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Victor Davis Hansen, The Vocabulary of Untruth. Some of the best parts:
“Civilians” in Lebanon have munitions in their basements and deliberately wish to draw fire; in Israel they are in bunkers to avoid it. Israel uses precision weapons to avoid hitting them; Hezbollah sends random missiles into Israel to ensure they are struck.
“Collateral damage” refers mostly to casualties among Hezbollah’s human shields; it can never be used to describe civilian deaths inside Israel , because everything there is by intent a target.
[ . . . ]
“Deplore” is usually evoked against Israel by those who themselves have slaughtered noncombatants or allowed them to perish — such as the Russians in Grozny , the Syrians in Hama , or the U.N. in Rwanda and Dafur.
“Disproportionate” means that the Hezbollah aggressors whose primitive rockets can’t kill very many Israeli civilians are losing, while the Israelis’ sophisticated response is deadly against the combatants themselves. See “excessive.”
Anytime you hear the adjective “excessive,” Hezbollah is losing. Anytime you don’t, it isn’t.
[ . . . ]
“Multinational,” as in “multinational force,” usually means “third-world mercenaries who sympathize with Hezbollah.” See “peacekeepers.”
“Peacekeepers” keep no peace, but always side with the less Western of the belligerents.
[ . . . ]
What explains this distortion of language? A lot.
First there is the need for Middle Eastern oil. Take that away, and the war would receive the same scant attention as bloodletting in central Africa.
Then there is the fear of Islamic terrorism. If the Middle East were Buddhist, the world would care about Lebanon as little as it does about occupied Tibet.
And don’t forget the old anti-Semitism. If Russia or France were shelled by neighbors, Putin and Chirac would be threatening nuclear retaliation.
Israel is the symbol of the hated West. Were it a client of China, no one would dare say a word.
Hat tip Ace.
And a top-poster, of course.
In response to Paul’s whining on Wizbang!, I posted the following comment:
You made an ass of yourself and Ace called you on it, and how you’re stomping off in a tantrum.
Then Kevin decides he’s going to post veiled threats, then claim they’re not threats. What a bunch of losers you are.
Then I get this email message from the lying Aylward:
Are you stupid on purpose? I was very specific about what kind of stuff was allowed and then you defy my instructions?
Deleted.
To which I responded:
And I’m supposed to care? What kind of arrogant ass are you that you think you can make threats online
then lie about them later, turn around and act like you’re some kind of superior?You’re a fucking idiot.
And the email you sent it getting posted and sent to Ace. Just so you know you’re just another arrogant asshole, and nobody is going to let you get away with it.
Copy sent to Ace.
Now that I’ve seen all of both seasons — and do not read if you haven’t seen all of season two.
He was the world’s most expensive shelter rescue. Soon after adopting him, he was diagnosed with severe dysplasia and we had surgery (TPO) performed on his hips. The surgery was a great success: soon after, he was chasing squirrels up tree trunks, and (unfortunately) jumping the fence and getting out when we were at work.
As a puppy he was a hellion. He ate CDs, videotapes, and books. He ate the windshield wiper off the back window of the car. He chewed through the wrought iron porch post so he could get out. One day I had left a large roasting hen on the BACK of the counter so it would defrost before I got home from work. When I did get home, I saw that it was gone and the plate was on the floor. Before I had a chance to tell him he was a naughty puppy, he upchucked the hen, bones and all, right onto my feet.
Puppy from hell or not, he was a sweet, affectionate dog. Perhaps his dominant trait was his gentle nature. When our best friends got a tiny (about five pounds) miniature American Eskimo, I volunteered to feed and sit with her at lunchtime because my schedule was more plastic than theirs. Whiskers was still a puppy, still hellacious, but I would take him with me and he would play with her and let her beat up on him.
It wasn’t obvious how much of a wuss he was, however, until we got Minnie, another rescue. She was half his size, and from the first day on was the Queen Alpha Bitch. Poor Whiskers never got to play with any toys after Minnie came.
We never knew what exactly his ancestry was, though he had that big curled fluffy huskie tail. That tail was dangerous to objects on tables, which is how he got his name.
Whiskers was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma a month ago. He was bleeding internally, and his last week with us the bleeding had spread to his throat. I knew he was preparing to die because he had never been a nester, yet the last few nights he began going under the piano to sleep. The last few days he couldn’t chew because the bleeding had spread to his jaw. His last night with us we fed him one of his two favorite things: salami.
We miss our sweet gentle pal, but he is at peace.
He leaves a girlfriend Kubota (well, in her mind, anyway–he always found her attention rather disturbing), and his little sister Minnie.
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Crossposted from Stop The ACLU
Well it comes at no surprise to us at Stop The ACLU and Wide Awakes Radio that the American Civil Liberties Union is opposed to passage of H.R. 2679, the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005.
A review of the bill is as follows:
PERA would eliminate the ability for judges to award attorney’s fees compensation to groups like the ACLU in Establishment Clause cases only. These fees where originally authorized by CONGRESS so that good attorneys wouldn’t be dissuaded from accepting civil rights cases pro bono.
But in the hands of the ACLU it has become a source of income for the organization. In any other type of lawsuit, ie: personal injury, the attorney’s fee if any comes out of the settlement with their client if they prevail. But not under the law authorizing these fees.
The ACLU actively shops around for reasons to challenge any public displays of religion in order to collect these “attorneys’ fees”. This has led to a systematic removal of your Constitutional protections under the 1st Amendment to freely exercise your religious beliefs. They accomplish this by judge shopping. They shop for a district to present a case in. A district in which one of their “best buddies” activist judges will hear the case and more often than not, rule in the favor of the ACLU.
The ACLU prefers to bring these types of lawsuits against cities, towns, and states which are usually cash strapped. First it is a matter of sending a letter to the governing body recommending that they cease and desist from further allowing public displays of religion. That if they fail to do so, it will cost the city, town, or state massive amounts of money to defend against them in court. And usually, a city or town is likely to not challenge. They will capitulate to the will of the ACLU. But if it does come to trial and they prevail, the amounts awarded to the prevailing party are often compounded by the amounts awarded to the ACLU attorney(s) for fees that had they NOT prevailed, would have gone uncollected.
This is extortion. Do what we tell you or something bad is going to happen. Pure unadulterated extortion.
It is these practices that the Public Display of Religion Act of 2005 (H.R. 2679) promises to eliminate so of course the ACLU would be opposed to its passage. They aren’t interested in protecting your right to freely express your religious beliefs in public.
From the ACLU’s News Release on H.R. 2679 dated 07.26.06:
The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the House Judiciary Committee to reject H.R. 2679, the “Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005″ (PERA). The panel is expected to vote on the legislation today [meaning Wednesday - in committee]. The bill would bar the recovery of attorneys’ fees to citizens who win lawsuits asserting their fundamental constitutional and civil rights in cases brought under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
“If this bill were to become law, Congress would, for the first time, single out one area protected by the Bill of Rights and prevent its full enforcement,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “Proponents of the measure claim that the bill is needed to protect religious freedom, when in fact, the bill would undermine it. We hope that the committee will stand for the Constitution and reject this unwise proposal.” emphasis mine
Hold the presses… Stop Stop Stop…..
Did they actually make an argument that if the bill becomes law, Congress would single out a Constitutional protection and block it from enforcement?
WRONG!
The only thing being discussed is a law written and adopted by Congress for the awarding of the fees. And the removal of the fees from a certain kind of cases in order to remove the ability for unscrupulous people like the ACLU to abuse it. In other words, shop around for cases in order to create a money making enterprise out of the award.
The so-call establishment clause only appears one place, in the first Amendment. The leftists at the ACLU are addicted to abusing the so-call protection of separation of church and state. Which is a fantasy created by people like the ACLU in order to have grounds in which to remove religion from the public sphere. Here’s what it actually says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Amendment I of the United States Constitution
Where is this phantom “separation of church and state”? I don’t see it mentioned.
I do see a provision whereby the Congress of the United States is preventing from making a law which establishes a religion in the United States. The founders were escaping a government that dictated that if you didn’t follow the Church of England, you were a criminal. This is what they were trying to avoid.
I fail to see how putting a nativity scene in the public square or a cross being present on a war memorial constitutes Congress making such a law. Because Erie, PA allows the erection of a nativity scene in Perry Square doesn’t constitute Congress taking any action what-so-ever to establish a national religion.
Democrats strongly opposed the bill yesterday.
A veterans’ group, the American Legion, has pushed for the legislation out of concern that war memorials and cemeteries could be cleansed of religious symbols. Mr. Nadler called the gravestone issue a “red herring” and submitted a letter in which the ACLU said it would “vigorously defend” the rights of veterans to use any religious symbol they choose on grave markers. The letter did not address the use of Christian crosses in publicly owned group memorials or tombs for unknown soldiers.
…..
After more than an hour of debate yesterday, the committee adjourned before taking an up-or-down vote on the bill.
But the ACLU would have you believe otherwise. Their press release continues:
The ability to recover attorneys’ fees in civil rights and constitutional cases, including Establishment Clause cases, is necessary to help protect the religious freedom of all Americans and to keep religion government-free. People who successfully prove the government has violated their constitutional rights would, under the bill, be required to pay their own legal fees — often totaling tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. Few citizens can afford to do so. But more importantly citizens should not be required to do so where the court finds that the government has violated their rights and engaged in unconstitutional behavior.
The ability of the ACLU to collect attorney’s fees in establishment clause Cases does not protect your religious freedoms, it attacks them. The ACLU actively shops for these types of cases because in the hands of judges like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the former Chief Counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and former National Board member, the ACLU will prevail every time. And it becomes a business.
It is time that these types of abuse be brought to an end. Call, write, email, fax, and visit if you can , your Congressman and urge him to vote for the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 (H.R. 2679), and put an end to the abuse and prostitution of our Constitution and our Judicial Branch of government.
This has been a production of Stop The ACLU Blogburst. If you would like to join us, please email Jay or Gribbit. You will be added to our mailing list and blogroll. Over 200 blogs already on-board.
What I want to know is how did I get on this mailing list?
Hi there,
ISSUE-5 of The Railway Channel Out Now!
I couldn’t have said it better myself:
But it’s not Bolton’s “interpersonal skills” that make him the man for the job. It’s his commitment to putting US interests first and always. And his willingness to ditch UN bureaucratese for blunt talk…Bolton’s lifelong refusal to be a sycophant, apologist, and whitewasher makes him the necessary antidote to the global king of moral equivalence, Kofi Annan. With Iran on the nuclear brink, jihadists ascending, Israel under siege, and the U.N. oil-for-food debacle still unfolding, Bolton is exactly the right man in the right place at the right time to continue representing America’s national interests at Turtle Bay.
See it (video) here. What I want to know is why isn’t Bolton (and his mustache, Regis) running for President?
When I saw this on Indymediawatch, I thought it was a joke:
Thinking about sending the kids away to camp this summer? Well, why not try Witch Camp!
“Here is the long awaited update about this year’s Free Activist
Witchcamp….New to this camp teachers Copper Persephone & Synnove will be teaching
the Elements of Magic path, which presents basic magical skills.”
It’s no joke.
The California exit exam lawsuit is at the Appeals Court. Be sure to go look at the sample questions. Shameful.
However, there are three questions I near no one asking about this. First, if these students cannot pass this dumbed-down exam, how did they pass through and get to be seniors? Second, what is the point of a graduation exit exam that only tests up to eighth-grade skills? Third, do these students who could not pass this dumbed-down exam and their parents have no shame at all? How can they show their faces in public, much less in a high profile lawsuit?
By the way, I have had students who could not have answered this question from the exam:
Heather flipped a coin five times, and each time it came up heads. If Heather flips the coin one more time, what is the theoretical probability that it will come up tails?
A. 1/6
B. 1/2
C. 3/5
D. 5/6
(Answer: 1/2. Each flip of the coin is independent of all others.)
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I have no idea why, but old pingbacks (some from June) that never got here are suddently arriving on the blog. Do you know this is happening? And if so, do you have any idea why?
Liberals are so used to throwing out a word instead of addressing an issue that it has become their only response. Here is an excellent example of a mushminded liberal, who doesn’t understand what “xenophobia” means — or that it has a meaning at all, other than “opposed to my position on this particular issue”:
Last night I finally caught the latest Santorum campaign commercial while watching a Law and Order rerun on TNT. WTF? The whole ad just plays into the xenophobia of so many of his supporters, but it really just made me want to kick him in the teeth. I wasn’t sure if I should laugh hysterically or violently throw up, especially the part near the end when he said “Most of all, it will help make us less dependent on… them” while pointing to TV screens showing images of people rioting and burning American flags.
Here is the ad (Greenland). There’s nothing even vaguely xenophobic about it — unless you think “xenophobic” means “not pro-terrorist.”
Idiot.
Al-Jazeera endorses Casey against Santorum. That’s about the best reason to vote for Santorum I’ve seen.
CNN’s Robertson Now Admits: Hezbollah ‘Had Control’ of His Anti-Israel Piece.
Robertson: “Absolutely. And I think as we try and do our job, which is go out and see what’s happened to the best of our ability, clearly, in that environment, in the southern suburbs of Beirut that Hezbollah controls, the only way we can get into those areas is with a Hezbollah escort. And absolutely, when you hear their claims they have to come with more than a grain of salt, that you have to put in some journalistic integrity. That you have to point out to the audience and let them know that this was a guided tour by Hezbollah press officials along with their security, that it was a very rushed affair, that there wasn’t time to go and look through those buildings.”
I first heard about this on the Glenn Beck show (radio). Misha has a pretty good rant about it here. Yes, go read it. I’ll be here.
Okay.
Now, I’m going to piss a lot of people off. Please explain, in detail, how parents are somehow exempt from taking responsibility for their freedom? Remember, there is no freedom without responsibility. Why is it, then, that conservatives conveniently forget this basic precept when it comes to parents?
Certainly, it is the parents’ decision. However, if their child dies as a result of that decision, they should be imprisoned for manslaughter. Period. The end. It’s the same with religious freedom and doctors. Certainly, you have the right not to take your baby to the doctor, but if your baby dies as a result, you go to prison where you belong.
There is no freedom without responsibility, and parents are not exempt from responsibility.
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“Qualitative research” is not research in any sense of the word, nor is it qualitative; it is, however, a way for dim bulbs who aren’t bright enough to grasp research methodology to get dissertations — and PHDs.
Names and details have been altered to protect the stupid.
John is doing a PhD in language education. After John takes his substance-free doctoral education courses and finishes his quals, he has to write a dissertation. For the last four years, he’s had his head filled with PC postmodernist nonsense, and “doesn’t believe in” instruction (it all just happens magically!), so he decides to write his dissertation on whole language theory (it just happens magically!)
Being incapable of adding two and two in his head, and being the sort of PhD student who gets a headache if he has to read a paper that uses the word, “arithmetic mean,” and being a good, obedient postmodernist, John decides that he will do “qualitative research,” by writing a “learning journal” or “ethnography” of one of his language student’s progress.
And the scary part is that his dissertation committee enthusiastically endorses it.
A word must be said here. Postmodernists are fond of using the term “ethnography” to describe their “research,” but it needs to be said that the whole point of an ethnography is to choose somebody who is representative of the culture, so that your ethnography will have something to do with the culture as a whole. This is never the case with “ethnographies” in “qualitative research.”
John needs to pick one of his students, and he ruminates over his roster. Sure, he could do Mary, but she’s so ordinary. Why not Carla? She’s ever so different from all the others, and she’s one of his best students, so much better than the others, and writing her ethnography would be ever so interesting! Carla it is!
So week after week, John meets with Carla to ask her all sorts of irrelevant questions about how she felt in class, and what she thought she learned and didn’t learn, and how she feels she could learn even more. John then writes it up, and his committee sign his dissertation — and six months later, John is working at a major university in a tenure-track position, and is hailed as some sort of up and coming star in whole language theory.
The reality is that John’s dissertation was worthless, because it has nothing whatsoever to say about anyone but Carla. No research with only one subject can be academically useful or interesting, unless the field is psychology — and then, it still tells us nothing about anyone but that one subject. It had nothing to say about whole language theory — just what Carla thought about it; yet, how Carla feels is, to this not very intelligent “researcher,” the same as an empirical test of whole language theory, because to John, whole language theory is a matter of faith, and requires no test or proof. John’s dissertation had no quality of any academic sort, and cannot be called research without curling one’s lip. Yet, this is just the sort of babble educators invoke when they say, “The research shows …” over and over again, despite the fact that what they’re doing is demonstrably not working.
I have had to put up with any number of Johns and their “qualitative research,” and had to sit there without curling my lip (because that wouldn’t be collegial) while they go on about how important their research is, and how stupid conservatives are. Because if you are an empiricist — that is, if you believe that in order to qualify as research, something must be based on real-world data — then you are an evil conservative, and you must be castigated at every opportunity. “Qualitative researchers” are utterly oblivious to data and reality. They don’t care. Their “research” is driven by a political agenda, and facts must never get in the way of that “higher truth,” just as is the case with anthropologists. If you ask for data to back up their assertion, you will (if you’re lucky) get a long lecture about how empiricism is racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., etc., etc. (if you’re not so lucky, you’ll get a long lecture about how you’re trying to “disenfranchise” Carla and all her poor oppressed peers).
So the next time some educator says, “The research shows …” go ahead and curl your lip. Better yet, smack him upside the head if you can manage it. Somebody needs to.
Israellycool is liveblogging the war.
An Israeli dove figures out, finally, that pacifism and appeasement is never going to work.
I have heard this argument from the Israeli right many times and never believed it: “The Arabs will interpret such a withdrawal as weakness and result of their terror tactic. They will use the new freedom to intensify the terror rather than to lessen it.” Well, I have to admit, they were right on.
Hamas and Hezbollah have convinced one more Israeli dove. There can not be peace without the total destruction of their capability to terrorize the Israeli population. Only once those organizations have been totally destroyed, by all means and whatever the cost in terms of Israeli and Arab casualties, only then the remaining forces among the Palestinians and all other current enemies will have learned the lesson: Israel can not be defeated by violence. Only then they will be ready for peace.
Hear, hear!
Hat tip to AbbaGav (lots of other good stuff there too).
UPDATE: Another Israeli ex-peacenik finally finds his brain.
I too am turning back the clock. Eighteen years after finishing my military service — almost two decades after swearing that I would never again wear a uniform — I called the Israeli consulate in New York and gave them my phone number. If the army needed me, I told them, I would be the first on a plane back to Israel. And Sharon, of course, has still not woken from his coma. But I miss him.
Hat tip: BrothersJudd
Notice how clueless they are? “Hi, I use my Mac to play! And that’s so KEWL!”
Check this ad out. Hilarious.
Remember how so many California seniors couldn’t pass the graduation exam, you know, that exam that tested EIGHTH-GRADE math skills, that exam? Do you wonder how that could possibly have happened? Here, in a nutshell, is why:
If Johnny can’t read by the end of first grade, should he repeat the grade or move on with his friends? Texas schools are struggling with the question, reports the Houston Chronicle.
Struggling? Why would anyone give even a moment’s thought to such an obvious question?
Most studies show students who are held back never catch up
Really. So the solution is to pass them, and assume they’ll catch up at some point? So where is the research that shows that this idiocy is a good idea?
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Kit Jarrell has an excellent three-part overview of the travesty of military justice, thanks to the Pat Schroeder/Bill Clinton “kinder, gentler” military:
He nails it, first here:
First of all, it’s pretty difficult for me to wrap my brain around the idea of taking a summertime vacation to Beirut. Personally, I prefer Disneyworld. Or maybe a nice Caribbean cruise. But Lebanon? You take your pregnant wife into war-torn Lebanon?
Then here:
Amazingly, we’re not even going to charge these ungrateful evacuees for the free trip home. Despite a federal law that mandates reimbursement to the government if an American has to be evacuated from a foreign country, the State Department backed off after a big firestorm of objections were heard from critics of the Bush Administration. It’s estimated that a plane ticket from Lebanon to Cypress, where many were taken, costs about $200.00. Thanks to the stench of political correctness and cowering bureaucrats in Washington, we taxpayers now get the honor of buying the Lebanon evacuees their trip home.
Once more, we’re confronted with the ugly image of people shirking their personal responsibility and wanting to blame everyone else for their decisions. If you make the choice to take a holiday in a place like Beirut, it sure seems like there’s a possibility that you might not enjoy it when the terrorists get antsy. At the very least, you might want to hold your tongue and not complain, gripe and moan about your country when it comes and rescues you.
And finally, here:
Just once, I’d like to see an American on TV express some appreciation for their country during times like these. What a joy it would have been to turn on the television and see an evacuee from Lebanon say something like, “Boy, was I ever dumb for deciding to take a vacation in Lebanon. But thanks to the United States, I’m now safely sitting in the Baltimore airport and am I ever grateful. Thanks to the brave men and women who helped rescue my family and me, and God bless America. It sure feels great to be home.”
No, that wasn’t what these people said. Not even close. Their sense of outrage and entitlement is slowly but surely becoming the American way. And it’s positively disgusting.
Next time these folks want to take a trip, may I respectfully suggest they consider Six Flags. Then again, if the roller coaster is shut down for repairs, I guess it’ll be President Bush’s fault…
You can buy his book here (I highly recommend it):
I hate Apple. It’s one of the most stupidly run businesses in existence. I hate Macs. I hate user-friendly computers that want to be my friend, I really hate computers that are designed to be “fun” (what juvenile crap that is), and I really really hate computers that try to be cute, making cute noises and with cute faces and icons. You’d think Apple would have learned that their proprietary, closed business policy is why they have such a small market share and would wise up, but no, they’re still morons.
Case in point: Itunes.
I do not have an Ipod. I have no interest in ever owning an Ipod. I did, however, buy and download several television episodes from Itunes. Then, I found out that I cannot burn them to DVD, and watch them on my television — without an Ipod. I found this out by googling, then cruising various multimedia message boards.
And what’s more annoying is that the idiots on the message boards are even stupider than the dolts at Apple. Nearly all of them want to know how to burn a DVD so they can watch it on their idiotic Ipods.
Who wants to watch TV on a tiny little Ipod? I don’t even want to watch TV on my widescreen laptop monitor. TV belongs on TV. What kind of morons are these, that want to watch TV on their idiotic Ipods?
I hate Apple. I hate Macs.
I hate Apple. I hate Macs.
I hate Apple. I hate Macs.
And I really hate Steve Jobs. Moron.
Schröder probably would have written a response of solidarity:
This week, Ahmadinejad fired off a note to Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel. Ahmadinejad probably could not have picked a more inappropriate recipient:
A letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the German chancellor made statements about Israel and the Holocaust that are “not acceptable,” the government said Friday.
—
“It contains many statements that are not acceptable to us, in particular about Israel, the state of Israel’s right to exist and the Holocaust,” Wilhelm said.
—
Merkel said in an interview with ZDF television that Israel’s right to exist is a cornerstone of German policy.
“That is repeatedly questioned by him (Ahmadinejad), and at the same time our offer _ an offer that really gives the Iranian people a prospect for the future _ is not mentioned with a single word,” she said.
“That is not right, and so there is no need for a reply,” Merkel said.
He denied the Holocaust in a letter to the chancellor of the country where it occurred. Think about that.
Thanks, Hot Air!
But no thank you, I do not want to see a TV special with people whining about Katrina and the fact that they still have no place to live (and whose fault is that?) I was sick of Katrina about a week after it happened, particularly the whining by the idiots who didn’t get the hell out. And speaking of idiots who didn’t get the hell out, I’m already sick of the morons who thought they’d vacation in Lebanon, are getting out without paying for it, and are now whining about how their lobster thermidor isn’t up to their expectations.
No thank you, I do not want to see a TV special of diapered, bed-wetting “activists walking in somebody else’s shoes” and calling for the United Soviet Socialist Republik of America.
I found this article, courtesy of SwannBlog:
Two interesting articles recently crossed my path. One was an analysis of the growth in state spending under Gov. Ed Rendell done by the The conclusion of both reports is inescapable. Ed Rendell has presided over the largest spending spree in state history. He has shuffled money around like a carnival shell game. Somebody is going to have to pay for Rendell’s out-of-control spending. And, regrettably, it’s going to be the beleaguered taxpayers of Pennsylvania.
If Rendell is not stopped — and Nov. 7 is the day to put a halt to his spending orgy — Pennsylvania residents will face massive tax hikes in 2007 to make up for Rendell’s runaway spending.
. . .
The Associated Press analyzed 20 years worth of spending increases and found that state government expenditures grew by 28 percent so far under Rendell. That compares to a 12 percent increase in Gov. Tom Ridge’s second term and a 26 percent increase in the second term of Gov. Bob Casey, another tax-and-spend liberal.
State spending during Rendell’s first three years in office increased faster than the national average, according to the Associated Press. Counting the budget for the current fiscal year, which Rendell recently signed, the state’s General Fund budget has grown by $5.7 billion, or 28 percent, since Rendell took office in 2003, according to the Associated Press analysis.
Rendell has been funding his massive spending spree by dipping into reserves and taking from the spoils of the $1 billion earned income tax hike he pushed through in 2003 and a host of smaller tax hikes in subsequent years.
Rendell is also looking under his desk for money to fund the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. It seems that Rendell’s pie-in-the-sky promise that gambling would solve all of Pennsylvania’s fiscal woes is still a dream. He can’t even scrape enough cash together to keep the Gaming Board in business while it reviews casino applications.
But we NEED more entitlement programs! We NEED more welfare! We WANT we NEED we’re ENTITLED!
While in grad school, I was surrounded by stat illiterates. After the hundredth question about how to interpret the stats in a paper, or the two hundredth “you can’t do that!” objection, I wrote up an intro to basic statistical concepts and interpreting statistics for social scientists. It’s written for math illiterates, and yes, it’s simplistic (it had to be), but if you’re interested, it’s here.
I couldn’t have said it better myself:
Maybe if the CIA staff and its hirelings would quit blogging about policy and quit trying to undermine their boss – the duly elected president – and spent a little more time spying, the world would be safer.
Read the whole thing.
Yes, I know, I take out after ed schools a lot, but Mr. Dewey hits the nail on the head (sorry — forgot to put in the link!):
He talked some more about math anxiety. The ed school of thought holds that if you just relax and get over the anxiety, the greater truth will prevail. Not a word about how inadequate preparation may play a role. “At-risk” students are particularly vulnerable to math anxiety according to ed school wisdom. One instructor the professor knew was quite good with such students. He told how she gave each student a name having to do with a concept in algebra. One student was called “perfect square trinomial”, another was “binomial”, and so forth. (They may have had name tags). Their task was to learn how each of them “related” to one another, thus forcing them to learn what these terms meant. Which would be great if the only goal of an algebra class were to master vocabulary and get in touch with one’s inner polynomial. Perhaps this is all that is expected of these at-risk students, since they seem to have different “learning styles” than the rest of us.
Ah yes, more squishy nonsense! But this is what should frighten you — and why you should homeschool your children or send them to a private school:
There were no comments from the class as the professor told this tale. The future math teachers said nothing and showed no emotion, not even a grimace.
And what more need be said about these idiots — who will soon be teachers in the public schools?
Again, he knocks it out of the park:
One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.
“Peace” movements are among those who take advantage of this widespread inability to see beyond rhetoric to realities. Few people even seem interested in the actual track record of so-called “peace” movements — that is, whether such movements actually produce peace or war.
Take the Middle East. People are calling for a cease-fire in the interests of peace. But there have been more cease-fires in the Middle East than anywhere else. If cease-fires actually promoted peace, the Middle East would be the most peaceful region on the face of the earth instead of the most violent.
Read the whole indictment.
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I am proud to say that so far, I have kept my New Year’s Resolution.
Given a random sample, and given a large enough sample, data will distribute more or less normally. That’s reality.
A class of upperclassmen — majors in the field — is not a random sample.
A class of thirty students is not a large enough sample.
A class of 250 underclassmen will almost certainly form a more or less normal distribution, because it is a reasonably random sample (not everybody in the class is cut out to go into the field), and because it is a large enough sample.
And note that I said:
. . . if you curve your grades, this is the place to do it, after you have analyzed your results and thrown out any bad questions. The classic curve is 10-15-50-15-10 (A-B-C-D-F)
The point is, of course, that if you curve your grades (what part of “if” don’t you understand?), the place to do it is after you have thrown out the bad questions. Why? Fairness.
Did I say that I curved grades? No, I did not. Yet, the grades always form a reasonably normal distribution, despite the fact that I grade on a strict point-based system. Why? See the beginning of this article — and take a statistics course.
UPDATE: I misjudged the author of the article to which I responded, and made an error. For that, I apologize. Since I was not so much responding to his article as I was using it as a springboard, here is the original. Again, I aplogize for misrepresenting the original author’s intent.
Supreme Narcissism (aptly named, by the way) has an excellent example of Ivory Tower Arrogance, AKA Living In A Fantasy World:
The most common complaint that I hear from incoming university freshman is that they don’t understand how the things they’re doing in their classes are useful. Because they can’t immediately apply it to their daily lives they think it must be worthless.
It’s not. In fact, it’s the most important part of education and even though they don’t realize, it can be applied at every level of their lives.
If they wanted job training then they should have gone to a 2-year technical school or gotten an apprenticeship. University does not directly prepare you for the future. It may give you a few specific skills that you can use later, but for the most part it isn’t like becoming a mechanic or plumber who goes through an apprenticeship program.
As I stated in the comments, this statement is demonstrably false. What about agricultural university programs, engineering programs, natural science programs, business programs, all of which are exclusively for the purpose of directly preparing students for the future? Unsurprisingly, I got a snarky, arrogant little response from the author:
You’re making the faulty assumption that when I say ‘university’ I mean ‘college’.
I will correct places in the article to make more clear what I mean.
Actually, I don’t know that this is a smartass response, because “college” could mean two things (though in either case, he has made no point, as I will demonstrate). “College” could here be used in the academic sense, as an administrative unit within the university (College of Engineering, College of Business, etc.) If that is what the author meant, he is still exhibiting the arrogant view that only education that has no real-world value is “real” education, and that the university really only includes worthless programs (you know, like “transgendered lesbian of color studies” or “peace studies” or some other such postmodernist moonbat nonsense). Alternatively, the author could have meant “college” to mean “technical school,” in which case he still exhibits the same arrogant attitude.
So what is the reason for this arrogance? A well deserved sense of inferiority.
After all, no human being can have no real world skills, no value whatsoever to society at large, and no means of being economically productive without feeling inferior. Academics, therefore, inflate their own importance, and really do take those “disenfranchised three-headed conjoined-twins-of-color and evil imperialism” courses seriously. Never mind that these academics do little, if any, research based on actual evidence, and teach fact-free opinion as if it were fact — then turn around and complain about the “critical thinking skills” of the students who are brighter than they are. Academics have been wholly unaccountable for the crap they produce for so long, and have produced such dreck in the name of research since the 80s that this arrogance is their only possible response.
The capacity of academics for denial is unequalled.
Take the first lesson anyone in a PhD program learns, the one lesson that rapidly becomes the most obvious thing in the world, that a PhD is no guarantee of intelligence. Just a couple of PhD seminars, reading nonsense by researchers with PhDs, is more than enough to demonstrate that any idiot can get a PhD, given the tenacity and the right program. Yet, with very few exeptions, those who do learn this lesson promptly forget it before the ink is dry on their dissertations. Why?
Because now, they’ve joined the club, and they must maintain at all costs the fiction that they are the elite, so much more intelligent than anyone else. They’re going into the Ivory Tower, where they must now uphold their non-real world elitism. They cannot do this unless they forget all the idiots with PhDs whose papers they had to read in grad school.
Circle the wagons. The elite must maintain their intelllectual “superiority.”
A Mr. Scott Elliott demonstrated his own illiteracy (or dishonesty) when he misrepresented my article on testing with this gem:
Should a teacher try to pre-determine that 25 percent of their students are going to get a D or F on every test? I don’t think so. But one teacher featured in this week’s Carnival of Education, hosted by Mike at his Education in Texas blog thinks this is the way to make a test.
Commenting here is open; on Mr. Elliot’s blog, of course, it is moderated. My rejoinder to his misrepresentation (of course, I’m being kind and assuming this is a case of illiteracy, rather than out and out lying) will never appear there. What’s disturbing is that this is, supposedly, a college-educated journalist, and the “education journalist” for the Dayton paper.
He completely missed the point, and inserted some message about “predestination” that had nothing to do with what I said. He also apparently is statistics-illiterate, not surprising, since I have yet to see proof of just one reporter who understands basic statistics:
See, I thought tests were supposed to measure how well a group of students learned material. If everyone in the class learned really well, the’d all get A’s and we’d celebrate, right?
Here’s a clue. That doesn’t happen in a class of 100 or more, unless you’re teaching dumbed-down crap — no doubt like all the classes you took in that journalism school.
Surprise! That picture of Israeli girls writing messages on bombs for Hezbollah is a fake. Ah, journalists, anything to push their agenda, even lie.
Back in the … er, let’s just say several decades ago and leave it at that, when I chose my undergraduate major, I was interested in cultures, and therefore, chose anthropology. The department at my university had no undergraduate courses for majors; we took the same courses as the grad students, with different course numbers.
In my department, there were four concentrations: cultural anthropology, anthropological linguistics, archaeology, and bioanthropology. I initially wanted to concentrate in either cultural anthropology or anthropological linguistics.
Departmental politics were nasty in the department (and what undergrad even realizes that there are departmental politics?) and we were pulled into the politics more than undergrads usually are, because we were taking graduate courses. The one anthropological linguist aligned herself with the cultural anthropologists, who at the time held all the power in the department. The bioanthropologists and the archaeologists were banished to the top floor of the building, so the “real” anthropologists didn’t have to deal with them.
If you know anything about anthropology, particularly cultural anthropology, yes, I know what you’re thinking: That’s just about as moonbatty and peace-corps-y as it gets. All of that anti-Western bias that now pervades the university campus was then the primary realm of anthropology. To say the least, you needed to wear high boots in class.
At the time, sociobiology was the up and coming academic war in the field. Accepted as fact, with not a shred of evidence, was the “matriarchal” period of human development, fueled by Robert Graves (note that proposing a universal matriarchy is distinct from identifying matriarchal cultures, which do exist).
The intellectual dishonesty of the cultural anthropologists, and students, in the department was striking. They would deny any evidence that did not support their twin worldview of nurture-not-nature and the Romantic noble savage, in touch with nature (whatever that means). I took a seminar on sociobiology that opened my eyes to the utter disingenuousness and agenda-driven mindset of cultural anthropology, and ended up being a bioanthropology major. In a nutshell, the bioanthropologists in the sociobiology seminar argued the data; the cultural anthropologists ignored the data and attacked the personalities. You can see this in the charges trumped up against Napolen Chagnon, a sociobiologist and anthropologist, by Patrick Tierney, who made up serious charges and nearly ruined Chagnon’s career, and the bloodthirstiness with which so many anthropologists jumped in to ruin Chagnon.
Why am I dragging all this up, from years ago? Because I read this essay by Mark Steyn, in which he discusses the intellectual dishonesty of anthropologists as brought up in Nicholas Wade’s Before the Dawn. Steyn says:
But the passage that really stopped me short was this:
“Both Keeley and LeBlanc believe that for a variety of reasons anthropologists and their fellow archaeologists have seriously underreported the prevalence of warfare among primitive societies. . . . ‘I realized that archaeologists of the postwar period had artificially “pacified the past” and shared a pervasive bias against the possibility of prehistoric warfare,’ says Keeley.”
Ah yes, how familiar. As I was primarily interested in Mesoamerica, I had endless arguments with other majors about the “in tune with nature-ness” of the Maya. Never mind the stelae with pictures of beheaded captives, or rulers wearing human hearts around their necks, or the fortifications. The Maya were a “peaceful, nature loving” race, who spent all their time sitting in lotus positions, looking at the planet Venus, and meditating on the role of their navels in the Greater Universal Allness of the Oneness. Evidence didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but their counter-factual, outdated, notions of Romanticism, and their pathological hatred of all things Western.
We had the same arguments about cannibalism. The PC line was that cannibalism had rarely, if ever, existed, and was a lie cooked up by evil, imperialist, Europeans to demonize native populations. The facts are rather different. There is some evidence for cannibalism from some period of nearly every human society. And archaeologists were as blind to the evidence as were cultural anthropologists: The same archaeologists who, upon finding cut marks on animal bone, would conclude (rightly) that the animal had been butchered and most likely eaten (else, why butcher them?) would deny that the same cut marks on human bones indicated anything of the sort. (As a point of clarification, last I was keeping up with the literature, there is no evidence for subsistence cannibalism, that is, raising humans for food, because it is economically prohibitive. But I haven’t kept up, so that may be out of date information.)
We see the same lack of interest in physical evidence on all those Discovery Channel specials on Neanderthals. The claim is always that because the Neanderthals did not paint on cave walls or make jewelry that therefore their language was more primitive. That’s pure speculation. The physical evidence says otherwise. We have found at least one Neanderthal hyoid, and therefore know that they were as physically capable of speech as Homo Sapiens. We also know from casting skulls that both Broca’s and Wernicke’s Areas, the speech centers, were fully developed in Neanderthals. Therefore, this speculation about their speech being more primitive is not only unsupported by the evidence, but contradicted by the evidence.
But professor Keeley and Steven LeBlanc of Harvard disclose almost as an aside that, in fact, their scientific colleagues were equally invested in the notion of the noble primitive living in peace with nature and his fellow man, even though no such creature appears to have existed. “Most archaeologists,” says LeBlanc, “ignored the fortifications around Mayan cities and viewed the Mayan elite as peaceful priests. But over the last 20 years Mayan records have been deciphered. Contrary to archaeologists’ wishful thinking, they show the allegedly peaceful elite was heavily into war, conquest and the sanguinary sacrifice of beaten opponents…. The large number of copper and bronze axes found in Late Neolithic and Bronze Age burials were held to be not battle axes but a form of money.”
And on, and on. Do you remember that fabulously preserved 5,000-year-old man they found in a glacier in 1991? He had one of those copper axes the experts assured us were an early unit of currency. Unfortunately for this theory, he had it hafted in a manner that suggested he wasn’t asking, “Can you break a twenty?” “He also had with him,” notes professor Keeley, “a dagger, a bow, and some arrows; presumably these were his small change.” Nonetheless, anthropologists concluded that he was a shepherd who had fallen asleep and frozen peacefully to death in a snowstorm. Then the X-ray results came back and showed he had an arrowhead in him.
Exactly so. The utter intellectual dishonesty of anthropologists.
So yes, I’m afraid that even when I first went into grad school, I was cynical about academics and academic research. The mystery is why I went to grad school at all … but that’s for another time.
Hat tip to Ace for the Steyn article.
Van Helsing said it best:
Read the whole thing, and see just what a wackjob Buchanan is.
The Carnival of Education is posted!
Actually, it was Monday I heard it, on one of those “documentaries” narrated by Leonard Nimoy, about Troy:
Ultimately, Homer’s Iliad is a story about war.
No! What was your first clue, numbnuts? And Nimoy gets a big duncecap for being such a whore that he’d say something that stupid on television. There are no words in the English language to describe how much I despise the whole “History” Channel franchise. You want to see the dumbing down of education in America? Watch the “History” Channel.
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Here’s some interesting data about how church attendance correlated with voting patterns in 2004, courtesy of Betsy’s Page:
|
Church attendance
|
%age
|
Bush
|
Kerry
|
| More than weekly | 16% | 64% | 35% |
| Weekly |
