DADvocate

I support this guy's position. We don't need the government indoctrination numbing our children's minds plus the great mediocrity of our educational system is largely due to government regulations and bureaucracy.

Via Instapundit.

The bill limits the vouchers to low income students, not enough but a step in the right direction.

The state Senate on Thursday approved a school voucher bill that allows lower-income students to take half of the taxpayer money spent per pupil in their school district - about $4,300 per year in Knox County - to any private, church-sponsored or other independent school that will accept them.

They may also take the money to any other public or charter school that has room for them.

As written, the bill will initially apply only to students whose household income qualifies them for free or reduced-price school lunches, and only to students in Tennessee's four largest counties: Knox, Shelby, Davidson and Hamilton. School districts in all four counties opposed the bill.

Districts in all four counties oppose the bill? Surprise, surprise. Institutional greed.

Private, religious and public universities and colleges receive government money through various channels. Why not do that at the K-12 levels? Middle and upper income already have the choice to send their kids to private/religious schools. Why shouldn't we afford the same opportunity to lower income kids when it's at no extra cost to the taxpayer?

Reading the liberal/progressive/leftie comments against the law in the post at Knoxnews.com shows their fervor in denying opportunity to lower income students.

I can only assume that they wish to dismantle public education and shift those responsibilities to private and religious schools. In the end, this is damning for democracy.

Damming to democracy? How? By giving lower income families more freedom?

Another leftie in response to the comment above:

Your intentions are good, however this is where we lefties go wrong. We get "SAD" over things we don't like. Maybe we go to Starbucks and reflect over a four buck latte. Instead we should get "MAD" and march to Nashville and water the shrub of liberty with the urine of tyrants or whatever it is that those Tea Potty folks do.

Yeah, it's all about the Tea Party. I wonder where all the union protesters in Madison, Wisconsin went to potty at.

Vouchers are a bad idea. If parents have to pay for something they are more likely to follow up on their investment. Vouchers allow parents who would rather spend money on a new fishing boat to send their kids to schools that other parents work hard to pay for. It waters those schools down.

Excuse me. Where is a lower income going to get the money to pay for private school? Note the negative stereotypical, bigoted view of lower income people. This person should have gone to school longer or studied harder.

In Knox County, anyone in a failing school already has the opportunity to transfer to any non-failing school that has room. Why do they need vouchers except for the public to now pay for private school education.

Obviously, a major part of the bill is to give the families a choice a of private school also. Will the public school system have room in the desired school? Do you want to send your kid to another school in a system that has failing schools? What if the school your kid is in is barely above failing?

And so it goes with the reactionary left wing continual efforts to hold down the little guy. Maybe it's because if a kid from a lower income family who gets a good education, then a good job with a good income might be less likely to vote Democrat.

Filling your car up costs twice as much as when Obama took office.

Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in the Wall Street Journal, "“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,”

At the time Chu said that, the average price of gas in Europe was $7-$9 a gallon.

Next time you go to the movies, think about why it cost more to drive there than to buy the tickets. Maybe you should thank the man in the big White House who gets to ride and fly at your expense.

He just ended a 3 day trip using 53,300 gallons at a cost of about $180,000 which we paid for. He gets a free ride and has been getting a free ride.

Skyrocketing federal debt?



Notice the huge climb that began when the Democrats took over Congress during the Bush years.

More war.

Trials in Gitmo.

Continued high unemployment.

Inflation beginning.

Gas prices doubling.

Bigger idiot in the White House.

No hope. What little change there is is bad.

I wonder if Cousin Pat, who is always eager to incriminate Christians and whites, would ever post this video of a white girl getting the shit beat out of her by two black girls at a McDonald's in Baltimore. Or, is reality just too much to face?



UPDATE: More here Apparently the victim is a transvestite.

It appears that the victim used the women’s restroom, and these two teenagers decided to appoint themselves the Anti-Drag-Queen Vigilante Committee of Rosedale, Maryland. The horrible sadism of this crime — the perpetrators returning to beat the defenseless victim over and over again – is shocking to watch. Indeed, it “says quite a bit about where we are as a culture,”...

.....

Can you imagine the political uproar if the attackers had been right-wing Tea Party types? Perhaps we can ask Paul Krugman to favor us with another one of his “climate of hate” sermons.

I'm sure Krugman, Cousin Pat or some other liberal bloggers are busy looking for video and incidents to show Tea Partiers, Southern Whites, Trig Palin, or whom ever are worse. Reality has never been their strong suit.

Alabama is considering a law that would "require divorced parents to share equal custody unless one is declared unfit. Supporters say the bill will inject fairness into custody battles that usually favors mothers, and allows both parents to raise their children."

As you might expect, a reactionary female Democrat opposes the bill.

"This is a bad bill," Democratic Sen. Vivian Davis Figures told the newspaper. "We cannot have a one size fits all (approach) where children are concerned. You just can't."

Figures says you can't have a one size fits all. What do they have now? One size fits all that favors women and ignores kids and fathers. Figures probably doesn't like the mothers not getting as much child support under equal parenting. It's been a racket for several decades now for women to divorce and live off child support.

I know quite a few kids in equal custody situations. They do as well or better than kids of divorced parents that don't share. Hopefully, enough Democrats in Alabama will place equality under the law and the welfare of children above the feminist desire to have everything their way or the highway.

Ten days ago, I wrote a post on Lindsey Graham, Harry Reid and others blaming a preacher in Florida for Muslims rioting and murdering in Afghanistan. In the post I contrasted this reaction with the rather tame reaction to the "Piss Christ."

As some of us know, American Christians are known for acts of violence and depravity that make the worst of the Muslims look like walks in the park. Expect horrid violence to rise up any day now with this news of the U.S. government burning Bibles.

If that were true, the U.S. government must be full of geniuses. Consider: it was just a week or two ago that everyone from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., sort of, SC) to Gen. David Petraeus and Sec. of State Hillary Clinton loudly condemned the Rev. Terry Jones for presiding over his Koran barbecue. Burning a holy book, you see, was hateful, intolerant, and extremely disrespectful.

That’s how General Petraeus put it: “hateful, intolerant, extremely disrespectful.”

For his part, Sen. Lindsey wondered aloud on Face the Nation about how the government could “push back” against individuals who did such things. “Free speech is a great idea,” he said, “but we’re in a war.” Ann Barnhardt did for Lindsey Graham what Apollo did for Marsyas, and I hope that who ever runs against him in 2014 plays his statement and Ms. Barnhardt’s video again and again and again.

But back to the question of genius. The U.S. government under Barack Obama is deeply committed to battling any belittlement, criticism, or questioning of Islam. (“I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States,” he said, “to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”)

At the same time, however, it is OK, in the Obama regime, for the U.S. government to burn Bibles. Yes, that’s right. Bibles were sent to U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. But the U.S. government determined that the presence of Bibles in this “devoutly Muslim country” might inflame the natives. So they burned them. Why did they burn them? Because it is military policy to burn its trash.

So, the Bibles, according to U.S. policy, are trash, garbage, and it’s OK to burn them.

Somebody call me when it's safe to go outside again.

Brief dialogue:

Network executive: We’re afraid some viewers might be offended.

DC: So?

.....

I’ve never quite understood why this word — “offended” — is so horrifying. What doesn’t offend somebody? And who wants to see, read or write anything that is simon-pure in its inability to offend those dreaded “someones”?

“What could be more offensive than an offense-free show?” I sincerely inquired of the network suit.

Quite a bit of what I write, and some of what I say, is intended to offend. Some people need to be offended. They need that in-your-face offensiveness that at least wakes them up to some highly undesirable aspect of themselves.

If I offend you and don't apologize, take it personally. It was meant that way. If I apologize or give a goodhearted laugh, it was a mistake or a joke. Let us offend.

Hat tip to Instapundit

The song:



BTW - someone be sure and alert me when rioting Christians take to the streets of any city in the U.S. and start murdering people.

Thanks to GM Roper.

Some people think Barbie harms girls' self image. My daughter was a huge Bratz doll fan. I don't think it did her any harm.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak expressed some enlightening views on education at the spring SNW show. (SNW is "produced by Computerworld and co-owned by Computerworld and SNIA (The Storage Networking Industry Association")

Public education remains a passionate subject for Woz, who was unabashed in saying that schools today are far too structured and thus impede innovative thinking - which is key to "the artistic side" of technology.

.....

"A really innovative person is known for something that usually took an awful lot of thinking, maybe even over years, and a lot of development in a laboratory putting it together and getting it to work. And it's new and it's different. And it's not something you read about in a book," he said.

"In school, intelligence is a measurement," he continued. "If you have the same answer as everyone else in math or science, you're intelligent."

In subjects other than math and science, such as English, students are given essay assignments where individuality shines, where each pupil goes off on their own and creates an answer that's different from every other student's. And yet, that's not associated with innovation today, he said, but that's exactly the thinking schools and businesses need to apply to computer sciences.

(Emphasis added.)

One middle school science activity my kids were required to to do was lay out food and let mold grow on it. I say "activity" rather than experiment because it was never clear to me what the purpose of the project was, to cultivate mold or to see what mold, if any, grew on various types of food left laying out for 1-2 weeks.

Because this project was always done during the winter when the air inside the house was especially dry, little or no mold grew on anything. Last time we lay out raw hamburger, cheese slices, bread, and a sliced open potato. The potato grew a little mold, nothing grew on the other substances. My kids always told my kids the projects wasn't successful. I never clarified with the teacher whether this was an experiment or a cultivation project.

If it was an experiment, it was successful. If it was a cultivation project, it was not. Many people forget that in an experiment, even if you don't get the results you predicted, it is a success if you performed the experiment according to scientific principles.

This was burned into my mind one day when I was sitting in my father's office (he was a psychology professor) and a graduate student burst in in great distress. He cried out that his dissertation was a failure and he would have to do a new one. (This would be cause for distress as dissertations normally took 9-12 months.) My father asked why. The student proclaimed the the results on his research disproved his hypothesis. My father explained that the student's dissertation research was in fine shape. The research was valid, he had disproved a hypothesis and he would simply report that in the dissertation. Having a correct hypothesis is not a requirement of science. Doing scientifically correct research and accurately reporting the results is.

Often I wonder how many times important findings are rejected or simply passed over because the findings didn't agree with what the researcher(s) wanted to find. And, is this what we teach our kids rather than to discover and innovate.

Recently riots in Afghanistan resulted in several deaths including UN workers. Senators Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham blamed the violence on a preacher in Florida who burned a Koran. Graham:

I wish we could find some way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war. During World War II you had limits on what you could do if it inspired the enemy. Any time we can push back here in American against actions like this that put our troops at risk, we ought to do it.

Roger Kimball addresses this stupidity and points out a woman who made two videos targeting Graham's and Reid's totalitarian approach.

Read Kimball's column and watch Ann Barnhardt's videos.

And think of this: Remember the Piss Christ? A piece of art which consisted of a crucifix of Christ submerged in a jar of piss which the artist claimed to have produced. While many Christians protested it and no one died, others defended it as freedom of expression (speech) and artistic freedom. When people protested that the artist was given a prize of money provided "in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, a United States Government agency that offers support and funding for artistic projects," others defended that under separation of church and state.

But, now,

What Lindsey Graham wants to do, she [Ms. Barnhardt] continues, is to “elevate the totalitarian political system masquerading as a religion called Islam to a status which

supersedes and overrides the First Amendment to the Constitution and thus places it in a position of specially protected legal superiority wherein criticism of Islam or failure to show proper and sufficient deference and honor for Islamic texts is a crime. Hey Lindsey, you Jackass, you know what that’s called? It’s called Sharia. What the hell is wrong with you?”

But, because American Christians behave as civilized humans and don't riot and kill, liberals feel quite justified and contented to demean them, disrespect their religion and blaspheme their God. But, when Muslims behave like barbarians, riot, rape and kill in the streets, liberals are quick to put the blame on...


...Christians.

Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder