Chaos Manor View, Thursday, July 21, 2016
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983
I keep reminding you that the education mess is deep and getting deeper, because it’s so easy to forget that it wasn’t always this way. If you want to minimize income disparity, you ought to minimize education disparity; but leveling is very difficult – folks got money scratch where they itch, so it ain’t so easy robbin’ the rich; easier by far, to keep robbin’ the poor. And lousy public schools are a good way for robbing the poor. It only takes one undisciplined student being either ignored by the teacher or coddled by the teacher, to really limit the education of the rest of the class. And of course students who don’t understand the language, or the culture, or have any background education, take up a great deal of the teacher’s time, so making sure every classroom has a fair share of kids who really need help is a very good way for seeing that the ordinary middle class kids whose parents pay for those schools don’t learn much. And we can import an infinite number of kids who need all of the teacher’s time, and fill the classrooms with them, and call it equality.
But if you were to try to design a system to produce low class education, and make going to private schools very beneficial, and thus widen all gaps into castes, I wonder what system would be better than the one we are developing? And closing the Charter schools, making sure that all but the rich have lousy systems, is a great way to continue; only we never catch wise, do we?
The joys of diversity.
Ted Cruz, like Nelson Rockefeller in ’64, is concerned about principles, not Party, and thus wants to assure that Hillary Clinton is elected President since it can’t be him. If that wasn’t his intent, it is the effect.
As a guy thrown out of the Conservatives by the egregious Frum at National Review because I opposed the invasion of Iraq, I can’t speak for Conservatives. I remain a student and admirer of Burke, and I was a protégé of Russell Kirk and Steve Possony – got my doctorate under Cole at the University of Washington – so I used to have Conservative credentials until the National Review crowd decided you had to be an international interventionist like the neo-conservatives to be a conservative. I think I know something about conservative principles. As a Republican County Chairman I was I think the third chairman to have an actor named Ronald Reagan speak at a rally (at the Orange Bowl in San Bernardino) and I got along with Reagan fine, years later chairing the kitchen cabinet committee that wrote the Strategic Defense (Ted Kennedy called it Star Wars) proposal.
Trump is no movement conservative, but he has conservative principles. He doesn’t want a bigger government, he believes people can do very well without so much government, and he believes the Constitution means what it says – exactly as the Federalist Papers which, after all, were newspaper articles when they were published, states. Trump won’t expand government, he’ll appoint scholars to the Supreme Court, and he’ll put America First in negotiations. He won’t import hundreds of terrorists along with hundreds of thousands of refugees – a majority of whom have no intention of assimilating.
Under Trump I don’t know what the future will be, but I know quite well what a third term for Obama will mean; and Hillary is that third term.
As to personal honesty, Trump is a sharp business man. You may draw your own conclusions about Mrs. Clinton.
As Mr. Ryan said, this election is important. Key. It is going to determine the future. It is a maximum effort mission.
Mrs. Trump hit a standing up three base flier off the right field wall so Fox News had a pipsqueak analyzer on two hours later to comment on her plagiarism; as if there were all that many ways to say “Work hard, and make your word your bond. Be honest. ” You can’t imagine Hillary saying that without gales of laughter. Early in Barrack Hussein Obama’s days, his charming wife could say it; today she’d have a bit more difficulty. Which is the point. It used to be that way in America. It might be again. And we may have enough of the joys of diversity that it will never be again. If we lose this election, no one will ever say it again. And that’s not discussed : that Trumps family seems to believe in working hard and keeping promises.
We now have an estimate on fixing my wall. Since it has been falling for forty years, and it’s deductible, I guess I can’t complain too much. At least it can be done.
I’m hard at work on the Cthulhu book, but stuff like this is certainly a distraction. More later; I have to go work on fiction.
2300 Trump’s acceptance speech was remarkable: as Newt Gingrich said afterwards, probably there is no other political figure in America who could have made it. It was certainly effective with the focus group of undecided voters consulted after the speech. Only 7 were converted and would vote for Trump, but none would vote for Hillary, and a dozen said they now leaned toward Trump – if they could believe him. Trump’s family made impressive appearances, too, although I expect many women viewers were more impressed with the crew of elves it took to manage the appearances of Trump’s wife and daughters. All told it was an impressive speech, but about half an hour too long. In general, most speeches are too long; this one not fearfully so, and not all that long at all compared to many historical orations. Millenials don’t much like long speeches (or essays).
People don’t seem to take Daesh economic warfare seriously. Consider this:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article90782637.html
Some Albanian hacker compromised, what seems to be, a small business.
He used customer data to create a kill list for ISIS. Knowing that large businesses and politicians like Hillary Clinton cannot keep their data secure; indeed, the United States government routinely has data breaches and offers “free” identity theft protection to those concerned at considerable taxpayer expense, no doubt.
Any intelligent person who wants to mitigate their risk of being on such a list would, prudently, stop doing business with small businesses online that didn’t seem secure. And, since figuring that out would require time, it seems likely to me that most would rather just go to a larger retailer with hopefully better security or at least lots of other folks that might be gotten to first. After all, when you’re running from a wild beast you do not have to run faster than the beast; you only have to run faster than the slowest person in front of the beast.
But, I have no confidence enough people will be convinced of this idea before it’s too late and we’re onto the next idea while they’re still trying to figure out the last one. I’m starting to think that maladjustment is the biggest threat to national security.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
Daesh needs to be destroyed, not just molested. All the special forces we have can’t do that. We now need a full Corps, including Heavy Armor and an Armored Cavalry, artillery, all the A-10’s, and considerable air superiority assets to protect the Warthogs from SAM and other anti-aircraft. It means a major effort, and now that Turkey is unreliable, Iraqi Kurdistan is probably the right p,lace for an air base, and the base to operate from.
It will take considerable skill to handle Turkey now.
Anything mush smaller will mean far more casualties. We need overwhelming, mind-numbing force to deal with this threat, even though our allies will do most of the fighting; but there needs to be overwhelming force to protect our striking forces.
That’s the only way America makes war. We are not can Empire and we don’t have mercenary legions to rule without the consent of the governed. We should have learned that in the Philippines long ago. We don’t colonize well.
well, they said it
“2016 is the hottest year on record,” CBS Evening News, 20 July 2016, 5:36pmCDT
Pardon me while I laugh — I played polo in heat much greater than this, with higher heat indices, more than ten years ago…
Stephanie
Worth your time: http://realclimatescience.com/2016/07/global-temperatures-are-mostly-fake/
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Denmark, Norway and global warming
The weather in Northern Europe, especially Denmark, is getting warmer in the winter. Little snow falls in Denmark anymore. The young I’ve talked to cry Global Warming, the old recall Greenland had dairy farms in the time of the Vikings. The old don’t seem to missing the freezing winters.
Just anecdotal evidence from our family vacation.
—
Phil
We all know temperatures are defined, not measured. The reported temperatures are not data, they are adjusted. The adjustments have been getting more frantic as heating has slowed. We know the Earth was warmer in Viking times than it is now. How much warmer we don’t know, but enough to extend growing seasons in China and Europe.
‘It simply makes no sense to tie America’s security to countries of such modest importance that are situated in such unpromising tactical circumstances.’
—————————————
Roland Dobbins
One of Trump’s major points was that our allies are not paying their share. Extended deterrence was often discussed during the Cold War. One consequence was a large military force in Germany, large enough to keep the Russians from just driving to the Rhine in hours. My daughter was S2 for an artillery unit in the Fulda Gap; large enough to stop small units, but no more than a trip wire if facing the entire Red Army. Eisenhower’s carefully worded statement that attacks on our units in Germany would be met wit “massive retaliation at a time and place of our choosing”, along with the cold but easily observed competence of SAC – the Strategic Air Force — was sufficient. If it was a bluff, it was a damned good one, and the SAC generals at Dropkick and Looking Glass didn’t know it was a bluff. They were ready if ordered, and the Polit Buro knew it.
Now SAC is no more. The Navy’s boomers are counter value – city buster – weapons, not counterforce – war fighting – forces. I make no doubt they are ready and efficient, but they are to avenge us after we are dead; they would never be used in a retaliation “at a time and place of our choosing”. Estonia was “my” captive nation in our captive nations program, and I came to admire the Estonians and their American-recognized government in exile (the US did not recognize the legality of the incorporation of the Baltic Republics into the Soviet Union after World War II). But Eisenhower, then Kennedy, then Nixon did not pledge American lives to the defense of Estonia and Lithuania, and they were freed only after the general collapse of the Soviet empire. Now they are pledged to consider an attack on the United States as an attack on them. I don’t know the size of the Balt armies, but I suppose that among the three of them they might field 20,000 men with which to invade Russia if Washington was atom bombed.
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
