From Rasmussen:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 68% of American Adults view being a teacher as one of the most important jobs in our country today…

…Thirty-seven percent (37%) say, in terms of its impact on the nation, it’s a good thing that most teachers belong to public employee unions. Forty-six percent (46%) disagree and say it’s a bad thing that most teachers are unionized. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure…

Which is pretty much as one would suspect it to be – we like teachers, don’t like the unions. Not too long ago I was doing a little research on the Clark County (NV) school system and discovered that about half of the district’s employees are not teachers. That, actually, is the result of having teacher’s unions…the massive and steady increases in education funding we’ve provided over the years (rising, in inflation-adjusted dollars, from $3,101.00 per student in 1960 to $8,682.00 per student in 2007) hasn’t gone for teachers, but for piles of flapdoodle which has little or nothing to do with teaching kids. This is because, for the unions, it is irrelevant whether or not the kids learn.

You see, for the unions, the whole point of existence is to obtain the highest number of unionized employees making the highest amount of pay possible (and thus providing the highest possible union dues) for doing the least work possible. This is what all unions do, all the time – not one of them is actually interested in providing a superior product at a lower cost; there is no upside for a union in doing that. In fact, doing such would be negative for a public sector union because greater efficiency means less employees needed. As long as teachers have to belong to a union, things will never improve – for teachers or students.

It would be better if we just did it with individual contracts – start off with a 1 year contract renewable for five years. If the teacher does well, then make a new 5 year contract renewable for 15 years. That gets a teacher to 20 years at which time the teacher can either retire, or just keep on with additional five year contracts – and all renewals dependent upon both the need of the school district and the performance of the individual teacher. There would still be room for corruption and failure, but no central union making back room deals which eventually have half the staff being made up of non-teachers – at massive monetary cost and to the detriment of actual education.

It is time for a change – and getting rid of the public sector unions, especially in education, is the vital first step. In this, Wisconsin is leading the way – and if the GOP wins there, we can start to at long last really address education reform.

I volunteer for this effort – from ABC:

After playing such a pivotal role in the November elections, Tea Party activists vowed they would keep a close eye on Congress. They weren’t kidding.

The Tea Party Patriots, one of the largest organizing groups of the movement, want to assign personal bloggers to track every member of Congress, not just the ones they supported…

I’m in. Of course, for me it would be easy – the Donk of my District is just a back bencher who hasn’t had an original idea, ever. She just votes as she’s told. Unfortunately, I also live in a district which was deliberately crafted to be impervious to Republicans – though we also have routinely failed to nominate a credible challenger. Maybe if someone is exposing Berkeley all the time there will be a better chance of a strong challenger?

At any rate, it would be a good thing for there to be a blogger per congresscritter – just someone who can do a weekly update on what the person did, how they voted, who they fund raised with, that sort of thing. It allows us to see patterns and build up a record of either accomplishment or corruption…and it would be just regular folks keeping tabs on the Ruling Class. I like it.

Just another in a long line of such stories:

More than 300 Muslims set fire to a town in Bangladesh in order to strip indigenous Christians, Hindus and Buddhists of their property.

The group of Muslim settlers set fire to the town of Rangamati in the Diocese of Chattagonag, Bangladesh on Feb. 17. According to the Fides news agency, news that the body of a missing Muslim man had been found was the pretext for carrying out what the Muslims called “an expedition to punish the town where indigenous peoples live.”

Other attacks on indigenous towns were reported in the region of Gulishakhali.

An eyewitness told Fides that recently, Muslim colonists have been expelling non-Muslim ethnic groups in order to take possession of their farmland…

Non-Moslems cannot live under Moslem rule – that becomes ever more clear. Christians and other religious peoples in the Moslem world must be given, at the least, local autonomy in compact territorial locations where Moslem authority is forbidden to enter. Better, of course, if the Christians of the Islamic world are given full independence (this would, most importantly, work out to freeing southern Sudan, southern Lebanon, southern Egypt and Assyria from Moslem rule; but there are other areas to be dealt with). Moslems have yet to attain a level of civilization which allows a non-Moslem to live in peace and security under Moslem rule.

I hate to be harsh like that, but it just has to be. How many more people have to be killed, raped and robbed before everyone else admits to this reality? That is what I’d like to know.

And rather convincingly, too – from the Telegraph:

Early returns from Ireland’s national elections Saturday suggested the opposition had routed the ruling party, national media said.

State broadcaster RTE said exit polls indicated the Fine Gael party had a “huge” majority over the incumbent Fianna Fail party, although official results weren’t due for two days, the BBC reported…

Ireland, being inhabited by Irish people, naturally has a horrifically complex means of determining who gets how many seats in a proportional representation system, so know one knows just just how many seats Fine Gael will win, but it does look like a complete route of Fianna Fail, which has ruled Ireland for most of its modern existence as an independent nation (reports elsewhere indicate that Fianna Fail took only 15% or so of the vote; they got 42% at the last election).

This is a rejection of Fianna Fail over that party’s agreement to a bail out program which essentially would tax the Irish in to penury in order to make good banker losses – bankers who, with eyes wide open, agreed to investments in Ireland which never had any chance of being repaid. To be sure, the people of Ireland played their part in the financial meltdown – buying in to a get-rich-quick scheme, after all was said and done – but the bankers are supposed to be the wise men in the know who, with their fiduciary responsibility, steer people away from financial traps. Instead, the bankers were right there in the mix, being stupid from day one.

How this will effect the larger European Union remains to be seen. German Chancellor Merkel’s party was wiped out in a recent regional election over pretty much the same issue – and while she doesn’t have to face a national vote for a while, there are a series of other regional elections coming up this year, all of which look to be a disaster for her party. Not just the Irish, but the people of Europe are determined not to play the sucker for bankers and bureaucrats who made the mess. This could lead, eventually, to sovereign default on the part of some weaker EU nations – as the bail out funds dry up, places like Greece, Portugal and Spain might be forced in to default. That would have incalculable results on the global economy – incalculable in the sense of no one can say how bad it would be, but that it would certainly be bad.

At all events, my hats off to the people of Ireland – it was high time that people took a stand against this nonsense.

A very disturbing story by Gil Ronen over at Israel National News:

Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes.

Roni Aloni Sedovnik, a feminist activist, penned an article in News1 – an independent website run by respected investigative reporter Yoav Yitzchak – under the heading “The Left’s Betrayal of Female Peace Activists Who were Sexually Assaulted.”

“A nauseous atrocity has been going on for a long time behind the scenes at the leftists’ demonstration at Bil’in, Naalin and Sheikh Jarrah [Shimon HaTzaddik],” she writes. “A dark secret that threatens to smash the basic ideological values upon which the demand to end the occupation of the Territories rests.”…

According to the story, this has been going on for a while – including some women who have been kept for quite some time as the “wives” of some Palestinian men…never allowed to leave and, of course, never allowed to tell their stories. The leftist activists who are in charge of getting non-Arab women in to the demonstrations ruthlessly cover up the crimes lest the world develope a negative attitude towards the Palestinian cause. The whole thing does make sense – leftist people are often like that; willing to sacrifice everything for the cause (one remembers a woman noted in Gulag Archipelago who falsely confessed to a crime in order to prevent her children from losing faith in communism).

But, still, a crime is a crime…and that the left is covering up these crimes is just another indicator that they are utterly inimical to to our civilization. These are people who might use the words “justice” and “liberty” but they simply do not mean the same thing as they do to the rest of us. In fact, one has to go entirely Orwellian with them – to the left, justice requires injustice and liberty really is slavery.

There’s not much we can do about this – if the left continues to cover up the crimes, they’ll never be stopped. But keep this story in mind when you read and hear things about the Arab world – without great care, you’ll never know what is truth and what is false. This also buttresses my argument that none of us – not even the Arab leaders – really knows what Arabs/Moslems want. You think its only a few western women who are being abused over there? For the locals, it is probably worse…and with no genuine mechanism for expressing desires either in politics or the market place, there is no way for any one to determine what is wanted.

The only approach we can take is with our objective truths – the self-evident truths as expressed in our sublime Declaration of Independence. If someone isn’t following those precepts then don’t let them off the hook over cultural differences – barbarians are barbarians. The people of Palestine are not, as yet, measuring up to our standards, and until they do their case for an independent State will remain weak…and as Israel does work to match our standards (no one ever will completely, not even us, of course…it is an aspiration more than a goal…but you have to keep trying), all our doubts should come down in favor of Israel.

One would call the antics of the Democrats childish except for there is a sinister aspect of it – a thuggery which insists that no one dare change the liberal settlement. We are only to debate within, as it were, a party line – and the party line is that corrupt unions which bankroll the Democrat party must be allowed to work out backroom deals against the people.

We must win this fight because if we don’t then we’ll set the precedent that Democrat policy trumps everything, including the will of the people.

UPDATE: Big turnout for a rally to recall one of the Fleebaggers. As soon as I find a link of where you can volunteer/donate, I’ll have that up.

Jeffery Anderson over at Pajamas Media has an excellent article about just whom the GOP will need in 2012 – essentially, we’ll need our best of the best to beat Obama, but it seems that a lot of our top flight candidates are going to sit 2012 out. This worries Anderson, correctly, because he views the election of 2012 as crucial as the 1864 election. In that year, had Lincoln lost, the Union would have been permanently split – in 2012, if Obama wins then we might well see the permanent imposition of socialism in America…but the time 2016 rolls around so many people will be made dependent upon government that no small government candidate will ever win.

Which is all true, but I’m not entirely convinced that any of the top flight candidates Anderson lists (Ryan, Christie and Pence in his view – though I’m sure he’d have kind words to say about Daniels, Pawlenty and a few others) are what we need. They may end up being what we need, but only one candidate, in my view, has shown an inkling of what we really face – and even she (yes, its Sarah Palin) has yet to completely demonstrate an understanding of the gravity of the situation.

The Civil War analogy is apt, but one must add to it a bit more to fully understand the nature not just of the threat, but of our opponents. Do you remember that scene in Terminator where the soldier from the future was explaining just how inexorable the Terminator would be? Keep on going no matter what, reach down her throat and rip her heart out? That sort of thing? Well, that is the nature of the left – they will not stop. Not ever. If we beat them in 2012, they’ll just keep coming at us until we crush them completely.

What do I mean by “crush them completely”? I mean not just beating them at the polls but after we do so, going about the reform of America to the point where the left is no longer able to exercise influence on American policy. The dirty, little secret of the left is that it is largely government funded. Starting in the 1930s, the left stopped being a purely opposition movement and started moving in to government as a means of re-directing American policy in a leftist manner. From the strong regulatory and funding positions of government, the left also started to press itself upon the media and the education establishment. Here in 2011 there is a massive web of government funding and regulation which both keeps the left well funded as well as allowing it to continually influence policy even when not 1 in 10 Americans agree with the policy being advanced. In order for us to really win – in order for us to stop this leftist terminator of America – we need to clear out that web. We need to de-fund and disbar the left.

Thus far, I’ve yet to see a GOP candidate who fully understands this. Palin comes closest, but none of them have articulated a vision which would have us dismantling the government support for the American left. And make no mistake about it, once the left is excluded from government support, it will dry up and blow away – becoming no more relevant to American policy than was the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas in the early 20th century. Think I’m off base here?

Just think it through for a moment – how much money does Uncle Sam allegedly spend on education? And how much of that actually goes to pay for a classroom teacher? Once you’ve subtracted that amount (which is rather tiny) from the total amount spent on “education”, you’ve now got the part which functions as a slush fund for the left. So, too, with agency after agency of the federal government…very large amounts of the money goes for things other than the stated purpose; that part of the money is going to fund the left. And this leaves off the various regulations which either empower the left without a vote or prevent non-leftists from attacking left wing bastions of power.

This is, in a very real sense, a Civil War – one side or the other will win it all and permanently impose its vision on America. If the left wins, we die out as a nation (I know they don’t see it that way, but they also, apparently, can’t see that rampant sex and violence in popular culture has a negative impact on society…if you can’t see something plain as a pike staff like that, you’re not likely to see that your whole worldview is dysfunctional). If we win, we survive and thrive. 2012 could be crucial and no matter what we must get Obama out – but until we steel ourselves to the real task, utterly destroying the left, then we are just spinning our wheels. What we need is a GOP candidate who sees this – and, so far, I haven’t seen one.

Newt Gingrich lays it out at Newsmax:

…Imagine that Governor Palin had become president. Imagine that she had announced that Roe versus Wade in her view was unconstitutional and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone’s right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed. The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment…

I was listening a bit to Rush Limbaugh as I traveled about today – and noted with relish that he’s on the same page as I am about a shutdown – and he has it right: Obama is being lawless. The duty of the President of the United States is to enforce the laws, not decide if they are constitutional. Congress enacted DOMA, President Clinton signed it – until Congress repeals or the courts void the law, Obama must vigorously enforce every last bit of the law. He has no choice in the matter. Refusing to enforce it is a dereliction of duty…and, in my view, an impeachable offense.

This is not to say that it will happen – even if articles of impeachment were passed in the House, the Senate Democrats will never, no matter what, vote to convict Obama. It literally does not matter what Obama does – Democrats are uninterested in the law, only in their power…and they know that if it comes to punishing Obama, it would cost them power. So, nothing will happen – but that doesn’t change the fact of what Obama has done.

America is in need of deep reform – the only reason we’re at this condition is because we have allowed a criminal class of people to gain control of our nation. Criminal not just in the rank corruption of office, but in the fact that they have no awareness of, or concern for, what is it that makes America work. More than any other nation, we are a people governed by consent…but we only consent because we feel, at the end of the day, that the rules are being observed. By breaking the rules – and not just on DOMA but on a lot of issues…such as ignoring a federal judge’s ruling that ObamaCare is unconstitutional – Obama and his Democrats are cutting at the very heart of the American way of life. In order to save our nation, it now becomes a requirement to reduce government to its proper, constitutional functions.

The reason Obama and his Democrats just go ahead and do this is because it is the way they have been schooled. To them, as to all on the left, the law is whatever they want it to be at the moment. When government was smaller, this had less effect – now that government is pervasive, our lives and our liberty are at stake. Not because of some absurd leftwing or libertarian worry that Uncle Sam will listen in on a phone call, but in rock hard reality – where it matters the most; in the question of whether we’ll be ruled by laws, or by men. If Obama can set aside one law because he wants to, then he can set aside any law…and enforce any rule he likes, whether or not he has the legal authority to do so. And that puts us under tyranny – because we’ll never know what the law is until Obama decrees it.

By reducing government power we’ll essentially cut out the ability of liberals like Obama to become tin plated, little dictators. The only way we can be sure that Obama can’t decide if we’ll have this kind of health care or that kind of marriage is to take the federal government entirely out of such equations. Then, and only then, will our liberties be secure.

As expected – well, expected by you, me and everyone non-liberal out there…which means the financial “experts” and the MSM were caught flat footed. From Reuters:

The economy grew slower than initially estimated in the fourth quarter as government spending contracted more sharply and consumer spending was less robust, a government report showed on Friday.

Gross domestic product grew at annualized rate of 2.8 percent, the Commerce Department said in its second estimate, marking a downward revision from its initial 3.2 percent estimate.

Economists had expected GDP growth, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, to be revised up to a 3.3 percent pace…

What this means is that the “experts” were half a percentage point off (expected 3.3%, actual 2.8%). And here’s the really bad news – there is one more revision to go before we get the actual 4th quarter GDP number. What this means is that it could be revised even lower. I expect it will be – I know there were lots of stories of a booming Christmas shopping season, but I noted early on that they were only getting shoppers in to the stores by steep discounts and people were sticking to the “loss leaders” rather than going on shopping sprees. I fully expected 4th quarter GDP numbers to be lousy.

I don’t know what the initial 1st quarter 2011 numbers will look like when announced in April, but you can bet they’ll be pumped up as much as possible. I have little faith in any initial number put out by government agencies these days. This is primarily because of the new claims for unemployment data – each week we get a number and then the next week we get a revised number; over and over again in the past two years it has been an upward revision. If they are fudging the unemployment numbers then it is just as likely they are fudging all numbers…until the hard data arrives.

UPDATE: Seems that a lot of people are getting that sinking feeling.

From Hotline On Call:

In the battle over federal spending for the remainder of this fiscal year, nearly two-thirds of the Republican operatives surveyed in this week’s National Journal Political Insiders Poll believe that it isn’t in their party’s interest to see a government shutdown, while most Democrats feel such a confrontation could benefit them.

First off – and this goes for you Democrat insiders, as well – one salient fact about the 2011 budget fight must be remembered: it is taking place in 2011, not in 1995. Secondly, the budget fight of 1995 played little, if any, role in determining who won in 1996.

Democrats have told themselves for years that the budget shut down of 1995 allowed Bill Clinton to cruise to victory in 1996. GOPers have told themselves the same thing. Actually what got Bill Clinton re-elected in 1996 was a booming economy, signing welfare reform and having Bob Dole as his opponent. The government shut down was a lot of inside-baseball stuff which didn’t have the least effect on any American’s day to day living. But, no matter – Democrats and Republicans have both talked themselves in to believing that if it weren’t for a short government shut down in 1995, Clinton would have lost in 1996.

Lost in all of this is the fact that the GOP also won in 1996 – holding on to their House majority in consecutive elections for the first time since the 1920’s. That, in and of itself, was a stunning achievement…especially in a year when a Democrat President was being rather convincingly re-elected. If the budget battle was enough to re-elect Clinton, it should have been enough to turn out the GOP majority…at least in the House. It didn’t. So, please stop believing false narratives about what happened in 1995.

But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the 1995 shut down did act as myth claims it did – what then? Well, you still have to remember that this is 2011, not 1995. Back in 1995 you had Rush Limbaugh, a few other talk radio hosts, National Review and a couple other magazines and that was it as far as alternative media. Honestly, how many of you out there had even so much as heard fo Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Bill O’Reilly back in 1995? I know darn well you had never heard of Pajamas Media, National Review Online, Powerline, Instapundit and 10,000 other conservative and libertarian outlets back then because they didn’t exist. In other words, if we lost in 1996 because of the shut down in 1995, then we lost because the narrative was controlled by the other side…they had it in the MSM that mean, nasty and cruel Republicans were trying to starve granny while sweet, loving and kind Clinton was trying to save her. In 2011, that narrative will be tried, but it won’t work because there are enough alternate voices out there to expose it for the stupid lie that it is.

What this means, GOP Insiders, is that you’re not alone out there – no one is asking you to walk the plank. In fact, all the plank walking has already been done for you…we, the GOP base and the TEA Partiers already did it for you in 2010 and continue to do it in 2011. And if you show a bit of spine and actually do as we want, we’ll do it even more in 2012. So, seriously, grow a pair – or, if you can’t, then borrow some from a TEA Partier. Most of them have enough for two or three Insider types…even the lady TEA Partiers tend to have more testicular fortitude than Insiders…so, fret not, we’ve got plenty to go around…all you have to do is work up the gumption to just do as you’re told. We’ll do the rest.