Irreversible Damage

After the Boston bombings, a poll revealed that Fox News was the most watched and most trusted network covering the incident. Although the rejection of liberal biased networks is encouraging, damage caused by years of voter ignorance aided by media bias may be irreversible.

A recent poll shows that 42% of Americans don’t know that Obamacare has been passed into law. Unfortunately, many of these people vote. The hastily passed healthcare bill that is proving to be a disaster was sold to the public by a media vested in “making history” and reluctant to report on the bill’s failures. Congress is now trying to exempt itself from Obamacare while some unions, avid Obama backers, are trying to get many of its provisions repealed, but the media continues praising it.

Another poll shows that 55% of Americans don’t know that Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the country, actually performs abortions. It receives taxpayer money based on the perception that its function is only women’s healthcare, a notion reinforced by President Obama stating publicly that Planned Parenthood provides mammograms, which it doesn’t.

The current trial of abortionist doctor Kermit Gosnell, accused of killing newborns as part of his abortion practice, went unmentioned by the mainstream media until it was forced to cover it because of the attention from Fox News and other responsible news outlets. The progressive media fully approves of abortion so it is reluctant to report anything negative concerning it.

Due to media-assisted voter ignorance, many abortion practices that most find despicable have taken root in society and flaws in Obamacare adversely affecting everyone have become law. It now seems likely that immigration reform will focus on amnesty and ignore border security, putting us all in danger for years to come.

Permanent damage has been done and more is sure to come if the biased media continues unfettered. A Republican White House would surely compel the liberal media to return to being a “watchdog” critically investigating administration policies. If that doesn’t occur, the damage already done will end up seeming miniscule compared to what is coming.

David J. Hentosh

Obama’s State of Denial Address

President Obama once again delivered a campaign speech disguised as a State of the Union address. Obama is good with rhetoric that stirs emotions while denying reality, so those who succumb to such gibberish will be ecstatic. Those who are not in denial will be frightened by the direction this president is taking.

Obama’s denial of his administration’s failure to improve job growth was evident in his calling for a higher minimum wage. If there are no jobs available at a minimum rate of $7.25 an hour, how would raising it to $9.00 help create more? It wouldn’t, and many experts have warned against such an increase at this time, especially since it could result in jobs being exported to China.

Obama further denied the job crisis and threw out another emotional bone to hungry believers by stressing a college education. The unemployment lines are full of college graduates unable to find jobs, so the primary emphasis needs to be on the economy and job growth. Talking of college educations certainly plucks parents’ heart strings, Obama’s intent; but it hides his administration’s failure to improve the job market and reduce unemployment.

Obama declared Al Qaeda to be a “shadow of its former self”, denying Al Qaeda’s continued successful attacks around the globe. Declaring Al Qaeda defeated doesn’t make it so, but it rationalizes bringing troops home so he can cut the defense budget. Obama only cares about his social programs and cutting the defense budget will help him finance those programs. Pretending Iran and North Korea are of little threat also helps him in that endeavor.

In Obama’s eyes, everything is going well because he is, by hook or by crook, finding a way to get everything he wants. Consequences are meaningless to one convinced of superior intelligence, especially when duped voters and a highly invested media ignore accountability.  His “green” agenda has been a costly disaster, but that bandwagon is still full and rolling.

Inadvertently, the president did touch on reality in his speech at one point when he said his spending proposals would not increase the deficit by “a single dime”. They will increase the deficit by billions of dimes and saddle future generations with the bill, higher taxes, and programs they will no longer be able to afford. On the brighter side, fast food joints will end up with the most educated employees of any industry – as long as Michelle doesn’t find a way of eliminating fast food.

David J. Hentosh

Say Goodbye to Christmas

It has become commonplace for the holiday season to bring furor and protests from progressives concerning Christmas trees, nativity scenes, and almost anything traditionally associated with Christmas. Even though polls show that a majority of people still favor those traditions, it is now inevitable that they will be eradicated.

On FOX’s “The O’Reilly Factor”, Jesse Waters reported back to Bill O’Reilly his results of random interviews on the streets of Rhode Island concerning the governor’s renaming of a Christmas tree as a “Holiday tree”. Waters reported that most people he talked to preferred Christmas tree to Holiday tree, except at Brown University. He reported: “Everyone I spoke to at Brown University was pro-holiday tree”. Everyone.

The take-over of this country’s education system by progressives has been complete for years and students at every level are fully indoctrinated with a progressive agenda that has been fed to them, unchallenged, their entire time in school. They are the future of this country and fully programmed to implement what they have been taught.

There will always be a few who will not accept such an agenda, but they will be ostracized and silenced, perhaps even jailed, by a majority indoctrinated (brainwashed?) to follow that agenda religiously. It has already become a substitute religion for many having blind faith in the veracity of its tenets.

With the minds and hearts of our youth hijacked by the progressive agenda, there is little hope that future generations will even look back on American traditions such as Christmas with anything but scorn. It will become an historical embarrassment eliciting even more guilt over this country’s evil past.

So, the train has left the station; the chickens have hatched; the cat’s out of the bag; the ship has sailed; the die is cast – pick whichever idiom suits you best because there is no turning back. Say goodbye to Christmas and much, much more. The battle for our children and our traditions has been lost before most even knew there was a war. The enemy within has won.

David J Hentosh

UPDATE: Liberal Censors on Campus

Another Nanny State Failure

Idealism begat socialism which begat the Nanny State where “choice” is taken from the individual and given to the government which supposedly knows best about all things and provides everything one needs in order to live happily ever after. The intent may seem good but, as everyone knows, intentions pave the road to hell.

Obama embraces the Nanny State and has been forcing idealistic policies that fail miserably when confronted with reality. Solyndra failed because the technology is not efficient or economically feasible. The Chevy Volt is failing because it is premature technology forced upon the public, wasting taxpayer money. The entire coal industry has been decimated by a “green” policy blind to consequences and reality. Dependency on foreign oil remains a problem while our own oil is left untapped because of idealistic notions.

The latest Nanny State failure, pushed by Michelle Obama, is the school lunch “mandate” from the Department of Agriculture. This mandate forces schools to eliminate popular foods and offer reduced calorie lunches (at a higher cost, of course) of healthy foods such as humus and black bean salads to children who, as any parent knows, usually abhor them. Consequently, children are throwing away the food and going hungry rather than eating what Michelle knows is best.

The mandate’s “one size fits all” calorie cap doesn’t account for student athletes and others needing more calories and certainly doesn’t satisfy the appetites of teenagers. High school football players can burn up to 3,000 calories a day and the 850 calorie maximum doesn’t work for them. Children are going hungry and parents are protesting in anger. The slippery slope of government mandates is once again causing havoc – and failing.

On the positive side, Obama could learn much-needed economic lessons. Students are protesting by bringing lunch to school rather than buying it in cafeterias, hitting schools in the pocketbook. A student black market in items such as chocolate syrup is springing up, demonstrating the backbone of a market economy: “supply and demand”. Perhaps Obama will also learn that a government program, even when mandated, is useless when people won’t use it. Then, again, Obama knows best – right?

David J. Hentosh

Blue Man School Blues

The Blue School website announces that “our mission is to cultivate creative, joyful and compassionate inquirers who use courageous and innovative thinking to build a harmonious and sustainable world”. Absent in that mission statement is any mention of teaching reading or writing or any other basic skills, so why are parents of Blue School students upset that their children can’t read?

Established by the founders of the successful and entertaining Blue Man Group, the Blue School was to be a new type of school that would “remove the kinds of educational practices that we believe are not working so well and amp up the best practices and innovations that we believe have great promise”. It seems teaching children to read was determined to be a practice that was not working so well.

Angry parents are pulling their children out of the expensive $32K-per-year private school because their kids are barely able to read and they are bored. The school’s curriculum is decided by the kindergarten-to-third-grade students and there are no books, no tests, and no set arrival time. What could possibly go wrong?

It is hard to find sympathy for parents eager to spend a ton of money on an untried, “progressive” school established by a Vegas act wanting to “create something the world has never seen” and “have a good time doing it”. It is, however, easy to feel sorry for the kids who now have to make up the lost time that was wasted in a “nurturing environment” clueless about educating.

Kids do not get to choose their parents and shouldn’t get to choose their curriculum in first grade either. Perhaps the parents learned more from this Blue School experience than the kids did. We can only hope they did – for the kids’ sake.

David J. Hentosh

College “Dispensing” Education

Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania offers amenities for students that are sure to become popular on other college campuses. Available in the school’s health center is a vending machine that dispenses the emergency contraceptive Plan B along with condoms and pregnancy tests – and nasal decongestants. (Decongestants certainly legitimize the machine as a health aid.)

The university says it does not profit from the sale of Plan B ($25 a pop) but it certainly must benefit from catering to the prurient interests of college-bound students. Rather than trying to instill outmoded values of sexual restraint and self discipline, it is much easier to just deal with the consequences of random, copious sexual activity.

One can easily imagine that penicillin will become the next popular, and necessary, item dispensed from the machine. In the not-too-distant future, medicinal marijuana will find its way into the machine and any remaining “no smoking” signs on campus will add an asterisk to allow its use – for health reasons, of course.

Sex on college campuses runs a very close second to drinking as the most popular activity. Perhaps it would be prudent to install beer vending machines in the dorms for the sole purpose of preventing students from driving under the influence. The school would not profit from the sale of beer, either, but enrollment may very well get a significant spike.

Remember this “health aid” vending machine when you find Shippensburg at the top of your college-bound daughter’s list of schools. It will give you a warm, cuddly feeling and ease the stress of watching her leave the nest for a higher education.

David J. Hentosh

NY Dep’t of Education Banning Words

This is a sad commentary on “progressive” trends in our education system and the misguided thought process of those in charge. It is not the children who are too sensitive, it is the adults who are supposed to know better.

From CBS New York

The New York City Department of Education is waging a war on words of sorts, and is seeking to have words they deem upsetting removed from standardized tests. Fearing that certain words and topics can make students feel unpleasant, officials are requesting 50 or so words be removed from city-issued tests…The word “dinosaur” made the hit list because dinosaurs suggest evolution which creationists might not like…“Halloween” is targeted because it suggests paganism; a “birthday” might not be happy to all because it isn’t celebrated by Jehovah’s Witnesses…the word “dancing” is also taboo…“Poverty”… could make kids jealous…Also banned are references to “divorce” and “disease,” because kids taking the tests may have relatives who split from spouses or are ill…Abuse…alcohol…crime…computers in the home…homelessness…hunting…junk food…nuclear weapons…poverty…terrorism…violence…

Read it here: War on Words

DJH

Another Progressive Failure

In the LA Unified School District, thousands of students have stopped participating in the school lunch program, school lunches are being thrown away, and a black market has emerged among students providing ‘unhealthy’ food. After one year of the school district’s decision to force healthy menus on students, the program’s failure cannot be ignored.

 “Healthy” lunches for students certainly sounds reasonable and something everyone agrees would be ideal – But there’s the rub. Ideals are perfect and trying to legislate or force perfection does not work because reality is not perfect. This is the basic flaw in a progressive ideology that refuses to accept anything less than perfection and ignores human nature.

A hungry student does not do well in school, so school lunches are important. What a child eats is a parent’s responsibility and the best a school should do is offer a variety for the student’s choice. The fact that many students do not have responsible parents does not mean that schools should stop focusing on education to become substitute parents. Providing food that students will eat establishes a better learning environment that allows a school to do its job.

Progressive failures such as this abound. Obamacare mandates, Chevy Volt, Solyndra, UN climate change conference, and many other attempts to force ideological ideals verify the futility of doing so. Everyone has heard the old adage about good intentions paving the road to hell, but progressives’ quest for perfection breeds a self-righteous attitude that refutes past wisdom. Progressives focus on what “should” be and fail to see what “is” and end up trying to force what they believe “must” be. The majority suffers because of it.

David J. Hentosh

Pay Children to go to School?

From NBC News via Drudge

The city of Camden will be paying almost 70 high school students $100 each to go to school in the first three weeks of the year.

Read it and shake your head in wonder here: Camden Pays Students to Not Skip School

DJH

Miscellaneous Thoughts and Observations

- Isn’t it a little strange, silly, and frightening that we put our money in a fickle stock market that goes up or down on a whim? It is more fickle than a wo…never mind…

- The government’s main responsibility is our defense, but don’t tell those hikers who Iran wrongly arrested and convicted. The US has been useless in attempts to free them, making one wonder if traveling outside the country cancels US citizenship. If one ever needed a reason to go into Iran in force and, while there, accidentally bomb a few nuclear facilities…

-  Why is it that so many on the left continue to find religion, race, or personality as the main reason a GOP candidate is or isn’t popular – rather than policies? Chris Matthews is the latest one, trying to justify Rick Perry’s popularity on not being a Mormon.

-  If Obama has a plan to create jobs, why do we have to wait until September for it? And where was this plan for the past three years when the jobless numbers were increasing rapidly?

-  When did raising taxes become such a popular idea and the answer for everything (at least for the left)? Haven’t we learned that throwing money at a problem is not a solution? Our school systems and the War on Drugs are perfect examples of the fallacy of this notion.

-  If ALL federal government departments were forced to cut 10% from their budgets without cutting personnel or services, it is almost certain that a lot of waste would be eliminated – and it would save approximately $300 billion per year. That’s real money – and we all know there’s at least 10% waste in government.

I’m just saying…

David J. Hentosh