Education

Open Thread

Mark Noonan10 Comments

Apparently at UC San Diego something like 130 students were asked this math question: 7+2 = 6+___. And twenty five percent of them couldn’t answer it.

That is third grade math, tops. Another education thing I saw recently was a professor who’s class was upset because he was using letters for mathematical equations and the kids were furious that he expected them to know there are twenty six letters in the alphabet.

Turns out when Sir Edward Grey said the lights were going out in Europe in 1914 he was dead right – the only real reason I can think we’re here is so many of the very best people in the West were killed in WWI that we were left with nothing but the dregs…who have, step by step, brought the West down to their level. It is worse in Europe – where the dying was must greater – than in the USA, but everywhere in the West the 20th century saw the most intelligent, physically fit and bravest sacrificed…and as time went on, sacrificed by ever stupider people.

Always good to keep in mind that to be educated 125 years ago meant you knew Latin and Greek. That you had a firm grounding in math, history, law, theology, philosophy and geography, no matter what sort of degree you were aiming at. And also good to keep in mind that money didn’t keep you out of college – sure, the rich kids got in because daddy paid, but anyone who had the intellectual chops for college could get in. Sure, it was difficult to pass the exams…sure you probably had to work to earn money in addition to your scholarship…sure, you lived poor and struggled to keep going. But if you had the grit plus brains, you got the degree…and entered into a world of rare and honored achievement. To be an educated man or woman in 1900 placed you in an elite. A class of people who were not only intelligent, but knowledgeable, hard working and disciplined. Since WWI, all of that has been dispensed and getting a degree is really no more than sitting there and waiting to get it. And now the kids can’t add or read.

Democrats are in massive psy-op mode, again. The bottom line is that they want us talking about anything but their support for illegals, criminals and boys in girls sports (positions their insane base will not let them retreat from). This is why they are now bringing up Epstein as if it had anything to do with Trump. They don’t care that every scrap of evidence indicates that Trump never used Epstein’s services and that the two men hated each other – they’ll just lie and say up is down not really with the intent to convince, but just to get us talking about it. Meanwhile, the GOP is on track to flip voter registration in North Carolina red by 2026…and Pennsylvania by 2028. And even our loss in New Jersey this month is masking a distinct trend in favor of the GOP in that State. Oh, and Nevada is a Red State – so Red that both our Democrat Senators voted to end the shutdown.

The real key is to understand that whatever it is the Democrats and MSM (BIRM) are talking about is mere distraction. Don’t get distracted.

Marjorie Green has decided to join a long list of people who decided to go to war against Trump…and she’s destroying herself in the process. Lets face it, we all had questions about her from the start but as long as she was MAGA, ok. But now that she’s going on the View to attack Trump, that pretty much dispenses with her. Whatever she started out to do, she’s chosen the path of TDS grifter. So be it – and so long.

Michelle Obama is a bitter and exceptionally ignorant woman – she’s been gifted wealth unimaginable (and entirely unearned by her) from a nation she despises…and now she’s out on some book tour telling us how horrible we all are. She is the modern Ruling Class writ large…no ability, no accomplishment, massive sense of entitlement combined with disgusting bigotry. The bad news is she and her husband are only in their 60’s and so the USA has decades left of hearing these two creeps whine about America.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan38 Comments

As per usual, celebrities are lining up to make their “I’m leaving” statements if the GOPer wins – in this case, its still all about Trump but we remember it from past elections. So far, Madonna, Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen have said they’re out if Trump wins. If only. Just one, little vote and we end the long, national nightmare of Born to Run? Sign me up!

The trouble is they never follow through, do they? They stay. And that is a monstrous injustice! Why do they think we vote GOP?

Speaking of the GOP: we do note that the Democrats impeached Trump multiple times and so far all we’ve got out of the GOP House majority is a couple toothless hearings. Some people do figure we could win the White House next year and lose the House. It wouldn’t surprise me if that happened: the GOP has given us no reason to vote GOP down ballot. Heck, in the recent budget deal all they did was cancel some unspent Covid money…they didn’t defund a single aspect of Pudding Brain’s weaponization of government. And there went the new Speaker’s resolve that we won’t have omnibus bills…just about the first he did was pass an omnibus bill. They don’t understand: we don’t want any of it. Just shut it down. We don’t care! Sure, the MSM will have a heart-attack…but we don’t watch the MSM so we wouldn’t even notice. The number of votes we might lose over a shut down are tiny compared to the number gained by having the shut down. But, they don’t see it. Gonna take years to clear out the GOP deadwood.

I guess that in Florida for your government shakedown operation (ie, government employee union) to be certified for bargaining, 60% of the workers have to belong to the union. Now, its been decades since the Supreme Court ruled that you can’t compel union membership but for the most part this has been calmly ignored and various dirty means have been used to keep government employees in the Union. But in Florida, the ability to leave the union has now been enshrined in law and there’s a government which actually enforces that law…and it looks like the teacher’s union in Florida has or will very soon fall below that 60% threshold. In other words, there won’t be a union for the government to deal with in education. Can you imagine the sorts of reforms which will be possible once you have that barnacle scraped off? My prediction: if the GOP shows some guts and retains control in Florida for another ten years, then the Ivy League will be finished as the only place in America to get really first-rate education will be Florida and any other Red States where the GOP has the courage to reform education.

And we do have to get on that education thing. Over the past few days the latest Tik Tok craze has been for youngsters to read Bin Laden’s Letter to America and then they react positively to it and are all, “this is legitimate resistance”. First thing to keep in mind is that a 20 year old college kid was born after 9/11. Time marches on! The rising generation has no memory of that day. My guess is that the Tik Tok craze is a Sino-Iranian intelligence op; they’re trying to undermine American support for Israel. By far, Iran values Hezbollah more than Hamas but it would be a major blow to Iranian prestige if Hamas is wiped out. There is simply nothing Iran can do directly because of distance and the fact that Israel almost certainly has nuclear-armed subs off the coast of Iran right now. But they’ve got to do something – and that “something” is get a ceasefire before the IDF clears Gaza.

Our problem is not the op, but that it is working. Our youth are so astonishingly ignorant that a screed – actually written by a renegade American college kid who converted to Islam and joined al-Qaeda – by a psychopath is considered good. As jokester David Burge put it on X, wait until the kids find out about this vegetarian former art school student who’s anti-Zionist tome ignited a world movement! Our kids are so ignorant they are falling for the most elementary propaganda…and propaganda in favor of anti-human evil. If we don’t fix this then if a real war comes, we’ll find at least a significant portion of our youth will believe the enemy rather than America.

But even beyond that, keep in mind that affirmative action doesn’t just end at some point. You have to affirmative-action them into school. And then into a degree. And then into a job. We’ve seen again and again highly credentialed Pudding Brain judicial nominees fail to correctly answer basic legal questions. We’re seeing doctors who assert that masks will stop a virus. On and on like that – if the education was at least engineering plus commie propaganda it would be bad, but not necessarily fatal…but the education is nothing but commie propaganda. They don’t know anything, really. And they are now starting to be placed in charge. We need a crop of our youth who actually know what they’re doing.

But, do keep in mind, if the Red States start to churn out first class doctors and engineers that won’t do the trick. The USSR could educate excellent engineers…who were then put under the thumb of party hacks. They were arrested as “wreckers” when the hacks loused everything up. It will be like that here in America if we don’t start enacting laws to put some teeth into civil rights. Laws which expressly prohibit law enforcement from doing certain things. Laws which punish oath-breakers. On and on like that.

As for the war in Gaza, the IDF is being very methodical in its approach – this is to keep casualties low; both IDF and Gazan. I worry this isn’t the way to do it. I’ve always favored celerity of movement in warfare. The longer it takes the more imponderables start to have their way. Of course, the IDF isn’t going to call me for advice and I do wish them success…but I worry that if this starts to take too long not only will global pressure for a ceasefire increase, but we may start to see domestic Israeli pressure grow to call it off.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Over on Twitter @ZubyMusic asks, “What is the most damaging popular myth?”. Getting a lot of responses, some of them jokes of course. But it did get me thinking.

And I think that the most damaging popular myth is the history (so-called) of the last 100 years. That is, what we’ve been told is the history.

I’ve yammered on quite a bit over the past couple years about aspects of our received beliefs which don’t hold up to scrutiny and I’m coming to the conclusion that just as we have Narrative-Drivers for our politics (ie, story lines created – often in advance – to drive opinion in certain directions desired by those in charge) so we’ve had History-Drivers: that is, gatekeepers in the production of history who make certain that the historical Narrative only rolls into accepted grooves.

Just as in the MSM and the larger popular media the ability to be seen and heard largely depends on your ability to do as you’re told, so too is it likely to be this way in all disciplines. Do we really want to think that there is some institutional aspect of our society which isn’t controlled? That the people who have crafted Narrative after Narrative for our immediate political debates would let slip something as crucial as how history records things? That in a world of overwhelmingly conformist thought, they’d let independent thinkers have a place all to their own?

I’m just reminded of a story I heard some years back – it involved a moderately famous man but I can’t remember exactly who at the moment, but no worry as that isn’t fully relevant here. The key thing is that this man’s father was a British colonial official at the tail end of the Empire and upon a time this man pointed out to his son a ragged ship heading north from coastal east Africa and said, “that ship is filled with slaves, and I’m under orders to do nothing about it”. The British were leaving, as were all the colonial powers and with them went any impetus to stop the slave trade…and what had been firmly suppressed was now rising to the surface as the anti-slavers quite the scene. And then, 40 years later, we were all told that the British Empire was nothing but racist colonial oppression. Of course, a true history of Africa since the end of colonial rule would rather harp upon the breakdown of services, the rise of oppression and ethnic murder, the return of slavery…but, we can’t have that, can we? Doesn’t fit the Narrative. Oh, sure, when some particularly hideous thing happens, the world takes notice (like, say, the Rwandan genocide) but it is never placed in context. If any context is given at all, the problem is ascribed to “the legacy of colonialism”, as if the people today had no agency. And then we move on, not noticing until the next outrage occurs. Meanwhile, South Africa is slipping back into Third World status as the millennium promised with the end of Apartheid breaks down under the weight of bribery, incompetence and a raft of anti-white laws and rhetoric.

Just a little bit of the actual history of Africa and none of this would have had to happen. But just as in everything else, all we got was the Narrative history…and it is sustained in spite of any contravening facts.

Pudding Brain’s Secretary of Education said the quiet part out loud – asserting that teacher’s know better than parents what is best for kids. It is absurd and evil, but they really do think that way. They believe, that is, that someone with credentials is inherently superior. No surprise there: they all rise based on their credentials and so they hold credentials as supreme. None of these people – either in government or corporation – has ever had to produce. To actually make something happen or come into existence by their own efforts. Its all just reviewing plans and picking among them based upon the Current Thing and where the strongest pressure is coming from. And they are never tossed out, never jailed, never wind up in poverty. What we’re going to have to do is change laws to require first of all real world experience before you can take a government position and, secondly, entrance exams…really tough exams. Like, say, if you are seeking employment at the Department of Transportation, one of the questions should be along the lines of, “what is the per mile cost of moving a ton of goods from Long Beach to Denver?” and “if fleet average MPG is increased by 10 percent, what will be the average annual cost to an American consumer?”. Guarantee it will weed out these credentialed morons and allow room in there for people who actually know how things work.

See that little flap of metal up the pole there that everyone is smiling about? That was a shade installation to make travel by bus more equitable in Los Angeles. No, seriously; that little bit of metal is supposed to provide shade. I guess when its high noon and if you can stand right under it. It cost $10,000.00 to install. The Progs are seriously proud of this.

How about some fun stuff, now?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan15 Comments

As of a little while ago as I write, Oz clings to about a 1,200 vote lead in the PA GOP primary – nobody really knows how it will come out. I get the sense that Oz might pull it off, but McCormick could certainly get the win. Either is acceptable to me and would be immediately favored to win in November – the Democrats having nominate a leftist lunatic who thinks Catholic teaching is “gross”. That won’t play well in Western PA where the Democrats have to come back from the politically dead if they want to win Statewide.

GOP turnout in these primaries is so far vastly better than Democrat – and in North Carolina, very much so. A lot of punditry doesn’t like to read too much into that, but one thing we learn every election cycle is that political pundits don’t know the first thing about politics…they got some hobby-horse theory about how it works and they cherry pick data which confirms their bias. And when they get it wrong, they either ignore it completely, or explain it away. To me, people taking the time to go vote – especially in a primary – is a key indicator of how things are going. The other thing is voter registration patterns, which are also favorable to the GOP just about everywhere.

Musk announced that he intends to vote GOP – because Democrats are insane. And that, right there, pretty much nutshells 2022: Democrats are about to get a scorching rebuke not because of a sudden love for the GOP, but because they, the Democrats, have become so bad that they simply have to go. The political pundit class is, as I said before, clueless. At best you’re starting to see some of them hedge a bit and say the GOP may have a good year but even that with caveats about how if this, that and the other thing happens, the Democrats could do well. But, they all know. They have to know. It is the first mid-term of a President’s party: almost always that party does badly. The House is already gone for the Democrats. It was gone the minute 2020 was called for Biden. Especially since the Democrat majority was so thin. There was, early on, a better shot for the Democrats to hold on in the Senate. Democrats only had 14 seats to defend while the GOP has 21 and most of the Democrat seats are in States Biden carried. But that was before Biden took office.

A guy Tweeted out earlier that if gasoline was $2.50 a gallon, Biden would probably be doing ok. Even if not terribly popular, at least not toxic and we’d be looking at a normal midterm rather than a wave election. There is some truth to that – Biden has screwed up lots of things, but gas prices are something you can’t get around. People see it every time they fill up their tank. They might have let Afghanistan slip out of mind. The invasion at the border might pass to the side. But you can’t forget what you paid when you gas up. Nor can you forget food shortages and price hikes. It rather sticks with you. Here’s the kicker: all Biden had to do to keep gas at $2.50 is nothing. If he had just left Trump energy policies in place, then we’d still be energy independent. And this might have also protected us against recession…because the supply disruptions which are contributing to high oil prices would have benefited the United States…we would have been pumping record amounts of oil.

But the Democrats weather god had to be appeased, and here we are.

Saw a clip of a Clark County (NV) school district meeting where a parent, shocked at a dirty assignment her 15 year old was given in school, decided to read the assignment to the school board…which promptly cut off her mic, saying they couldn’t allow someone to use dirty words in a public hearing. That, in a nutshell, is the whole problem with public schools. The good news is that at last GOPers are taking an interest in such things – and are starting to win school board seats. The importance of this can’t be emphasized enough. While having the White House and Congress is very important, controlling the school boards, sheriff’s office and District Attorney is vastly more important…it is such offices which translate policy proposals into action. They are where the rubber meets the road. Control them, then even when the Left controls the national apparatus, we can effectively block their actions.

Never heard of monkey pox before, but it is being reported…and I think all of us can smell the bull**** a mile away here. Especially as the Democrats are trying to re-stoke Covid fears just in time for Fall. As noted before, I have had Covid. It sucks very badly. Certainly a person with underlying conditions should take care. But, I’m a 57 year old smoker and I’m getting through it just fine. I’ve still got a bit of the cough, but mostly it is all gone. Worst cold I ever had by a long stretch. But, nothing to be terrified about.

Man does a DNA test on himself, finds out he’s got a huge family he never knew about. It is a cool story.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

I came across this article on the state of public education and I’d like to say it was shocking and a real eye-opener, but as I read it my whole attitude was “yeah, naturally”. I do strongly recommend reading it, but that we’ve got an insider’s story about how absolutely out of control and effectively worthless public education is – especially at the high school level – is about the least surprising thing you can read.

It must be kept in mind that education is the last thing public education is for. In fact, if it actually educated, it would be undercutting the primary purpose of public education, which is to provide fat sinecures for unionized employees who, in turn, back Democrat politicians who get to use their funding of public schools to show how much they care. An actually educated populace would see through the scam right away – but even to this day, I’d bet that polling would show north of 65% still believe that public education is crucial to our nation. It isn’t, and never was.

It is time to bite the bullet and start working for the abolition of public schools. I don’t at all mind giving money to poor parents to send their kids to school, but I don’t want a single, government official within 10 miles of a school. I don’t want them in charge of curriculum. Of discipline. Of class size. I don’t even want them there for health and safety inspections. Be better if there was a law making it a felony for a government official to come within 100 yards of a school. Leave government out of it. Yes, this means some kids won’t get any formal education – but all those who really want it, will. And as for a kid turning 18 with no schooling, how is that really inferior to a kid getting a high school diploma at 18 when he can’t even read? The 18 year old with no schooling might have at least picked up some life skills along the way.

Concaine Mitch (R-Increasingly MAGA America) is going to bring the Green New Deal up for a vote – so, Democrats can either make themselves politically toxic by voting in favor, or infuriate their base by voting against. I like Cocaine Mitch.

Governor Newsom (D-People’s Republic of California) is putting the high speed rail boondoggle on the back burner. Hey, at least those most juiced in got a big payday for a while.

Rep. Omar (D-West Somalia) has got herself into hot water over her anti-Semitic remarks. The MSM is furious – with us, for noticing. She’s what the Democrats get when they decided that downplaying radical Islam in a play for Muslim votes was the thing to do. Radical Islam is shot through with anti-Semitism. Anyone who subscribes in any way, shape or form to radical Islam is going to be anti-Semitic. It’s as natural as their being anti-American. Our Democrats have made Labour’s choice – there’s more votes and money in Islam than in Judaism…but, it comes with a price.

Governor Cuomo (D-Will the Last Person in NY Please Turn out the Lights) is upset over rich New Yorker’s bailing out and heading to Florida. He’s thinking that Florida is stealing New York’s people…I’d suggest that all the taxes and the lousy climate plays a role, but that would probably be a hate crime.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Did you guys know that our Matt now has a writing gig at Townhall? ((wipes away tear)) And we remember him when he was just this little blogger. This is his latest – pointing out the bit of absurdity of Obama not be embarrassed by his scandals. Give him a read. And, don’t forget his new book The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama comes out on April 3rd. In other writing news, the novel is past 72,000 words, now, and I’m simply not going to meet my original publish date…the story is very much growing in the telling and it’ll be around 100,000 words when done. I’m hoping to have the first draft done in about six more weeks and then it’ll probably be another six months of work before I can get it ready to read. Meanwhile, Worst President is going to be re-issued soon.

I also keep forgetting to mention that Don Surber – a man of excellent quality – has a follow-on book to his Trump the Press: Fake News Follies of 2017. I keep promising myself I’ll do a review of it, and I will, but, meanwhile, check it out yourself.

Codepink has decided to make an in-kind donation to the Trump/Pence 2020 re-election effort – they want JROTC kicked out of schools.

Getting in on the effort to help Trump get re-elected, John Oliver has decided to attack a children’s book written by Pence’s daughter. The book is about a bunny rabbit and the proceeds to go help the victims of human trafficking. Someone noted that all the Democrats ever had to do to beat Trump is not be insane, and they just can’t manage that.

We have long known that the public school system has become an indoctrination system for Progressive ideology – but, now our Progressives are really letting the mask slip. It really struck me about a week ago: why in heck do we even consider the government educating the kids a good idea? I mean, think about it: how stupid do we have to be to believe that is a good idea? I wouldn’t want it even if we completely control the government. No matter what, a government-run school is going to do what the government wants…and, more importantly, what the permanent bureaucracy wants it to do. Let’s provide aid to poor families so they can buy their own education and terminate the public education system.

Cynthia Nixon is running for Governor of New York on the theory that Cuomo isn’t liberal enough. Aside from the fun of watching Progressives eat their own, it came out that she was called an “unqualified lesbian” by a fellow Progressive. I’m trying very hard not to find out what it takes to be a qualified one.

You’ve all read The Lottery, right? Turns out, modern kids are unwilling to condemn human sacrifice these days…you know, who are we to judge, right? Yet another reason to close down the public schools.