‘Why Not Chickens’?

The lastest Sanity Squad podcast is up.

This week, we look at the efforts to replace a Holocaust Memorial Day with a more generic ‘Genocide Day,’ an idea enthusiastically endorsed and espoused by many British Muslims, in the hope that Israeli ‘genocide’ against the Palestinians will take center stage.

SC&A think a Genocide Day isn’t such a bad idea. After all, it is clear that the Israelis have come to symbolize failure when it comes to genocide, despite all their world class achievements. On the other hand, the ongoing genocide in Sudan, perpetrated by the Arab Janjaweed has been far more effective at business of killing and rape. The Arab League is no hurry to end the slaughter.

The same can be said for the atrocities and genocide in Algeria, the Philippines, and East Timor. Under Saddam, Kurds and Marsh Arabs were subjected to unspeakable horrors, as were ordinary Iraqis.

So many atrocities, so little time.

A Genocide Day might bring awareness to the use of poison gas in Yemen by the Egyptians, as well as the ongoing slave trade in Mauritania, conducted by Arab slave traders.

We’re all for raising awareness.

As an aside, see this. Puts the whole ‘inclusive’ Holocaust movement in perspective.

Neo, Dr Sanity, Shrinkwrapped and ourselves respond to this latest assault on civilized behavior in scintillating fashion. Join us this week and you’ll be treated to erudite, considered opinions and insightful analysis sans pareil- with a few snide and smart ass observations that hit home.

This weeks podcast is a keeper.

Archived brilliance can be found here.

Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much About Reality

Last year, and the year before, almost 43,000 Americans died on our highways and in traffic accidents (there is good news to report. No drunk senator from any New England state managed to drive off a bridge, resulting in the death of a young woman (some two hours after the accident) and then checked into a motel and ‘forgot to call the police.’ The senator did remember to call his state’s political fixers, lawyers, family and other assorted individuals. We ought to be grateful. Who needs a senator with a faulty memory?).

As a nation, it is clear those 43,000 deaths don’t mean much to us. If we really did care, we’d be up in arms in the same way some people ‘care’ about the deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, or ‘care’ about the deaths of Palestinians who chose to initiate violence against Israel that would lead to her destruction(as opposed to seeking a durable peace treaty ).

The war in Iraq has lead to the tragic deaths of over 3,000 Americans, over a few years. The Palestinian Intifadah, has resulted in slightly more deaths, over a longer period of time. Nevertheless, because the the 43,000 deaths per year attributed to drunk driving cannot be attributed to George Bush, neo-cons or people who attend religious services, those deaths are deemed irrelevant. That is no overstatement. When a religious figure is caught up in a scandal, there are those who revel in the bloodletting. When a public school teacher is involved in a similar incident, it is usually ignored. A study was commissioned to look at child abuse in public schools. The conclusion was astounding.

…we believe that sexual misconduct in whatever form it takes is a serious problem in our nation’s schools and one about which parents and taxpayers have a right to be informed. The Department of Education is currently investigating ways to obtain more reliable evidence on the extent of sexual abuse in schools.

Abuse by public school teachers appears to be a far greater issue than abuse by religious school instructors.

the report says the mistreatment of students ranges from sexual comments to rape. In fact, says the study’s author Charol Shakeshaft, professor of educational administration at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., the scope of the school-sex problem appears to far exceed the clergy-abuse scandal that has recently rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

Comparing the incidence of sexual misconduct in schools with the Catholic Church scandal, Shakeshaft notes that a recent study by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops concluded 10,667 young people were sexually mistreated by priests between 1950 and 2002.

In contrast, she extrapolates from a national survey conducted for the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation in 2000 that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.

The figures suggest “the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests,” said Shakeshaft, according to Education Week.

Indeed, more than 4.5 million students are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade, says the report.

Stupidity and denial run in all directions.

The idea of registering guns is a good one. Yes, it is. The registering of weapons is not an endorsement of a ban on weapons. In fact, quite the contrary- there should be no issue with responsible citizens owning weapons. The truth is, weapons are registered today, when the application to purchase that weapon is filled out. All a national gun registry would do is submit the state information to a national database, or make state information available to other state law enforcement. Registering a weapon helps law enforcement identify a weapon used in a crime. If that gun was stolen from you and used in the commission of a crime, we want the SOB that took it to do even more time.

Criminals will not be able to register guns- so we endeavor to protect society, when some other SOB buys weapons legally and then resells them, we want his butt in prison as well.

Registering a weapon is not like registering your DNA, so get over it.

Further, there is no earthly reason why anyone should be able to walk out of Walmart or Bubba’s Gun Emporium with a 50 caliber machine gun. If that troubles you, ask yourself why you cannot walk out of Walmart with hand grenades or land mines. If you need a 50 caliber machine gun, for sport, target or anything else, forgive your neighbors if they would seek a bit of peace of mind.

Social Security is in trouble. There are fewer people paying into it and more extracting from it.

When Social Security was initiated, you retired at 65 and were dead by 70. Now, you retire at 67 and with modern medicine, plastic surgery and Viagra, you’re good to go into your nineties. Even the products of todays education systems should be able to get the general idea, if not the specifics.

Something will have to give- and what will have to give is obvious. Lesser benefits, paid later on, and if you’ve made a bundle and have money, well, no Social Security for you.

Before you start bitching in that a stupid, self righteous voice, consider this: What you actually pay into Social Security is a pittance compared to what you will receive. You could receive 3 (even many multiples of that) times what you put in and the end, your children and grandchildren will pay. .

Now, if you want to screw your kids and grandkids, that’s your business. Just don’t go blaming the government (of either party) for your selfishness. Unless and until you demand Social Security reform, you will get exactly what you deserve- a royal screwing. This has nothing to do with partisan politics- it has to do with math and your kids. Even if you can’t do the math, understand you will screw your kids. Not even the current crop of twenty something, self absorbed, self esteemed, well trophied and otherwise complete idiots (for the most part) deserve that.

Look at it this way. Teddy Kennedy is the Senator from Massachusetts- well, he vacations there. He lives in Florida, so he would presumably pay no taxes in his home state. Can you blame him? Jeb Bush and the state of Florida are tax friendly. Now, this is the guy that oversaw the sale of the Chicago Merchandise Mart for almost a billion dollars- and made sure that no taxes would have to paid on that billion dollar windfall. This is the guy that is talking about the ‘little guy’ and taxes and how we have to protect social security. This is the guy that will enjoy a huge pension, paid medical coverage for him and his family for the rest of his life- and this is the guy who is telling you we don’t need to change a thing. Oh yes- this is also the guy who wants the feds to fork over another 8 or 9 billion dollars for the Big Dig project

The Pyramids of Egypt could have been built for less and unlike the Big Dig, they aren’t collapsing. Teddy Kennedy isn’t calling for an investigation into the debacle- that might upset his union buddies.

As to the state of education, well, let’s be serious. Our schools are in trouble, as we noted earlier today. The number of A’s handed out (even to the idiots who needed remedial everything) has gone up. Grading must now be given on the idiot curve. Students (the self esteemed and trophy crowd) are giving out evaluations of professors. See this and have a good laugh. The severity of the problem becomes evident.

In grade school, (where the problems originate) the situation is nowhere near resolving itself. Plagiarism is running rampant and parents are objecting to their kids actually having to write in depth papers. Also, see this- there is a letter in that post worth reading.

All in all, we have a lot to clean up- messes that we ourselves have created or are responsible for. We cannot blame government for all these problems, much as we’d like to pass the buck. By giving successive governments the mandate to ignore these and other issues, we must take responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. These problems were not created overnight, nor will they be solved quickly.

On Camels, Colleges And Reality

Alice is upset. Of course, you can’t really blame her. She (like Mamacita) has become a more than mildly unwilling worker bee in the vast and dumbed down educational complex.

She quotes Robert Bork’s Slouching Towards Gomorrah:

As the universities lose respect for intellect, that attitude spreads not only to lower schools but to the society at large. It is perhaps unclear whether the universities are instructing the culture at large in the joys of anti-intellectualism or whether the universities have been infected by a culture already lobotomized by television. Probably the influence runs both ways. The universities have an independent reason to abandon intellect: the barrier that rationality places in the way of politicization.

Alice is on the front lines. She deals with the students who believe Barney would make a fine UN Secretary General.

…I’m in a gymnasium full of teenage revolutionaries in training and they are all writing exams. Exams that will determine whether or not they advance to higher levels of freedom fighting. High school math.

A girl wearing powder blue pajama pants and pink fuzzy slippers raised her hand and whispered to the supervising teacher, “Um, excuse me, I was just wondering, um, like, when you write a cheque, so you’re the one writing the cheque, um, I’m just not sure, does the money go into your account, or come out of it?” Even without bangs there were no visible lobotomy scars, but then, is it even the front part that gets removed??

Alice notes that ‘the battle for the mind is won and lost on many fronts,‘ and in fact, that battle rages on and extends beyond basic banking skills.

How is it possible that there are people who mightily applaud a onetime presidential candidate who joyfully embraces a hate filled bigot? How is it possible that the leader of Iran and John Kerry seem to share the same values? How is it possible that sharing those anti American values trump the racist, bigoted and hateful values that are publicly embraced by the Iranian regime?

It would appear that those who applaud John Kerry now would have applauded if he embraced Adolph Hitler.

How is it possible that there are people who applaud resistance to an American initiative to bring democracy to a region of the world that has never known that magnificent gift and luxury?

The answers to those questions and other similar questions, is clear. There are those, by reason of a political agenda, that have come to fear the truth. They believe that if they can shut their eyes tightly, cover their ears with their hands and click their heels three times, the truth will go away.

They have been taught that truth and justice are incompatible. They demand justice only for those who share their political ideologies.

The Kurds are a good example. For decades, Kurdish populations wanted free and democratic societies with capitalist economies. They were ignored for no other reason than their oppressors and persecutors (read: butchers) were darlings of the left.

Stalin, Che, Castro, Mao and Ho Chi Minh are a few other examples of the ideologues that caused the death of hundreds of millions. Notwithstanding those truths, the are revered figures of the left, History and truth are rewritten to lionize these leftist ‘heroes.’

Yasser Arafat, the man that caused more war, death and destruction in the Middle East is revered by the left despite the reality that he has been all but forgotten by the Palestinians. Despite the billions of dollars stolen by Arafat that left his ‘people’ wallowing is squalor and poverty, children in this country are taught that he was the beloved ‘father of his people.’

In The Myths That Fuels The Lefts’ Denial, Dr Sanity notes

Psychological denial and the avoidance of an unpleasant reality are certainly not confined to one side of the political spectrum or the other. But what I find endlessly fascinating is how the political left has created and fully integrated specific ideological tools that facilitate ongoing psychological denial…

When it suits their purposes (i.e., when they are losing the argument), they will resort to the claim that reality and truth are merely subjective constructs anyway, and that any evidence you present is only someone’s “opinion” and that their opinions are as good as anyone else’s.

Such a position should logically disqualify their position to begin with, but of course, it doesn’t…

Shrinkwrapped, in speaking of the what are now easily recognized leftist dysfunctionality cogently notes that

The ACLU, people like Ward Churchill, groups like Moveon.org and Human Rights First insist that their motives are pure (while everyone who disagrees with them have motives that are typically corrupt.) They are upholding human rights; the right to be treated with respect; the right to counsel; the right to free speech. As abstractions, these rights are inviolate; as explanations for their behavior (which could appear to be harmful to our nation’s interests) they are superficially plausible; yet, reality always supervenes. To be more attached to abstractions than to the welfare of others in one’s community is a classic signifier of the Narcissist [emp-SC&A]. It is one step removed from the narcissistic disavowal of the other: my beliefs are more important than your life.

Believing in the ‘Can’t we all get along ideology’ is more important than dealing with reality. As long as despots, tyrants and dictators say they wan’t to get along, business as usual is the order of the day. They are given a free pass to continue their well documented dysfunctional behavior and they are more than happy to lionize the ‘useful idiots’ that hand out those free passes.

These dysfunctional beliefs must be taught from an early age. This is no small matter. One of the ways a child learns by learning to distinguish between what is real and what is not. Decision making skills are in fact about being able to distinguish what is real (relevant) and what is not (irrelevant). History has proved that when a child is taught that reality and truth are subjective and in fact, are only relevant when supporting a particular ideology, that child/student/society wil fail- but not before horrific damage is done.

The Nazis, communists and Arab world are examples of truth denying ideologies run wild. Nazi ideology resulted in the deaths of 50 million people. Stalin and Mao painted communism red with the blood of hundreds of millions of now forgotten souls. The Arab nations, led by some of the most dysfunc tional leaders in history, have doomed hundreds of millions of people to generations of failure, with no end in sight.

Of course, the left will point to Augusto Pinochet of Chile, as if he were the embodiment of all right wing evil. That is like pointing to the singular terror act of Baruch Goldstein and concluding that the Israelis are no different than the Palestinians who have made terror a godly expression of their raison d’etre.

There are other ‘inconvenient truths’ besides those promulgated by Al Gore, that remain ignored by the left.

The entire African continent is being exploited by China on an ever escalating scale, with no end in sight. China cares little about Africa or African nations and there is more than ample evidence that they are exploiting resources with little or no regard to environmental concerns. They are also flooding those African nations with low cost goods and thus they are killing the fledgling modernization and manufacturing capabilities of those nations. The left cares little about what China does in Africa or to Africans.

There is another ‘inconvenient truth the left needs to extinguish.

There is not a single example of a regime or tyrant that has been supported by the left that that has resulted in anything but failure, misery and death. Not one- and that is why the left desperately needs to obfuscate reality and the truth.

The emperor has no clothes.

That road to obfuscation starts- and ends- in the schools. Alice dryly notes:

Back in the old days when I was studying business and had big plans to make money, I recall visiting with a B. Ed student who had to write an essay about a dead, white, classical musician as her final project. She said to me:

I’m sooo tired of writing boring old essays, so I think I’m going to tweak the project a bit and make it into a story about a grandmother telling her grandson about his great-great-great grandfather Bach. They can be by a fireplace and he can be holding a teddy bear. Do you think the prof will mind?

At the time, my business mind couldn’t comprehend. Tweaking? Teddy bears? After spending a little time in working on my own B. Ed years later, it all made perfect sense.

To credit the music prof’s integrity, the essay was rejected.

The battle for the mind is won and lost on many fronts.

The question is, who are we fighting?
That is one loaded question, Alice

Mamacita wrote in Mamacita On The PC Of Dumbing Down And Why This May Be The Most Important Post You’ll Read This Year

Our educational system is a national disgrace.

I was forced to dumb down the curriculum and pass failing students along when I was in the public school systems, and now I am dealing with one of the results of that at the college level. And I still maintain that while it is, of course, ultimately, the lazy spoiled self-esteem-laden students’ fault, they were enabled along the way by their ferocious red-shirting parents, who demanded, and generally got, exceptions for any rule, all along the way.

Shame on us for allowing it to happen. Shame on us for catering to the demanding. Shame on us for permitting our kids to be whiny and empty-headed. Shame on us for putting Nascar on a pedestal and basketball on a throne and letting academics fall by the wayside. Shame on us for sanctioning plagiarism, and hiring lawyers to make sure our kids get the grades we want them to get, whether it’s the grades they’ve earned or not. Shame on us for not making students EARN every single grade they get. EARN. It’s a concept many people don’t even understand. Shame on us for become an entitlement culture. Shame on every parent who ever went to school and demanded mercy instead of justice. Or, rather, ‘favors,’ in the name of mercy. Shame on every kid who fudged an assignment and told his parents he was being picked on and THAT’S why his grades are low. And shame on every parent who believed it.

As long as Americans believe they are entitled to good grades and scholarships, and as long as foreigners EARN good grades and scholarships, we’re going to get our asses kicked in academic competition, and we will have EARNED that big bruise and that big “NO” on the admissions form. And once out in the business world, who wants to give their money to a company that can’t even spell the words right on their billboard? Not me, that’s for sure. Misspelling in the business? Count your change very, very carefully. They probably can’t do that, either, unless they’ve hired a foreigner to do it right, for them. I’m sick of it. I’m a loyal American, but I’m not deaf and blind, and we’re going down the tubes, and it all boils down to stupid parents, sissy administrations, ignorant government decisions, feelings of entitlement instead of requirements for hard work, the myth of unearned self-esteem, and excuses instead of expectations.

Think about it.