Day 330 – Teacher, Leave Those Kids Alone

Don’t get me wrong. I love making fun of Jackass’ stupidity as much as anyone else. Extending the school day and the school year is fodder for many jokes. There is a serious issue here, however.

The school day is made up of more activity driven items than actual learning sessions. I could write an entire blog post about how math is taught in exactly the wrong way. This is from someone in the 99th percentile in math classes. Education is more self-esteem oriented than result oriented. Reagan Education Secretary William Bennet once pointed out that although Americans finish near the middle in test scores, we’re number one in terms of student opinion about their abilities. Self-esteem is one thing, self-importance is something else altogether.

What the school day extension plan aims for is to turn schools into a one-stop government service center. We start the school day early, not to teach, but to give out the free meals that supposedly make kids study better. Decades of school lunch programs and scores keep going down. Opening school late will provide free dinners next.

Kids will stay at school until 5 or 6 at night so they’re 9 to 5 parents (the ones still working in this economy) will not have to be bothered with having at kid at home. What will they do? Since the learning time is basically over, kids can get indoctrinated with the same worship hymns that the elementary school kids are learning in New Jersey. Then the janitors can tell them stories of the SEIU and how they make more than their parents do.

This is another HCR. You don’t solve health care problems by writing a bill. You don’t improve education by extending the school day. This president thinks, one again, that any answer is the right answer. It looks more and more to everyone that the guy in charge is the wrong answer.

Day 329

The forces of hopey changey are very concerned about the possibility of violence from protestors of DC’s American Idiot, er, Idol. They fear violence because they have SEEN NO VIOLENCE.

If you want some violence, follow around the purple shirts of the SEIU.

Day 328 – We’re Not Gonna Take it Anymore

Andrew Breitbart’s Biggovernment.com has had a major impact on the people who will have an impact on the next election. People who watch the “big 3″ networks or CNN may not know who they are. However, those people may have heard about ACORN, now that it’s federal and state funding are in danger.

After ACORN, the site revived a story about an attempt by the administration to encourage NEA grantees to care about the issues the administration put on their priority list. Yet another official went under the bus for that.

This weekend brought an interesting side note where an NBC producer used a racial slur against an anti-ACORN e-mailer. I should more correctly say it was her e-mail, since NBC claims her e-mail may have been hacked. Of course, they first claim the e-mail was not made at all. Snide remarks by the major news networks by Blackberry appear to be nothing new.

I, like other Republicans, let things like this slide. The networks are biased and we know it. Once in a while, something ridiculous like the National Guard Memo happens, but mostly we accept that the media will spin things to the left. That was fine for 8 years of the Bush administration and for the other 6 years when Republicans controlled Congress during Clinton’s term.

Unfortunately, megalomaniacs like George Soros were setting the groundwork for corrupt state officials rigging elections. Others were setting up ACORN to buy registrations if not votes themselves. Can we even believe the true number of Democrats registered? The Republicans had the power but they didn’t make waves.

It’s over now. This will stand no longer. Every Kool Aid kid should now assume that we are capturing your e-mail packets, videotaping our homes and recording all the calls on our phones. The light will shine on all your misdeeds for the last 12 months and the last 12 years. Our side has been laid bare and your side’s sins run so deep the rabbit hole seems endless. The battle is joined.

Day 327

After more than 30 years, Roman Polanski has been re-arrested for his crimes. He was filled with enough bravado to leave his adoptive country of France to come to a country with a real extradition treaty with the US. Chalk it up to another fool who thought the new administration would make their lives hassle-free.

Day 326 – Taking a Break

I’d thought I’d clear my head this weekend and go off on a tangent. I was thinking today, that those hand dryers in the bathrooms work much better when you dry most of the water off with a paper towel. Wal-Mart has both, but many places only have the air dryer. They think that it’s just as good. Of course, you end up turning it on for 2-3 cycles and then have to gram the dirty door handle with your bare hand.

That’s a problem I have with environmentally “green” products. Either they don’t work just as well or require overuse to do the same job. Green jobs are just as bad. You can’t “create” a bunch of solar panel installer jobs when people can’t afford them. You can’t use government money to subsidize them without going into debt. If you go into debt, no one will be able to afford anything.

I went to a shopping center for the first time in a while. Stores were dead. It’ll be worse this winter. It will be fatal if energy prices shoot up on top of it.

Day 325

It really worries me when Bebe Netanyahu has to go in front of the UN and explain that the Holocaust did, in fact, happen. The Western world has spent entirely too much time coddling the (mostly Islamic) dictators who talk crazy shit and treating them like legitimate heads of state.

A lot of people criticize Bush for going after autocrats like Hussein (Saddam, not Barack) but still having a relationship with Saudi Arabia. Bush simply tried to pick his battles. Jackass has been promoting Islam while giving the cold shoulder to Judaism and his supposed faith of Christianity. He is praised by the same people who committed terrorist acts and practice everything that is opposite to democracy in their own nations.

I think you can tell who someone is by their friends and allies. People refused to believe it during the presidential campaign because of their afrophillic racism and they deny it now because of their love of all things foreign and disdain for all things domestic.

It’s a good thing the Holocaust didn’t really happen, because comparing Jackass to Hitler won’t sting as much.

Day 324

Any Republican should know about the Clinton effect. In the 2 years Bill Clinton had a Democratic House and Senate, he annoyed so many people that the Republicans were able to get back the Congress for the first time in 4 decades.

Still, there was a downside. The Democrats were able to mount a successful attack on a power-drunk Republican party and its leader even after the shock and awe. Clinton got re-elected, even though he had to deal with a Republican Congress.

The current cast of idiots is going to have to continue for a few more months before they seal their doom. Even then, Republican approval numbers are as bad. This means basically anyone who isn’t there already has a better chance than an incumbent. Then there are the independents.

New Jersey may be a hard lesson for third-party supporters. The third party candidate is about the best one can hope for, but the Republican is beating him and Corzine. And if Corzine wins, expect the Obots to start making noises about how independents are so much better for democracy than Republicans.

For me, nothing speed bumps a president like the opposing party running the other branch. If Senators like Gillibrand have taught us anything, it’s that a Republican will be better than a Democrat for opposing Jackass.

Day 323 – What does Ward Cleaver do?

Anyone who’s seen “Leave it to Beaver” knows that Beaver’s dad Ward put on a suit every morning, went to work and came home for dinner. No one ever quite knew what he did, though. A lot of TV shows used the generic office job as a way to give the father something to do. In reality, a lot of suburban dads had a job that wasn’t 9 to 5 or didn’t involve pushing papers all day.

Ward Cleaver is what I think of when I consider what President Jackass does as president. He’s really done nothing so far. He’s made no decisions on health care, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gitmo, bank regulation or the budget. He’s signed the Stimulus (written by one of his Czars) and a few other pointless bills.

When the members of his party beg him to show some leadership of health care, he gives speeches and goes on TV. He can’t write legislation. He didn’t do it in the Senate. He didn’t show up to work much when he was in local office, when he worked for ACORN, when he was editor of the law review or when he was in college. Most likely, Bill Ayers wrote most of his book.

Besides the people who were duped by the slick advertising, the ones who believed his post-racialism and the liberals who thought he was going to support their agenda, there is yet another group that may be turning on him. People want him to get to work. He’s  turned the UN into a week-long event in a presidency that is about 33 weeks old. I don’t know if I want that. I just want to know what made him qualified to do anything.

Day 322

Health Care Bill – Take 2.

People where I work have a sign. It says you can have things fast, good or cheap. You can’t have 3. If you want it fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If you want it good and cheap it won’t be fast and if you want it fast and good it won’t be cheap.

This is a problem. This country spends $2 trillion on health care for 330,000,000 people. That works out to something like $7,000 per person. But that includes the 5-10% of people who don’t have any sort of payment system. If they needed more health care, it would add another $500 billion to that figure.

We have three variables at work in health coverage. They are cost, quality and availability. You can have cheap health care for everyone (maybe) but the quality will suffer. You can have good health care for everyone, but it will not be cheap. You can also have good, relatively cheap health care, but not for everyone.

I don’t particularly like universal coverage. It assumes everyone will only seek medically necessary care and that doctors like working on the cheap. Most of the countries using it are running growing deficits. Still, it is a possible option. What I don’t agree with is the idea that universal (or public) options will be cheap, top quality and fully available. Something has to give.

I think we have to look at lowering our expectations on all fronts. Costs can be lowered by paying medical school tuition in exchange for a term of service at reduced pay. This would get more low-income doctors into the system to cover the growing number of patients. We need to look into the idea of catastrophic only insurance for the people with no health insurance. This kind of insurance is usually cheap due to lower payout rates.

We also need to let insurance companies compete. Set up a standard for MINIMAL coverage. New York, for example, covers a lot of things that are maintenance related and not necessary. It keeps rates high. People need to buy their insurance, instead of their employer.

Finally, we need to stop using the legal system to dispute care. We don’t need punitive damages as much as punitive actions. Doctors need to be removed from practice, not fined over and over again in legal cases. Any of these actions can be done right now, without a liberal wish list of pork and nanny-state lifestyle monitoring.

Day 321 – The Future of Obamacare

Two things that may shed some light on what will happen under government controlled health care. First, people over 65 will be the last to get Swine flu vaccinations, presumably because they have more chance of natural immunity. However, all flus impact the elderly more once contracted. Will older people be dead last in health services?

The Congress also plans to scrap private student loan lenders and have all guaranteed loans written through the government. That means that this Congress thinks that private industry should get out of government business. The private option will be the same way. If the government gives any money to private health concerns, it will eventually want to control that sector as well. The signs are there, just like before the election.