Precision Idiocy

 art credit: pixabay.com

From John Ellis at PJ Media:

As you file your taxes, try not to think too hard about the revelation that your hard-earned money is helping someone achieve their dream of becoming a clown. Because, apparently becoming a clown requires going to college, and going to college requires taxpayers footing the bill. Next time you're at the circus, demand a "thank you" from a clown.

CNS News provides more information about the bad news regarding the gross misuse of our taxes: "The federal government is funding a clown school located in House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco-based congressional district that has classes and workshops on 'Precision Idiocy' and how to act like a 'Buffoon,'" CNS wrote. "The school, which is called the 'Clown Conservatory' and is part of the nonprofit Circus Center, received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that runs from June 2017 through May 2018." Clown Conservatory claims to be “the United States' only professional training program for clowns and physical comedians.”

The rest of the report is here. And in related news at the LA Times:

Schwarzenegger, Kasich to team up in L.A.
for group seeking to reform California GOP

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ohio Gov. John Kasich will headline an event to debut a new group seeking to reform the California Republican Party.

The pair will deliver speeches and participate in panels on March 21 in Los Angeles at an event for New Way California, a group formed by Assemblyman Chad Mayes (R-Yucca Valley).

“They will be focused on reminding the Republican Party we need them to be successful, but in order to be successful, they need to choose policies and messaging that helps them grow rather than continue to shrink,” said Daniel Ketchell, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger.

Cue: “Send in the Clowns.”

# # #

Mark Levin debuts on Fox

photo / image credit: pinterest.com

Last night, Mark Levin debuted his Sunday evening program on Fox:

On the Fox News Channel premiere of "Life, Liberty & Levin,"Mark Levin sat down for an illuminating discussion with prominent economist and syndicated columnist Walter E. Williams.

Levin recalled that when he was about 20 years old, he spoke with then-Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.), a close ally of Ronald Reagan.

"One of the things he said to me that has stuck with me ever since [was] 'every day Congress meets, we lose a little bit of our liberty.' It wasn't supposed to be that way," Levin noted.

. . .

Our household reluctantly tuned in last night -- and with low expectations. Levin is often strident and irritating on radio, and we did not sign on to CRTV after his disgraceful treatment/firing of Mark Steyn about a month after they started operations. However, last night’s program was a pleasant surprise. The distinguished economics professor Walter E. Williams was on for the full hour, so there was a sustained discussion instead of the usual 2-minute sound bite, cut off with the host/hostess saying “we’re out of time.”

There is a short video extract at the link (scroll down).

# # # 

More on House Bill 512 - Comprehensive Education Restructuring

image credit: yaf.org

Yesterday, I posted an Action Alert that is circulating among Ohio liberty groups concerning House Bill 512 -- a bill that is 2,430 pages in length! Today, I found more information at the Christian Home Educators of Ohio here. Here's their take :

CHEO LEGISLATIVE ALERT – February 16, 2018
From Melanie Elsey, Legislative liaison for Christian Home Educators of Ohio

Regarding: HB 512 – Comprehensive Education Restructuring

This legislation (2.430 pages in length), sponsored by State Representative Bill Reineke and co-sponsored by Representatives Blessing, Carfagna, Pelanda, Brenner, Riedel, Hoops, and Koehler, was introduced February 14^, 2018. It has not yet been assigned to committee.

HB 512 places the regulations for home education and regulations for non-chartered, nonpublic schools (08 schools) in jeopardy by pulling them out of the jurisdiction of the State Board of Education (partially elected) and placing these policies under the authority of a NON-ELECTED cabinet agency under the sole authority of the Governor.

At Wednesday’s press conference, Ohio House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger stated that HB512 “will be the Ohio House’s mission for the rest of the year.”

It is intended to abolish the Ohio Board of Regents, abolish the Ohio Department of Higher Education, and strip the Ohio Department of Education/State Board of Education of more than 80% of their duties.  It creates an enormous state agency in the executive branch with authority over all the responsibilities of these abolished and diminished agencies. This new agency would be called the Department of Learning and Achievement (DLA).  In the language of the bill this “mega-agency” will have a blank check on their authority to set policy as described in 3301.07(D). 

There will be NO ACCOUNTABILITY to the public – only to the Governor. In various news articles, Governor Kasich has publicly expressed frustration for lack of control of the State Board of Education. This new agency would provide him with the desired oversight and authority in this area.

The bill’s sponsor, Representative Reineke stated, “This bill is about a lifetime of learning – crib to career – birth to work.”  He has served on Governor Kasich’s Taskforce for Workforce Transformation, which will become a department within the DLA and he is genuinely excited about the intent of this legislation to streamline how students are prepared for what he calls the “new knowledge economy.”

CHEO is working to review and analyze all of these proposed policies within the 2430 pages of this legislation.  It will absolutely affect every child in this state for generations to come.

IMMEDIATE ACTION IS NEEDED:

Home education is not the focus or intent of this legislation, but the shift in authority places ALL POLICIES governing home education in SERIOUS JEOPARDY. Speaker Rosenberger is making this a high priority and, as such, this legislation will likely be on a fast track – unless legislators hear from you!

1)  Please contact your own State Representative and urge him/her to OPPOSE HB512. In your own words, please express the importance of keeping policies that govern pre-K to grade 12 education with the State Board of Education, where you have an elected representative. There should not be transfer of power that will have ZERO accountability to the public. Please be respectful, yet firm, in all communications with legislators.

2)  Please contact Speaker Rosenberger (614-466-3506) and ask him to stop his efforts to take away your voice by moving most responsibilities of the State Board of Education to an unelected agency.

3) . . . You can visit the CHEO website at:  www.cheohome.org

You can find contact information for your state representative at www.legislature.ohio.gov

More details on yesterday's Action Alert concerning House Bill 512 are here.

# # #

ACTION ALERT! Ohio Board of Education vs The Feds

One of the three core Tea Party principles is in support of "limited government," and here we have yet another imminent intrusion of the federal government into state business. This Action Alert is already on several Ohio liberty group lists. It’s all about The Feds' attempted overreach into the Ohio Board of Education and school systems, and it appears to undo the provisions passed in 2014 in Ohio HB 487, as summarized here on Rep. Brenner’s webpage and which include the following language:

No official or board shall enter into any agreement or memorandum of understanding with a federal or private entity that requires the state to cede any control of development, adoption or revision of academic content standards. (3301.07, page 12)

I am forwarding the Alert:

Oppose HB 512!

Ohio State Board of Education, Sarah Fowler, alerted us to something that needs our immediate attention.  

On February 14^th, State Representative Bill Reineke (R – 88^th District) introduced HB 512. This legislation would combine the Ohio Department of Education, the Ohio Department of Higher Education, and the Ohio Department of Workforce Transformation into a single department called the Department of Learning and Achievement. It would be organized under the governor. Not surprisingly, Governor Kasich and House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger have voiced their support for the bill.

What this legislation would mean is that our elected State Board of Education would no longer have any say in state education policy, including things like state report cards, educational standards in all subjects, public school operating standards, and home school regulations. All of these currently go through a public hearing process. This legislation would eliminate the public hearings and eliminate any transparency in the process. Further, it would concentrate more power and control in the Executive branch, giving it legislative authority.

If there is one thing that we do not need is to concentrate more power with the governor’s office, especially when it comes to the future of our children.

Call your state legislator this week

HB 512 is moving rapidly through the House, with its first hearing scheduled today. To stop this bill in its tracks, we need to move even more quickly. Start by calling your state representative and let your voice be heard. Tell your representative that you want them to vote NO on this legislation and that support of it will tell us that they are more interested in representing the governor and the House leadership than they are in representing their constituents.

Find your state representative here.

Call the committee members this week

Call every member of the Government Accountability and Oversight Committee and ask them to oppose HB 512.

1)      Chairman Louis Blessing III (Co-sponsor of HB 512), (614) 466-9091

2)      Vice-Chairman Bill Reineke (Sponsor of HB 512), (614) 466-1374

3)      Kathleen Clyde, (614) 466-2004

4)      Keith Faber, (614) 466-6344

5)      Timothy Ginter, (614) 466-8022

6)      Dave Greenspan, (614) 466-0961

7)      Brigid Kelly, (614) 466-5786

8)      Bernadine Kennedy Kent, (614) 466-5343

9)      P. Scott Lipps, (614) 466-6023

10)   Dorothy Pelanda (Co-sponsor of HB 512), (614) 466-8147

11)   Bill Sietz, (614) 466-8258

12)   Ryan Smith, (614) 466-1366

13)   Martin J. Sweeney, (614) 466-3350

# # #

A letter to the boys & young men of America

Mr. Incredible

Amidst all the shrieking about toxic masculinity, I thought this column, by J. Ishiro Finney,  was worth posting in its entirety:

A response to the mass shooting in Florida.

The bodies aren’t even cold yet and already you are being blamed.

Yes you.

All of you.

The boys and young men who will grow up to become one half of America’s future.

Once again, due to society’s failure to raise you, to teach you, to properly guide you on your path to manhood, your mere existence is being held responsible for seventeen more deaths—this time in Florida, and once again, at a school. The headlines of the last few days say it all:

  “Guns don’t kill people; men and boys kill people, experts say”
  -USA TODAY

  “Michael Ian Black reacts to Florida shooting: Boys are broken”
  -New York Daily News

  “How Gun Violence And Toxic Masculinity Are Linked, In 8 Tweets”
  -The Huffington Post

  “Toxic white masculinity: The killer that haunts American life”
  -Salon

  “Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Us”
  -The Boston Globe

  “Toxic Masculinity Is Killing Us”
  -Harpers Bazaar

  “Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings; Blame Men”
  -Politico

In the handful of decades I’ve been alive, I’ve seen America shift from a culture of responsibility to one of blame. We don’t solve problems anymore. We cry, we pray for, we seek to find closure, and then finally, slaughter a sacrificial lamb for our sins. When I was young and Columbine happened, that lamb was Marilyn Manson and video games. Before that, it was D&D and Twisted Sister. 

These days, though, as body counts continue to rise and excuses continue to vanish, the lamb America has chosen to sacrifice is you. Rather than take responsibility for the seeds we’ve sown, the culture we built, and the disaster you’ve been left to inherit, we as a nation have chosen to lie to ourselves. To listen and believe those who claim that the answer is simple: “Boys are simply born bad.”

As an aging Gen Xer watching this tragedy unfold, I can’t help but look back at my youth and realize we were the dry run for this “crisis of masculinity” as the media likes to call it. In my time I’ve watched as fathers were pushed out of the home, separated from their children, and their role in society debased and devalued. Like you, I was taught male behavior was bad behavior. That I was broken and needed to be fixed. Drugs, therapy, mass socialization were required to save me from my most innate instincts—

—the need compete.

—the drive to create.

—the urge to protect.

—the desire for female affection.

Like you, I was told these instincts were not only wrong, but dangerous. That due to my Original Sin of being born a boy, I was destined to mature into a lustful monster and an oppressor of women. All this was burned into me before I even reached college, where campus policy actually assumed all men to be rapists waiting to happen.

It isn’t hard to see how we got here, to an age when America is more than willing to sacrifice its boys. To quote Fight Club, “We’re a generation of men raised by women.” And the women who raised my generation had a saying: All men are pigs. But there’s another saying those same women were enamored with and that is: The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.

So here we are, coming close to fifty years of single mothers raising their boys as if they were animals. Two generations of young men raised to believe they’re broken, immoral, and dangerous. That their natural state, if left unchecked and unmedicated, is a sexual ticking time bomb of rape and abuse. Half a century of academia peddling a grim version of history that holds your gender personally responsible for all the wrongs ever to have happened in the world. And a press, that at this very moment, is blaming YOU for every school shooting to have ever occurred.

After all this, how could there not be a crisis of masculinity?

So to the boys and young men of America, believe me when I say it isn’t you who should be apologizing for the state of our world today. This mess was set in motion long before you were born.

You are not bad.

You are not broken.

You are not inherently evil or a sexual abuser in waiting.

You are boys who were robbed of your right to be men.

All your life you’ve been told to act, think, and behave like women. To suppress your passions, your pride, your need to compete and drive to achieve.

Now society is crumbling around us.

Feminizing boys didn’t make better men. It’s resulted in broken homes and shattered families and record suicide rates. It’s destroying any notion of a healthy partnership between men and women, and is pushing us ever closer to total collapse of gender relations.

Boys, we don’t need you to be like women, the world has plenty of women, already.

What the world needs now more than ever is for you to be men.

For you to grow-up, to grow strong, and do what men do.

For it is men’s strength and determination that tamed the wilderness, built civilization, and has kept the world fed despite all predictions we’d all die starving before the year 2000. It’s men’s curiosity that lead us to explore the oceans, to conquer space, and peer into the tiniest of microcosms of the human body. It was men who built the cities we inhabit, the luxuries we enjoy, the medicines that keep us alive. Men built the road, the plumbing, the electrical grid, the phone in your hand, the internet it’s connected to.

Men have always been innovators, explores, defenders, and leaders.

But most importantly, men have always been fathers.

So to the boys and young men of America, please read this and take every word to heart.

The world needs you.

-J. Ishiro Finney, Feb 2018

- - - - -

My take-away: America has shifted from a culture of responsibility to one of blame.

# # #

Happy President’s Day

image credit: smvdiscoverymuseum.org

Thoughts from Melissa Emery at CNS News:

I recently received an email from an old friend who lives in a very blue state exclaiming that Trump was “not his president.” 

. . .

I tried not to respond in anger, but merely with regret to learn that Trump was not “his” president, since wages were up, taxes were down, the stock market was up, and over 2 million new jobs had been created. Black and Latino unemployment were at new all-time lows. Were these not things that liberals cared about anymore? But, perhaps, I suggested a bit snarkily, these bits of news had not appeared in the New York Times. I doubt that I’ll ever hear from him again.

As the days went by, his comment that Trump was not his president kept rolling around in my head. I wanted to ask him, who IS your president? Are you operating now without a president? Is your state no longer part of the Union? And how does not having the United States’ president as your president work for you? Do you still get all your Social Security payments and Medicare benefits? Can you still sit in your lovely cabin by a lake and pontificate about how much smarter you are than people who voted for Mr. Trump?

. . .

I didn’t like Obama. I wanted him and his crew out of there as soon as possible. But it never occurred to me to say he was not my president. He was president of the United States, for better or for worse. We cannot continue to be united if we decide which laws to obey and which presidents to acknowledge. If you don’t like Trump, work to elect someone you do like next time.  . . .

Mark Steyn posted a musical medley in honor of President’s Day starting with this introduction:

Happy Presidents Day to all our American readers - and yes, I know it's grotesque to have to put Jimmy Carter and Franklin Pierce up there with Washington and Lincoln, but don't blame me . . . 

From a history.com link on President’s Day:

Presidents’ Day is an American holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February. Originally established in 1885 in recognition of President George Washington, it is still officially called “Washington’s Birthday” by the federal government. Traditionally celebrated on February 22—Washington’s actual day of birth—the holiday became popularly known as Presidents’ Day after it was moved as part of 1971’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act, an attempt to create more three-day weekends for the nation’s workers. While several states still have individual holidays honoring the birthdays of Washington, Abraham Lincoln and other figures, Presidents’ Day is now popularly viewed as a day to celebrate all U.S. presidents past and present.

Cleveland Tea Party salutes George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald J. Trump.

# # #

Newt's "Practical proposal to protect our children"

Photo credit: newstalkflorida.com

The other evening on Fox News, Sean Hannity proposed his solutions for security on school campuses, to prevent another Parkland shooting from taking place. His proposals mostly involved increased armed presence in halls and classrooms, security clearances at all entrances similar to checkpoints at entrances to federal buildings, and so forth. I did not much like his proposals, as they would turn our campuses into the very militarized environments that we associate with police states. 

During the Parkland shooting, ROTC training saved lives. CNN reported:

Colton Haab heard seven gunshots, and his Junior ROTC training kicked in.

The 17-year-old junior knew a gunman was on his high school campus Wednesday afternoon so he ushered 60 to 70 people to shelter in an open Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps room. At that point, he realized that the Kevlar sheets generally used for the Junior ROTC marksmanship program could come in handy.

"We took those sheets, and we put them in front of everybody so they weren't seen, because they were behind a solid object and the Kevlar would slow the bullet down," Haab told CNN on Thursday.

In his proposals, Speaker Newt Newt sets forth some alternative ideas that expand on the Junior ROTC trainee's quick thinking. The excerpt below is from his newsletter (also posted online at Fox News):

This week’s tragic attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is a deeply painful reminder of how much we have failed to honestly confront the problem of school shootings in America.

Putting up “Gun-Free Zone” signs is not a solution. It is an act of self-deception. By definition, the determined killers carry their guns past the signs. They are not slowed down for one second by community sentiment.

The current strategies of responding to a violent threat by either freezing students in place or accelerating student evacuation both carry seeds of disaster. Freezing the students in place simply sets them up to be killed methodically by a brutal, evil, or mentally ill person. Having them flee may lead them to run right into the path of the killer.

. . .

The fact is, evil people with guns must be stopped by good people with guns.

Furthermore, the faster good people can respond, the fewer innocent people will be killed.

Every school in America should have several teachers and administrators trained in firearms who are permitted to carry concealed weapons. The number of these “protectors of the innocent” in each school should be determined by the number of students. Agreeing to serve in this role might be encouraged with an appropriate monthly stipend. After all, in Georgia, teachers who agree to serve as coaches are paid stipends ranging from $150 to as much as $400 (and sometimes more for large football programs). Surely, we can afford to provide this type of incentive to people who want to help protect our children.

Because these protectors would have concealed weapons and not be in uniform, would-be killers would have no idea who might be capable of ending their threat by ending them.

. . .

If we are really serious about protecting our children, we must have trained and equipped protectors prepared to handle this type of situation whenever there are school activities. The Parkland school had an armed officer assigned to the campus, but the officer never encountered the shooter and was not able to respond in time. Dramatically increasing the presence of uniformed, visibly-armed security guards, however, might create an environment ill-suited for learning.

Instead, teachers and administrators serving as protectors could complement and support the dedicated officer or security personnel who are already serving in many schools. This combination of using uniformed police officers to handle standard school security challenges, while also having responsible adult protectors who are already going to be working in the school prepared to provide additional force in the case of a catastrophic emergency, like a mass shooting, is the most effective and practical way to protect our children.

Read Newt’s full column here.

We all know now that the FBI completely dropped the ball on this one. See Sundance here. It wasn’t the first failure by the FBI to act on tips of imminent danger. And it won’t be the last. Message to schools: you are probably on your own. Prepare accordingly. And I thought Newt's ideas were on the right track.

# # #