civility. This after we were told that the right-wing rhetoric, particularly that of the evil Sarah Palin, supposedly prompted a mental case with no recorded past of following conservatives to shoot a Democratic Arizona Congresswoman whom he had been stalking since 2007 (when the aforementioned Ms. Palin was an unknown governor from the distant state of Alaska.)

Well, in case you didn’t know about this, it was reported on Thursday that the author of this electronic death threat was found [h/t Sister Toldja]:

Katherine R. Windels, 26, of Cross Plains faces two felony bomb scare counts along with two misdemeanor counts of sending a computer message threatening injury or harm.

Now, if you check out the profile of Ms. Windels (an early childhood teacher who at 26 still lives with her parents), you will see a rather attractive young lady who presumably wouldn’t hurt a fly. So why would such a woman write such terroristic messages to 15 public officials?

Because that’s what hard leftism does, my friends. It turns decent and kind human beings into extremist thugs. With all the talk from our most prominent figures—from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama—about how much of a threat right-wing rhetoric is to the nation, here we have a bone fide example of how left-wing rhetoric caused a pretty 26-year-old public school teacher threaten to murder 15 human beings and their families.

Does anyone other than me see the gross irony of it all? For years we are told that the millions of people who listen daily Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, etc. are all being turned into little Timothy McVeighs (and no one never even bothered to prove that McVeigh was a right-wing talk-radio listener, but hey, why ruin a good politically-motivated myth?)

But in fact, it’s been the complete opposite. Only left-wing rhetoric has created violence in this country as of late:

• It’s left-wing socialist class-warfare rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—that incite angry mobs to shatter store windows; vandalize private businesses and banks; and hurl paint , firecrackers, and lightbulbs filled with ammonia at police, just this past week in London’s Trafalgar Square.
• It’s left-wing socialist class-warfare rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—that incite angry mobs to break store windows, vandalize buildings, and torch police cars during last June’s G20 summit in Toronto.
• It’s left-wing socialist class-warfare rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—that caused union thugs and protestors of other liberal stripes to converge upon the private residences of individuals they don’t like and terrorizing their families trapped inside. Such victims have included Karl Rove, AIG executives, and, most recently, John Boehner and Wisconsin state Republicans.
• It’s left-wing environ-mental-ist rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—that caused one James Jay Lee to hold hostages at the Discovery Channel’s Maryland headquarters because its environmental programming wasn’t alarmist enough in his view.
• It’s left-wing environ-mental-ist rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—that inspired “Unibomber” Ted Kaczynski to hold hostages.
• A combination of left-wing socialist class-warfare and environ-mental-ist rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—incited someone to send a mail bomb to an oil executive during the height of the BP oil spill, injuring his wife when she opened the package.
• It’s left-wing anti-war rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—that caused the streets of major cities around the country to be fouled by the most vicious and hateful slurs toward George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condaleezza Rice.
• It’s left-wing anti-war rhetoric—amplified and propagated by prominent liberal politicians and compliant mainstream media—that prompted “peace activists” to commit violence towards our brave military, such as vandilizing military recruitment centers, banning ROTC’s on college campuses, and even fragging (the act of subordinate military personnel to shoot their own superior officers.)

In my opinion, Katherine R. Windels did a stupid thing. And she should be punished for it. But let’s not pretend her actions are not the result of a mindset created by constant bombardment of left-wing ideas: Hatred toward “the rich,” hatred toward “traditional values,” hatred toward the Founders and Founding Documents, hatred toward war (unless it’s a war started by a Democrat).

In short, Windels is the result of what happens when left-wing rhetoric goes unchecked.

Vicki at Frugal Café blog notes that, as of this writing (Saturday afternoon 4/2), CBS News and CNN have reported on the story, but neither they nor the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel Journal or Green Bay Press-Gazette bothered to mention Windel’s occupation as a pre-school teacher (and, thus, the presumed association with/membership in a public union). Do you think for one second that if the perpetrator’s third cousin’s college roommate’s business partner’s former live-in nanny had a fetish for raspberry zinger you wouldn’t see the phrase “Tea Party” blaring in these news stories? Puh-lease.

Tom at the Bizzy Blog notes that AP has the story but relegates it to the local section. And the mainstream media wonder why no one trusts them anymore.

Other blogs discussing this story: Conservative Underground, Freedom Eden, Gateway Pundit, Malkin

Paul Krugman and The Know-Nothings

From James Lewis at American Thinker, a real scathing and no-holds-barred of the intellectual moronic-ness that liberals like Krugman project:

Paul Krugman recently was quoted as telling the world he doesn't follow contemporary conservative news commentary. Krugman's open contempt for the dominant political philosophy of the Western Enlightenment, including most of American history, is incredibly revealing. It's not just one New York Times guru of Political Correctness. No, I've run into Krugman's mental lockbox among "educated" people all my life, people with advanced degrees who just mouth the platitudes of the left. In all their education they never learned to open their minds. 

It is pathetic. Intellectually, Paul Krugman has just run up the white flag. That's how we have to see the self-censorship of the left. In a free marketplace of ideas they can't survive. It's our job to restore the free media and give Americans a choice again.

*     *     *     *     *

Ever wonder why the left doesn't teach history? It's one disaster after another for them.

Until the organized left decided to purge our schools and universities of our own Western traditions, "conservatism" was called "liberalism," because it celebrated liberty of thought, liberty of speech and religion, freedom of association, and free ownership of productive assets, including the fruits of one's own labors. Today China, India and Russia have thrown off their Marxist shackles and their economies are suddenly thriving, and we can still see the wonders of South Korea right next to the Stalinist nightmare of the North. 

But Paul Krugman, economist extraordinaire, just doesn't get it. What is it you don't get, Professor Krugman? ...

*     *     *     *     *

The left doesn't  need official censors because they carry their own censors in their heads. But just to make sure, they also work to block the free flow of information to everybody else. That must be why the media have to witchhunt Sarah Palin and Clarence Thomas on a regular basis, a smart conservative woman and a smart conservative black man. It's why they have to keep smearing good and decent people. If their own followers ever figured out the scam the media couldn't compete. 

Liberals are constantly telling their obedient flocks what not to listen to, like Fox News. I've never heard a conservative radio host tell the audience not to read the New York Times. Who would listen to that?  We stay astonished by the Mind-locked Media, to see what kind of disinformation they pump out every day. The liberal media provide daily mind-food for conservatives, just like the old Kremlinologists who would look at air-brushed photos of Soviet apparatchiks standing on top of Lenin's tomb, to see who was in power and who got purged.

We criticize their ideas, while they go on poisoning the wellsprings. That's why they fell for global warming fraud and for con artists like Bernie Madoff. If you have no conscience and want to make a million bucks, try selling GM Volts to liberals. But sell them an expensive accident policy at the same time, for the inevitable moment when their motor buggy gets crushed on the freeway. You can get them coming and going, if you have no conscience. If you do have a conscience you can only tell the truth and hope.

Leftist censorship often seems like a source of power for the left, but it's also a great weakness, because reality keeps finding them out.  Ever since he took office Obama has looked stunned that nothing works the way he expects. Maybe that's why he's playing so much golf, to get away from all the bad news. Baffled. Why don't the Muslims and Israelis do what I tell them? Why doesn't the economy rebound from my "stimulus"? He doesn't get it. The more things get out of control, the more confused he feels. It wasn't supposed to be this way. ...

Lots more where that came from.

 

The Totalitarian Minority

From Lance Fairchok at American Thinker.

... Wisconsin was Democrat political theater at its finest.  Milking the civil rights movement for every drop of sympathy, the Rev. Jesse Jackson recited his tired rhyming shtick on the steps of the state house, conflating the conflict there with a time of actual injustice.  Ironically and sadly, Students for a Democratic Society demonstrated in solidarity with a privileged minority of "haves" to undermine the democratic process.  The courses taught by their well-compensated professors left out critical analysis.  A bonus for the unions, they got naïve teenage foot soldiers and bearded graduate students to shout and rampage and shove democracy aside for nothing.  Real thugs are so expensive.

"You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments." Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals

The mass-produced signs used by demonstrators and the statements used by leftist pundits and political apparatchiks, held the predictable moral rhetoric intended to convince the public that theirs was a fight against tyranny.  Yet, the people placed Republicans in power in Wisconsin in a free and fair election.  Democrats fled to Illinois when they could not defeat the governor's necessary and long overdue austerity measures, within the rules of a democratic legislature.  So beholden to union special interests they abandoned their responsibility to the states citizens, an act of political cowardice that has become the Democrat standard.  Their actions show they do not respect or accept the duties and constraints placed upon citizen legislators within the constitutions of the nation and their state. 

Elections are either won or lost within our political system, there is no other alternative.  Those who win have the approval of the majority of citizens for the policies and legislation they have promised to enact.  That reality usually prevents what happened in Wisconsin.  It assumes both sides accept that the rule of law is in the best interest of all.  A setback means a legislator struggles harder or reassesses, working to bring about the legislation they feel is best for the constituency whose interests they represent.  If they lose, they do not refuse to play or unleash foul-mouthed thugs on the institutions they so recently spent into insolvency.  No Democratic Republic can operate for long when one side sabotages the process when they do not get their way.

The public sector unions are saying clearly and loudly that they deserve privileges and status denied the vast majority of the citizens whose taxes pay their inflated salaries, and implicit in their violent rhetoric is the threat that if they do not get their way they will burn the statehouse down, even kill their political opponents.  They further let us know that their privileges should come off the backs of those whose labors are much greater and whose rewards are far less, peasants to their royal status, "have-not" to their "have."  This is the truth of the national debate under the Democrats.  President Obama, the great divider, is a stooge of union bosses.  The latter care nothing about citizens not members of their union. ...

 

Leftist protesters rage on as world burns | Wisconsin protests continue

From Eric Golub at The Daily Caller.

... The Tea Party rallies were a salute to democracy at its finest, with peaceful protests around the nation leading to a resounding election victory. Unlike the leftist rallies in Wisconsin, the Tea Party protests are what democracy looks like.

Democracy is not illegally going on strike. Democracy is not violating medical ethics laws by handing out phony sick notes. Democracy is not legislators fleeing their states. That is not a filibuster, which requires being in the chamber. That is anarchy. That is subversion. That is leftism, where the rule of law does not matter.

Democracy is not sending death threats to GOP lawmakers over a policy dispute. That is terrorism.

Democracy is not bringing in Jesse Jackson to create the illusion that a financial dispute is a civil rights issue.

Madison, Wisconsin is not Selma, Alabama. The fight over collective bargaining is not the fight to end slavery. To link these disparate events is an insult to anybody who has ever been through slavery, the Holocaust, genocide, or any other real tragedy.

At the risk of disappointing an entire over-privileged race that I belong to, there is not a single middle-class, Caucasian, white-collar government worker in America having their civil rights violated by another Caucasian politician.

Governor Walker was compared to Hitler, but Walker didn’t throw the protesters into ovens.

He was compared to Gaddafi, but Walker didn’t shoot the protesters. He did not even lightly turn on any fire hoses to clean them up after a week of them laying in their own filth.

None of the protesters were enslaved. A few were carried out of the capitol in handcuffs. Unlike the fear and seriousness in Dr. Martin Luther King’s eyes in the 1960s, several of these protesters responded by smiling at the cameras and yelling, “Hi mom!” ...

Liberal Media Bias: Hearting Wisconsin, Hating Texas.

It was once said that there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Well, a couple of recent pieces published by liberals happen to have all three!

In a continued desparate attempt to support the spoiled brats known as the protesting Wisconsin public school teachers, Paul Krugman at the NY Times tries to paint Texas as a hell-on-earth for its children in the areas of economic stability, education, and health. Why Texas? In a heart-wrenching piece titled, “Leaving Children Behind,” Krugman writes:

[I]n low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average. …

Furthermore, The Economist recently provides this tidbit:

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.

The implication being made is that Texas’ dismal high school graduation rate, low ACT/SAT rankings, high percentage of children without health insurance, percentage of children in poverty, percentage of children in decent health, etc., etc. is the result of the state’s low spending per pupil, low taxes, and no collective bargaining for public union teachers.

It’s a typical leftist argument. Everything bad is the result of not enough spending, not enough taxes, not enough public union influence, not enough government. And therefore, the solution to these ills is more spending, more taxes, more public union influence, and more government. It’s the record on the liberal phonograph that spins and spins so often that one often wonders whether they even listen to the lyrics as they sing along.

Now, as is often the case with liberals’ arguments, not only are the conclusions wrong and assumptions questionable, but the data used to form these conclusions are unreliable.

Dave at the Iowahawk blog (h/t Aaron Gee at American Thinker’s blog) explains why.

… A state’s “average ACT/SAT” is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there. In fact, the lion’s share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students - regardless of state residence - tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be.

What is the percentage of black students in Wisconsin compared to Texas? 4% to 12%. How about Hispanic students? 4% to a whopping 30%. So, when you take into account the unfortunately indisputable fact that blacks and Hispanics perform below their white counterparts, pitting the average ACT/SAT scores, dropout rates, etc. means bupkus. Of course a lily-white state like Wisconsin is going to look good on paper compared to Texas, which is being overrun by illegal aliens and nearly a third of whose students are Hispanic.

In order for the arguments about Wisconsin vs. Texas to hold water, therefore, one would need to compare the scores of students divided by ethnic group. It’s Statistics 101. (But I guess when you’re a liberal ideologue writing for a liberal propaganda rag like the NY Times, Statistics 101 goes by the wayside.)

Lo and behold, Iowahawk Dave found such data at the website of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). (One must ask, were such easily accessible statistics unknown to Krugman or deliberately ignored by him?)

Observing the data therein, you will find that (in 2009) in the following 18 scores, accounting for ethnicity, Texas whoops Wisconsin’s ass in 17 of them (in 4th grade science, Hispanic Wisconsin students beat their Texan counterparts by a statistically irrelevant 2 points). Furthermore, also accounting for ethnicity, Texas surpasses the national average in all 18 scores; Wisconsin in only 8:

2009 4th Grade Math

White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)

2009 8th Grade Math

White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294)
Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260)
Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260)

2009 4th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229)
Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204)
Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204)

2009 8th Grade Reading

White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271)
Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245)
Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248)

2009 4th Grade Science

White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162)
Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127)
Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130)

2009 8th Grade Science

White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161)
Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125)
Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131)

That paints a very different picture of the quality of education in Paul Krugman’s beloved Wisconsin vs. the reviled Texas.

Things go from bad to worse for The Economist when you look at some observant readers' comments. One commenter questions the SAT/ACT data itself:

You have GOT TO BE KIDDING ME, Economist, for reporting such garbage!

Here is the ACT's own website!!!

http://www.act.org/news/data/10/states.html

Virginia ranks 14th on ACT for 2010, and Wisconsin ranks 18th! Also, only 4% of the top Wisconsin students take the SAT!

And other commenter to this Economist piece provides the racial/ethnic breakup of the other states with (supposedly) the crummiest ACT/SAT scores:

Wisconsin is 91.5% white. Here are the bottom 5 states from above: South Carolina: 69% white, North Carolina: 75% white, Georgia: 68% white, Texas: 48% white, Virginia: 69% white.

With regard to Krugman’s dig about high school graduation rates (and believe me, 61% is pitiful for any state), here is what Dave found in this 2006-7 report from the National Center for Education Statistics:

Event Dropout Rates for 9th-12th graders during 2006-7 school year:

White students: Texas 1.9%, Wisconsin 1.2% (national average 3.0%)
Black students: Texas 5.8%, Wisconsin 7.8% (national 6.8%)
Hispanic students: Texas 5.6%, Wisconsin 5.2% (national 6.5%)

Hispanic students in Texas drop out at a statistically negligible higher rate than in Wisconsin, but again, Hispanics account for 30% of Texas’ students, compared to a measly 4% in Wisconsin. And look at Wisconsin’s black dropout rate: 2 full percentage points higher than the Lone Star State. Which begs the question, and indeed, Dave asks it: why do the union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?”

Dave concludes:

To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. …

Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools—especially minority students.

Conclusion: instead of chanting slogans in Madison, maybe it’s time for Wisconsin teachers to take refresher lessons from their non-union counterparts in the Lone Star State.

And certain contributors to The Economist better take a refresher course in Statistics 101.

Incidentaly, I was curious how other states fared with math, reading, and science scores. I picked three of the other states that, in addition to Texas, prohibit collective bargaining - North and South Carolina and Virginia (in red). Of states that have aggressive collective bargaining like Wisconsin, I chose New Jersey, New York, and Illinois (in blue). The national average is in gold.

Math: 4^th grade // 8^th grade:

White	Black	Hisp.		White	Black	Hisp.
NJ 255	TX 231	NC 236		NJ 302	TX 272	TX 277
TX / NC 254	NJ 228	VA 234		TX 301	VA 268	VA/NC 274
VA 251	NC 226	TX 233		NC 297	NJ 267	NJ 272
WI 250	VA / NY 225	SC / NJ 232		NY/IL/WI/VA/ Nat’l 294	SC 263	SC 269
IL 249	Nat’l 222	NY 231		SC 293	NC 262	WI 268
NY/Nat’l 248	SC 220	WI 228			Nat’l 260	NY 262
SC 245	WI 217	IL/Nat’l 227			IL 255	Nat’l 260
	IL 216				WI 254

 Reading: 4^th grade // 8^th grade:

White	Black	Hisp.		White	Black	Hisp.
NJ 237	TX/NJ 213	VA 214		NJ 281	NJ/VA 250	SC 259
VA 234	VA 210	NJ 213		NY 275	TX 249	VA/NJ 256
NY 233	NY 209	NY/TX 210		IL 274	NY 246	IL 252
TX 232	NC/Nat’l 204	SC 205		TX 273	Nat’l 245	TX 251
IL 231	SC 200	NC/Nat’l 204		VA 272	NC/SC/IL 243	WI 250
NC 230	IL 198	IL 203		WI/Nat’l 271	WI 238	NC 249
Nat’l 229	WI 192	WI 202		NC 270		Nat’l 248
WI 227				SC 267		NY 247
SC 226

 Science: 4^th grade // 8^th grade:

White	Black	Hisp.		White	Black	Hisp.
VA 172	VA 144	VA 152		TX 167	VA 141	VA 144
TX 168	TX 139	SC 140		VA 166	NJ/TX 133	TX 141
NJ 166	NJ 138	WI/NJ 138		WI/NJ 165	SC 128	NJ 138
IL/WI 164	SC 129	TX 136		NY 164	NY 127	WI 134
SC 163	Nat’l 127	NC 132		IL 162	Nat’l 125	NC 132
NC/Nat’l 162	NC 126	NY/Nat’l 130		Nat’l 161	NC 121	IL/Nat’l 131
NY 161	NY 125	IL 129		NC/SC 158	WI 120	SC 129
	WI 121				IL 118	NY 125
	IL 120

 

From these data, one can observe that the supposedly wonderful collective bargaining states of Wisconsin and Illinois are consistently toward the bottom of the list; the supposedly heartless states of Texas and Virginia are consistently toward the top.

In fairness, one can't deny that my home state of New Jersey, where collectively bargaining public teachers union currently have the state in a fiscal stranglehold, has some impressive scores. It is also clear that in many areas, non-bargaining South Carolina has some pretty pitiful scores.

These numbers make it pretty clear, then, that the affect on scores by the presence/absence of public teacher collective bargaining is inconclusive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Listen & Learn: El Rushbo on the Wisconsin Teacher Protests (So Far) (2/22/11)

I haven't blogged about the fascinating teacher union protests in Wisconsin. There's a lot of good writing out there already and I'd just be reinventing the wheel. El Rushbo has been on top of this story from the beginning and on Tuesday the (22nd) he made this on-the-mark comments.

In this clip from the 2nd hour Rush discusses the American people's rejection of the Democrats' overreach for power and how Wisconsin is just another example of it. He also exposes the teachers' (or at least the union's) hypocrisy when they claim they're for "the little guy" and "the children," as well as the cowardice of Wisconsin's Democrat lawmakers for fleeing the state rather than taking on their responsibilities. He also castigates Obama for siding with the greedy union over the cash-strapped citizenry and laments the dramatic diminution of standing the U.S. has suffered under his presidency.

[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and extraneous talking]

(Download clip here)

(Download clip here)

Liberal Ignorance, Hate, and Intolerance: Iraq Vet Heckled at Columbia

This disgusting incident was reported in the NY Post over the weekend: 

Wounded Iraq veteran jeered for speaking in Columbia University ROTC debate

Columbia University students heckled a war hero during a town-hall meeting on whether ROTC should be allowed back on campus.

"Racist!" some students yelled at Anthony Maschek, a Columbia freshman and former Army staff sergeant awarded the Purple Heart after being shot 11 times in a firefight in northern Iraq in February 2008. Others hissed and booed the veteran.

Maschek, 28, had bravely stepped up to the mike Tuesday at the meeting to issue an impassioned challenge to fellow students on their perceptions of the military.

"It doesn't matter how you feel about the war. It doesn't matter how you feel about fighting," said Maschek. "There are bad men out there plotting to kill you."

Several students laughed and jeered the Idaho native, a 10th Mountain Division infantryman who spent two years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington recovering from grievous wounds. ...

You can't blame the poor young skulls full of mush, can you? After all, isn't Anti-Americanism a bona fide field of study at Columbia? (Sure seems like it.)

I wonder if these punks would've treated Ahmedinejad this way.

Maschek has more bravery and integrity in the nail of his pinky toe than any of these anti-American cretins or their Commie professors. And they know it.

But don't you dare question their patriotism!

Related reading: Mike at Political Commentator.

Schmuck Republican: Mark Levin Embarrasses Interviewee

It pains me to write a post like this but if one is to strive for intellectual honesty, then posts like this are inevitable.

Let me say at the onset that the genius and passion of Mark Levin have changed my life. By catching his radio show daily and absorbing his political writings, I have been genuinely challenged, inspired, and transformed. My deep love for my country, its history, government, and founding documents I owe in large part to him. Anyone who reads this blog knows full well I have the highest regard for this man. It is exactly for this reason that I was very disappointed by a stunt he pulled on the radio Tuesday night (the 7th).

At the tail end of the evening's show, Mark had on Margo Wootan, Director of Nutrition Policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. This woman has been lobbying Congress to regulate the types of food schools can serve according to its nutritional value. Such regulation includes the banning of most junk food in vending machines, and prohibiting bake sales. In other words, Wootan wants to use the overreaching authority of federal government to dictate at the local level what schools - and more importantly, parents - allow children to eat.

So I get it; her intentions might be honorable, but she's a big government nanny stater and is part of the problem, not the solution. I don't want the self-appointed food police in my home or schools. That's why Mark had a problem with her. I have a problem with her too.

But this did not, in my humble opinion, excuse the way Mark treated Ms. Wootan on the air. It was clear she did not know Mark's political background and thought he was simply a radio host interested in her campaign. Instead of engaging her, however, Mark actually addressed her supportively and egged her on to soliloquize about all the work she was doing to ban all this snack. His mockery and condescension were very blatant, except to her, whom Mark told was doing "the Lord's work."

The second Ms. Wootan hung up, Mark returned to his snide and sarcastic way of speaking and told us, his audience, that this was the type of "crackpot" we were dealing with in Washington. I don't think that was fair or nice. I was expecting an interesting debate between the two of them. There was no reason why he had to trick her into thinking he supported her efforts to control schools through Washington diktats, and then bad-mouth her as soon as she got off the phone. If I were a friend or relative of Ms. Wootan's and was listening to this interview because she announced to people she was going to be on the radio, I would have been extremely embarrassed for her.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think anybody - be it Margo Wootan, Michelle Obama, or whoever -should be banning certain foods and regulating what children should or should not be allowed to eat. Those decisions should be made at the local level by individual districts and parents, not by a sanctimonious busybody bureaucrat in D.C.

But Ms. Wootan sounded like a decent lady and concerned mother, and didn't deserved to be humiliated on national radio like that.

Sorry, Mark. I respect you and thought you were bigger than that.

ObamaCare's Next Victims: Union Members' Children

Isn't it funny (not really) that every time some liberal-Democrat boondoggle gets shoved down our throats, it ends up hurting the very people it was purported to help. LBJ's Great Society big government welfare and "poverty" programs come to mind. Nearly 50 years after those ingenious policies were put in play to help the the families and communities of America's poor minorities, those very families and communities are completely destroyed. And countless billions of our tax dollars utterly wasted.

Carter's creation of the Department of Education to help the children? Thirty years hence and the quality of public education in this country has turned to crap. And countless billions of our tax dollars utterly wasted.

Should we even talk about the housing collapse, brought to you primarily by Andrew Cuomo, the Clinton-era HUD director and newly-elected governor of N.Y. (idiots)? Well, we all know how that turned out, don't we?

And now ObamaCare. There's a reason Nancy Pelosi teased us by saying Congress had to pass it in order to find out what's in it. Well, with every day people are learning more and more what's in it. And, as predicted by most, it all sucks.

On that note, read this piece in full, dear readers. Then weep. For everyone.

The Littlest Victims of Obamacare
By Michelle Malkin • December 1, 2010

It’s time for America’s youth to buckle up and take a rough ride on Reality Highway. For the past two years, President Obama has promised our children the moon, stars, rainbows, unicorns and universal health care for all. But the White House Santa’s cradle-to-grave entitlement mandates are a spectacularly predictable bust.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Obamacare’s own biggest cheerleaders.

Late last month, the Service Employees International Union informed dues-paying members of its behemoth 1199 affiliate in New York that it was dropping its health care coverage for children. That’s right. A radical leftist union, not an evil Republican corporation, is abandoning the young ‘uns to cut costs.

More than 30,000 low-wage families will be affected, according to The Wall Street Journal. Who’s to blame? SEIU 1199 benefits manager Mitra Behroozi singled out oppressive new state and federal regulations, including the much-ballyhooed Obamacare rule forcing insurers to cover dependents well into their 20s:

“…(N)ew federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” Behroozi explained in an Oct. 22 letter to members. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

In a related development, over the past several months several insurers across California, Colorado, Ohio and Missouri have dropped child-only plans because of Obamacare-induced premium increases. Untold tens of thousands of families who purchase their plans in the private individual health market will be affected.

Let us pause for a moment to ruminate on this wholly man-caused disaster. To sell Obamacare and manufacture support, desperate Democrats pandered to the college set and their parents. Former SEIU chief Andy Stern specifically touted the unfunded kiddie insurance mandate as a strategic selling point, telling the Washington Post early this year that the lobbying and public relations campaign would be “helped by which parts of the bill go into effect immediately. It’s hard to talk about things that’ll happen in 2019.But if you can say to people that if your kid is 26 years old, you can keep him on your insurance plan? … They get that.”

Some 20 states had already passed legislation requiring insurers to cover adult children before the federal rule was imposed. Citing results in New Jersey, Wisconsin and elsewhere, many critics pointed to how such top-down benefits mandates were driving up the cost of insurance and limiting access instead of expanding it. In response, top SEIU thug Dennis Rivera accused Obamacare opponents of “terrorist tactics” in a conference call earlier this spring with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Now, confronted with the thorny allocation of scarce resources, profligate money managers at the SEIU are dropping thousands of kids’ health coverage because they, too, can’t afford to foot the bill imposed by the president whom their union bosses spent more than $60 million to elect. And SEIU’s Rivera is nowhere to be found.

The SEIU also pumped tens of millions of dollars in union funds directly into the campaign for Obamacare. Workers regurgitated White House talking points hyping increased access, lower premiums and peace of mind for the working class. SEIU 1199 — which is now cutting off health care coverage to children whose parents work in the health care industry of all industries — was at the forefront of those D.C.-directed “reform” rallies. The same militant leaders of SEIU 1199 sent hordes of their workers on buses to an anti-tea party rally convened by Comedy Central clowns in October, while their benefits and pension funds eroded.

Yes, the union road to hell is paved with workers’ own hard-earned dues money. All hail progressivism!

How far we’ve come from the halcyon moment when President Obama rallied young college students at George Mason University in Virginia in March. To wild applause, he pledged: “If you buy a new plan, there won’t be lifetime or restrictive annual limits on the amount of care you receive from your insurance companies. (Applause.) And by the way, to all the young people here today, starting this year if you don’t have insurance, all new plans will allow you to stay on your parents’ plan until you are 26 years old. (Applause.)”

Cue bitter laughter here. As I reported two weeks ago, more than 111 unions (including two SEIU affiliates), companies and insurers have now secured federal waivers to escape the first provision Obama mentioned to the George Mason University students. And more financially strapped union affiliates like SEIU 1199 will undoubtedly be canceling children’s coverage to escape the costs tied to Obama’s second vow.

For the kiddie human shields who helped the Democrats dig their own ditch, reality bites. Live and learn.

(No wonder Keith Overbite calls Malkin a mashed up bag of meat with lipstick. She’s always right. He’s always wrong.)

Welcome to the future, suckers.

Video of the Day (11/20/10): N.J. Gov. Christie Rocks!

Here's (sniffle sniffle) my governor retelling a teacher union smackdown to an audience at the Goldwater Institute [h/t Right Scoop]:

End the Occupation! - California Public School Bans Student from Displaying U.S. Flag

Yes, people. At a California public school displaying a United States flag is now off limits due to the fake excuse of potentially inciting “racial tension.”

DENAIR, Calif., Nov. 11 (UPI) -- Officials in a California school district said a middle school student was told to take a U.S. flag off his bike to avoid “racial tension.”

Denair Unified School District Superintendent Edward Parraz said Cody Alicea, 13, was told not to fly the U.S. flag from his bike while at Denair Middle School after complaints from other students, KCRA-TV, Sacramento, Calif., reported.

“(The) First Amendment is important,” Parraz said. “We want the kids to respect it, understand it, and with that comes a responsibility.”

Gee, by that logic, shouldn’t the leftoids have been telling Rauf the Radical Imam ix-nay on the osque-may near Ground Zero, in order to avoid “racial tension”? (I know, I know, I know. How silly of me to try to find logic, principle, and consistency in liberalism!)

Parraz said racial tensions boiled over at the school this year around the Cinco de Mayo holiday.

Then why didn’t you ban Cinco de Mayo, Mr. Parraz? If your goal is to avoid “racial tension,” then you should have. (I know, I know, I know. How silly of me to try to find logic, principle, and consistency in liberalism!)

“Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they’ll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don’t really want,” Parraz said. “We want them to appreciate the cultures.” …

First of all, it’s bad enough when some prepubescent Miley-Cyrus-worshipping, texting-addicted, Justin-Beiber-obsessed schoolgirl says, “you know … you know … you know” twenty times in one sentence. But really, this is a district superintendent?

Second, here’s what I would do if there are Hispanic students at this school who might become racially incensed at the sight of an American flag: I would sit them down in a room, tell them that they are in the United States of America. And in this country we have freedoms. And at the top of that list is freedom of speech, and especially the freedom to display the flag of one’s own country.

If you have a problem with any of this, then that is your problem, not theirs. American citizens will not have their free speech rights denied because you have an unhealthy chip on your shoulder. If you still have a problem with it, then go home, grab your ungrateful parents who clearly didn’t instill love for this the best and freest country on the planet, and go the f**k back where you came from! (And take your worthless superintendent with you!)

And just to be really snarky, I’ll tell them all this in English!

Oh, I’m sorry, was that too insensitive? Too intolerant? Too mean-spirited? Tough. Get over yourself. It’s the truth and the sooner you realize it, the better you’ll be.

P.S. By the way, this incident happened yesterday, i.e. Veteran’s Day.

END THE OCCUPATION! LIBERALS OUT OF THE SCHOOLS NOW!!!

Listen & Learn: Mark Levin Asks, "What Is It That Gov't Does Well?" (10/15/10)

Yesterday the 15th, Mark was at his best. In the first hour he had on Christine O'Donnell, who in a debate earlier this week out-debated her Senatorial opponent Chris Coons (D-DE). During the second hour he brought on Sharron Angle who in Thursday's debate mopped the floor with Harry Reid's tuchas. These are two of the smartest, talented, pro-America, pro-Constitution, pro-liberty women running right now. And the Left has bashed both of them, most recently mocking O'Donnell as a witch on "Saturday Night Live."

The Democrats are a bunch of misogynists. Sexists. Anti-woman. They've bashed and demonized Angle, O'Donnell, Meg Whitman running for governor in California, and of course Sarah Palin. (Not to mention the fact that these women have achieved their successes without riding on the coattails of some man—like Hillary Clinton, Nancy D'Alessandro Pelosi, or Michelle Obama.)

So how can one not come to any conclusion other than that the Democrats are misogynist sexist woman-haters?

(Hey, I'm just using the left's own twisted logic right back at them.)

And while we're on the topic, there are 38 blacks running for national office this year as Republicans. Yet you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the Democrat-run media giving these candidates any positive coverage, if any at all! Conclusion: Liberals/Democrats are racist.

When the liberals/Democrat calls their opponents "racist"—be it establishment blue blood Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, or Tea Partiers—they say it on the basis of us disliking one black person: Barack Obama. They, on the other hand, have not lifted one finger to support or endorse any black GOP candidate running in 2010. This must mean they are more racist than conservatives/Republicans by a factor of 38.

(Hey, I'm just using the left's own twisted logic right back at them.)

But now back to Mark. Below is the monologue he began the entire show with. His central question is, "(Putting aside the military) What is it that the government does well?" He then goes through a list of massive liberal government programs and policies that have been dismal money-wasting failures. By the end, the answer to his question is quite clear: Not only does government not do anything well, but they have been quite detrimental to our economy and to our society as a whole.

If you're going to pass along any sound clip to friends or family before they vote next month, this is the one. Take it away, Great One:

[Edited for commercials, long pauses, and other extraneous content]

Download clip here