Lost in the Wisconsin fracas is one very important fact about American education: it sucks. I mean, it has got to be the worst education system any Great Power has ever had. If an enemy was seeking to slowly destroy us over time, they could do no worse than to impose upon the education system we have today. We expend an astounding amount of resources on education and get very little in return.

One wonders – how many 20 year olds know what happened at Lepanto? Have heard of Metternich? Are familiar with what de Gama did? These are just three very important bits of information – lack of which would leave any person of our society with a flawed understanding of why things are they way they are. To me its not so much a matter of test scores but a matter of just how little they know when they get through the public school system. If you’re scoring high on a test which doesn’t really indicate knowledge, what is the point?

Not knowing things is pretty bad, but if the school were at least imparting good character then the deficiencies of education could be made up. The trouble is that the formation of worthwhile character is frowned upon in school. Teaching kids to be honest, sober and hard working can’t be fitted in to a scheduled filled with self esteem building and instructions on the finer points of sexual acts. There is a definite air of slipshod morality among our youth – and only those lucky enough to go become soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines seem to escape it. While there is often generosity on the part of young, there is little concept of sacrifice, while such things as respecting someone enough to not have sex with them until marriage is increasingly alien.

I have all kinds of respect for teachers. Often they are burdened with trying to fix kids who have been wrecked by indolent parents and/or kids who have been so polluted with popular culture sex and violence that its hard to hammer any sense in to them. Budgets are tight for the class room – supernumerary levels of administration taking first priority in funding in all too many schools (out here in Clark County, Nevada, about half of all school district employees are not teachers). In this fight over education we must remember to not belabor the teachers. There are some stunningly bad ones out there, but the general run is pretty good – and they are doing a job most of us would run away screaming from.

And yet, the system is broken – and it didn’t just get broken yesterday. We started the process of wrecking our education system about a century ago, though the real work of destruction didn’t hit until the 1970s. We, the people, got it all wrong. We allowed people who wanted to live off the education system to run the show, while teachers, students and what is learned are allowed to rot. Lots of ideas have been and will be put before the American people – but in context of today’s debate, the best move we can possibly make is to get the unions out of the education picture. It is unions which provided the muscle and the (mostly Democrat) campaign donations. In large measure, what has happened to American education is the result of having union bosses call the shots – just as they are in Wisconsin.

The whole of education must be reformed from top to bottom, and this cannot be done while unions retain their collective bargaining power outside of wages. Keeping the unions around means we’ll have a large, well-funded and decidedly Democrat organization undercutting the needs of educating – and prohibiting the rest of us from trying to fix it.

Walker and the Wisconsin GOP are simply doing what is necessary. It is the only way to clear out the union-created cobwebs which both destroy education, and prohibit anyone form fixing it. Well past time to get done with this and get on with the real issue – educating the kids.

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If Obama won’t carry out his oath, then someone else will have to step in – from NRO’s The Corner:

As he previously indicated, Speaker of the House John Boehner has officially announced that the House of Representatives will defend the Defense of Marriage Act.

In a statement, Boehner says: “I will convene a meeting of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group for the purpose of initiating action by the House to defend this law of the United States, which was enacted by a bipartisan vote in Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton. It is regrettable that the Obama Administration has opened this divisive issue at a time when Americans want their leaders to focus on jobs and the challenges facing our economy. The constitutionality of this law should be determined by the courts — not by the president unilaterally — and this action by the House will ensure the matter is addressed in a manner consistent with our Constitution.”

The lawlessness of the Obama Administration is astounding. It seems that they just don’t care what the law says, and figure that we’re too distracted to punish them for their actions. Obama probably believes that comes 2012, no one will care whether he enforced the laws, or not – we’ll be back to the razzle dazzle of Hope and Change and substantive issues won’t carry any weight. They think they can fool us, at least long enough to re-elect Obama.

Perhaps they are right, but I don’ think it will come out that way. A gigantic quantity of lies are abroad in the Republic, deforming our debates. But it appears to me that a plurality are fully awake to what is going on, and their enthusiasm to bring the Obama Administration far outstrips any lingering Obamania on the left. We will win in 2012 because we are simply more determined to do so – after all, our motivation the knowledge that if Obama is re-elected, it will be a catastrophe for the United States and the world (one just has to think how utterly contemptuous of us a re-elected Obama, who never has to face the voters again, would be).

Boehner and the House GOP must be pressed to really make this an issue – not just on the merits of DOMA, but on the very fact that law is law, and must be obeyed even if the law is unpopular. The only answer to a law you don’t like is to seek its repeal, not just pretend it doesn’t exist (imagine if we all decided that the income tax was unconstitutional and stopped paying…how would you liberals like that?). Enough of the petty tyrants of the left – enough of the rule of liberal men/women/other…time for us to once again be under the rule of law.

From the WSJ:

Forces loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi put down protests in Tripoli and fought deadly battles for control of rebel territory, as opposition forces sought to advance toward the capital in their efforts to take down the Libyan leader.

In the western rebel-held city of al-Zawiya, a large force from a brigade led by one of Col. Gadhafi’s sons led an attack on rebel forces, the Associated Press reported. The AP reported nearly 37 people killed in Libya Friday…

Here we have the results of a US policy to consult with the international community and proclaim, in advance, that we don’t want to intervene militarily. It means that Gadhafi knows no one will stop him if the Libyan people – leaderless and disorganized – don’t. It could still work out that the rebels win, numbers and spirit are on their side…but history is replete with stories of large, disorganizes masses of rebels being disposed of by small, tightly organized forces of repression. If one had to bet, the best bet right now is that Gadhafi hangs on.

This the time to use American power. Strictly speaking, the time was two or three days ago when Gadhafi was only in partial control of Tripoli – but now is the very last moment. If we intervene right away and provide leadership and a bit of extra force to the rebels, they will swiftly prevail as those forces willing to stand up for Gadhafi will be unwilling to do so when faced with rebels backed by American power. If we don’t intervene, then we’ll probably get a bad result. Even worse, it could turn in to a drawn out civil war, with its continual impetus to more disruption and consequent rise in death and destruction…and an increasingly bad effect on the global economy.

Courageous leadership is called for – and we simply do not have it.

UPDATE: Charting the impact of oil price hikes. It isn’t a pretty picture.

Boiled down, that is what he’s saying – from US News and World Report:

…But Obama, in his most candid moments, acknowledged that race was still a problem. In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent “Tea Party” movement that was then surging across the country. Many middle-class and working-class whites felt aggrieved and resentful that the federal government was helping other groups, including bankers, automakers, irresponsible people who had defaulted on their mortgages, and the poor, but wasn’t helping them nearly enough, he said.

A guest suggested that when Tea Party activists said they wanted to “take back” their country, their real motivation was to stir up anger and anxiety at having a black president, and Obama didn’t dispute the idea. He agreed that there was a “subterranean agenda” in the anti-Obama movement—a racially biased one—that was unfortunate. But he sadly conceded that there was little he could do about it…

Uh, Barry, its not quite like that. You see, we really don’t care that you’re black. What bothers us about you is not your skin color, but the fact that you are a fool who is running the nation we love up on the rocks. We’d swap you out for a differently abled, transgendered person of color if we could provided that person had a modicum of competence to recommend them for the job. You don’t have that – you coasted to victory on a wave of euphoria with your reality hidden behind a fog of feel-good propaganda. And it also helped that you were running against a man who proved he would rather lose gracefully than win by getting down and dirty in the political trenches.

Hatred does, of course, stalk our land. But the hatred emanates from the left – those who compare Governor Walker to Hitler, or who blame Sarah Palin because a lunatic went on a shoot spree in Arizona. The hatred comes from those who want to butcher unborn children, even in the last days of pregnancy. There is hatred in those who want President Bush charged as a war criminal, but never make a move to take out a beast like Fidel Castro. There is the most evil and wicked hatred in those who blame the United States for the misery spawned by wicked men who hate the United States.

President and Obama and his liberals don’t see it like that. They see a world in which they are exemplars of mercy, justice and love…and if they are such, then those who oppose them must have base motivations. And, so, you get a topsy-turvy world in which the President believes that hate-filled racism motivates his opponents, while his own minions daily slander and attack. This will not change. If we beat Obama in 2012, then there will be a whole slew of stories and books written about how the latent racism of the United States rose up to drive Obama out of office – in fact, if you want to pre-position yourself to make a fast buck, write that book today and just have it ready for the publisher…be the first off the mark with it and you’ll probably have a million-seller.

As usual when dealing with liberal, the answer is to beat them so badly at the polls that they don’t matter any more – and then defund them so that they’ll dry up and blow away. Until such time, we’re just going to have to put up with monstrously stupid, liberal statements.

HAT TIP: The Other McCain.

From the Daily Beast:

It was bizarre, say students—even for a professor who gets off (excuse the pun) on controversy. On Feb. 21, after a lecture on sexual arousal, students in Northwestern University psychology Professor J. Michael Bailey’s human-sexuality course were given the option to stay for a guest presentation. Most were used to these sessions: With topics like “The Gay Guys Panel” (gay men talking about their sex lives) and Q&A sessions with transgender performers, the optional add-ons were part of what made Bailey’s class one of the most popular on campus.

But this particular lecture was, shall we say, different. Led by a man whose website describes him as a “psychic detective and ghost hunter,” it was called “Networking for Kinky People,” and began with a towel placed neatly on the auditorium stage. Next, a woman took her clothes off, and—with an audience of around 100—lay down on her back, legs spread. As students moved forward from the theater’s back seats, for a closer view, “The girl grabbed the mic,” says Sean Lavery, a Northwestern freshman. “She explained that she had a fetish for being watched by large crowds while having an orgasm.”…

You can read the rest, if you have a mind to – I stopped a bit further down as there is nothing in the actual story worthy of attention. And, of course, there absolutely zero reason to have a class – any class, anywhere – on sex. Trust me on this one, boys and girls, long before anyone ever started having classes on sex, people managed the act. Some how or another, propagating the human species never required a girl to spread her legs in public for a demonstration.

What is worthy of attention is what this story says about us – of course the college is officially deploring the event, but one wonders, why? What has this professor done which is not implied in a score of other events on college? It certainly is in keeping with the general pornification of our society. And our kids waste vast amounts of time – what is one more hour wasted on a sex demonstration? That the kids only have a limited number of hours to accomplish their goals in life isn’t that important – what is important, to those who decree these things, is that the kids be desensitized to decent behavior.

The wages of sin is death – and death will take us all, and I mean as a people, unless we call a halt to this nonsense. The entire waste of lives and resources on something as stupid as a sex class is just a tip of the iceberg of what is causing us to collapse. We’re wallowing in filth and wondering why things look so bad. Here’s a clue for all you out there – especially our liberal Sherlocks who think a sex class a grand thing – it is because we’re engaging in idiotic twaddle like sex classes that we can’t even make a pair of shoes in the United States.

Decline is a choice, and we have chosen to decline for several decades, now. We can, though, choose again – we can, that is, choose to stop declining and start rising. Will we do it? Only time will tell.

From Fox News:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich plans to announce Thursday that he will begin raising money to test whether a bid for the Republican presidential nomination is feasible.

Spokesman Rick Tyler confirmed to Fox News that Gingrich is in the exploratory phase, which he will discuss at a news conference at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta…

In a lot of ways, Newt Gingrich is the most intelligent and knowledgeable man in American politics. A man of deep historical knowledge and a well-trained ability to take disparate events and facts and produce a coherent picture, Gingrich would be a President who could easily navigate through the troubles we have, and those which are rapidly brewing. But, can he be elected President?

Gingrich was once the hero, then the goat – defeated men are not usually turned to as leaders. Winston Churchill was an exception to this rule – suffering crushing, and partially undeserved, failure at an early age, he had to struggle for two decades to regain the stature needed to lead his nation. Most of the time, you don’t get two bites at the apple. Gingrich can overcome this, but it would take a near perfect campaign and several things out of his control breaking his way.

First and foremost, he’ll have to overcome lingering GOP doubts about him. He’s had his moral failings in the past (and they are, now, very much in the past – Gingrich has grown a great deal since leaving office as Speaker in this area) and that causes worry. No matter how long ago or how irrelevant to current events, Democrats will dredge up whatever mud they can. As a deeply polarizing figure in American politics, there is also the worry that Gingrich won’t be able to sufficiently appeal to Independents and disaffected Democrats to beat Obama. The final thing here is that Gingrich is a bit of yesterday’s news – there are a lot of stellar up-and-comers in the GOP whom Gingrich will have to elbow aside.

Supposing Gingrich does make it to the nomination, his problem will become one of how to attack Obama without offending people in the process. Don’t let our GOP anger over Obama fool you on this – Obama is still well-liked by the American people and while that may change by 2012, we have to presume that he’ll still have a reservoir of good will to draw upon. You don’t want to just hack away at Obama – you have to present him to the American people as a well meaning yet out of his depth President. A fine man, but no man to lead us out of this morass. All the while Gingrich is doing this, he’ll have to manfully stand up to the most nasty slanders imaginable against not just himself, but against everyone remotely connected to him. The nastiness will never (or, at least, almost never) come from Obama directly – but it will be relentless.

And then, with all that, Gingrich will have to lay out a compelling agenda for the American people. This is actually Gingrich’s greatest strength – his ability to create a narrative and explain to people why they should go his way. Any GOPer who thinks he or she can coast to victory on anti-Obama sentiment is likely to wind up disappointed. If it turns out there is 10% unemployment and inflation by October of 2012, that is fine – we’ll win it in a walkover…but don’t work on any such assumption. Work along the lines of things at least appearing to improve, with massive, pro-Obama propaganda in the MSM telling everyone that things are coming up roses. In such a scenario, only the strongest, most believable and most American sort of message will do. Whomever we nominate will have to commune with the shade of Ronald Reagan a great deal.

I wish Gingrich well in this. I’ll be delighted if he pulls it off – it would be nice to have someone who understands the United States and the world backwards and forwards as President. I don’t think he can do it, however. Time will tell.

No, I’m not kidding – from the Arizona Daily Star:

Border Patrol agents shot beanbags at a group of suspected bandits before the men returned fire during a confrontation in a remote canyon, killing agent Brian Terry with a single gunshot, records show…

Beanbags? BEANBAGS? We’re defending our border from ruthless and well-armed gangsters with beanbags…we’re not even bringing a knife to a gunfight; we’re bringing a child’s toy.

Armed men crossing a border illegally are not coming over to do nice things to people – they are invading our country with the intent of doing harm. The merest fact that they are armed and on our side of the border relieves our forces for any concern about whether lethal force is justified – it is, immediately and without warning. We have a fricking government for the primary purpose of defending us against outsiders…and our government is sending men armed with beanbags to fight criminals armed with AK-47’s.

This is criminal negligence. Whoever thought up the idea of beanbags must be immediately discharged. Laws must be passed to make it clear that deadly force is always authorized when dealing with armed men crossing the border. No more of this nonsense – no more dead border patrol agents because some PC pinhead decided that armed gangsters crossing our border deserve a second chance…

UPDATE: A BATF agent says he was ordered to allow cross-border gun running. Our nation is being run by people who have no grasp of what the world is like.

A little bit of the harsh realities of economics – and actually being reported on in the MSM! Astounding! From Bloomberg:

Employers in the U.S. announced more job cuts in February than in the same month last year, led by a surge at government agencies.

Planned firings increased 20 percent to 50,702 last month from February 2010, the first year-over-year gain since May 2009, according to a report today from Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Announcements at federal, state and local government offices almost tripled from last year…

…Dismissals of government workers may contribute to a slowdown in consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of the economy. Combined with the highest gasoline prices in two years, the threat of a pause in purchases may already be causing retailers, which had the second-biggest number of announcements last month, to pare payrolls, said Challenger.

“If gasoline tops $4 per gallon in the coming weeks, consumers may be forced to make significant changes to their spending habits,” said Challenger. “At this stage of the recovery, that could be an extremely damaging setback.”…

Who would have thought that massive, unsustainable levels of government spending for years would eventually have a negative impact? And, my goodness, how was anyone to know that things like revolution in the middle east could disrupt supplies and confidence? Geesh, its not like anyone has been out there demanding greater domestic oil production. I’m sure that Obama’s cracker-jack economic team is on this – and I wonder if a bit more spending and maybe some windmill subsidies will get us out of the mess.

This is what we get, boys and girls, for years of irresponsibility. Its going to get increasingly difficult to get out of the mess – the longer we put off the deep cuts in spending and the reforms necessary to encourage making, mining and growing things, the worse the crisis will get, and the longer it will take to get out of it.

UPDATE: Gallup poll has unemployment at 10.3%.

From Ann Althouse:

…as the protest drags on and protesters are sleep-deprived and frustrated and tired of nothing happening but standing around chanting and listening to drum-beating for hours on end, logic and proportion is flopping away. There was some serious aggression yesterday.

You saw Meade’s video where 2 over-aggressive protesters interrogated a couple of nice ladies who drove into Madison just to stand quietly, in the sea of Walker-haters, and hold their pro-Walker signs. In the video, you can hear that the 2 protesters are not making that much sense, and when Meade tries to mediate — meadeate — for them, other protesters in the area close in on Meade.

There’s very tense confrontation, and it flips into paranoia and incoherence…

One does begin to wonder – how does it end? How can the Democrats get out of this mess they’ve landed themselves in? No matter how you slice it, the GOP holds the actual power in the State of Wisconsin – that cannot change before November of 2012, and I don’t think these people would be able to keep it up quite that long.

Contrast the two groups. Democrats show up day after day after day and keep telling themselves the same things over and over and over again. Republicans showed up for one day, had a blast, let their guys know they’ve got their backs, and then went home. Our troops are still fresh for the fight and if the GOP needs some more bucking up, it can happen next weekend. Its got to get a bit tiresome to keep eating pizza and sleeping on the floor…though, then again, maybe that is how most Democrats live?

At any rate, this has been endlessly entertaining and the best part of it is that we win, no matter what. You see, the GOP actually won the election and thus holds all the power in Wisconsin – Democrats can bang the drum all they want, but eventually at least one Fleebagger will have to come home, and then its game over.