Monday, January 10, 2011

Left Writes Narrative of Blame in Blood Against Conservative Enemies

The Safeway at Ina and Oracle Road at the scene of the 2011 Tucson shooting. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Some Leftist can’t wait to use the tragedy in Arizona as an excuse to rob law-abiding Americans of their Second Amendment freedom, but as reprehensible as that is, we have seen even worse behavior from the Left in the wake of this bloodshed.

As I pointed out yesterday, after Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot along with several other people, we didn’t even know the shooter’s name much less a single think about his politics–and few of us knew Giffords was a relatively moderate Democrat who had opposed the Obama Administration in illegal aliens–before liberals began smearing conservatives, blaming the killing on Sarah Palin and “heated rhetoric” from the Tea Party movement.

Even in the wake of this sad tragedy, it was interesting to watch information about the gunman emerge. First we learned his name, Jared Loughner, and soon other details began to emerge. We quickly saw that he was a complete loon, with an odd mix of nutty ideas. Some of his statements made online sounded as if they could have been made by a conservative, but most of them sounded like the demented rantings of a Leftist. Friends who knew him confirmed that he was a liberal. We learned that he was a pot-smoking God-hater who had been rejected by the military and seems to have been involved in the making of a video which involved the burning of an American flag.

Of course, none of these details mattered to the “mainstream” media. They had a meme to promote (conservatives are evil and filled with hate and violence), and they weren’t about to allow petty things like facts and information to get in the way of running with their narrative. As Jim Hoft at Big Government points out, referencing a Politico article, Democrat operatives were quick to see political opportunity in this tragedy:

“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

There was a hypersonic rush to judgment far in advance of even sketchy information–a stark contrast to the “molasses in January” pace with which the “mainstream” media struggled mightily not to “rush to judgment when a man with an Islamic name yelling “Allahu Akbar” opened fire on unarmed people at Ft. Hood a little more than a year ago.

Also interesting is the contrast between the vitriolic and truly hateful language fired off by the Left on a daily basis during the Bush years…and this newfound concern about “heated rhetoric.”

Ironically (hypocritically?), Leftists clamored that they should be allowed to trash our country and our president–even in the middle of war–without any criticism whatsoever, but when patriotic Americans take a stand for freedom, for the Constitution, for the values upon which our nation was founded…the same Left demands that these patriotic Americans be shut down and silenced by whatever means (including lies) necessary.

  • NY State Comptroller Alan Hevesi’s statement about “putting a bullet between the president’s eyes” of President Bush
  • Liberal radio talk show host Randi Rhodes calls for the assassination of President Bush.
  • An ad taken out by Florida Democrats calling for the assassination of Donald Rumsfeld
  • Betty Williams’ statement that she wanted to kill President Bush.
  • Leftists holding signs that say “Hitler=Poland, Bush=Iraq,” signs saying President Bush should be shot, “I’m here to kill Bush
  • Craig Kilborn’s show which superimposed the words “Snipers Wanted” over an image of President Bush
  • Pick any of something like 5,500 images online one can find that reference killing President Bush
  • Liberal radio talk show host Mike Malloy hoping that Glenn Beck will commit suicide and that Rush Limbaugh would choke to death

This is only a tiny handful of the statements calling for murder from the Left.

Consider too this newfound angst from the Left about the use of ”military” terms in political discourse. Even though for decades if not longer, we have referred to a candidate’s campaign funds or ”war chest,” talked about defeated candidates going “down in flames” or being “targeted for defeat,” or when they are criticized they are “under fire” for something.

Even Christianity, the religion founded by the man who told us to love our enemies, recognizes both the illustrative value of military metaphors, and the fact that in the very real war between good and evil, military analogies do apply:

  • In 2 Corinthians 10:5 Christians are admonished to ”demolish arguments” and “take captive” thoughts that are contrary to God’s standards
  • In Ephesians 6:1-17 the Christian is told to put on the “armor of God” to fight spiritual battles

And who can forget the lyrics of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a song so popular during the time when our nation was fighting a real war against the evil of slavery.

The Left as well as the Right uses militaristic terms, and (until now) everyone has been grownup enough to realize they are metaphors and analogies, not calls or incitements to violence.

  • Senator/candidate Barack Obama’s statement “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
  • The Democratic Leadership Committee’s “target list” of races with bulls eyes on them, and calls states that Bush won as “behind enemy lines”
  • President Obama says a Republican majority in congress would mean “hand to hand combat.”
  • President Obama tells Hispanic supporters ‘We’re going to punish our enemies.”

No, this is not about “heated rhetoric” or the use of militaristic terms. No rational, informed person is going to fall for that, just as no rational person is going to confuse such terms with a license to commit murder.

It’s about hysterical anger and fear from the Left. Liberalism in America enjoyed a good run in America from the 1930s to the 1970s, and while liberalism has had its triumphs since the 1970s, its adherents have had to watch in recent decades as more and more Americans have awakened to the corrosive, dead-end nature of their ideas. With the unprecedented awakening of the American people personified in the Tea Party movement, the Left now realizes that most Americans understand that their emperor is completely naked. While they still believe in their discredited ideas, they have watched in horror as the majority of Americans began to reject their un-American ideas.

Left with no cogent, rational arguments to make, they have had to rely more and more on lies, deception, smears and fears, and smokescreens in the hopes of, if not convincing Americans, at least intimidating them into acquiescence to their dark agenda.

In 2009, as millions of Americans who had never been politically active before rose up and joined the Tea Party movement, at first the Left tried to ignore it and pretend it didn’t exist. After somewhere on the order of 2,000 Tax Day Tea Party events took the nation by storm on April 15, 2009, they realized it couldn’t be ignored any longer and so they switched to demonization. A string of charges followed over the next year or year and a half, from claims that Tea Party people were stupid and uninformed (they are actually the most informed and knowledgeable block of Americans), to claims that the Tea Party is racist (despite considerable involvement and leadership in the Tea Party movement by black Americans, as well as Tea Party support of black candidates).

Now, in the wake of a historic sweep in the U.S. House and the loss of several seats in the Senate, the Left is more discredited than ever. Moreover, they are running out of things they can possibly throw at conservatives in the hopes of slowing them down. Then Jared Loughner came along and gave them a bloody gift. Who the shooter was didn’t matter, what his politics were didn’t matter, whether Rep. Giffords was a faithful liberal trooper didn’t matter. All that mattered was jumping on this vehicle and gunning the engine for all it was worth while there might still be some mileage in it.

The Leftists did exactly this same thing in 1995. As far back as 2009 when I could see the election of 2010 coming, I feared some nutcase would do something after the 2010 election, just as Timothy McVeigh did in 1995, and give the Left a vehicle they could ride to intimidate conservatives into silence and inaction. Unfortunately, the 112th Congress was hardly sworn in before a wacko came along and gave the Left a new weapon in their depleted arsenal.

In 1994, Republicans swept to control of the House and Senate in a historic landslide. They came to power in 1995 and immediately set about fulfilling their promised “Contract With America.” They made incredible gains in demolishing the liberal welfare state which had been in place since the days of LBJ and FDR. They were turning back the tide of liberal rot in our great nation at a breathtaking pace…until wackjob Timothy McVeigh bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

The dust had hardly settled before talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, the Republican congress and evil conservatives in general were being blamed. Back then we heard the same kind of blather about “heated rhetoric” and “incendiary talk” and such. No, the war the Left had launched on the U.S. Constitution and the American way of life under FDR–that was not heated or incendiary. No, the war the Left had unleashed mercilessly on every aspect of American culture and institutions in the 1960s–that wasn’t heated or incendiary. No, “heated and incendiary” only applies when conservatives talk about returning our nation to our historical principles and placing our government back under constitutional authority.

Sadly, we let them get away with it in 1995. Ultimately still being political animals, Republicans in congress allowed themselves to be cowed by the relentless pressure from the “mainstream” media. They abandoned their passion for returning America to her roots and just settled in to become the big government big spending Right-wingers that we grew to despise in the 2000s.

They did it again on a smaller scale when Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) died in a plane crash in 2002. The Left was so utterly shameless, they turned Wellstone’s funeral into a fundraiser and campaign rally to get the liberal troops fired up. Wellstone’s funeral was so tawdry and crass, even Slate–no conservative publication, to be sure–compared it to a “pep rally” and described some of the rhetoric as “creepy arrogance.”

But liberals won’t get away with it this time like they did in 1995. Back then, we had Rush Limbaugh on AM radio and that was about it. Fox News was just getting started, there was very little conservative media, only a fledgling internet with no blogosphere and YouTube repository of truth to document liberal lies and misdeeds. Most people still did not use email, there was no Twitter or other social media, no texting and few cell phones. Conservatives had nothing remotely like the sources of information we do now, nor did we have the ability to network and share information with which to fight liberal propaganda.

The only way the liberals can win this time is if we the people let them. And I have news for the Left: we will not let you win this time. Unlike days past, too many of us know Edmund Burke’s truth that, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” American conservatives of today will not stand idly by and allow the triumph of evil.” Conservatives are slow to anger, just “live and let live” people, but there comes a time when evil must be opposed and we no longer have the luxury of expecting someone else to do it. Most conservatives have realized they must fight the socialist agenda of the Left, or see our republic fall.

Indeed, while Republicans in congress will almost certainly need “we the people” to strengthen their knees for them, conservatives across America are definitely not sitting still for this smear campaign as we did in 1995. As the Politico notes, bloggers like Erick Erickson are laying the blame for this hysterical witch hunt right at the feet of those most deserving the “mainstream” media. Megyn Kelly of Fox News did what is rare to see in the mainstream media: held the line against outrageous statements from Leftists. She cut right through the opportunistic propaganda of the liberal agitator who is also known as Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik.

You should give your senators and congressman a quick call or email to let them know that you aren’t going to stand by and allow liberals to pervert this tragedy into a vehicle to silence conservatives–and they shouldn’t either. Let them know you’ll stand with them if they continue standing for freedom and the U.S. Constitution.

No, we will not allow 1995 to happen again. I have been greatly heartened to watch the news and monitor dozens of media outlets and websites over the weekend as conservatives have come out swinging like I have never seen in my life. It seems that gone are the days when you could pretty much count on most conservatives to fold at the first sign of opposition or criticism. There seems to be a new generation of battle-hardened and determined troops who understand that the Left is always going to fight dirty…and we are going to pick up the grenades they have thrown at us and toss them right back into their own laps to explode there (how’s that for a military analogy?). If they mess with the bull, they’re going to get the horns.

Photo credit: Nyki M

If the Left insists on continuing this boorish, shameless behavior, we cannot stop them. If they press on with writing their false charges against conservatives using as ink the blood of innocent people, we cannot prevent that. But we can expose them for the liars, the charlatans, the propaganda ministers, the craven opportunists that they are.

There was once a time when the American people might have been disengaged and distracted enough to fall for their bloody campaign of deception. But that day has passed.

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Sunday, January 09, 2011

Vile Evil Liberals

Before the Blood was even dry at the Safeway, these nasty evil animals were piling on. This makes me sick:
One veteran Democratic operative, who blames overheated rhetoric for the shooting, said President Barack Obama should carefully but forcefully do what his predecessor did.

“They need to deftly pin this on the tea partiers,” said the Democrat. “Just like the Clinton White House deftly pinned the Oklahoma City bombing on the militia and anti-government people.”

Another Democratic strategist said the similarity is that Tucson and Oklahoma City both “take place in a climate of bitter and virulent rhetoric against the government and Democrats.”

This Democrat said that the time had come to insist that Republicans stand up when, for example, a figure such as Fox News commentator Glenn Beck says something incendiary.


These are GHOULS

Saturday, January 08, 2011

What the Shooter is like...a perspective

Chicago Boyz is a great website. On of their writers is a man by the name of Shannon Love. This is so insightful, but visit Chicago Boyz for more and the comments.

From Shannon Love:

He believes himself more intelligent, more knowledgeable and more skilled than he actually is. He is incapable of accepting responsibility for the consequences of his own foolish actions. This exaggerated sense of his own worth leads him expect far greater rewards in all areas of life than he actually receives. He does not get the jobs, pay, authority, awards, social circle, romantic interest and overall social status he believes that he justly deserves.

Constantly thwarted in all areas of life and unable to accept personal responsibility, he has no other logical alternative than to presume that some sort of conspiracy exists that holds him down. In particular, he will lash out at any real or imagined source of authority or influence in both his personal life and the greater world.

(Someone suggested he was an Afghan war vet. If so, he won’t be a combat vet but rather will have been in a low-level support position e.g. file clerk, fork lift driver etc. Because he cannot submit to any authority for any reason, his military record will be filled with instances of insubordination and demotions. He most likely has a less than honorable discharge. He will, however, have exaggerated his military record when he talks about it.)

In politics, he will begin to lash out at any real or imagined political entity that he believes has influence in the world. He will hate the Federal government. He will hate the military. He will hate any long established and large religious denominations. He will hate other racial or ethnic groups. He will hate those both richer and poorer than himself. He will hate socialists. He will hate big business, Wall Street and capitalism.

He will read all across the political spectrum and cherry pick ideas from every possible ideology. From each ideology, he will select only those ideas which: (1) claim this or that group has disproportionate, unjust and often secret influence or control over the world and (2) justify significantly altering the status quo to correct that group’s unjust power. In the end, his personal ideology will be a Frankenstein-like creation of unrelated ideas stitched together by the thread of his own hubris and narcissism. He will create an ideology that purports to explain why the “ordinary person”, which he sees as himself, is constantly screwed over by the world.

He will leave behind some rambling manifesto that anyone can themselves cherry pick to “prove” he supported some political point of view the cherry-picker opposes.

In the end, we will find out that he turned to violence because he became enraged at his own irrelevance and anonymity. The triggering stressor will be something personal and probably relatively trivial. His targets will have been primarily ones of opportunity. (Those who stalk and attack specific individuals are always schizophrenics and/or have some personal connection to the victim.) He will have shot the congresswoman because he could reach her and not because he had any specific personal animosity toward her or her politics. She was just a convenient authority figure, a personalization of the unjust power and order of the world.

The left plays a dangerous and ultimately self-defeating game when in every case to date, they have immediately, often literally within minutes, of a reported act of political violence, sprung out to denounce ordinary non-lefitsts as culpable in the attack. Since it is widely known that such attackers are either seriously mentally ill or individuals with highly egocentric and idiosyncratic ideologies, seeking to link such attacks to their mainstream political opposition makes it clear that they see instances of political violence merely as chances to advance their political power. Moreover, since such attackers have a hodgepodge ideology, one can just as easily blame leftist’s rhetoric for such attacks as non-leftists.

More darkly, by linking ordinary, mainstream political opponents to such political violence, the left appears to be creating a context for suppressing or even violently attacking such opposition. They are desperately trying to create an equation in which disagreeing with a leftists is tantamount to a violent attack.

The Ugly American is Loud, Fat, a Bully and Crude

I love my country. I do. I think it has at it's origin goodness.

That goodness has been lost. It has become a platform for some of the most gross behavior unimagined a generation ago. We are now become what we thought about and watched on TV for so many years.
  • Feuding hillbillies on Jerry Springer
  • Unwed Mothers trying to figure out who their baby daddy is on Morey Povich
  • Yelling and Screaming TV talking heads talking over each other
  • Talk Radio Bullies demeaning everyone who doesn't agree with them
  • WWF type interviews with sports stars being all macho even over football or hockey
  • Admiration of bullies on Orange County Chopper, Pawn Men and even on Top Chef with hundreds of F words every show
  • The side show that is our political class who represent us are just posing bullies who try to pull a fast one on the other side. Both side do it all the time.

And so many of US (me included) are way too fat. I was in a restaurant this week and wanted to have a nice quiet dinner. I was atmospherically assaulted by a group of loud patrons I could not get far enough from. And the level of language. YIKES.

I know we in the USA are not alone, but it was not always like this here. Recently there were events where a mob of kids rampaged thru a Milwaukee area mall. Or beat up a Marine and his wife after he asked them to be quiet in a movie theater.

Culturally, we are in the toilet and swirling. I know I'm an older man but I no longer get nor understand this life.

This last week I was shocked to be bullied about by the owner of a company I did business with. I have been proud of the fact that we do business in the Nursery world on just our word. That no longer seems to be the case.

We have lost much. Now the courts are the only source of relief from such bullies. Of course winning means that you will have to have a better bully than they hire to represent them.

American has lost much and I'm afraid until a substantial crunch comes, much will not be regained. If ever.

I'm pessimistic about the future of this nation.

Americans have become very ugly to me.

Do we really want the outcome of these "Lovers Quarrels" in our Military?

I saw this on Drudge today. It's not unusual for Homosexuals to have fights. Do we want this? The first time this happens in some barracks or on the battlefield it will be very bad.


A prominent Portuguese journalist and gay activist was found murdered in a New York City hotel, his body brutally mutilated.

Carlos Castro, 65, was found dead last night inside a 34th-floor room at the Intercontinental New York Times Square Hotel.

Sources tell CBS Station WCBS that Renato Seabra, a male model in his 20s who checked into the hotel with Castro late last month, is in police custody at Bellevue Hospital.

Authorities said police responded to a 911 call of an unconscious male at the InterContinental New York hotel. When police arrived at the scene, they found Castro around 7 p.m. in Room 3416, unresponsive with trauma to the head.

Friday, January 07, 2011

Net neutrality fight: GOP wields garlic against FCC "vampires"

The new, Republican-controlled House of Representatives started work yesterday, and it took only a few hours before anti-net neutrality legislation was introduced to stop the "vampires" at the FCC from imposing net neutrality on American Internet access providers.

No surprises here; Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had last year made plain her opposition to net neutrality, and she pledged back in November to legislate against the FCC.

"Chairman Genachowski has little if any Congressional support for net neutrality," she said at the time. "He can expect this folly to be resolutely overturned in the new year, and to ensure that, I will reintroduce my bill to pull the FCC from the policy making process on the first day of the 112th Congress."


Net neutrality fight: GOP wields garlic against FCC "vampires"

Thursday, January 06, 2011

I never even knew what G I was other than Ralph G

(Newser) – AT&T pulled off the cheapest network upgrade ever yesterday, changing its 3G network into a 4G one by… renaming it. Yep, in a move that’s sure to make the term “4G” even more meaningless than it already was, AT&T has rebranded its existing network, and will begin selling new phones with the 4G label soon, all without upgrading its technology at all, the Wall Street Journal reports.

AT&T can get away with the marketing move because the International Telecommunications Union hasn’t actually set firm standards for what constitutes 4G. AT&T has also announced that it’ll speed up work on its “Long-Term Evolution” network boost, but that still won’t be ready until the end of 2013. The company also slashed the price on the iPhone 3GS to just $49, in anticipation, the Journal suspects, of competition from the upcoming Verizon iPhone.

Obama's Foolhardy Fight with Windmills

What is becoming clearer is that the concept of “manmade global warming” may be one of the greatest hoaxes in world history. How soon this will become generally known will depend on how forcefully the political effort seeking both national and international control of industry and wealth redistribution can keep the hoax hidden by intimidation and forcefully amplified rhetoric while systematically jeopardizing the economies of America and other developed nations.

A couple of months later, the Climategate e-mails appeared. What was revealed therein changes the “may be” in the excerpted paragraph’s first sentence to “is.”

It is the Obama administration that is “systematically jeopardizing the economies of America” for no reason, as the IBD editorial makes clear:

In just two years, as Steve Everley of the American Solutions blog has noted, the Obama administration has:

• Virtually shut down oil drilling in the Gulf. Yes, the six-month moratorium announced during the BP oil spill ended in November. But regulators have made it nearly impossible for oil firms to restart operations and have slapped strict new rules on drilling even in shallow waters.

• Put hundreds of billions of barrels of offshore oil and gas off-limits to exploration and production. By executive order, the administration has taken much of the energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf out of play. This, according to the Energy Information Administration, will cut this year’s output by 220,000 barrels a day.

• Canceled 77 existing drilling leases in Utah, one of Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s first actions and a move that set the tone for the Obama administration’s war on energy.

• Proposed new taxes on energy, including the cap-and-trade fiasco, that have had a chilling effect on new investment in energy. Steven Chu, Obama’s energy secretary, has already let the cat out of the bag by saying he wants to see pump prices in the U.S. as high as they are in Europe. Last we checked, that was $7 a gallon.

America has the oil and natural gas resources to ensure its energy future as we develop reasonable, economically viable alternatives to fossil fuels. And that oil and gas is available right now.

Yet, our government has systematically put those resources out of reach, making us more dependent on unreliable foreign sources. Today we’re more, not less, vulnerable to the predations of foreign dictators and tyrants who would do us ill.

… Obama’s war against fossil fuels is a direct assault on our oil-dependent economy and standard of living.

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Cedra Crenshaw and Issac Hayes were legitimate alternative voices in the last election. They deserved a hearing. The Republican establishment eschewed them as did the Democrat driven electorate did by putting back in office people who do not represent them. Something is wrong with this picture. Now we will have Rahm Emmanuel as mayor because of a lack of a competent conservative voice from the community. WHY??

Cedra Crenshaw is the Republican candidate for Illinois State Senate in the 43rd District. She is a wife, stay at home mother, education reformer, and professional accountant. The trifecta of marriage, mortgage, and motherhood catapulted her into the independent thinker that she is today. Cedra is a

The insanity of the congress that JUST ENDED with Nancy Pelosi has been more destructive to business than any recession.

Are you one of the millions of Americans who own rental property? Do you enjoy filling out lots of extra tax forms? If so, you're in luck!
John Williams of Shadowstats has repeatedly warned that our economy is not doing as well as some would have you believe. From unemployment to GDP to current and future liabilities, there are fundamental problems that will not be resolved anytime soon - in fact, they're likely to get worse

Change we can't believe. Dr Owned Hospitals can't bill the government. Obamacare shuts down construction at 45 sites. I guess they can always make those partially finished buildings into Dollar Stores. My doc just told me he's getting out of medicine. Man, this socialized medicine is great.

Under the headline, "Construction Stops at Physician Hospitals," Politico reports today that "Physician Hospitals of America says that construction had to stop at 45 hospitals nationwide or they would not be able to bill Medicare for treatments." Stopping construction at doctor-owned hospitals might

This time it's different. It's certainly true that America has been through cycles of declinism in the past. Campaigning for the presidency in 1960, John F. Kennedy complained, "American strength relative to that of the Soviet Union has been slipping, and communism has been advancing steadily in eve
There’s a danger in policy makers’ overreacting to a few positive economic indicators. It’s jobs, not G.D.P. numbers, that matter to American families.
Britain could face widespread power blackouts and be left without critical communication signals for long periods of time, after the earth is hit by a once-in-a-generation “space storm”, Nasa has warned.
J-20 stealth fighter photos have appeared on Chinese websites, suggesting that the leaks of images of what could be China's first stealth fighter jet are a calculated moved by the traditionally secretive People's Liberation Army.
More than 150 countries and donor groups met in New York City on March 31, 2010, to figure out how to rebuild Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake. Eleven billion dollars was pledged for the task, including $1.15 billion from the United States. In between the meetings and pledging
Scientists say the magnetic north pole is moving toward Russia and the fallout has reached -- of all places -- Tampa International Airport.

Monday, January 03, 2011

Cultural Collapse...People waxing worse and worse. Lawlessness Increases

I will post a few evidences of how young people have become lawless. This is the beginning of the end of civilization brought on by failed schools and failed families.

Mob attacks Prince Charles

Mob attacks Attack on Marine at Florida Theater Comes Months After Brother's Death at Navy Hospital

Mob destroys a mall in Milwaukee area

I have to tell the truth. In the second two cases the mobs were made up of Black Teenagers.

We have a culture that is failing.

Things that will destroy a church, business or nation

I have NOT read this book, but I was forwarded this page. It really speaks to the decline of a church, a company or even a nation. Look at the list


Leadership Is An Art, Part 3 Max Depree,
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc., New York 1989, A Critique by Dale Roach

Picture

Depree presents communication as essentially important for the survival of any organization. I agree with his theories. He says that “only through good communication can we convey and preserve a common corporate vision.”(107) His thesis on communication includes the need for leaders to “sharpen” and help “enact” the vision of the organization. (107) These acts of any leader will enable or cripple the purpose and mission of the organization.

Communication cannot be ignored. A strong and memorable quote used by Depree to describe the need for clear communication was by Plato. “Plato said that a society cultivates whatever is honored there.” (108)

This is a good quote to use in team development. “What is of value here?” Depree goes on to give an easy way in understanding any congregation. That which an organization values is “it’s life’s blood.”(108)


Depree notes that this list will help leaders recognize signals of impending deterioration in their organization. These signs are:
  • a tendency toward superficiality
  • a dark tension among key people
  • no longer having time for celebration and ritual
  • a growing feeling that rewards and goals are the same thing
  • when people stop telling tribal stories or cannot understand them
  • a recurring effort by some to convince others that business is, after all, quite simple (The acceptance of complexity and ambiguity and the ability to deal with them constructively are essential.)
  • when people begin to have different understandings of words like “responsibility” or “service” or “trust”
  • when problem-makers outnumber problem-solvers
  • when folks confuse heroes and celebrities
  • leaders who seek to control rather than liberate
  • when the pressures of day-to-day operations push aside our concern for vision and risk (I think you know that vision and risk can never be separated.)
  • an orientation toward the dry rules of business school rather than a value orientation that takes into account such things contribution, spirit, excellence, beauty, and joy
  • when people speak of customers as impositions on their time rather than as opportunities to serve
  • manuals
  • a growing urge to quantify both history and one’s thoughts about the future (You may be familiar with people who take a look at a prototype and say, “In 1990 we’ll sell $6,493,000 worth”– nothing is more devastating because then you plan either to make that happen or to avoid it.)
  • the urge to establish ratios
  • leaders who rely on structures instead of people
  • a loss of confidence in judgment, experience, and wisdom
  • a loss of grace and style and civility
  • a loss of respect for the English language

Sunday, January 02, 2011

Public Education Fix

I was reading some weak apologetics from an academic who was crunching PISA scores until he could make America’s performance look better. This got me to thinking just how awful it is that so many smart people are engaged in “debating” education when we could just be educating our nation. That cascaded into a process of asking some random questions in no particular order.

* What if…

…education was provided by a large, independent network of content providers, each using varying methods?

* What if parents who wanted to groom their kids to be football stars and parents who wanted to raise the next Einstein (and the vast majority in between) where free to do so with out the interference of the state?

* What if tests were on-line, and allowed for the testing of specific content, the passage of which earned you “merit badges” to go on the next topic and direction of the parents’/child’s choosing?

* What if we got rid of school districts? Of what use is a school district or a superintendent? What do they do to connect neurons in a child’s head?

* On what planet would a rational civilization create a LAUSD or a CPS, or even a small district?

* What if we had REAL neighborhood schools? How can there be a “neighborhood school” when the entire public apparatus is run by a conglomerate of protected (essentially “privatized”) interests who churn bonds, taxes, and contracts for their own financial gain?

___

I could go on for days with these vignettes, but they all revolve around a simple truth that no one wants to admit. Education is an industry regulated by those who have captured the regulatory apparatus. This has created mini-industries (reform, measurement, building, consulting, curriculum, transportation, etc.), all of which are playgrounds for academics and adults to bruit about never-ending debates that accomplish exactly nothing.

The actual education of the child has become an afterthought (if that).

Given that we have this system of “controlled chaos,” where no amount of money, “reform,” or other aspect of government force shows any significant improvement, why not allow for a system of “spontaneous order?”

How might that look?

1. Pick a state (nothing is going to happen nationally).

2. Set up some rigorous, broad, sequenced standards, and create a testing system completely independent from the content providers. Give strong incentives to move testing on-line. (tech is getting good enough to allow for live coaching, oral exams, and even review of art/visual content) This should take 5-10% of the current ed budget.

3. Take the remaining 90+% and have it follow the child to any content provider/educational institution that succeeds at training/educating the child up to the testing standards.

4. Free up the entire system to design 100s, if not 1000s, of ways to meet standards. This means dissolving the massive political and bureaucratic apparatus currently spending entire states into bankruptcy with out showing that they can educate every child.

Would such a system be perfect? No. Would some fall through some cracks? Yes, but nowhere near the number currently being utterly failed by the current system.

Would there be political resistance to this transformation? Surely, but if educating such as large, diverse, nation is the goal, then it is time to ignore and/or defeat this political coalition.

It doesn’t have to be this way. To begin the process of transformation, all you have to do is withdraw all political support from the existing system. It will rapidly start to collapse of its own weight.

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Grossmont College journalism instructor Michael Grant shares a snapshot from 8 a.m. Christmas morning. If you have similar shots, add them here.

Life does not need to be a chore. It doesn't even need to be difficult, but we are choosing to make it so every day. Make the choice today to change something in your life to improve it.

Unintended consequences

Out of India's booming microlending industry, a dark reality. Bloomberg Markets magazine travels to the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, which has taken on a third of the country's $5.3 billion in... World News Summaries.

AARP will be exposed as the Left Wing Mouthpiece it has always been

aarp.us
Play the pundit and predict the new year's newsmakers and big stories. Then see how yours answers compare to the most popular responses.

Why is the black poverty rate little different now from where it was 40 years ago? The problem is not a dearth of organizations or social
initiatives, but the mysterious allergy in black America to the words
that defined what the civil rights movement was allegedly about —
individual freedom.

Plans for "economic empowerment," for example, which the Web site describes as the organization's "centerpiece," has the usual language of proposing collective action to pressure corporations to develop practices and policies that "favor justice, equality, and environmental responsibility."
This is a man who has a great future. Let's see what happens. We need clear thinking men like this at the helm.
Representative-Elect Allen West told Chris Wallace this morning on FOX News Sunday that this liberal progressive agenda is the antithesis of who we are as a nation.

Happy on the right

Conservatives are more religious, give more of their time and cash to charity, are more likely to be married, are healthier, have more friends, and like their jobs more. So the conservative road to greater happiness is well marked — attend church, be compassionate, get married, make good lifestyle choices, reach out to others, work hard, and retire comfortably.

But you knew that...

Ten Predictions for the New Year 2011


Happy New Year 2011!
January 1st 2011

Predictions:

1. Hillary will leave the Obama administration.

2. Attorney General Eric Holder will leave the Obama administration.

3. Germany will pull out of the Euro.

Read all ten. He's not joking

Saturday, January 01, 2011

Prediction for 2011: (tongue firmly implanted in cheek) Chevy will release its next attempt at an electric car, even more impractical than the Volt, as it will have only a 20 mile range, and to charge it you have to pick it up and shake it. Everyone will be mandated to buy one.


Yet, in 2010, it was still neither welcome nor “politically correct” (itself an oxymoron since nothing “political” is “correct”) to tell Americans to look in the mirror to see what they had become; overweight, overstressed, overmedicated, under-motivated, slovenly dressed. A trip to Wal-Mart spoke a thousand words. The American psyche was reflected in the American physique.

It's easy to point to the poor for buying cheap and eating stupid, but what of the smartest of the smart and the richest of the rich eating stupid?

Sobering thought. The market for all it's risk goes up 11% for 2010. People cheer. Yet, people put lives and fortunes on the line for....Wait....11%. This is not sound investing. Risk and Reward should be commensurate. This wasn't. Nearly any commodity, metal, liquid did better. Even a pure currency play or an energy ETF did. Not Impressed.

www.washingtonpost.com In a year of political upheaval, fiscal crisis in Europe and the threat of a double-dip recession in the United States, the stock market weathered all challenges, plodding upward.

The God Cloud

lamesa.patch.com
Grossmont College journalism instructor Michael Grant shares a snapshot from 8 a.m. Christmas morning. If you have similar shots, add them here.