Called on the Tarmac

Years ago, my mother and younger brother had a heated argument about something.  My brother was still a teenager.  He was six feet two inches tall (and had another two inches to go).  Mom was 5 feet 7, tallish for a woman.  In the midst of the argument, my brother yelled something and raised his hand as if to hit her.  His fist was still in mid-air when my mother thundered, “Are you raising your hand to me?!  Do you think you’re going to hit me, your mother?!”

With that, she put the old choke hold on him and lifted all six foot two of him, and commensurate weight, to the ceiling.  As he dangled there, his arms flailing and his face turning lobster red from the lack of oxygen, she let him know what would happen to him if he ever struck or ever dare tried to strike her again.  He never raised his hand to her again.

Obama flew to Arizona in great state, where Gov. Jan Brewer awaited him to personally deliver a letter to him requesting that he support Arizona’s right to guard its borders and enforce federal laws against illegal immigration.

Obama had a very different agenda on his mind.  As he descended the airliner staircase, the engines of the jet still running, he quickly took the letter and without reading it, handed it off to a Secret Service agent who threw it in the back of the presidential limousine.

“I don’t appreciate what you wrote about me in your book,” he said angrily of a book she’d written six months earlier, “saying I treated you poorly.”  A heated exchange followed with the now-famous photo of Brewer wagging her finger in Obama’s face.

Obama’s cheerleaders have painted a portrait of an insignificant governor excoriating the poor President of the United States of America.  All the president’s secret service agents and all the president’s jets couldn’t protect him from the wrath of one woman.  Poor Obama.

So the President flies to Arizona, with his phalanx of Secret Service armored cars, his 747, and fighter jets flying overhead.  Is Gov. Jan Brewer intimidated by this display of power and hubris?  Nope.  She gives it right back to him and wags her finger in the face of the President of the United States.  Does it matter that he outranks her?  Nope.  Does it matter that he has the U.S. military and the Secret Service at his disposal?  Nope.  Does it matter that he’s so much taller than she is?  Nope.  Does it matter that he’s a man and she’s a woman?  Nope, nope, nope.

All that matters is that she took him on, after personally delivering a letter to him allegedly asking him to support U.S. immigration laws.  Now that’s chutzpah.  The true picture is rather obvious; of a courageous woman standing up to the president of the United States.  His cheerleaders must somehow burnish his tarnished, humiliated image. 

Make no mistake; it’s a humiliating picture for Obama and his cheerleaders, and an encouraging portrait for the beleaguered Conservatives.  We were looking for someone who could stand up to this guy, and there she is, on the tarmac in Arizona for all to see.

How did the GOP manage to overlook her when vetting candidates for the 2012 election?  It’s too late now, but what a great team Brewer and Chris Christie would make in a future election.

 

Math is the Path

Tough times demand tough questions when interviewing prospective employees for your company. The Wall Street Journal ran an article recently about the upgrading of interview questions. Google, in particular, gives its potential employees some real brain-teasers. No, “What’s your favorite color?” at Google.

The company is primarily interested in software engineers who are expected to know their math and physics. One word problem states, “You are shrunk to the height of a nickle and thrown into a blender. The blades are about to start. You have sixty seconds until you’re pureed. What do you do?”

The prospectees had some interesting answers to this dilemma. Jam the blades. Lay inside the core of the blades. Huddle up against the glass wall of the blender. Swim for it. Use their shoelaces as a lasso and climb up. Stand on the blades and let the centrifugal force throw you out of the blender. The article says that Google was looking for inventive answers and these certainly were inventive.

But they were all wrong. Google was really looking for the mathematically-correct answer, despite the author’s assertion that Google wasn’t looking for the smartest or technically-correct answer. In fact, they were, and you would have to understand physics to get it.

The answer is: jump. The answer has to do with density, which is implied in the question but not actually quotable. Most non-engineers would not realize density was even a factor. Having been shrunk to the size of a nickel, or 1/10th your present height, your muscles would only be 1/100 as powerful – but you’d only weigh 1/1,000 of your ordinary weight. Small beings are butter able to lift their bodies against gravity. Think birds. Shrunk to the size of a nickel, you’d be strong enough to leap like Superman (or a flea), right out of the blender, taking the heavy sealed rubber lid with you.

The WSJ included a wonderfully telling graph of a man sealed inside a blender, though he is not the size of a nickel. It’s the very picture of our plight as Americans, trapped inside a burgeoning, socialist bureaucracy. By the end of 2012, with the presidential race decided in favor Obama, the fate of free people everywhere will be sealed.

Gravity has sealed us onto our planet and current physicists say we’re trapped, just like the nickel-sized man in the blender. Students in communist countries like China are outpacing American students in the sciences and mathematics, while American students study revisionist history and post-20th century modernist literature. Practically the whole canon of 20th Century literature is composed of nothing but Marxist propaganda disguised as literature and drama (which is why my master’s degree will be in history, not English).

If our students don’t accelerate their mathematical and scientific skills, their communists “brothers” and “sisters” will be on top and will seal us in, preventing an escape from the totalitarian recipe for world government they’re mixing together. Freedom will be pureed and our economy liquidated.

Our students can’t be the grasshoppers fiddling, while the rest of the world builds a prison around us. If the theoretical nickel man can pop his way out of a blender, then there must be a way for man to escape earth’s gravity other than atop a roman candle. We shouldn’t have to be thinking of “escaping” from a political situation on Earth, but it may just come to that – the only way freedom will survive is to seek out new frontiers.

Unless enough of our students wake up to the importance of mathematics and real science, we – or our descendants – will be stuck here. We must find the way out in the next few generations, or all the scientific decisions will be made for us.

Make no mistake – I was one of those daydreamers who had no use for math and didn’t think I ever would. I was busy drawing maps of little stick figure rocket ships heading for distant stars, and dreaming of what those planets were like and who might be living on them and whether Man would visit them someday.

That’s what I thought at 16. Now, as I study those same algebraic problems to prepare for the GRE, I have a very different notion of Mathematics, but the same dream about the little spaceship heading for the stars. Only it’s no idyll; it’s an imperative. Not that imagine myself an astrophysicist. But somewhere out there, across the fruited plain, is an intelligent, freedom-loving student who will either find the way or teach future generations to find the way to freedom. I hope they’re listening.

You can’t reach for the stars just by dreaming. Yet you can’t dream if you can’t reach for the stars. Math is the path.

 

 

 

Silence is Not an Option

Last week on his television program, Glenn Beck introduced some Internet security experts who gave dire warnings about our growing dependence upon computer-based communications: Google, Facebook, Twitter, e-mails, and so forth.

Studying the advent of the Anti-Christ (being an astrologer), I warned about this very problem many years ago, when I was still a student in college. I theorized that the number 666 which Biblical prophecy warned of, would be some sort of computerized number of password that not only the Anti-Christ have, but would compel everyone to have. You wouldn’t be able to do business, to make purchases, or to cash a check without it.

Yet when all these features came along, Facebook, Google, and blogs, I fell in love with them. I’m not completely dependent on them – yet – but have found them extremely convenient. I still insist on paying my bills by check. My employer sends my paycheck by direct deposit and I can only access by paystub electronically, which I sore unhappy about. But since my paycheck will disappear in about two months, along with my job, I suppose I have nothing to work in that regard.

The security experts’ warnings were well-timed. I was unable to post a blog on Friday because some time past, hackers had wormed their way into my computer and disconnected me from the Internet. It’s not the first time; I’ve become an expert at rebooting my computer. I’d finally restored my Internet connection. The last stage was rebooting Microsoft Word. I’ve been so busy, I just didn’t have a chance until Friday and by the time I got everything set up, it was too late in the evening (as it is now) to write the blog.

Saturdays and Sundays have been devoted to studying up for the Graduate Record Exams, which is why you generally don’t see weekend blogs anymore. But since I missed Friday, I figured I’d have to do one today and the corruption of the Internet seemed the perfect target.

It’s pretty scary to think that hackers can access even a dedicated computer (one that’s not plugged into the Internet but serves as a stand-alone). There isn’t a firewall built that can keep them out, apparently. So far, the last time any strange charges appeared on my credit card was years ago when the hacker robbed me the old-fashioned way; the store clerk swiped my card a second time on a hidden card swiper that remembered my number. Someone then began an 24-hour porn site. A call to my credit card company put them out of business.

We can fear all these Big Money types like George Soros. Or we can gather up our courage and our common sense. Pay our bills via check but go on posting blogs and comments, sounding the battle cry of freedom. I keep my reboot disks handy now, for I know the hackers are tireless and indefatigable. But so am I. I wouldn’t call myself “Anonymous” since they can get into my computer and learn name. But what if they do? In the end, I’m not “Anonymous; you could call me “Obscure.” Too obscure to be particularly frightened of them. I speak up. They shut me down. I reboot and go on speaking out for freedom. I do so because I must.

Silence is not an option.

Elevator Music

In a 6-2 ruling, the Supreme Court made it a crime to perform any composer’s music, even the works of those who are dead, without paying a royalty to either the artist or the artist’s estate.  The ruling came down as the public was protesting new Internet rulings – Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

ASCAP’s copyright rules are not new.  They simply had no way of enforcing the rules.  Technically, your dentist was supposed to pay a royalty on every single song played on Muzak and now its successor, Satellite radio.  Neither are school boards exempt.  Or musical groups like the Ramsey Wind Symphony.  One professional musician and composer notes, “We’ve been playing with fire.”

Enforcing these rules is somewhat like paying a royalty to the patent holder of the elevator door.  Every time it opens and closes, if we were to follow the music royalty rules, you would have to pay 8 cents.  The rules apply to performing groups making CDs of the performances.  It’s called the mechanical fee – 8 or 9 cents per disc for every song performed and recorded.

There’s a reason artists are right-brained and engineers are left-brained.  Engineers are efficient.  So are business owners.  They seek the most efficient way of profiting from their inventions, products or services.  As long as you respect the fact that they own the copyright and don’t try to pass their stuff as your own, they don’t care what you do with it or how often you use it.  They do incorporate planned obsolence into their designs so the thing will wear out and you’ll have to come back to buy another one, or a new, upgraded model.  Otherwise, you paid the money for the thing and you can do what you want with it.  The tablet maker doesn’t care whether you listen to Mozart, Elvis, or Lady Gaga.

Creative, right-brained people, on the other hand, aren’t nearly so flexible, although they claim they are.  The latest issue of the National Review has an article about an opera diva who’s the ultimate control freak.  If she doesn’t feel up to singing, the ticket-holders hoping to hear her are out of luck.  Musical artists, in particular, don’t feel they’re being justly compensated for their work.  They’re facing stiff competition.  But then, so are elevator door manufacturers.

The elevator door maker doesn’t have a hissy fit, though, when all sorts of people go through his elevator door, or a competitor invents one with a mirror so executives can check out their attire before getting off on their floors.  He invents new designs to make his elevator door more appealing.  The newest elevator can be programmed to only go to certain floors.  That’s not because the elevator door inventor wants to control his product; the buyer does.

This is about more than money.  Artists are right to be concerned about Internet piracy.  That’s stealing and it’s not fair.  However, SOPA and PIPA will open the doors to government intrusion on the privacy of individuals.

No, the artists want control of who plays their music and when.  They want to be able to say to someone, “I don’t like what your company makes, so I’m not going to allow you to play my music on your elevator music system.”  So the artist invokes this onerous, bureaucratic legislation, requiring a certain percentage every time the song plays on the elevator, all day long, over and over and over.  Finally, the company gives in and stops playing the music.  My company has very strict rules about what recorded music they can play at an event.  The company signed a contract with ASCAP for a certain list of music, and there’s still a restriction about how often it can be played.  The event planners have to notify ASCAP what music they’re going to perform, when, and why.

Imagine the elevator door manufacturer installing a camera on the elevator door so that it can track who is entering the elevator.  If someone about to enter is, say an obvious one percenter wearing an expensive suit or a Tea Partier wearing a Gadsden Flag pin, the elevator door owner could deny the rider access to the elevator.

The elevator manufacturers actually aren’t too far from that state.  They’ve already invented elevators that require a coded passkey to get into the cab, which will only go to certain floors.  Again, that’s the choice of buyer of the elevator, not the manufacturer.  Schindler Elevator.  Dover Elevator.  They don’t care who gets on.  That’s the difference between left-brain thinking, right-brain thinking, and hare-brained thinking.

By all means, go after the pirates.  But let us not go to the other extreme, where some poor classical quartet, elementary school band, church choir or community orchestra has to install a music meter to count the number of times they rehearsed and played Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.  The purchase of the music should infer all the rights the buyer needs to perform the music.

If these copyright laws are enforced, instead of reformed, next Christmas Eve will truly be a “Silent Night.”

State of the Union, 2012

To the untrained, uninformed ear, Obama’s State of the Union address was a great campaign speech, touting all-American values.  But do assertions measure up to the facts?  As with Shakespeare, it’s always instructive to parse the first line of the drama.

“Last month, I went to Andrews Air Force Base and welcomed home some of our last troops to serve in Iraq.”  By extension, that also means Afghanistan.  If we consider that statement only in a domestic light, it’s good news to the pacifists, Ron Paul economists who espouse an isolationist foreign policy, and of course, the service people and their families.  The last are the only ones who have the right to cheer.

Our troops are coming home, which does mean a great savings in lives and money, in the short term.  But it also means leaving Iraq to the predations of Iran.  The Taliban is no longer a threat, Obama claims; at least not to our American troops.  Why should they be?  The Taliban is just taking a cigarette break while we pack up and leave Afghanistan, and all its precious, rare metals to the Chinese and the Taliban.  We’ve paved the way for China; now we can come home.  As for the rest of Afghanistan – who the heck cares?  The Taliban can have them, at least in this view of things.

He gave due credit to the American Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, pluming himself for bringing them home, and crediting them with courage and managing to work in a little plug for socialism.

“These achievements are a testament to the courage, selflessness, and teamwork of America’s Armed Forces. At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations.  They’re not consumed with personal ambition. They don’t obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.  Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example.”

The Democrats have never been a party to work together.  What they mean when they say “work with us” is “it’s our way or the highway.”

He harkens back to the good old days of “the basic American promise that if you worked hard, you could do well enough to raise a family, own a home, send your kids to college, and put a little away for retirement” and scruples not to blame Corporate America for those failures.  If only they had paid their “fair share” – a frequent phrase in Obama’s address.

American businesses pay the highest corporate tax rate of any industrialized nation in the world.  Not surprisingly, thanks to high taxes and labor costs, the companies closed up shop and moved to more favorable climates, much as the individual wealthy will do if Obama and the Democrat Congress keep their “promise” of forcing the wealthy to pay their “fair share.”

“…no American company should be able to avoid paying its fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.  From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax. And every penny should go towards lowering taxes for companies that choose to stay here and hire here.”  Even those that must cravenly pay obeisance to unions.

If Obama is so worried about keeping jobs here, he might ask himself why Beechcraft was “allowed” to send its manufacturing facility overseas to build a military airplane instead of leaving it in Wichita, Kansas, where the town is now economically devastated.

Obama has an answer for both those niggling problems:  he’ll tax any company that moves its business overseas and the same for wealthy tax birds who might find Ireland’s lack of income tax more appealing.  He proposes closing tax loopholes and shelters, something the Republicans have been trying to enact for at least a decade, opposed by – guess who? – the Democrats.  Obama must be faithful to his base, after all – the Beer Partiers and the Unions – which is more than the Republicans can say.

Pres. Bush was ultimately responsible for TARP – but candidate Obama sat in the center of the negotiations, and he was certainly responsible for bailing out an American car company at taxpayer expense.  General Motors, and its onerous union deficit of non-working employees receiving full pay, was subsidized by us, and now Obama crows at the success of the public-private partnership.  He cited Ford, but Ford never asked for, received, or needed a government bail-out.  Chrysler is in the process of being sold to a foreign company, Fiat.  An apt name.  Perhaps that’s the next company Obama should consider taking over.

He also turned to his favorite bogey-man, the oil companies.  Why should taxpayers being subsidizing multi-billion dollar oil companies?  Well, as Fox News notes:  “This is at least Obama’s third run at stripping subsidies from the oil industry.  Back when fellow Democrats formed the House and Senate majorities, he sought $36.5 billion in tax increases on oil and gas companies over the next decade, but Congress largely ignored the request. He called again to end such tax breaks in last year’s State of the Union speech. And he’s now doing it again, despite facing a wall of opposition from Republicans who want to spur domestic oil and gas production and oppose tax increases generally.”  A tax break is not a subsidy; it’s just taking less money from them.

Mr. Energy boasted about how pro-energy he is, even for oil and natural gas.  Yet, he shut down the Keystone Pipeline, which benefitted his wealthy friend Warren Buffett’s railroad, shut down all drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, sold all our drilling equipment to Venezuela, is opposed to opening the Alaska oil fields, and wants all to ride bicycles to work, as the Hollanders do.  The Greenies shut down all our refineries ages ago.  Does he plan on reopening them and bringing back our oil equipment and allowing drilling in the Gulf (that will be a costly venture to undo that damage)?  Not likely.

There are jobs to be had in the technological fields, but not the educated workforce to do the tasks.  This is the generation that was taught by his good friend, William Ayers, that 2 plus 2 can equal five, and an associate of Bill’s, Noam Chomsky, that spelling and grammar don’t count.  He calls upon colleges and universities to lower their tuitions.  If students had the proper education in the elementary and high school grades, they’d know everything they need to know, mathematically.

Students have to be willing to do the work and that won’t be accomplished by saying, “Yes, we can”; it can only be accomplished by saying, “Yes, I can!”  Alas, academic excellence, like bathing (to paraphrase Hodson the Butler from the film Arthur) is a lonely business.  Mathematics requires hours and hours drilling from a book, not dancing to some rap tune on your Ipod.  Most American students are too socialized for the effort.  This is not a job for government; this is a job for the students, and their teachers and parents.  Truly, we should not depend upon the government to encourage students to study math and science; only the other day, some Liberal pundit said something about mathematics being a suspect science because it was devised by human beings.

My nephew is a graduate mechanical engineering student.  For the most part, he did the work, got the grades, and will probably get the job.  He has a Chinese girlfriend who criticizes him for not studying harder.  My brother says that while she was staying in his house over the Christmas holidays that the girl got up at the crack of dawn to study her mechanical engineering books and didn’t let up (except for meals) until late at night.  Nephew and his American buddies (mostly guys) take note.  If a Chinese girl can do it, what does that tell you?  Wake up!!!  Even I’ve hit the mathematics books in order to pass my GREs and even though my intended major is History, I take the math very seriously, something I didn’t do when I was younger.

American students need to start working harder and getting better grades.  Before you can teach them Math, though, you need to teach them History and Economics (the history of money), in order to undo the anti-Capitalist brainwashing that caused these unmotivated students to ignore their studies, regard success as evil, and assume they were entitled to a life of dependency.

Finally, Obama got to the economy.

“Long before the recession, jobs and manufacturing began leaving our shores. Technology made businesses more efficient, but also made some jobs obsolete. Folks at the top saw their incomes rise like never before, but most hardworking Americans struggled with costs that were growing, paychecks that weren’t, and personal debt that kept piling up.  In 2008, the house of cards collapsed. We learned that mortgages had been sold to people who couldn’t afford or understand them. Banks had made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money. Regulators had looked the other way, or didn’t have the authority to stop the bad behavior.

“It was wrong. It was irresponsible. And it plunged our economy into a crisis that put millions out of work, saddled us with more debt, and left innocent, hard-working Americans holding the bag. In the six months before I took office, we lost nearly four million jobs. And we lost another four million before our policies were in full effect.  Those are the facts.”

Facts?  Here are a few facts:  The housing crisis began back in the Jimmy Carter era (how’s that for blaming a past president) with the Community Reinvestment Act, leading to the Savings and Loan scandal.  Then along came Fannie, Freddie and Barney and a whole legacy of corruption in the form of a Ponzi scheme.  Banks, ordered to loan money to people who couldn’t pay them back, offered the lure of ARMs, adjustable rate mortgages, and equally scheming lendees, looking for a “deal” accepted them – and didn’t pay them back.

Obama promised, “A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world. An economy built to last, where hard work pays off, and responsibility is rewarded.  We can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules. What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values.”

Obama will really believe in American values when donkeys fly.  He’s a smooth-talking hypocrite, a member of the one percent who flies around the world in a taxpayer-funded jet (actually there are his and hers jets for the presidential couple), who speaks believable lies and propounds hogwash when it suits him.  This “all-American” president is the same guy who denounced the U.S. constitution as archaic and who’s idea of the “American dream” is the Marxist notion of wealth redistribution, and who is said to have hung a portrait of socialist Saul Alinsky in the White House.  Or was his press secretary joking?  Who can tell, with this president?

How did Obama sound last night?  Like the snake oil salesman who got his foot caught in the door.  “Ooo, oow!!  Did I say the ‘spread the wealth?’  Uh – uh – I meant ‘let’s live the American dream!!’”

Christie: No Conservative and Proud of It

Anyone who’s made the mistake of thinking tough-guy New Jersey governor Chris Christie is a Conservative only has to look at three things:  his nomination of a Muslim to the top New Jersey court, followed by yesterday’s nomination of an openly-gay (albeit Republican) African-American and a South Korean immigrant to the bench, and his support of notoriously Big Government, moderate presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

His appointment of an African-American judge should hardly bat an eye.  Why should it?  The appointment of the South Korean, Phillip H. Kwon, may or may not be a plus in the Conservative column, depending on whether he shares the generally Conservative views of New Jersey’s Korean community.

The appointment of an openly-gay justice is problematic, the emphasis being on “openly-gay”.  Does that phrase translate into “activist justice”?  The issue of gay marriage is coming up before the state’s Democrat senate.  Christie stated that he had not asked the justices about any of their views before appointing them.  In the past, he has criticized the state’s Supreme Court for being too liberal.

Neither candidate, however, has had experience as a judge, which is probably more problematic than their social or political views.  Harris, 61, is the Republican mayor of Chatham Borough in Morris County, a post Christie said he would give up if confirmed. He would be the third African-American to be seated on the court.  Kwon, 44, works in the attorney general’s Office and lives in Closter in Bergen County. He is not officially affiliated with either major political party.

Not all gay people are in favor gay marriage.  For all we know, Justice Bruce A. Harris is not one of those.  Six openly gay justices sit on state Supreme Courts nationwide.  The current New Jersey court is made up of five women and two men, all white.

Fox News reports that “New Jersey has one of the highest percentages of foreign-born residents in the nation, with about one of five residents being born outside the country, according to the U.S. Census. And Census figures show 15.8 percent of New Jersey residents identify themselves as at least partially black or African-American; 9 percent say they are at least partially Asian.

“New Jersey’s  gay marriage bill was defeated two years ago, but the Democratic Senate president, who didn’t vote then, has had a change of heart and is now sponsoring the legislation, carrying several votes with him.  Christie, who does not support gay marriage, has said he would look at the bill if it reaches his desk.  A parallel lawsuit filed by several same-sex couples and their children claim the state’s civil unions law, which confers the benefits of marriage but not the title, is unjust. That case is likely to be decided by the Supreme Court.”

 

Christie is no Conservative; but in the past, he’s been no Liberal, either.  Let us hope the governor has not had the same change of heart, or that he takes a belligerent stand in favor of something that, in the past, he knew was wrong, just to stick it to the Conservative side.

 

Unelectable GOP Candidates

 South Carolina went big for Newt Gingrich in the South Carolina, much to the dismay of the GOP and Conservative pundits.  This morning, Monday morning pundits are hanging the heads the way Forty-Niners fans are:  what were they thinking out there on the football field and in the Palmetto State voting booths.

Football?  Let’s leave that to the sports experts.  But here’s what the South Carolina allegedly Republican voters were thinking:  Newt’s not Mitt.

That’s it in a nutshell.  Is Newt a bad choice for Conservatives?  Well, he’s in favor of mass amnesty for illegal aliens, he was involved with Freddie Mac, he’s politically capricious, in favor of environmentalism (he was an environmental science professor, although of the sincere rather than the socialist sort) and Big Government before he changed his mind.

Whatever you may think of his marital status, though, he is spirited and dynamic.  If the GOP thinks electability means soft and cuddly, a negotiator, a compromiser, Newt may or may not be their guy.  Mitt most certainly is and therein lies the rift between the GOP and its Conservative members.

Just what candidate have they put forward, since Ronald Reagan, who was electable, or re-electable?  George H.W. “Read My Lips” Bush.  Congress lied to him, but that’s what you get for being negotiator.  Bob Dole?  John McCain?  George W. Bush was elected and re-elected, but on his coat tails came a flock of unsavory, high-spending moderate Republicans who were trounced out of office in 2006.  Thank you very much.  And George W. was no conservative, but he was the best the GOP was willing to manage.  “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”

The GOP is gnashing its teeth over a possible second Obama term.  They have only themselves to blame.  The GOP, under great protest from the Conservative wing, put McCain up for nomination.  By this time in 2008, he had shut the primary process down.  We were stuck with him.  Apparently, angry Conservatives are determined not to let that happen again.

The GOP should have backed Santorum.  But they wouldn’t give him a penny.  Every dollar went to Mitt Romney, who has scores of Big Business backers.  Romney is certainly more fiscally conservative than Obama (who isn’t?), but he’s still very definitely Big Government and Big Business has no qualms at all about negotiating with Big Government.

So why didn’t they back Santorum?  Because he’s a Conservative.  He’s a Conservative who backed earmarking, by the way.  Even Moderates make some reasoned arguments for some ear-marking; they consider it an act of returning their constituents’ federal taxpayer dollars to their state.

A political consultant on the radio this morning politely chastised the belligerent Newt for telling Moderates that since they’re really Liberals at heart that they should just go join the Democrat Party.  “That’s not the way to win undecided voters over,” said the cautious pundit.  But it is the way to win Conservative voters over, despite his record.  To Conservatives, Newt was just telling it like it is.  The fact is, the GOP considers nominating a Conservative candidate unsavvy.  Middle-of-the-road moderate is their strategy.

Newt himself has taken a moderate stance in bashing Romney for his wealth, even though Romney pointed out that Gingrich has a standing account at Tiffany’s.  That wealth-bashing evidently played well with the lower middle class voters and transplanted New Jerseyans in South Carolina. 

The whole thing may just be a GOP cabal to keep the real Conservative, Santorum, from taking the nomination.  He’s already been pronounced a “dead duck” by some.  But at least by fighting, Gingrich, even if he isn’t the electable candidate, has kept the nomination door open.  He’s made sure the primary race isn’t over until the last primary voter has voted.

The GOP should keep in mind that when you lead from behind you wind up in a bind.  The moderates want social liberalism and fiscal conservatism, without understanding or caring that with social liberalism, there is no fiscal conservatism; just endless debt.  What’s going to happen when all the uneducated, unskilled illegal aliens are allowed to invade our borders in a bad economy?  What’s wrong with gay marriage?  Well how about minus population growth, for starters?  No workers, no workforce, no workforce, no production, no production, no economy, and no economy, no one to pay the taxes for all the social entitlement programs.  Ditto abortion.

We certainly have a weak field of candidates, all thanks to the Republican Party.  They’re in favor of giving liberal moderates choices.  The rest of us can just go back to our hobbit holes – and that’s just what will happen if the GOP advances another weak candidate like McCain; the Conservatives will stay home and the election will go to Obama.

South Carolina just sent a huge message to the National Republican Party; they’d better start listening or it really will be too late.

 

 

The Roots of Agenda 21

John Anthony, business consultant and Agenda 21 expert, in a meeting with the North Jersey Regional Tea Party, summed up Agenda 21 this way:

“It’s a really good environmental plan wrapped up in a really bad social agenda.”

Agenda 21 was so bad, he told us, that even the plan’s public relations experts cautioned the activists not to use the words “Agenda 21” or “United Nations”. They were warned to give it some other name, like “Smart Growth.” Any politician uttering the words “Agenda 21” would immediately shot down by the opposition as a whacko nut-nut-job and the pigeons – er, the people – would be scared off.

Agenda 21 is what it is: the off-shoot of the report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro, June 3-14, 1992. If you were alive back them, you remember. You should also remember Rush Limbaugh sounding a warning about it.

Pres. George H.W. Bush approved it, but would not sign the pact. Pres. Bill, however, did.

The Rio declaration harkens back to the Declaration of the United Nations’ Conference on the Human Environment, adopted in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 16, 1972. The goal of the 1992 agreement was “a new and equitable global partnership through the creation of new levels of cooperation among states [nations], key sectors of societies, and people, working towards international agreements which respect the interests of all and protect the integrity of global environment and developmental systems, recognizing the integral and interdependent nature of Earth, our home.”

The proclamation is followed by 27 principles. Anthony noted that anyone who opposed clean air and water would be deemed out of their minds. “It all sounds good, doesn’t it?” he asked the Tea Party group. And who would disagree? “Until you read the fine print,” he added.

The U.N. published a book based on the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, created in 1983, called, “Our Common Future.” Essentially, the U.N.’s Agenda 21 is “Our Common Future” codified, according to Anthony.

Agenda 21 is all-encompassing for a program that’s supposed to be about saving tree frogs. The U.N. deals with everything from the International Economy to Ch. 10, Part 1: Planetary Management. Just in case anyone knows of an efficient and quick way of escaping Earth’s gravity and the even more magnetic clutches of the United Nations and its obviously communistic intentions.

From this big, all-encompassing agenda, 21 (meaning the 21st Century) was broken down into infinite, undetectable components. Anthony says that Agenda 21, under the guise of Smart Growth and other innocuous sobriquets (“Smart” Growth sounds so – smart, doesn’t it? Sensible? Logical? And if you oppose it, what does that make you?), filtered down through every federal agency and into every local town council and planning board.
Clever shills – stakeholders, as Anthony says they call themselves – with an interest in the success of Agenda 21 – excuse moi – Smart Growth – members with a vested interest, such as members of a Public-Private Partnership (think Solyndra) would attend the town meetings and convince the town councils that they were suffering from some serious problem, much like the fictional River City, Iowa, in the musical, “The Music Man.”

They’d offer up some bogus study based on surveys with small samplings and loaded questions (“Which of these would you prefer to happen to open spaces? 1. To be protected. 2. To be acquired (by the federal government). Anthony pointed out that there’s not much choice. In shill language, these loaded questions are termed “the visionary process,” giving the subject no choice.

To protect the stakeholders, the U.N. doctrine affords them the right not to have to prove any environmental allegations. In Dade County, local authorities declared that a residential neighborhood was in a wetlands area. The residents fought the declaration legally and even enlisted the aid of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who averred that the area was not a wetlands. Nevertheless, thanks to Principle 15 of the Rio Declaration, the local authorities prevailed.

“Principle 15: In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach (“because we say so, that’s why”) shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.” The declaration, incidentally, is not only codified, but bears a U.S. copyright from 1999.

An accompanying document, the Global Biodiversity Assessment, under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Programme, published in 1996, has pronounced many common areas of life to be hazardous to life, including: ski runs, fish ponds, pastures, golf courses, paved roads, dams, and straightened river beds. They are also seeking to implement legal representation for plants and animals. The book declares, also, that private property is “unsustainable.”

The Liberals don’t allow even a garbage dump without a plan. The U.N.’s two main thrusts are “Growing Smarter”, the urbanization plan for basically removing people from 16 percent of America’s rural lands into urban centers; and “The Wild Lands Project”, in which the government seizes that 16 percent of rural land, allowing no development at all.

Already large property owners are signing away rights to their land without reading the fine print, Anthony states. For the privilege of living on their land, now owned by the government, they can no longer profit from its sale and pass that profit on to their descendants.

Rural counties and states are beginning to wake up and fight this global bureaucratic monster. A couple of counties and some Midwestern states have already rescinded their Smart Growth plans, and more community groups are jumping on the land-wagon. Last night, a citizens group from Copiague, Long Island, attended North Jersey Regional’s meeting to get some pointers on how to fight Smart Growth.
Anthony suggested reading some of the key books, such as “Sustainable America” to see what the social planners are up to. He recommended not confusing sincere environmentalists with social environmentalists. The problem, he said, is not that we don’t want clean water, but that we don’t want Big Government telling us how to do it.

He said one of the things town councils need to be aware of are open-space grants. The contract may good. On the other hand, it may be filled with socialist lingo that has nothing to do with protecting open spaces. Citizens groups need to challenge assertions that towns are losing open space. They need to contact public officials and go to town planning meetings. Start a Property Rights Council (a job for, say, retired attorneys) to protect citizens from bad zoning laws. He also suggested going to Did You Know Online to get more information.

Citizens should be aware that the United Nations also engages in environmental doctrination. Anthony cited passages from a mathematics textbook called “Connected Math,” denouncing mathematics as a creation of human beings, and therefore, suspect.

Happily, the Republican National Committee has approved a resolution that exposes Agenda 21 in all its forms. Read the fine print of Agenda 21, especially the Rio Conference resolution, and get together with your neighbors. Fight this movement to place us all in these urban centers, which are nothing more than high-rise communes. Remember that “commune” is the root word of “Communism.”

The Political Pipeline

What does Obama have in common with the late Osama, besides the alliteration of their names – one letter off (b and s, ironically)? Osama destroyed energy pipelines, blowing them up, and Obama is destroying energy pipelines by obstructing them.

The White House has said it will reject a proposed 1,700-mile oil pipeline from Canada to Texas, claiming the February deadline set by Congress doesn’t allow for proper review of the $7 billion project.

According to Fox News, “For three years, the State Department has been reviewing the initial proposal to run a pipeline from Canada down to Texas through a sensitive Nebraska aquifer — authority it has because of the transnational path the route takes. The pipeline had been through several other federal, state and local approvals, but the department backed away from signing off on the plan last year after environmentalists and local lawmakers complained.”

Not surprisingly, in this presidential election year, Obama announced he would deny a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, run by Canadian energy company TransCanada because the Republicans imposed a ‘rushed and arbitrary deadline’ and also connected it to the short-term payroll tax cut extension. The Republicans wanted a longer extension but the Democrats, not the Republicans stymied passage of the bill, and the Republicans settled for the shorter extension as long as the Keystone Pipeline permit was included.

Now the Democrats have gotten away with the shorter payroll tax cut extension and they’ve politically imploded a key energy pipeline that would have delivered energy independence, to say nothing of cheaper oil, to America, and allowed the U.S. to withdraw from the volatile Middle East.

But let us not forget that Obama is the Green President. All this talk about tax-cut extensions and not leaving enough time to research the project is all the fog of politics. It’s all about the environment, as far as Obama and his supporters are concerned.

This oil would be heavy-crude they’d be shipping down to the Gulf Coast. That means it would need refining. Since the 1970s, the environmentalists have managed to close down every single refinery on America’s shores. New refineries would have to be built and up to 20,000 people would find employment. We can’t have all that nasty, dirty oil, and we certainly can’t have independent Americans driving around in their own cars using relatively cheap gas, or trucks helping drive the Capitalist economy. That’s not in the Agenda 21 plan.

Fox News reports, “The decision does not necessarily kill the project. The State Department said the denial “does not preclude any subsequent permit application” — and within hours pipeline company TransCanada announced that it would reapply for a permit. But the decision at least delays the project, one that unions and GOP lawmakers alike said would be a boon for job creation as well as energy security.”

“Until this pipeline is constructed, the U.S. will continue to import millions of barrels of conflict oil from the Middle East and Venezuela and other foreign countries,” TransCanada said in a statement Wednesday, saying it is “disappointed” by the administration’s call. “Thousands of jobs continue to hang in the balance if this project does not go forward.”

Obama scrupled not to blame the GOP.

“This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people,” Obama said. “I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil.”

Industry workers and Republicans contend the project would create thousands of jobs, and Canada’s prime minister warned if the U.S. doesn’t put the pipeline through, Canada will sell the oil to China, instead, with no blame to TransCanada.

Still, Fox News says, “Obama’s own jobs council suggested that it agrees with the pipeline concept. While not specifically mentioning Keystone in a report out Tuesday about improving competitiveness, the council said that when it comes to energy projects in general, the government needs to ‘expeditiously, though cautiously, move forward on projects that can support hundreds of thousands of jobs.’

“We think this all-in energy strategy can create significant economic growths and significant job creation,” said Lewis Hay, NextEra Energy CEO and a member of the president’s job council.

Obama, covering his political assets, maintained his environmental concerns about energy exploration, but insisted a balance could be found.

“I think the recommendations are sound. We see enormous potential in production of traditional fossil fuels,” he said without mentioning Keystone.

“In a purely partisan effort to score a political point, Republicans in Congress insisted on inserting an extraneous provision within a bill that had nothing to do with pipelines,” White House spokesman Carney said, adding that the ‘arbitrary deadline’ made an adequate review ‘virtually impossible.’

Newt Gingrich called the move “insanely stupid.” The Democrats’ disingenuous cries of “ridership” should be plainly called out; it’s the way of life in Capitol Hill. The Democrats do it all the time, and generally to the detriment of Capitalism and the American way of life.

It takes two to play hardball. But only one to renege on a deal.

National School Choice Week

If only there had been such a thing as “school choice” when I was in high school. Then I might have been taught American history properly and thoroughly, and would have been able to continue on to World History.

The Tea Parties are about taking back our government, and taking back our schools from the government. The N.J. Tea Party Caucus and Smart Girl Politics are celebrating National School Choice week (next week) with an event on Sun., January 22 at 2 p.m. at the Frank I. Williams Middle School in Jersey City, N.J. If you care about your children and grandchildren’s future, and about the education of America’s workforce, put this meeting on your calendar.

Bob Bowdown, creator of the education expose, “The Cartel” and founder and Executive Director of ChoiceMedia TV will be the special guest speaker. He will also moderate a panel discussion with key educational field experts on school choice and reform.

Date: Sunday, January 22, 2012
Time: 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Place: Franklin I. Williams Middle School
222 Laidlaw Avenue
Jersey City, NJ

Learn to work with your kids, even your teenagers, by building their math, history, and vocabulary skills. Did you know, for instance, that yesterday was Benjamin Franklin’s birthday? A great opportunity to have a conversation about a man who did it all.

Flash cards are great educational aids. Use the words to instill Conservatism in your children’s minds. For instance:

Contrite (noun): regretful; penitent; seeking forgiveness. Synonym: apologetic.

Moderates contritely seek penitence from the Liberals for imaginary grievances.

Cosset (verb): to coddle Synonym: pamper

The Occupy Wall Street protesters were pampered and cossetted by The Media.

Cozen (verb): To deceive, beguile or hoodwink Synonym: mislead

We hope voters will not be cozened again by Obama’s deceptions.

Denouement (noun): An outcome or solution; the unraveling of a plot.

We hope the denouement of the 2012 election will result in the restoration of Conservatism.

See? Isn’t learning fun? Repetition will anchor the words and their precise meanings, as well as Conservatism, in your children’s brains. Drilling will create the opening that will allow Conservative values to penetrate the dark and aphotic recesses of brainwashed students’ craniums.