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By her public utterances, Betsy DeVos seemed spectacularly unqualified to lead the bureaucratic enterprise called the US Department of Education. But you really have to wonder: could she do any worse than the exalted mandarins of educational bureaucracy who preceded her?

There is so much not right with public education these days that it could be the poster child for institutional collapse in America. Certainly in terms of the money spent per student, it illustrates perfectly Joseph Tainter’s classic collapse dynamic of over-investments in complexity with diminishing returns. Young adults are floundering in high school, or “graduating” as functional illiterates despite the vaunted widespread application of computer “technology.” They can do Instagram on a cell phone, but they can’t read an application for a driver’s license. And the mania for “diversity and multiculture” has left kids without the armature of an American common culture to successfully mold a life onto.

That common culture, by the way, is exactly what allowed waves of immigrants from the early 19th century until the Second World War to find a place and thrive in an American life that was new to them. It also enabled the sons and daughters of former slaves to enter professions and business, even despite Jim Crow segregation. Today, according to the official diktat of the Department of Education, and the propaganda of the politicized teacher corps, the very mechanisms that made previous success possible are essentially outlawed or banished beyond the pale of a functional consensus. For instance, instruction in speaking English correctly.

I have said this before to the scorn and derision of my auditors: it should be the primary mission of schooling to teach kids how to speak English grammatically and intelligibly. Without that capability, they may not be able to learn much of anything else. That this is not regarded as important anymore is a spectacular disgrace. It also brings us to the horrifying issue of race in American schooling. (Yes, this is part of that “conversation about race” that the professional race relations establishment calls for incessantly but doesn’t really want to have.)

The failures of education are especially vivid among the children of the so-called inner city — polite code for black. The school troubles of this group may be attributed to an array of other problems, starting with a social services system that pays teenage girls to have babies without a father present in the house, and the inept parenting that follows in chaotic homes. You could argue that children produced in those conditions are so damaged by the time they get to first grade that they can’t recover.

Under Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a policy called “racial equity” was devised to mitigate the embarrassing problem of black students being suspended or disciplined disproportionately for atrocious behavior in the classroom. The “solution” to that was to just stop enforcing behavioral standards. The policy placed the blame for students’ disruptive behavior on the “cultural insensitivity” of the teachers and staff, and more generally on “white privilege.” The result, naturally, is greater chaos and dysfunction in the classroom. It is worth reading the piece by Katherine Kersten in City Journal on how this worked out in the St. Paul, Minnesota, district.

Arne Duncan was also responsible for mis-applying federal “Title Nine” law on college campuses (originally drawn up to balance funding of men’s and women’s sports), where it was used to promote the extra-legal prosecution of rape allegations in what amounted to campus kangaroo courts run by ideologues unconstrained by due process. This has produced a star chamber climate of persecution across the country, nicely in-step with the officially sanctioned coercions of the cultural Maoists who are destroying the intellectual life of American higher ed.

American schooling from kindergarten to post-doc has entered a phase of epic failure under the watch of several generations of federal policy “experts.” It suffers from several other illnesses than the ones I’ve already mentioned, namely the tragic over-centralization of school districts into giant schools; and the odious racketeering in loans that drives college education. Betsy DeVos has a lot of damage to undo engineered by her exquisitely qualified predecessors.

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James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

240 Responses to “Left Behind”

  1. johngalt February 10, 2017 at 9:14 am #

    In the New Republic, members enjoy resuming the restoration of the Constitutional republic from JFK’s point of interruption, can see for miles and miles, and enjoy Liberty in building out properties and the local means of production, with the capability to sow, nurture, grow, harvest, store, cook, engineer, design, program, automate, construct, process, raise, teach, counsel, hunt, defend, provide, debate, organize, compose, worship, dance, laugh, love, celebrate, and sustain.

    http://www.got-truth.com

    • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 9:59 am #

      Excellent post, Jim. My sentiments exactly. I will be doing one about this topic in the next week or so. I’ve been planning it for a while now, and as you know, it’s near and dear to me since my wife is the Director of a Montessori School and has been a Montessori Guide for many years.

      As well, my children, who are being publicly-educated, are experiencing everything you have mentioned. Gifted classes, for example, can no longer be for the Gifted. In fact, the term Gifted can no longer be used and instead increasingly ambiguous euphemisms are used to delineate the level of challenge for any particular class.

      In the spirit of fairness & equity, heretofore Gifted classes now have to be open to all, and both my son & daughter report that these classes, since they are in all previously-referred-to Gifted classes, have become a Joke. The teachers can’t handle the unruly students who now make up a large part of the previously-referred-to Gifted classes.

      It’s Nuts like so much else these days.

      • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 10:10 am #

        When I say “one,” I mean a blog post. Montessori Philosophy has a lot to say about the inadequacy of Traditional Education and that criticism was rendered in the first half of the 20th Century. One can only imagine what Maria Montessori would say about Traditional Education in the beginning of the 21st Century. If she has a grave, I’m sure she’s rolling in it. There are a lot of famous Dead People rolling in their graves. People think it’s Fracking that’s causing all the Little Earthquakes, but it’s really all these famous Dead People doing a Dirt Dance to the Preposterous Pantomiming Predilections of Putrified, Pusillanimous, Pandering Politicians.

        • yooper2017 February 10, 2017 at 10:46 am #

          No1curr about your blog, Cold, stop trying to make it happen.

          Except for the Maura Murray stuff. That was interesting.

          • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 10:51 am #

            No problem. That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. I don’t write FOR you or anyone else. I write for myself to the universe. I sing to the Mountain and the Moon. I sing about Everything, because Everything is Me & You.

          • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 11:01 am #

            I am curious, though, what is it I’m “trying to make happen?” Help me understand. I wasn’t aware I was trying to make anything happen. A bear shits in the woods just as surely as I sing to the Mountain and the Moon. It just IS. There is no making it happen.

            Jim, take particular notice of this Numbskulls use of “No1curr.” It’s Case In Point to your blog post. It’s a Dumbing Down of the English language and communication in general.

          • thwack February 10, 2017 at 11:36 am #

            I am curious, though, what is it I’m “trying to make happen?” Help me understand. I wasn’t aware I was trying to make anything happen.

            ************************************

            Hey Cold, here is whats going on:

            people who can’t/won’t/don’t produce anything creative are often annoyed by those who do. In the hood its known as “player hating.”

            It reminds the hater of their lack of ability and fills them with a deep sense of inadequacy which results in them lashing out at that which they really wish they could be.

          • elysianfield February 10, 2017 at 11:51 am #

            Thwack,
            I invite you to shove your cultural Marxism where the sun don’t shine.

            An excerpt from the article hypertext offered by our host;

            ” They learned that “shouting out” answers in class and lack of punctuality are black cultural traits and that what may seem to be defiant student behavior is, in fact, just a culturally conditioned expression of “enthusiasm.””

            “Lack of punctuality are black cultural traits?” Are you shitting me? In less polite circumstance, what is that called?

            You have yet to give the “faggot” the beating promised….

          • thwack February 10, 2017 at 1:46 pm #

            Relax Francis,

            If you calm down you will see I was actually defending you?

            I know you are not used to it; but you do have a blog and are thus actually doing something, instead of just talking about doing something like the haters.

            But if you prefer a beat down?

            take a number.

    • noel bodie February 10, 2017 at 10:16 pm #

      JHK, very close to blaming the victims here, my friend. Schools are the canary not the mine. They reflect the chaos of so many students’ lives: dysfunctional families,high rates of mobility(moving to new housing/schools, sometimes multiple times, during the school year), poor nutrition, children sleeping on a couch while adults live because of overcrowding, violence. If a child lives in chaos that will be reflected In a lack of academic accomplishment. I totally agree on the importance of learning the language to use it as a tool for success. Following speaking should be an absolute laser focus on reading. If those language skills are not built the student will be handicapped. Inner city public schools do not have lots of money, tax rates have fallen, and charters are taking some budget. You ask rhetorically could she not do worse…I say yes it could get very much worse under her ideology.

      • noel bodie February 11, 2017 at 12:25 am #

        Further see CHARLIE ROSE 2/10/17 for a discussion on brain development/income as understood by latest research…very telling for understanding educational deficiencies. This underscores the social/economic/emotional connections to the ability for learning

        • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 8:50 pm #

          Years ago I noticed, as Indonesia (my home since 1988) began a sudden acceleration toward ‘development’, spiked by massive (and often indiscriminate) foreign investment, that the nouveau riche – a rentier class often of military, crony or nepostic origin – began to spawn offspring who looked startlingly different from the less fortunate (though from an identical genetic or social background).

          A case in point is that of Dr. Ibnu Sutowo, a crony of the dictator President Suharto, who should have earned a spot in the Guinness Book of Records for having nearly bankrupted Pertamina, the state oil company, when crude prices hit a peak in the mid-1970s. Unbelievable levels of corruption robbed the state, and blatantly so: five oil tankers were ordered from Japan and paid for; four showed up in Indonesia. Nobody dared complain as the hand in the velvet glove was steel.

          The good doctor, a military leader in the Indonesian revolution, looked very much like the wizened old kampung dweller selling roasted goat sate on the street (as did other old-timers miraculously become billionaires). Their children were taller, sturdier, infinitely confident and at ease with international customs. They drove Ferraris and had perfect table manners. They were mostly educated abroad (LSE, Stanford, but mostly expensive podunk ‘baby-sitter’ colleges in Australia and the west). They spoke near-native English, and some had been tutored in German and French as well.

          (Apologies for the elaborate introduction.) My point is that anyone who saw these young demigods strolling through a mall in Jakarta would never mistake them for the kampung kids who would scurry along through the same passage, always bunched up, with eyes lowered. Their grandparents had all started off desperately poor, in the era of the 1945 revolution. But in the 1990s these privileged youths acted and even looked so different (heavy subcutaneous fatty later, from a diet rich in dairy and meat) that they formed a ‘caste’ rather than a ‘class’. The nickname for the Suharto children was the ‘Lucky Sperm Club’.

          Why do I mention this? Noel Bodie’s comment made me suspect that a similar caste system has come into force in North America – which ridicules the Europeans because of the lingering influence of their aristocracy. Ghetto kids in the USA have become de facto untermenschen, physiological, linguistic, cultural and social defectives.

          And there is nothing which Big Guv, in its lumbering, accident-prone, well-intentioned efforts, can do to remedy the situation.

          (Smart parents meanwhile squirrel their own offspring away in private schools, further accentuating caste divisions.)

          Ame Rica becomes a true third-world plutocracy, albeit a huge and hypocritical one.

          • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 8:51 pm #

            The ‘Brahmin caste’ was also virtually untouchable. Google up ‘Adiguna Sutowo’, one of the good doctor’s children, to see how they behave.

      • kurtzs February 12, 2017 at 10:17 am #

        N.B.,

        Human population has tripled in my lifetime (71 yrs) The species is in massive biological overshoot, with resource depletion, pollution, food chain toxification, and systemic failures occurring around the planet. If anyone thinks that ‘good intentions’ and/or socio-economic engineering can remedy the downslope of civilization, I’ll make a charitable wager(10 year?) against that at:
        longbets.org

        I’d like to lose for the sake of my grandsons,

        • routersurfer February 16, 2017 at 10:31 am #

          Good post. Overshoot is real and just as impossible to deal with as Peak Oil and Climate Change. In fact it is the diver of most problems. Train your grandchildren in truth and science. What more can one do?

  2. Cavepainter February 10, 2017 at 9:45 am #

    Yep, no surprise, BLM, victimology and PC has done more damage to America’s inner city (code) “poor” and public discourse than Jim Crow laws.

  3. kimmasad01 February 10, 2017 at 9:48 am #

    So DeVos is unqualified because of the damage her predecessors have wrought? By that logic NOBODY is qualified.

    It’s my understanding that the NEA is behind the campaign against DeVos. You want to expose the core of the problem, follow the money. The Public school system has to be broken up and privatized. But that won’t happen because too much money is at stake.

    I definitely agree with the failure of public schools to properly instruct English in “inner city” classrooms and the subsequent impact on learning.

    • James Howard Kunstler February 10, 2017 at 10:07 am #

      That is CERTAINLY NOT what I said, Kimmasad01.

    • buzzyhardwood February 10, 2017 at 10:22 am #

      Privatizing the school system will ensure we have a slave class for the coming “World Made by Hand”. America is getting poorer by the minute and you think privatizing education will fix that? I know, we’ll just print more money so people can afford such. Privatizing is a solution the rich offer as if they’d ever let their children attend school with the commoners. DeVos certainly didn’t.

      I do heartily agree about a common language, taught properly to all. A second language spoken at home or in parts of the community is the heritage of many citizens and should be respected as such. However, English is the common language of the United States

      • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 10:30 am #

        I agree that Privatization is not the answer either because it keeps Traditional Education in tack and doesn’t address its motives & inadequacies.

        • Cactus Girl February 10, 2017 at 4:30 pm #

          Oh good grief…it’s “intact”, not “in tack”.

      • michics February 10, 2017 at 1:27 pm #

        It’s also the generally excepted language in the business the worldwide.

        • Cactus Girl February 10, 2017 at 4:31 pm #

          Talk about failure of education…it’s “accepted”, not “excepted”.

  4. kimmasad01 February 10, 2017 at 10:14 am #

    Excuse me sir, you’re right, you said she was spectacularly unqualified. You don’t offer a reason for your assessment, so I made an assumption based on the rest of your post. My apologies.

    I do agree with your analysis of the public school system and how it bleeds into the public university system. I wonder if anything can be done to improve it at all.

    • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 10:22 am #

      His larger point is the hypocrisy of the Liberal Establishment. They arrogantly & childishly denigrate DeVos for her lack of qualifications compared to their lofty qualifications, and yet they’re the ones who have made a mess of things. They simply have no leg to stand on. They have no credibility any longer. Qualifications obviously aren’t the answer, otherwise, we wouldn’t be in this mess that you say needs to be reformed.

      Frankly, Reformation isn’t the answer. I think it’s working as designed, so, you can’t and don’t reform something that is working as intended. replace it, perhaps, but it’s a waste of time trying to reform it.

      • kimmasad01 February 10, 2017 at 10:31 am #

        I have a problem reading sarcasm esp. when JHK calls her boss “meshuga”. My feelings are we are stuck with Trump. We could have been stuck with HRC. Name calling doesn’t help the situation and it makes it difficult for folks like me to read between the lines. I get it now.

    • patrickd February 10, 2017 at 12:02 pm #

      The reason for his assessment can be understood by reading the first four words of his blog post.

  5. buzzyhardwood February 10, 2017 at 10:17 am #

    DeVos doesn’t have clue in the world what goes on in a public school. It is a class distinction the elite make.

    As for the public schools, as a former teacher, I can tell you most people don’t have a clue in the world what it takes to teach children anything. Using a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work for the vast majority of our students. Most students won’t and shouldn’t go to college to obtain a four-year degree but our system treats them as if they all should. So little emphasis is placed on vocational/technical training. We’re sold on the paradigm of the global economy and that children should be educated to compete in this quickly sinking global mess. Because we fail to predict what will happen based on what is currently happening in the world of energy production (it’s shrinking folks, get over it and prepare accordingly). I tried bringing that up to a superintendent of my district once, and he verbally staggered before simply stating our constituents were not ready for that conversation. Man, they’d better get ready!! I often heard we were to teach “critical thinking skills” to kids. My response was, if you really do that, you’ll have a revolution. Critical thinking is the last thing we want.

    Jim, first of all, I’m not so sure there ever has been much of a consensus as to what “American Culture” is about. To some it is seen as opportunity, others a chance to plunder any fool with less clout (currently en vogue in D.C.) We, of the baby boomer generation, were raised to believe the America was always the good guy, riding in on the white horse to “save” the day for some unfortunate group. Ha, what a joke! Ask the Indian peoples out west how that’s worked out for them. Ask the interned Japanese in WWII. We have been sold a bill of goods a mile long and so many still believe the lies we’ve told ourselves as a culture. Ask the millions of “little brown people” who happen to live over OUR oil in some far off land. That’s a core issue for schools. It depends on one’s perspective as to what should be taught and how it should be taught. The classic line from Pontius Pilate, “What is truth?”. We can’t begin to agree on that so we shall remain deeply divided. Or Jack Nicholson’s famous, “You can’t handle the truth!”

    Please understand I taught in the western outback in a rural state that serves as America’s energy colony. The problems there are not at all what Jim describes in inner cities. Some problems are the same or similar, some aren’t even close to the same.

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    • ozone February 10, 2017 at 11:05 am #

      “…We’re sold on the paradigm of the global economy and that children should be educated to compete in this quickly sinking global mess. Because we fail to predict what will happen based on what is currently happening in the world of energy production (it’s shrinking folks, get over it and prepare accordingly). I tried bringing that up to a superintendent of my district once, and he verbally staggered before simply stating our constituents were not ready for that conversation. Man, they’d better get ready!! I often heard we were to teach “critical thinking skills” to kids. My response was, if you really do that, you’ll have a revolution. Critical thinking is the last thing we want.”

      buzzy,
      Most excellent point! (Also, the less [immersive] reading that goes on and the less it’s encouraged, the better for the “deciders”, wouldn’t you say?)

      Your questioning of what might our culture consist of is well-taken too. One obvious element is the capacity for violence and cold cruelty.
      (The Irish refer to the U.S.A. as an acronym for Unlimited Supply of Assholes.)

      • routersurfer February 16, 2017 at 10:34 am #

        Using Slaves Adroitly

    • Cavepainter February 10, 2017 at 11:27 am #

      Hey, wait a minute, public education’s primary purpose (and only justification for taxpayer support) is in teaching the role of citizen in our democratic republic. That is: understanding the structure, process and principles upon which our government is based. Common culture was taken as a priory.

      • thwack February 10, 2017 at 1:48 pm #

        Not really.

        Public education was started in the 1880s in Chicago. The purpose was to train future factory workers.

        Thats what the rows of desks and bells are all about.

        • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 8:58 pm #

          ‘…readin’ and writin’ and ‘rithmatic, all to the tune of a hickory stick…’

    • cbeard February 10, 2017 at 1:14 pm #

      Vocational/technical training should certainly be utilized more and that type of work (real work) should be held in higher esteem and their income should be at a much higher rate. I don’t begrudge anyone making a lot of money but trickle down shit does not work. I’m quite the pessimist about education in the U.S. as most people can’t handle the truth. The truth being that a lot of students are uneducable. But teaching proper english speaking would go a long way, as would better reading comprehension and math skills. If you can’t speak proper english you probably can’t read it either.

      • jloughrey February 10, 2017 at 11:57 pm #

        “A lot of students are uneducable.” The problem with public education is the “one size fits all” approach. Nearly all students are groomed to attend unaffordable post-secondary education that will indebt them for life and leave many of them without the ability to make a living wage. If you’re not aiming for college, you are seen as a failure. Meanwhile, there is always a shortage of skilled labor in the trades.

        A friend of mine’s son faltered throughout school, doing poorly in most subjects. Following high school, he spent 5 or 6 years working at dead-end jobs. He began training as a pipe fitter, which changed his entire life. He found he was actually really good at math and science (necessary skills that he never grasped in public school) and he is now a journeyman. His whole demeanor has changed. He loves his work and holds his head up. He is bursting with pride that he can support his wife and two young children, and they recently bought their first home. How many millions of other young people just like him never find their way? It’s sobering when you think of how many lives are wasted because these kids aren’t given the right direction at home or school.

    • michics February 10, 2017 at 1:34 pm #

      As a baby boomer myself I agree 100%. Your dead on.

    • zekesdad February 10, 2017 at 3:04 pm #

      Buzzyhardwood; Ask the interned Japanese during World War II about America being the good guy? You’re joking right? Almost all interned Japanese were prisoners of war. You must be talking about Japanese-Americans. That was a miscarriage of justice, but in no way compares to what the Japanese did to non-Japanese caught in their country or occupied territories. I don’t think America starved, shot, or beheaded very many Japanese-Americans.

      • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 9:07 pm #

        There was also a not-irrational fear that many of the issei, and even the nisei, Japanese-Americans still felt loyalty toward the Imp and the old country. The kibei, Japanese-Americans who had lived or studied in Japan, were particularly singled out for investigation and / or detention. Where exactly were their loyalties? Hard to say.

        Many of the issei spoke no English and spent their entire lives in the USA immersed in a Japanese-speaking environment. There was also the notable Niihau incident in Hawaii, which not unnaturally gave rise to alarm among the military about the potential of collaboration,

  6. Greg Knepp February 10, 2017 at 10:39 am #

    Language is a necessary component of intelligence. Derick Bikerton, author of ‘Adam’s Tongue’, relates that basic proto-language was the driving force behind the evolution of abstract reasoning. In other words, from the very beginning language created intelligence rather than visa-versa.

    A simplistic language or dialect, such as Ebonics, impedes the formation of complex, nuanced ideations, through a lack of vocabulary and structural depth. I mean, how can one fully express oneself when the only available adjective is ‘motherfuckin’? Additionally, Ebonics lacks a written form, as it depends heavily on gesture and intonation.

    The effects of the unraveling of language skills are also apparent among white Millennials, due, I believe, to the influence of computer driven communications. A read of Dmitry Orlov’s latest book is a must where this whole can of worms is concerned.

    • pequiste February 10, 2017 at 4:37 pm #

      I think it is (or should be nearly ) universally recognized that language provides the framework as well as the interior structures and mechanics for both concrete and abstract thought. More importantly, using the famous Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: language determines ideation and behavior within a cultural environment.

      When you state that Ebonics has no written form — I’m not sure it has been formalized as such, however, I would suggest that you compare formal French language to Creole (the language of Haiti.) You will find, in fact, that Creole is Francais Eboniques – and its vernacular usage is nearly unintelligible to speakers of Francais. Moving to the written form of Creole, it is even less identifiable as an offshoot of Francais. The basic phonetic structures are altered, slurred, and spelled in a manner that makes it a foreign language for French readers.

      I like to think Creole is a close analog for American Ebonics.
      Both as cultural manifestation of Haiti and a reason for its abominable condition.

      It’s going to be O.K. though; The Hip Hip Research Institute at Harvard University ensures the institutionalization of this toxic waste, but if one applies early enough and has the proper “credentials,” one might even acquire a prestige fellowship to the world’s number one school.

      http://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/hiphop-archive-research-institute

    • JimInFlorida February 12, 2017 at 10:54 am #

      Ebonics and texting are the heralds of George Orwell’s “newspeak.”

      The First Edition Newspeak Dictionary can be compiled and printed now! Today’s “English” is a rubbish heap of Ebonics, marketing buzzwords, corporate legalese, SJW code words, and texting.

      The First Edition HAS to be a giant pile of shit to start with. It has to be a compilation of a degraded language that conditions We Teh Sheep to function on a much lower intellectual level. Once that is achieved, THEN the lexicon can be progressively pared down.

      English, as a medium of expression for civilized White minds, is already corrupted beyond redemption. The maggots of Diversity and Jewish New Leftism have been feeding on the corpse of Proper English for decades now.

      [Syme speaking to Winston in, “1984”]

      “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. “

  7. Walter B February 10, 2017 at 10:40 am #

    Have to disagree with you today James, at least semantically, because the American Public Education System has NOT been a failure. It has been an overwhelming success. Do you really think that those who rule over us have anything to be gained by educating the children of the Servant Class? Why would they create additional competition for themselves and for their own spawn, considering that since they rule for life, there is not nearly enough room at the top for them all? They are in positions of power that allow them to not only intentionally stupefy the general population, but to profit from the process by creating huge paychecks for their fraternity brothers and sorority sisters with kickbacks galore in the process. No, James, this system is performing grandly and generating massive profit for those who rule it, which they will gobble up with great gusto until it all comes crashing down. When you consider how easily distracted the Common American Idiot is by the contents of their own crotches, it’s pretty much all they deserve anyway. If there is some way to turn them all around or awaken them in any fashion, I have not found it yet though I shall continue my useless efforts as best I can in every way I can, fruitless as it may be.

    • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 9:11 pm #

      I would respectfully suggest that this exposition supports my contention, elaborated above, that a rigid de facto caste system is in place, and public education simply reflects this.

      • Walter B February 12, 2017 at 5:59 pm #

        You have no contention, what you are describing is obvious fact my friend. It is additionally backed up by the indisputable fact that the people that are being brought into America without restraint today, the Asian Indians, the Orientals, the Islamic people all have and maintain cultures where the social order is already determined . Sometimes it is even tattooed on their foreheads! These subservient docile people are what the masters who rule today require in order to maintain their positions on top of the pile. They certainly do not want, nor do they need any more Germans, Irish, English or any other European immigrants that are willing to stand and fight for equality for all. No, the elite want their subservient minions to mow their lawns, bathe their pets, and clean their toilets. Yes, already in place and being populated by the new willing slave class.

  8. sprawlcapital February 10, 2017 at 11:02 am #

    Regarding the educational bureaucracy’s obsession with technology: we are told that there must be computers in the classroom in order for students to get a good education. This is such self serving, lazy, herd-mentality groupthink! Or, not to put too fine a point upon it, pure BS!!

    We now have college students who can’t even print letters or numerals clearly; and certainly cursive handwriting is alien to them, They are unable to provide so much as a legible signature–just an unformed scrawl.

    Yet these functional illiterates are “computer literate”.

    • sprawlcapital February 10, 2017 at 11:04 am #

      Period, not comma, after “alien to them”.

      • Greg Knepp February 10, 2017 at 11:30 am #

        Taking up the pedantic banner of Qshtick eh?

      • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 9:13 pm #

        Kind of a shame that we cannot edit our comments, particularly when a close reading reveals errors in spelling, punctuation and usage that slipped in during composition. Heat of the moment.

        • sprawlcapital February 12, 2017 at 5:04 pm #

          Agreed. Informed Comment, uninformed as it too often is, at least allows the writer about two minutes to make corrections on a submitted comment.

    • cbeard February 10, 2017 at 1:17 pm #

      My sentiments exactly.

      • cbeard February 10, 2017 at 1:18 pm #

        My sentiments post was for sprawlcapital and his computer literate post.

        • Greg Knepp February 10, 2017 at 2:41 pm #

          I agree. Though sometimes we get caught up in copy editing – ourselves as well as others. This is, after all, just a comment on a blog. Now and then a comma will be misplaced and misspelling will occur…no big deal.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 10, 2017 at 2:35 pm #

      They send welfare mothers and women in shelters to community college now. Speak proper English? Some of them can barely speak at all in any language. They’re just two legged animals.

      We must bring back the Perennial Teaching, held in all times and places, of the Inequality of Man. Only once that is accepted, can we begin to improve and reform our education system. I mean how can you reform it if you don’t know who can be educated, how, and for what? And obviously, little criminals don’t belong with regular kids. That means millions of ghetto spawn raised in Black or Brown criminal cultures.

      • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 9:22 pm #

        Mr. Skorenzy, it must really burn the butts of well-meaning liberals when they come face to face with grim reality and are forced to acknowledge (if they are even half-assed honest) your (admittedly extreme) contentions.

        Tolerating disruptive or even criminal behavior in the public school classroom in the name of ‘cultural accommodation’ is one of those head-shakers that makes foreigners wryly smile. ‘Only in America.’

        Visit public school classes in practically any third-world country to see military-style discipline imposed. Up to and including corporal punishment. Right up at the front of the class.

  9. volodya February 10, 2017 at 11:05 am #

    We hear incessantly that people in formerly industrial, fly-over America are “uneducated” ie they don’t have a college degree.

    So, assuming that the majority of the toothless fly-over fatsos are at least high school grads, how is it possible to go through k-12, that is THIRTEEN years of sitting in classrooms, and STILL be “uneducated” even without a college degree.

    If these people really are, at the advanced age of 18 years, illiterate then this points to a spectacular, widespread, multi-year, nay, multi-decade failure of educational – cough – “experts” and educrats and the teaching profession, all of which for all those years apparently worked for some other reason than the reason for their being there: the education of the country’s young.

    If it’s true that all these millions of people can’t read and write worth a damn, after all that money spent and all those years in school, then as JHK sez, this is institutional collapse. There’s no other way to describe it. And given the torrents of money dedicated to the cause of imparting knowledge, there is NO excuse.

    The Left’s insistence that everyone should get a college degree is grounded in fact-free ideology. It’s just plain common sense that not everyone is cut out to sit in a college classroom, any more than not everyone is cut out to be a tool and die maker or jet pilot or Navy SEAL. Innate human ability comes in many varieties and not all of it, in fact not a lot of it, has anything to do with book lernin’ you get in college. To assert that abilities come in different forms is a simple acknowledgement of human diversity. Surely these morally astringent SJWs, that make their living condemning the attitudinal shortcomings of others, can see the reality of it especially as “diversity” is every second word coming out of their mouths.

    Betsy De Vos isn’t cut out for the task? What of it? If it’s doing more harm than good, abolish the department. Surely she’s up to that.

  10. Paulo February 10, 2017 at 11:12 am #

    The Public System works quite well in Canada compared to US. After 20 years in Industry I finished off my working life with a 17 year stint teaching grades 5-12, most subjects. At year 3 in this new career I almost quit. In fact, I gave my notice as I simply could not stand it anymore. A High School principal phoned my house several times and finally said, ” I know you are listening to this message right now. Pick up your phone and listen to what I have to say”. He offered me a new lease on my career. He gave me freedom to develop my program as I saw fit.

    As the years passed by I compared my situation to my sister who taught in WA State. It was a very interesting discovery. In Canada, (and this varies from Province to Province), we have very strong teacher unions. What this does is protect teacher autonomy, and we guard this right with great zeal and activism. For example, as a carpenter if I want to teach geometry using building principles I can do so. In fact, I once had grade 6 students (in my rural logging home region) develop an algebraic formula for correct chainsaw/oil mixture ratios. For a non-academic math class I had students design and cost out all materials for their own tiny house or ski cabin. There were strict parameters and outcomes for evaluation, but after that the kids were only limited by their imagination.

    My sister, on the other hand, was limited to what she taught by strict test preparation as per legislated oversight. (Admin interference) In California, the curriculum is so limited by top-down meddling they have what is called ‘scripted learning’. On day 17 of the school year, all students in ________ class will be doing the same lesson. At the end of term, all students will be taking the same________test. And all the Govt. top-down directives like Common Core, No Child Left Behind etc., are all designed for greater control by Govt. functionaries and their political masters. Instead of reflecting what the voters want for their children in school, these same groups use a great deal of energy in demonizing teachers and their unions and convincing parents what they should have. So prevasive have been their efforts it is now a common understanding the US Public System is now at fault and must be privatised. And if only, if only parents had real choice (vouchers) they could pull their kids out of school and send them to any flavour of the week school, and all other schools will just step up their game under pressure to keep little Johnny in his desk. Of course, there will be a great deal of money to be made in the process and those damn pesky teachers will have some more comeuppance, “Goddam those greedy bastards”.

    In the included links Canada ranks #2 and #3 in education outcomes…right behind Finland. US ranks #11 in both.

    Canada receives an “A” standing…US receives a “C” standing.

    Dollars spent: US spends almost $1800/year more on per student funding than Canada….on average. In my Province of BC the US spends almost $3,000 more per student.

    The answer to the US conundrum is Teacher Autonomy and Engagement. People who have some independence and autonomy in their job are far more engaged and do a better job; pure and simple. When I managed an airline business and worked as a carpenter foreman I always believed that employees want to do a good job, and that it is management’s role to make that happen. I just let the people we hired do their job, and if things wern’t getting done properly we asked for their input to help us figure out why? We then made the required changes as a joint effort. Micro-managing is a form of bullying and an underlying cause of depression. It certainly does not help morale and productivity. The US version of Education is two things. It relies on micro-managing from a ‘Father’s Knows Best’ perspective, and furthers the goal of demonizing teachers and their unions.

    There’s money to be made, boyo.

    https://news.gov.bc.ca/stories/bc-students-among-best-internationally

    Another big difference is the salary structure. Our teachers make more money, but our administrators make far far less on average. In fact, if you factor in the extra time required to spend on the job the higher salary for admin. is a wash. (Too many meetings to attend) 🙂

    https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading

    http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/details/education.aspx

    Devos is a shitty choice. Just let people do their job to the best of their abilty. What a concept.

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    • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 11:29 am #

      In America, so-called Learning Institutions are set up to serve the Teachers & Administrators rather than the Students. When I worked at a Grocery Market in High School, as an employee, I was required to park at the far end of the Parking Lot because the choice Parking Spots were for the Paying Customers — the People we Served. This is not so with American Learning Institutions. The Choice Parking is reserved for Teachers & Administrators versus the Students they presumably serve. Symbolism is Everything and the Symbolism of the Parking Arrangement says it ALL. It may seem like a Small Thing, but it’s at the Heart of it. It’s the Nucleus. It starts with a basic attitude of Service to Others — something that is sorely lacking in American Learning Institutions and I’d say not sorely lacking but in fact non-existent and anathema.

      • Paulo February 10, 2017 at 1:54 pm #

        @Cold

        That is a very strange observation. First of all, why should students drive to school, anyway? They should walk, take the supplied school bus, or take public transit. Second, many teachers have a great deal of marking to slog back and forth to their cars, including books. Third, Admin often have to leave the school ,several times per day for command performances. As such, why waste their extremely valuable time walking out to the ‘back end’. Fourth, sercurity. Female teachers often work late and Should Not be required to walk through a dark parking lot to their cars. Fifth, vandalism. Little Jimmy that didn’t study and failed his assignment might get back at a teacher through vandalizing a vehicle. In fact, when I was teaching Mechanics 12 I had some dickheads who were late, every day. I tuned them up one morning, and removed them from my class. They responded by dumping garbage in the back of my pickup. I then removed them permenantly from my class, (which they needed to graduate on time). Natural consequences I called it, and my principal thanked me and asked if I needed anything else done? And supplies always need carrying. I usually picked up scrap steel for my welding class….with my own vehicle and on my own time…several times per week. I always paid for it myself, and tried to collect, later. I needed to park at the head of the lot to carry in the steel, maybe 2 hours before the kids showed up.

        In the large high school where I worked there were 8 parking spots that were reserved. 2 were for the school secretaries who often showed up to work in the dark. 2 were for admininstration as mentioned. 1 was for the day custodian. 1 was for visiting maintenance trades. And 2 were for visitors. About 100 feet away was the staff parking lot. And right next to that was set aside for the students who drove. There were also several ‘handicap spots’ by the wheel chair ramps outside every building.

        First come first serve was the way it all worked, with common sense procedures. If a day came that my spot next to the shops was open for student parking, that would be my last run for supplies on my own dime and time. In fact, all I would have done is ordered online and have everything delivered. I saved our School District thousands of dollars per year by using my vehicle.

        Inner city schools have no parking.

        You want an example of just how entitled kids of this generation already are? I used to get about 15 minutes for lunch by the time I finished off my duties. One day, I was eating a sandwich in the staff room and a young lady came in and asked me to help get her Grampa’s car started. I told her I was eating lunch and then had a math class to teach in another part of the school. She replied, “But you’re the mechanics teacher, you get could his car going”! I told her that indeed, I was and could, however if I didn’t eat my lunch right then and now I would not have time to eat until the end of the day. (As I started work at 7:00, I was pretty damn hungry). I then suggested Grampa call BCAA (triple A). She was livid. Absolutely livid, and stomped out of the room.

        What other profession would face this? After cell phones became omnipresent I was forced to ride herd on their use. In my class they were not allowed. One day, during a math demo a young lady held up her phone and said her stepdad wanted to speak with me. I burst out laughing and told her it didn’t work that way, that I would phone her Dad that night or tomorrow at 7:30. Or, he could come in and see me before school started. Of course his phone always went to voicemail when I tried and I never did hear back from him. (She was failing, of course).

        I remember being in a logging camp one day and saw a sign that read, “Employes using cell phones in camp will have their employment immediately terminated”. Of course any employee, ever, are simply not allowed to phone on company time. And yet these same parents feel they can phone their kid’s teacher during class, or their kids during class, and are angry when the phones are taken away to be picked up in the office at the end of the day?

        Kids already receive many messages from an over-indulgent society. They don’t have to listen, if they lip off it must be the teacher’s fault, school is stupid, and my all time favourite, “My child is not challenged enough in your class. That is why _____ is failing”. (You cannot believe just how many parents believe their child is gifted, when in fact, they are usually pretty normal in intelligence.) I don’t know about you folks, but in my house we did not fail at school…and if we did, there was only one person to blame and there, “Would be consequences, mister”.

        Kids need to learn there is no blue ribbon for just ‘showing up’, that success is not guaranteed, and that in order to get somewhere in life they will have to work hard. Jeeez, they might even have to walk from the parking lot where daddy’s car was parked. (At least I hope the car was daddy’s).

        • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 2:14 pm #

          No, it’s not a strange observation. Your response to it is strange, but then again, you’re Canadian, so that’s to be expected.

          Students wouldn’t have to drive to school if schools weren’t Centralized Warehouses. Students in America are frequently in and out, like my daughter for example who attends both the High School and a local College where she takes College Courses and she has to lug a back pack full of heavy text books around because the stupid fucking teachers & administrators require archaic physical text books instead of online text books.

          I’m going to stop here though because you’re really not worth my time. You’re obviously wedded to the Authoritarian Paternalistic Traditional Education Model, and no, it’s not working for Canada despite your bragging it does. Canada is quickly becoming Mini America (versus Mini Me) and that’s a reflection, amongst other things, of the Education System.

          • Cold N. Holefield February 10, 2017 at 2:18 pm #

            And yes, Paulo, if I were a Teacher and/or Administrator, I’d gladly lead by example and park at the far end of Campus sending a symbolic message to any and all that I, nay we, serve the student, not the other way around.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 10, 2017 at 2:38 pm #

      Compare White Canada with Minority Canada. The latter will be found to be comparable to Minority America. Race trumps Policy every time. Obviously White Americans want the freedom to get their children out of the Prison Complexes known as Public School. And obviously the Teacher’s Union doesn’t want to lose “clients”.

  11. thwack February 10, 2017 at 11:22 am #

    “Young adults are floundering in high school,”

    ********************************

    I thought the correct term was “foundering?”

    What is “floundering?”

    Is that like when a fish gets pulled out of the water and is flapping around on the deck of the boat?

    • kimmasad01 February 10, 2017 at 11:45 am #

      I use foundering too. Floundering is acceptable.

    • elysianfield February 10, 2017 at 12:39 pm #

      “I thought the correct term was “foundering”

      “What is “floundering?”

      Thwack, repeat after me (and I present this example in a construct you can identify with);

      “…Ill take ‘reading comprehension’ for 15, Bob….”

      • thwack February 10, 2017 at 1:52 pm #

        If Im incorrect, why don’t you correct me instead of attacking me?

        Is it because Im black?

        • elysianfield February 10, 2017 at 7:25 pm #

          “If Im incorrect, why don’t you correct me instead of attacking me?

          Is it because Im black?

          Thwack,
          Nooo, it’s because you have impugned me with ad hominem attacks….

          You have not offered a heartfelt apology, to me, our Host or the readership. You might try it…it will unburden your soul…black or white as it might be.

          • thwack February 10, 2017 at 8:08 pm #

            Ok, from the bottom of my heart:

            Im sorry Im black.

            Now can we be friends?

          • elysianfield February 11, 2017 at 11:00 am #

            “Ok, from the bottom of my heart:

            Im sorry Im black.

            Now can we be friends?”

            Thwack,
            If you mean that you are a product of your upbringing and environment, and that you are given to invective rather than thoughtful, civil dialog…?

            An embarrassing revelation, but acceptable.

      • messianicdruid February 13, 2017 at 8:29 am #

        Let’s explain “foundering” first.

  12. Cavepainter February 10, 2017 at 11:30 am #

    The most fervently religious population today is the neo-Left. I know, I know, that contradicts the fact that its number is dense with self-proclaimed secularist from agnostics to atheist, but examining its contentions reveals belief as meta-physical as the Pentecost – completely outside the parameters imposed by nature on either global carry capacity or the diversity fail-safe point for social cohesiveness. It is no different in that sense than the “prosperity churches” that have grown in popularity in recent decades, offering the premise that God is, like a good sugar daddy, anxious to rain wealth down on those who “believe” (manna from heaven miracle, so to speak). In its lamentations categorizing historical wrongs (sins) its version of expulsion from Eden begins with the rise to preeminence of Western Culture – that is, White folks identified much like Beelzebul, ol’ Jake, Satan, the Devil and likes). Redemption (regaining paradise of civility, respect and peace among all people) therefore, can only follow by cleansing the scourge of Western Culture — Baptismal of all nations. In practical terms that means that the Western World must sacrifice itself upon alter of PC and victimology, ignoring the grim calculus of Nature now tightening it noose around any prospect for human survival other than where ratio between sustainable resources and population remain extant. Oh, but that is apostasy against the fervent belief that nature makes exception (miracles) to humanity on basis of the Left’s abstract notions of moral culpability.

  13. Hospice Man February 10, 2017 at 11:30 am #

    The handing of blame to the people stuck in urban schools is unfair and counter-productive. I’ve been teaching ‘enrichment’ programs i public and private schools in NYC for the last few years. When people (rightly) laud the educational accomplishments in Danish, Finnish and French schools, I’d point out that the teachers there make living wages (teachers here need side-gigs to cover their expenses). I’d also point out that a teacher in Finland who found herself in front of a class of 35 eighth graders, most of whom hadn’t had breakfast because the family had no money, that teacher would probably walk out and/or demand a meeting with the union. My kids in the public schools didn’t just need an education–they needed social workers. BTW, many of the students I had were first-generation, with Caribbean parents, and if there wasn’t a man in the kids’ house, it had a lot to do with deportation. We know what works in education–every poor schlub teaching in NY knows what would help (they have to take two extra years of classes for the teaching license, including best practices and childhood mental development). But since school expenditures are based on local tax proceeds and since politicians in NYC rarely have to answer for the schools, nobody is looking out for the interests of the kids. Betsy DeVos is going to eradicate the department she’s now in charge of–the reason we got a Department of Ed in the first place is that after desegregation kicked in, Southern states experienced massive white flight from the public system and setting national education standards seemed like a good idea.
    Also–my eighth graders didn’t know when the CIvil War happened (let alone WWII), and had never heard of earth day (April 22) because the third week of April is devoted to a week of NCLB tests that they all have to pass, so there’s no distraction allowed for Earth Day. History has been removed from curriculum because it isn’t on the tests the kids have to pass. Again, the Caribbean kids didn’t know anything about segregation, Jim Crow, etc., and felt that this history didn’t apply to them.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 10, 2017 at 2:44 pm #

      Thank God for small favors. Obviously once they are acculturated, they will be as angry and bitter as American Blacks. And this is what you WANT? Utterly perverse.

      • malthuss February 10, 2017 at 4:58 pm #

        Again, the Caribbean kids didn’t know anything about segregation, Jim Crow, etc., and felt that this history didn’t apply to them.

        Exactly. Another sign of low IQ.

        Blacks have little or no interest in things that dont relate or benefit them.

      • thwack February 10, 2017 at 5:02 pm #

        Why are you so angry if you’re not black?

        • elysianfield February 10, 2017 at 7:36 pm #

          Thwack,
          It is that “reading comprehension” thang again…he is unhappy about circumstances BECAUSE he is not black…see, ya gotta read it closely, and then think about it.

          I disagree with his general statement about blacks…many, many, but not all, blacks evince his stated lack of other-than-self interest. Malthuss understands this, it was but a hurried comment….

          A Quiz…

          She offered her honor,
          He honored her offer,
          And all night long,
          It was honor and offer….

          So, Thwack…what is happening here?

          • thwack February 10, 2017 at 7:55 pm #

            You are infected with some kind of cuntagian that makes you act like a faggot?

  14. capt spaulding February 10, 2017 at 11:32 am #

    A lot of the problem has to do with the parents of the kids. Both my kids were enrolled in what was referred to as an “open” school. If you wanted your child in it, you had to make an effort to get them enrolled. They had black kids in their classes whose parents made the effort to get them in, and those kids responded as well as any others in the program. They did their homework, were well behaved, and performed well in the program. The difference, as far as I could see, was in the parenting. It all starts in the home. If the parents don’t give a damn, the kids won’t either.

  15. HowardBeale February 10, 2017 at 12:14 pm #

    “… it illustrates perfectly Joseph Tainter’s classic collapse dynamic of over-investments in complexity with diminishing returns.”

    Jim, With about 20 years of teaching experience in California schools, 4 years in South Korean public schools, and 1 year in Japanese private schools, I can tell you you are spot on 100%. At least 90% of “staff development” time in California schools, in my experience, has been spent “learning” how to teach kids who don’t speak English; i.e., enabling students to never have to learn English. Abysmal failure. The complexity of the effort reduces actual content delivered to a small fraction of what would normally be covered in a course.
    South Korea and Japan, monolingual countries, are focused like the sun passing through a magnifying glass on content and mastery.

    “Multi-culturalism,” more aptly called rabid support for non-assimilation, has failed spectacularly. We are the third world; the memo just hasn’t breached the fire wall of ignorance yet. Should have put it on Hillary’s server…

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    • malthuss February 10, 2017 at 12:17 pm #

      enabling students to never have to learn English.———

      Thats what its all about.
      1700-1970, English only in USA schools.

      As more Brown skinned, Spanish speaking moved to USA with little desire to assimilate, bi lingual education was offered.
      We accommodated them. BAD IDEA.

  16. malthuss February 10, 2017 at 12:14 pm #

    Lean Body Mass versus Percent Body fat,

    beantownbill. February 9, 2017 at 11:57 pm #

    ’m not interested in knowing anyone’s weight, including my wife’s because weight is just a number; how one looks is just one determinent of desirability.

    One’s fatness or thinness is more important to one’s looks than one’s weight.

    • thwack February 10, 2017 at 1:56 pm #

      Look,

      I stand by my statement; if you are AFRAID to ask a woman her weight, it means she is a fatson.

      Same thing with age; no girl ever hesitates to tell you “Im 17”

  17. malthuss February 10, 2017 at 12:20 pm #

    Under Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, a policy called “racial equity” was devised to mitigate the embarrassing problem of black students being suspended or disciplined disproportionately for atrocious behavior in the classroom. [JHK]

    Racists everywhere, usually non White.
    Disparate impact, anyone?

  18. cdwarior February 10, 2017 at 1:02 pm #

    English is very specific in both meaning and magnitude. It therefore is a root language of money. You order three pairs of shoes and get them, not 8 wheels of cheese. If you are unable to manage English, you are most likely unable to manage money and hence your inability to attain a ‘lifestyle’. This is fertile ground for the micro-managing statist whose only motivation is to ‘help’. Themselves of course, because after all, they can speak the language.

    • thwack February 10, 2017 at 2:20 pm #

      “English is very specific in both meaning and magnitude. It therefore is a root language of money”

      ********************************************************

      It is also a root language of lying, deception, equivocation, mis direction, confusion…

      thats why whenever I ask a simple question?

      and I get buckets and buckets of words in reply?

      I know the respondent is trying to flim flam, hood wink, or bamboozl me.

      And you guys wonder why sometimes Janos is the only white person I can stand up in this muhfuggah?

      *vomit*

      • JimInFlorida February 12, 2017 at 11:10 am #

        The lying, deception, equivocation, etc. that infected the English language came from JEWS and Jew lawyers. Great English literature and poetry are great because they are uncontaminated by the mind of Esau-Edom (Jews).

        The King’s English made Shakespeare and the King James Bible possible. It also conveyed the Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence, the inventions of the Industrial Age, the ideas that liberated Working Men from Robber Barons, and launched us into space.

        The pollution of English comes from Legalese, (a.k.a Talmudism) which is 110% JEWISH, and it pollutes every word it touches. THERE is where you find the flim-flam.

  19. AKlein February 10, 2017 at 1:15 pm #

    Over the course of the past several decades the public education system has followed the same route as the healthcare system. That is, it has fostered a vast increase in the number of administrators, but a rather anemic increase (if any) in the number of on-the-front providers. In the case of healthcare, it’s physicians/practitioners, in the educational system, it’s teachers. Adding to this, both in healthcare and education, there has been a greatly increased emphasis on credentials over demonstrated ability. So what makes these two areas of social concern, education and healthcare, so similar? As our host opines, both have become rackets.And the primary objective of a racket is to extract as much money as possible from its constituency, not the delivery of the goods or services ostensibly promised. From my perspective, the failure of public education is symptomatic of a much greater problem; a grossly defective culture which embodies all the wrong values. Unless and until we address the defective culture, nothing durable can be done about the education, healthcare, or financial systems. This viewpoint is hardly new. I believe I have read it in several of our host JHK’s many essays. JHK has written, several times I should add, that we are a wicked people and thus richly deserve all the ill consequences our wickedness creates. Until we do something about the intrinsic wickedness, we might just as well bay at the moon about the evils of education – and healthcare – and the financial system – and, etc etc, etc.

    • Greg Knepp February 10, 2017 at 2:59 pm #

      “intrinsic wickedness” is apt. Perhaps Trump is a symptom of the national dysfunction rather than a cause. In his late 1940’s essays, Carl Jung makes this very point about the rise of Hitler amid the chaos of depression era Germany – the inevitability of a leader such as Hitler under the prevailing circumstances of the day. Mind, I don’t take the ‘symptom’ theory lightly. In truth, nobody dies of a disease – it’s the symptom that kills you!

  20. San Jose February 10, 2017 at 1:31 pm #

    Up until the third grade, I sent my kids to a local, private, Waldorf-esque school. It was pricey and turned out to be too “tree-huggy” even for me.

    So I moved the kids to San Jose Unified School District. There were rumors of a GATE program (Gifted And Talented Education) for kids with IQ’s over 130, but it turned out that it was smoke and mirrors. Parents could ask the teachers to give their talented kids more homework. That was it.

    I did my best to contribute by volunteering in the classroom and teaching art history and appreciation one afternoon a month.

    Up until grade 10, the stupid and smart kids are all in the same classrooms in San Jose Unified. Then the AP and advanced courses kick in and my kids didn’t have their time wasted by kids who didn’t care about education and were in school just to keep a seat warm–that is if they had the ability to sit still.

    In wealthier California districts (Los Altos/Palo Alto) all the parents get an invoice from the PTA for like $7,000 a year to enrich the education–music, art, field trips. If they are living in those districts, they can afford it! Most parents contribute. There are social consequences for those who don’t contribute.

    My two cents,

    Jen in San Jose

    PS is Q OK?

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    • malthuss February 10, 2017 at 4:51 pm #

      Now, at you tube, the buzz is theres a connection from waldorf
      schools and Pizza gate.

  21. Jigplate February 10, 2017 at 2:05 pm #

    Last week, I celebrated my 30th anniversary as a vocational teacher in one of the poorest districts in the largest urban school system in the country. Consequently, I feel particularly qualified to speak to today’s topic. First, I feel that the DeVos debacle will likely have little impact on the daily lives of America’s classroom teachers, simply because I saw little impact on my daily life from any of the other past education secretaries (common core notwithstanding) . In addition, since it seems that the “resistance” fight against trump is entirely based on lawyers, DeVos won’t be able to order a box of pencils without some SJW filing a federal lawsuit. By far, the most impact and damage that I have experienced has come at the hands of state and city officials (perhaps egged on and encouraged/ funded by the feds). In 2000, my city district had 15 comprehensive academic High Schools- each with between 1400 and 4000 students. Each school had one principal, and one assistant principal for each academic department. Then in walked the Gates and Annenberg foundations, and in cahoots with our financial wizard mayor – whoosh- the entire city was turned upside-down. Now 15 years later, those same 15 buildings have from 4 to 8 separate “Boutique” High schools- each with a separate independent principle ( at $150,000 a pop) , and multiple Assistant principals. I kid you not – one of these schools is named “the peace and diversity academy” ( Not to be confused with the High school for peace and social justice in Philly).

    Our financial wizard mayor is gone, and so is Uncle Bill’s grant money. We are now left with a financially unsustainable model (how many industries in America have had a 1000% increase in mid-level management?) A model that will likely collapse under its own weight and poor performance. Culturally, I have seen little difference in the quality of the students in the last 30 years, except that far fewer of them speak what could be regarded as English. Instead of writing poorly on paper, they can now write poorly on a small screen. The girls have even learned how to text with the phone hidden inside their bag! In fact, I have stopped going to the Teacher’s staff room, primarily because of the depressing lack of English being spoken there. As for what I am ostensibly supposed to be teaching, Vocational Information technology, I am in reality doing precious little of that. Despite my continuing encouragement in the form of posting help wanted ads for IT jobs (showing the high salaries) many of my students show little interest, and in any event, are frustrated at their lack of ability to read the technical material.

    I am now close to the end of my career, and if I were to sum it up, I would say that I am primarily engaged in warehousing the children of our cities’ permanent underclass. On the whole, this would seem to be an incredibly demoralizing job, but a conversation with a former colleague who retired some years ago put it into perspective. He told me not to feel bad, because I was simply a cog in the machine of our city’s public service economy. He said that my job was to provide future clients to other city agencies such as social services, corrections, police, etc. The cosmic Irony in all of this is that the school that I am now in is in the same neighborhood where my father grew up in the 1940’s. Walking down the street towards the school I sometimes feel as if I am in some sort of foreign exchange program. I see little in the way of assimilation. After all, it is not like immigration in the early part of the last century- where small insular communities eventually expelled their children into a common American culture, now the entire city it seems is from someplace else.

    • Frankiti February 10, 2017 at 2:16 pm #

      With the passage of child labor laws, schools became the daycares for worker offspring.
      The companies didn’t have to pay, and neither did the worker.
      Thus freeing up another household member (mom) for labor.

    • thwack February 10, 2017 at 2:27 pm #

      He said that my job was to provide future clients to other city agencies such as social services, corrections, police, etc.

      ****************************************

      Why did this person trust you enough to tell you the truth?

      You think he says that to every teacher?

    • Janos Skorenzy February 10, 2017 at 2:52 pm #

      Exactly. Those “children” should be learning things that matter. By high school they should be working in the fields or factories. They have neither the desire or the capacity to learn any of the higher things our culture has to offer. And the same is true of most White kids, though obviously to a lesser degree.

      Maybe they shouldn’t have been brought here? Of course. Diversity is weakness and dysfunction. Homogeneity is strength and longevity. They would have been less prone to criminality and dysfunction in their own lands. But even there, they would be different. Blacks have weaker family structures in Africa as well. The Clan and Tribe make up for it. Since those are weak here, they end up with nothing – except the Gang of course which is both Clan and Tribe.

      • malthuss February 10, 2017 at 4:50 pm #

        Robotics means the end of work, With perilous consequences.

        See J Rifkins book, from the 1990s.

      • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 10:34 pm #

        Janos S. states ‘Diversity is weakness and dysfunction. Homogeneity is strength and longevity.’ I immediately flashed on all the years I spent studying and working in Japan – probably the most homogenous large country in the world. Practically no immigration (and, amusingly, revealingly, statement of policy like ‘Islam is not suitable for Japan’).

        Eager foreigners who wish to assimilate (or even fit in) should save their time and energy as the Japanese do not appreciate it (you’ll never be accepted as an equal and at best be a standing joke).

        Even the ethnic Japanese-Brazilians who moved to Japan – largely for economic reasons – were treated as foreigners. Many returned to Brazil, disheartened.

        Yet look at how amazingly efficient Japanese business and industry is. Look the same, act the same, talk the same, think the same: the mechanism runs perfectly smoothly and rapidly. It does tend to be inhuman, though.

    • malthuss February 10, 2017 at 4:55 pm #

      Information technology, I am in reality doing precious little of that. Despite my continuing encouragement in the form of posting help wanted ads for IT jobs (showing the high salaries) many of my students show little interest, and in any event, are frustrated at their lack of ability to read the technical material.

      Do the students have IQs of 110 and up?

      If not, IT is not for them, with a few AA and other exceptions.

      read the technical material. –as in?

  22. RobRhodes February 10, 2017 at 2:11 pm #

    The lack of a cultural framework is also consistent with what I can grasp of Spengler in “Decline of the West,” it fails as the culture does. He seems to argue though that the framework evolves organically early in the culture’s arc and cannot be created artificially.

    I agree with some commenters that Big Education needs to be disassembled but see no solution in privatizing it, that need not break it up at all. Re-localization would.

  23. Frankiti February 10, 2017 at 2:11 pm #

    A “broken educational system” is a worn euphemism.
    We have a broken culture.
    We accept a lesser culture.
    We have broken parenting.
    We have no accountability.
    We have no ownership.
    Teachers are to be surrogate parents.
    Failure is on account of the school, not the student, not the family.
    Up is down.
    Lost is all

    • capt spaulding February 10, 2017 at 2:14 pm #

      I agree with everything you say.

      • capt spaulding February 10, 2017 at 2:28 pm #

        Except your last statement. Failure is largely a result of the parent’s not raising their kids properly. I have seen it time after time. Somehow people expect the teachers to fill the gap left by parents who don’t give a damn. It’s not realistic. A child raised by dirtballs will more than likely be a dirtball. Nasty, but that’s the reality.

        • Janos Skorenzy February 10, 2017 at 2:54 pm #

          Remember, he’s mocking the false assumptions of our times. His last is in line with all the rest. I reacted the same way. Our reactive minds get us into all kinds of trouble.

      • thwack February 10, 2017 at 2:29 pm #

        You two should get a room.

        • capt spaulding February 10, 2017 at 2:46 pm #

          You should get a life.

    • SpeedyBB February 11, 2017 at 10:37 pm #

      Burma-Shave

  24. San Jose February 10, 2017 at 2:26 pm #

    I hear Christine Baranski is going to play DeVos on SNL. Definitely a resemblance. No doubt we’ll see some Trump twitters.

  25. I was considering a career in the Teaching industry but after a quick examination of the facts I decided against it.

    Low pay, terrible working conditions, no independence. Investigating the institutions and teachers themselves, I find the atmosphere of feminine stupidity overwhelming. The schools seem to revel in terrible architecture- I found out that as long as they keep erecting buildings they can keep getting grants. The schools around me are laid out like prisons. Surrounded by high fences, sentries everywhere.

    After school, the parade of SUVs show up to ferry their kids home- I know for a fact they could walk the distance (I did as a kid). The parking lot is a cloud of exhaust fumes. The buses, which still run normal routes, are diesel-spewing monstrosities barely running 10% capacity most of the time.

    At this point I think children are really being victimized. Restrained from meaningful participation in daily life (what is left of it in the empty wasteland of suburban sprawl) and unable to witness a real work ethic other than their ordained education ministers and parent(s), these kids seem neurotic well before their time. I think this generation of college students are completely unable to think (based on their ability to speak and reason- at the state college and c.c. level)- the up and comers will fare no better.

    DeVos, et. al., will bring a big change to the educational landscape. We’ll see vouchers paying for religious instruction, American madrasas, homeschooling and private, and the evisceration of schools like Como Park in St. Paul. Whites will continue to fly away- but the landing spots are looking more and more expensive, crowded, and beset with real estate racketeering.

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    • Janos Skorenzy February 10, 2017 at 2:56 pm #

      Yes, women take over whole professions and persecute men until they alone remain – after having driven normal men out, keeping the eunuchs made over in their own image.

      • routersurfer February 10, 2017 at 5:08 pm #

        What professions are you speaking of? Not Education. Since only coaches of major schools make real money. 50% of our Higher Ed. Pros are part time and on food stamps. America respects educators…….

        • thwack February 10, 2017 at 7:59 pm #

          He is speaking of HR where women make 6 figure salaries chopping balls off.

          • SpeedyBB February 12, 2017 at 7:39 am #

            I bet you’re really popular at parties, with a line like that (though I agree with you 100%).

  26. Ishabaka February 10, 2017 at 3:08 pm #

    I actually talk with a large number of lower class Blacks at work. It took me a long time to realize that the repeated expression “Know’m sayin?” is because the speaker CANNOT be sure the listeners knows what is being said, because the speaker lacks the capability to express himself clearly in English. It’s quite sad – imagine being unable to clearly express your views and thoughts to those around you.

    • thwack February 10, 2017 at 3:32 pm #

      Indeed.

      Many black people suffer from Helen Keller Syndrome; since we don’t have the language to express ourselves, we just get louder and more violent

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHwoRFe70jk

    • AKlein February 11, 2017 at 9:36 am #

      Sadly, that’s also prevalent among whites. Their phase of choice is “like, you know?” or just “like”. In other words, they use the lead-in word which indicates that a simile is about to be uttered, but it usually never does. When I hear them use these phrases, I often want to say, “No, I don’t know, so why don’t you explain it to me?” At one time, decades ago, this kind of jargon was called “Valley girl” speak. It was, I recall, supposed to project a coquettish innocence. But in truth, it’s just a display of gross laziness.

      • SpeedyBB February 12, 2017 at 7:42 am #

        [From The Onion Archives]:

        “The way things stand, things in the Deep South almost have to get better. Otherwise, the people who live there will devolve into preverbal, overall-wearing sub-morons within a century,” said Professor Dennis Lassiter of Princeton University. “Either Southerners will start improving themselves, or they’ll be sold to middle-class Asians as pets.”

        (Not just the ‘Deep South’ either – not these days.)

        http://www.theonion.com/article/south-postpones-rising-again-for-yet-another-year-377

    • Greg Knepp February 11, 2017 at 4:41 pm #

      Good point, Ish, but it’s worse than that – indeed the speaker you reference has a severely limited ability to even form complex, coherent ‘views and thoughts’. This is due to his lack of language resources. He has only a generalized sense of where he wants to go, but no real means to get there. severely

  27. grochef February 10, 2017 at 3:15 pm #

    Excellent post, James. Thank you for the link to Katherine Kersten’s article. The findings outlined in the end of her article go hand-in-hand with the thoughts that Christopher Cornelius shared in your PodCast.

    • routersurfer February 10, 2017 at 6:11 pm #

      Agreed. JHK podcasts are great.

      • thwack February 10, 2017 at 8:04 pm #

        yes, especially the intro music; makes me want a small dranka lickah

  28. hmuller February 10, 2017 at 3:28 pm #

    Decades of the Federal Govt. gaining power over education at the expense of the localities; decades of public school students getting dumber. Could there be a connection? Oh JHK, your honesty and common sense on this and other issues will get you booted out of the “Left-Wing America Club”.

    • routersurfer February 10, 2017 at 6:18 pm #

      Our friends The Feds, Big Biz tools and fools. Mad at The Fed? Ask Corp. America to buy a better GovMint. I really hope many of you live to see a world without elected government. BTW, what we have now is not thoughtful elections and serious political parties. Just Show Biz!!! Welcome to the Circus. Just like Rome.

      • SpeedyBB February 12, 2017 at 7:49 am #

        At one point I imagined that I, as a moderately serious student of ancient history, was abnormally paranoid, the only one tracking contemporary American history with the Roman Empire around 200~300AD: corrupt, useless, frightened Senate, the masses angry but inchoate (bread & circuses distracting them for the moment), silly / insane / self-absorbed Emperors propped up and removed at the sinister pleasure of the Praetorians. Borders wavering & crumbling as hostile alien armies, many schooled in Roman military tactics, push and probe. Provinces unhappy, muttering about secession. Treasury empty, coin debased. Overall sense of paralysis.

        Sound familiar? I’m seeing a lot of these comparisons these days – all on-line, however. In the MSM it’s still happy motoring and business as usual.

  29. tucsonspur February 10, 2017 at 4:39 pm #

    Please, it’s “nome sayin?”

    It’s all really very, very simple. Get back to the three “Rs”, and the three “Ds”. Duty (to yourself and others), discipline, and dedication.

    Of course the politicization of education with race and culture undermines and convolutes what should be an effective, simple process, assuming good teachers and good parents. Right, big assumption.

    School was great back in the day where I went in NYC. See what “real” education was like back then:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Amyo9HNLSgI

  30. routersurfer February 10, 2017 at 5:01 pm #

    Good luck Ms. De Voss. Welcome to POWER DOWN EARTH! You can bet the Govmint vouchers will end a few years after the public schools and teacher unions are cremated. Just returned a few things to my local public library. Seems they are having a Book Sale. Yes, you guessed it selling books from the stacks. Each year the shelf space for books and other forms of physical media become smaller and smaller.

    Education could bring us together. Which is why it is being scrapped. For a bit longer we will be consumers, not citizens. Then we not of Inc. Born will work the fields or die. Back to church as State. With the rancid cream of society rising to the top.

    Thanks for a great read Mr. Kunstler.

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    • SpeedyBB February 12, 2017 at 7:56 am #

      Agreed in toto.

      And yours truly, living ten time zones away (Indonesia) watching as the eager and diligent middle class yearns to steer society and the economy in exactly the same direction. The latest alarming phenomenon scores of energy-gulping high-rise condo towers popping up all over the archipelago.

      Unbelievable traffic jams in Jakarta (the result of easy if expensive automotive loans).Sign of progress. A ‘bicycle economy’ pinning its hopes on the optimism and desires of 250m potential consumers – a chancy business, as the masses can suddenly turn skittish and stop buying.

      I suspect you see this same pattern all over the ‘third world’. If only they knew…

  31. K-Dog February 10, 2017 at 5:21 pm #

    ‘Equity’ was a stupid policy. If a student deserves discipline it should be administered regardless of race and race must not be considered individual behavior is what matters. Attempting to force equity by making statistics match between racial groups demonstrated extreme stupidity and a Bolshevik expression of racism.

    Americans in general do not value education and see it only as a means to an end. The end being employment. That it can lead to enlightenment and the achievement of individual potential is dismissed. Christian conservative values in general are at odds with education as education challenges conservative values. Blind acceptance of conservative values is expected and education is an enemy of blind acceptance.

    Republicans do not embrace equality and consider an elite class necessary and natural. Denying others education makes perfect sense to Republicans so picking an unqualified person who will privatize the education (but with generous infusions of public money to the new owners) system is the way to go. Raid the public coffers for individual gain. What else do you expect Trump to do. It is what he is about.

    Public education made America great and is the gateway to a common culture, but in our zeitgeist of me myself and I, a common culture has no place.

  32. pequiste February 10, 2017 at 5:25 pm #

    Regular parents, if there are any remaining (not the kind that send the kids to equestrian or sailing camp for the summer ) cannot compete with the media landscape that the Evil Bastards have created for today’s children – TV, cinema, internet, video games etc. Neither can those one formidable bastions of community awareness and spirit, now more like sports-themed concentration camps: the public schools.

    But just think, in 10 years or so, a wonderful intervention shall occur – autonomous Artificial Intelligence robots executing the dreary job of teaching little Johnny and Janey the three Rs – reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. For the “Inner-City,” teacher unions and NEA will jump for joy to have a robot do the heavy lifting (and be bullet resistant too) in ensuring D’Tronius and Shay-Waniqua have the skills they will need. (What would be the Three “Rs” for Inner City youth I wonder? Anyone care to take a shot at it?)

    I can see it now, under the U.S. Department of Education’s “Future Looks Bright Program” of 2025, students, teachers, and especially administrators, may well be reduced to grunts and squeals to communicate, learn and teach, but just think of the investments in technology.

    • tucsonspur February 10, 2017 at 6:44 pm #

      Rap, reefer, and riots?

      • pequiste February 10, 2017 at 7:16 pm #

        Well done sir. Thank you.

  33. beantownbill. February 10, 2017 at 6:51 pm #

    What I don’t see here is any discussion about learning. All I see is talk about teaching. To me, teaching implies applying force and control over others, while learning implies a free quest for gaining knowledge. Many young people don’t want to be taught, but most want to learn.

    Education to me also implies lack of choice; it is a poor word. Learning implies a willing consent of someone to get something of value.

    Many years ago, before the www, I read an article about a private school where students picked their own subjects to learn, the theory being that kids will learn and apply themselves in life most effectively when they learned subjects that interest them.

    One kid loved math, and down through the years that was almost the only thing he studied in this school. But because he was so interested in one non-verbal area, he could barely read and was far below the other students’ reading level. Until, in order to advance to the next level of math, he had to be able to read the more complicated verbal descriptions of the math. So he went to the right teacher and requested help in learning more advanced reading comprehension. Soon, he could read as well as the next student.

    The obvious point is that he learned something voluntarily when it became necessary to advance in his life. Nobody forced him to do something he didn’t care about. I used the example of reading, but the principle is the same for anything.

    • pequiste February 10, 2017 at 7:57 pm #

      There is a blizzard of learnin’ going on in the world Bill, except it is not the “traditional” learning of a stable civilization. On the contrary:

      You will see the children and teens of today learning how to use the latest “app” for their smartphone. They are learning how to do math, chemistry and even history on the computer (now children, where is Canada on the map? No, not you Elrond.) They are learning how to use the computer for computer-aided-design. Who needs to know how to draw anyway?

      Speaking of drawing, of course kids today need to learn how to draw: see the adorable coloring books made specifically for our stressed- out and emotionally-hurt college and university children.

      You may observe, at your local schools, children and teens learning that Heather Has Two Mommies; that Daddy Has A New Room-mate, and that LBGTQ…. is perfectly fine for eight year olds. Now what toilet are we using today?

      You may also see children and teens, in public and private schools, learning that to be White is nearly anathema because of all the horrible things that White people have done. Latinos can have La Raza and African Americans – Black Lives Matter – as they are important tools to liberate morally superior people and cultures.

      You will hear the children utilize the language they are learning in the mass media and, to a lesser extent, the home. BITCH, HO, MUTHA FUKKA, NIGGA. Now that is a lexicon the NEA can believe in!

      You will see the teens and young adults sporting impressive tattoos and piercings. (As a matter of fact, just today, I saw an approximately late-teens or maybe 20 year old male clerk at a store who had an ear opening with plastic rim, large enough to place a Dunkin’ Munchkin through. Yikes!

      You will observe the benighted, learning religious texts that demand the subjugation of women and jihad, and death to infidels among other progressive goals. In a madrassa near you. Check it if you dare.

      Lots of learnin’ going on for sure Bill; from sea to shining sea and well beyond. And from it we shall surely reap a most rotten harvest.

      • beantownbill. February 10, 2017 at 8:33 pm #

        I dislike the examples you use above, too, Peq. For us, we have to learn how to cope with the world as it is, even if we don’t like a lot of it.

        What I do to cope is to think of our present-day culture in terms of evolution. Nature is partial to experimentation. If we look at the fossil record, we see the rise of various species, and then suddenly they disappear. From what we can gather, nature discarded a lot of species and replaced them with something different (better).

        Using that as an analogy, I see our culture experimenting with different forms. Many of them will eventually be discarded, like this silly trans-gender stuff, if they don’t work. You only can have so much dysfunction before there’s a re-set. Then things work better; that’s what evolution is.

        So I say let all this weird and ineffective experimentation play itself out and enjoy the show. The only caveat is that nature doesn’t decide that the human experiment needs to come to an end.

        • KesaAnna February 10, 2017 at 9:40 pm #

          ” in terms of evolution. ”

          Or, perhaps, in terms of Social Darwinism.

          ” Nature is partial to experimentation. ”

          ” Experimentation” , if a shotgun blast to the face is experimentation. At least some evidence suggests that at least some extinctions are triggered, not by anything resembling experimentation , ( By the way, how does a mindless non-entity experiment ?? ) but by wild-card violent events, or random slips on banana peels.

          ” nature discarded a lot of species and replaced them with something different (better). ”

          Genuine scientific objectivity would leave out the ” ( better) ” part.
          At the very most, in so many cases , “better” is infinitely debatable.
          Were house cats and dogs really better adaptations to, and better for the ecology of, an Indian Ocean Island, than Dodo Birds?
          Like I said, that’s infinitely debatable.

          As often as not, “survival of the fittest” looks more like survival of the fattest, or survival of the crudest, survival of the lowest mean, survival of the LEAST adapted , elaborated, or refined.

          “The only caveat is that nature doesn’t decide that the human experiment needs to come to an end. ”

          If the human experiment ever ends, according to this train of thought, there won’t be discussion forums.

          Which is to say, if this is true, there is nothing to discuss then , or to discuss now.

  34. KesaAnna February 10, 2017 at 8:08 pm #

    “Christian conservative values” ? Surely that should be put in quotation marks.

    what I am guessing you are calling conservative Christian values is like unto calling National Socialism “conservative”, when the only thing remotely conservative about National Socialism was the costumes. ( and, well, maybe Hitler’s Edwardian / Victorian , actually boring , sexuality. lol )

    Martin Luther was the paid stooge of German secular princes who hated the Roman Magisterium right from the start anyway.
    And near as I can tell it isn’t really much different now 500 years later.

    I can’t imagine why secular types gripe about the Christian Right , except maybe they never actually set foot in one of these churches, and so are ignorant of the subject?
    These churches , for example, teach a Sola Scriptura which flatly ignores the fact that the very important United States is never mentioned in the Bible.

    This is to say, generally, these churches teach a jingoistic secularism that should please all but the most power-hungry Fascists and Bolsheviks.

    Which is to say it seems curious to inject Christianity into it in a negative , when it seems to have very little to do with Christianity , but very much to do with secular forces presumably being endorsed never-the-less.

    But then you said it yourself , ” Americans in general do not value education and see it only as a means to an end. The end being employment. ”
    Yes, and this has what to do with theology ? And if it does have anything to do with theology, wouldn’t a mundane secular motive serve just as well in this case?

    As for what Christianity DOES have to do with it ;

    — The assertion that promiscuity is probably a really bad way to go about raising a reliable, productive , educated adult.

    — The assertion that marriage vows as negotiable will lead to destruction of trust between two, since a vow — THE most important vow — is now worth zero, will lead to destruction of trust in the wider community, and will ultimately produce a society as armed camp begging for a strong man .

    Yes, these assertions contradict the notion that your secular institutions are as vital and important as represented.

    These assertions contradict the assumption that your science is really that definitive, that maybe goatherds from 2,000 years ago weren’t so stupid after all , that 2,000 year old wisdom and tradition is not mindless , but actually well informed.

    I can see where that might be a …..”problem”.

  35. KesaAnna February 10, 2017 at 8:33 pm #

    ” There is so much not right with public education these days that it could be the poster child for institutional collapse in America. ”

    What are these institutions ?

    This quasi-religion that isn’t a religion that thought it could replace the 10,000 year old family , and 10,000 year old theology , with legal forms , architecture, costumes, new technological toys, and organizational charts.

    Maybe that was simply a rotten, even idiotic, idea?

    No! it couldn’t be ! Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were geniuses , and great humanitarians ! Like Lenin.

    Lol, I wouldn’t buy an apple from Jefferson or Franklin .

    What I have noticed about public education, and since I was 12 years old,
    is that affluent , nurturing, cohesive families , or even impoverished, but nurturing, cohesive families , produce the educated and professional classes ——— the same as in 1720 , except there was no public education in 1720.

    hmm, that’s curious.
    But, oh, never mind.

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    • Janos Skorenzy February 10, 2017 at 11:43 pm #

      Yes, the fear of the old intellectuals anent public education have proven all too accurate: it is simply mass indoctrination into twisted ideology and unnatural ways of life. Most have no business going to college. Educating people beyond their capacity is simply the perfection of indoctrination – the creation of mandarins and cadres.

  36. janet February 10, 2017 at 9:46 pm #

    What I don’t see here is any discussion about learning. –beantown

    beantown, there is an excellent post above from Paulo (February 10, 2017 at 11:12 am #) which does mention learning but he used the educational code word “engagement” which is when students engage in self-motivated learning that happens spontaneously when students are motivated because they have something interesting to learn.

    “In today’s interconnected world, it’s essential that we expand our notions of the who, what, and where of civic engagement. From early ages, young people have important ideas about how their schools, communities, and the larger world might be changed for the better. How do we support children, teens, and emerging adults to be effective and reflective agents of positive social change? What unique opportunities and challenges for civic and political participation are presented by digital and social media? Civic education needs to prepare youth not just for the voting booth but for deep engagement in their communities, with critical problems facing our world, offline and online, and from young ages.” http://www.pz.harvard.edu/topics/civic-engagement

  37. Pucker February 11, 2017 at 1:31 am #

    I heard that the “Podesta Emails” are worth reading. Lots of coded references to pizza, cheese, etc. in such a way as to make it evident that they’re talking about neither pizza nor cheese.

  38. Pucker February 11, 2017 at 1:42 am #

    Wikileaks published one of Podesta’s emails in which they discuss “Spirit Cooking”.

  39. BackRowHeckler February 11, 2017 at 1:43 am #

    In our town of 25000 the school system has 3 ‘Diversity Coordinators’, each one pulling down about $150,000 per year. Several hundred black and Hispanic kids are bussed out here each day from Hartford; that’s what they must be coordinating, I don’t know.

    Lately they’ve latched on the ‘anti-bullying’ crusade, which is a gay initiative. They’re riding that hard.

    brh

  40. FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 1:48 am #

    Radical restructuring of education in the interests of transnational business

    The most important area of global management of the educational project, implemented by the world financial elite, is the creation of a single world system of education, the basis of which should be based on common standards, principles and patterns.

    Development and implementation of these standards has been assigned to UNESCO, as an important milestone in the implementation became 1970s, when the West began the transition to a neoliberal strategy aimed at scrapping the welfare state and the formation of informational society under the control of the world’s elite.

    That’s when one of the global think tank, Club of Rome, has prepared a report in which a catastrophic situation has been described, waiting for humanity in the early twenty-first century. Prioritized was a task of ensuring “zero growth”, implying a reduction in population and the transition to the new model of societal management. Although this change was carried out under the guise of scientific concepts, in reality, the ideology of the “Club of Rome” is based on an occult-pantheistic worldview of the movement “New Age”, which the tops of the ruling class adheres to, and use of new social technologies.

    In another famous paper in 1975, which was written under the direction of Samuel Huntington called the Crisis of Democracy: the Trilateral Commission report on manageable democracy, has openly expressed concern about excess of democracy, and its threat of it to the ruling elite of America. The crisis, according to Huntington, consisted in the fact that hundreds of thousands of ordinary US citizens began to protest against the policy of their government.

    ”Democratic government vulnerability in the United States is not due to external threats, though these threats are very real, and not due to internal threats from the left or right, even though such threats as very real, but because of the internal dynamics of democracy itself in a highly educated , mobile and active society”

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  41. FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 1:55 am #

    In order to solve the problem of “highly educated people” and achieve controllability of society (the less educated people, the easier it is to manipulate them) the elites began a radical restructuring of education in the interests of transnational business.

  42. FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 2:39 am #

    Restructuring of Humanity and Global Morality

    Program standardization, methodologies and assessments – this is only the visible part of the globalization of education. The main thing is its content, which translates to a qualitatively new basic principles emanating from the “global spiritual vision.” They are used at all levels of education – primary, secondary, higher – and spread over the whole field of education.

    These principles began to be developed in the US in the 60-ies during the formation of the youth counterculture. The cultural and sexual revolution has declared war on all traditional and primarily Christian values, norms and principles, and this gave religious justification to “New Age”, which became the main laboratory of the Esalen Institute (California), which initiated a large-scale restructuring of the understanding of human.

    The new Bible of New-Agers became the book of Stanford’s Marilyn Ferguson “The Aquarian Conspiracy,” published in 1980, Ferguson declared the beginning of the “paradigm shift” – a synthesis of social revolutionary changes in consciousness realized by liberation of the old prohibitions.

    Ferguson wrote: “Strong, but leaderless organization is at work in the United States in order to make radical changes. Members of this organization were able to break down some of the key elements of traditional Western thinking … This plot is the fastest in the history of cultural mutation, which was wider than reform, deeper than revolution”

    Then for the “scientific” justification of this mutation were formulated gender concept – queer theory, approving the possibility of different “gender identity” that could be chosen independently by a person.

    At the same time the American Academy announced a revolt against the canons in order to liberalize education and institute the program of political correctness and multiculturalism. Susan Jacoby has shown in her book “The Age of American unreason” (2008), universities have embarked on equality, decided to do away with racism, sexism and elitism, which in turn led to the elimination of basic knowledge and extreme primitivization of education.

    • Ken Hall February 11, 2017 at 7:09 pm #

      “Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.”
      H.L. Mencken

  43. FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 3:17 am #

    Who Betrayed SEAL Team Six?

    I’ve been very concerned with the report of a security breach in President Trump’s first military mission that he approved. This most likely means there is a traitor in the midst of Trump’s core team.

    The Jan. 29th raid sending in SEAL Team 6 to penetrate an al-Qaida compound in Yemen was done under the tightest need-to-know security procedures as far as the military goes; but someone tipped the targets of the raid off because even though it was a moon-less night, as soon as Seal Team 6 hit the ground, they were met with ferocious resistance.

    As a result of the intense firefight, SEAL Team 6 member Ryan Owens was killed and two other SEALS were wounded. In addition, 23 civilians were killed and a $90 million Osprey, tilt-rotor aircraft was destroyed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYyvwRfTP4k

    KUHNER (2013): The betrayal of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6

    Did the Obama administration put a target on the backs of members of Navy SEAL Team 6? This is the question that parents of slain SEALs are now asking — and rightly so. Forget Benghazi, the IRS, Eric H. Holder Jr. and the National Security Agency spying on U.S. citizens. Important as these scandals are, what happened to SEAL Team 6 could very well dwarf them. Our government betrayed America’s finest warriors.

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/7/the-betrayal-of-the-navys-seal-team-6/

    • thwack February 11, 2017 at 6:30 pm #

      “a $90 million Osprey, tilt-rotor aircraft was destroyed.”

      *******************

      Look up the video of an attempted air to air refueling; that thing is ridiculous.

      • JimInFlorida February 12, 2017 at 11:27 am #

        The Osprey is inherently unstable because it must balance its mass across a very narrow center of gravity (the wings) while the thrust vector is also right across the CG and changing direction. Insanely stupid engineering.

        The Soviets has already experimented with that idea decades beforehand with their giant ekranoplan (Caspian Sea Monster). They exhausted that concept and decided it was a failure.

        The concept of four-point lift was around but, the momentum of cronyism and military contractor politics was too strong. Four-point lift is why electric drones are so successful! The CG is well inside the four points and is inherently stable.

        All but one V22 Osprey should be junked. Save one as a shameful example of what happens when politics, pork, payola, and cronyism gets out of control.

    • Ken Hall February 11, 2017 at 7:06 pm #

      Any chance the folks in the compound might have heard the Osprey/Ospreys coming in for landing/landings or were these a new/improved “silent” variant of the Osprey?

  44. FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 3:28 am #

    President Trump confirms Finca’s theory of Ross Perot being a “special op” by Hillary Clinton:

    https://youtu.be/ex7d-izDwzw?t=105

    Ross Perot – if it hadn’t been for Ross Perot, you would never heard of Bill Clinton

  45. dolph9 February 11, 2017 at 4:26 am #

    In America, most blacks perform at a low level. But what does that matter, right? They can become rap stars and basketball players, and the rest can get affirmative action because they are black!

    Many whites and hispanics, it must be said, are better but not by much. But what does that matter, right? They can all become administrators, or actors, or “insert worthless profession here” because the oil of the middle east belongs to us and we can just print dollars!

    America has become the land of make believe and nothing matters.

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  46. FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 6:11 am #

    How it all began

    Yesterday was a 10th anniversary of Munich Speech by Vladimir Putin

    http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034

    Ten years ago, Vladimir Putin, speaking at a security conference in Germany.

    This speech was even then regarded as sensational, but now it is clear exactly what it meant in History by designating a major turn, not only in Russian, but also in world politics.

    It was an unconditional sentence to the unipolar globalist world, and today can be clearly seen how it all has come true.

  47. Georges1202 February 11, 2017 at 8:19 am #

    Jim,

    Distressing to see you become the official apologist for this noisome cabal of nitwits that has overrun the government. Wow.

  48. Cold N. Holefield February 11, 2017 at 9:09 am #

    beantownbill, that was beautifully written. Lenny Belardo couldn’t have said it better himself. Neither could I.

    Very few can get Out of the Box as you just did. When Teachers, Administrators & Adults of all Stripes reorient themselves to a mission of serving the Future as opposed to robbing it, then we can start to move forward and evolve. The Future is The Children. Anyone who argues otherwise is a Fool and a Deceit interested only in maintaining the regressive and stultifying Status Quo and their status within it. We MUST serve The Children, and in this case The Students, if we want to evolve and, I’d say, if we want to survive as a species.

    • Cold N. Holefield February 11, 2017 at 9:18 am #

      There are many here amongst us who like it just the way it is. They crave the dysfunction because they crave hate. They live to piss & moan & hate all the live long day. If the dysfunction (function disguised as dysfunction) were to be reconciled, their miserable lives would be ruined. My Vision for the World will ruin many such lives, and nothing, and I mean NOTHING, would be more fulfilling than that. My Life would be complete. Total metaphorical annihilation & evisceration of those who conspire to hold Humanity in Chains in perpetuity. They Rule — for now. But The End, their End, is near. I can feel it in my bones, my veins, my organs & tissues. Pure Bliss awaits us because soon they will be Vanquished once and for all.

      • nsa February 11, 2017 at 10:57 am #

        CFN’s walking talking leftie cliche…..is there a community college near you offering a creative writing 101 course?

    • elysianfield February 11, 2017 at 11:28 am #

      “We MUST serve The Children, and in this case The Students, if we want to evolve and, I’d say, if we want to survive as a species.”

      The students must be given hard choices…discipline maintained, winners and losers defined. Education should be offered as a privilege, one that can be lost due to sloth, indifference, or disruptive behavior. One should never be forced to attend school past the age of 13. Corporal punishment within reason.

      Sounds a lot like public education pre-WWII, doesn’t it? You need not search for some new, golden bullet, the solution has been presented to you…the results qualified.

      • FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 11:35 am #

        elysian, corporal punishment?

        Maybe for Anglo Saxon kids?

        I remember the Soviet school – we studied hard and competitive, without any corporal punishment.

        • elysianfield February 11, 2017 at 1:08 pm #

          Finc,
          Hard study and competitiveness are to be valued. However, no fuck-ups in Russia? I understand the treatment of new recruits in the former Soviet Army was brutal. Permit me an example of “corporal punishment”. Your statement begs the suggestion of “Communist youth marching in lock-step to the glory of the 3rd Party Congress”…or some such.

          I was a freshman in High School, in Texas, when JFK opined that the youth of the country were becoming…”soft”. Change in the Physical Education class was immediate. We spent our hour per day either running or doing sit-ups, push-ups, or other strenuous activity…non-stop. I remember the whole class, in a huge group, on the gym floor doing push-ups. Circling the class were the coaches…carrying footballs. Any of us perceived as “dogging it” would catch a football, at velocity, in the head.

          No one complained or thought this untoward. I didn’t then, and still don’t.

  49. FincaInTheMountains February 11, 2017 at 11:24 am #

    As Finca predicted, Macron surges in French Presidential Race

    http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/forecast-2017-wheels-finally-come-off/#comment-288839

    After Francois Fillon, and Marine Le Pen faced a wave of compromising materials, the leader of the presidential race in France became Emmanuel Macron – the movie-star like 39-year-old financier with an amazing career. According to opinion polls, he will get to the second round, along with Le Pen, where he’ll attain 66% of the vote.

    http://www.france24.com/en/20170116-pro-eu-macron-surges-french-election-polls-france

    Macron is being actively promoted by Her Majesty and the entire City of London behind her. I guess it should be good news for the Anglo Saxons – UK and US, France will remain in their orbit even after collapse of EU (in the current form).

  50. volodya February 11, 2017 at 2:18 pm #

    When it comes right down to it, there’s nothing all that complicated about teaching basic literacy and numeracy. That should be in place by the end of the sixth grade. I went through it and so I know for a fact it can be done.

    Oh, but these are complicated times, the era of excuse making, so you don’t dare to make an assertion with the word “basic” included in it. What IS “basic”? What do we MEAN by “basic”, asks the educational philosopher with furrowed brow.

    See, given the obvious racial divides in educational attainment, with kids of east and south Asian immigrants outclassing people of other races especially blacks and Hispanics, with White kids somewhere in the middle, we quickly descend into a mire of racial grievance and cultural specificity. How many times have we heard it, Black and Hispanic kids can’t be expected to thrive intellectually in a school-world who’s cultural references are Euro-Anglo-American dominant. It’s nonsense and a distraction because for one thing, how it is that south and east Asian kids manage it?

    At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Discussion on how to fix things is pretty much pointless. If it does happen it has to be within narrow pathways which are set out so that nothing actually gets fixed. Discussion about nonsensical and dysfunctional multi-culturalism? No can do because then you’re labelled a xenophobe. Discussions by non-Blacks about Black dysfunction? Out of bounds utterly.

    No, and you can’t say anything about the depressive effect of the economic destruction of Black and other racial communities by plundering oligarchs and their preening, bi-coastal clerisy. This talk is forbidden because now it’s about the money interests of the top tier. Can’t do that.

    No, the prescribed answers are easy. White, fly-over Americans are inbred morons that chase their sisters and for these people there’s nothing to be done. This is an article of faith. For the rest, they are victims of systemic racial bias. This too is an article of faith. End of story.

    And it also doesn’t matter because the educational results we have are the educational results that the oligarch class and its supporting caste want. Fix education? No, they don’t WANT it fixed. An educated, literate, numerate working class with knowledge in history, geography, and science? No thanks, they want working class people stupid, the better to dominate and exploit.

  51. doggersize February 11, 2017 at 2:46 pm #

    most of the immigrants I run into in Cleveland speak better English and are more well spoken than most of the African Americans I run into in Cleveland that were born here.

    As for American Education, it’s flaws are trying to prepare everyone for college. Kids that aren’t that good at learning that stuff should be steered into a vocational program by the time they are sixteen. Kids not good at anything else should be steered into doing the work that most illegal immigrants do.

  52. janet February 11, 2017 at 3:46 pm #

    “Discussion about nonsensical and dysfunctional multi-culturalism?” –volodya

    We have multiculturalism thanks to immigration. We need immigrants.

    51% of unicorn companies (start-up companies whose valuation has exceeded $1 billion dollars) were founded by immigrants.

    Those immigrant-founded companies are employing native-born white Americans. Without immigrants the native-born white unemployment rate would skyrocket.

    We have multiculturalism thanks to immigration. We need immigrants. We need diversity because it makes us stronger.

  53. My Point of View February 11, 2017 at 3:50 pm #

    JK wrote: “the tragic over-centralization of school districts into giant schools”

    Agree. High schools are so large they are industrial scale factories where conformity is driven by a few king rats of peer pressure. Attention to studies takes a back seat to being a cool kid within the larger mob; prison-like worlds except one goes home at the end of the day. Boys and girls lose any connection to a local human-scale environment; lost in an airport-sized shuffling of 2-legged livestock from classroom to classroom just as passengers shuffle gate to gate for connecting flights.

  54. el vasco February 11, 2017 at 3:52 pm #

    after many years of reading this post and commenting a few times, I say adios. here’s the gist: love Jim’s style and humor and much of the content, but the anger and futility roiling here do far more harm than good.

    I conclude that such anonymous posting is truly a coward’s way. people should meet in a saloon, a courthouse, a park bench, a book store… and duke it out in person– verbally and with regard for each other as flawed human beings.

    agur

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    • elysianfield February 12, 2017 at 11:04 am #

      “I conclude that such anonymous posting is truly a coward’s way”

      Well said…uhh,,,el…(?)

  55. My Point of View February 11, 2017 at 3:54 pm #

    JK wrote: “…children produced in those conditions are so damaged by the time they get to first grade that they can’t recover.”

    Agree. The Head Start program was supposed to overcome the damage of rural and urban poverty. Like many Federal “help” programs one has to apply and prove they live below the poverty level, subject to any number of stipulations and other acts (McKinney-Vento Act, et al).  

    This gets squarely at the complexity issues of which JK speaks and detracts from reaching the people the program was supposed to help. I see the complexity of things these days and expect someday it’s all coming to a screeching halt. Much of Europe and Japan, and their institutions, were destroyed in WW-2; they got a “reset” or “do over” to start afresh (GTV and Bullet Trains anyone?) while we limp along with our ancient societal models and infrastructures.

    We need a simpler approach: all kids get kindergarten, pre-school, meals, health care as part of ONE single program and it’s a simple “opt-in” by the parent at the local schoolhouse. Screw all the dick measuring to see who qualifies and who doesn’t.

    One complexity not touched on yet is Head Start is under the Federal HHS and schools are under the Federal Dept of Edu and this complexity is further exacerbated by these agencies coming under different congressional committee oversight structures that compete with each other for funding and power.  What a damned mess.

    DeVos isn’t the answer, all she’s going to do is pimp vouchers to use our tax dollars to support religious madrassas that teach fiction and folklore instead of STEM which will further set us back in a global economy. DeVos is a threat to the 1st Amendment by putting the Federal stamp of approval on religion via the funding of vouchers.

  56. BackRowHeckler February 11, 2017 at 3:58 pm #

    Well, at Yale, John C Calhoun’s name is being removed from one of the colleges. Like I said before, for decades Yale has been surrounded by New haven ghetto. Now it is becoming part of the ghetto.

    And in Charlottesville Va. RE Lee Statue is being removed from a public park. I’m not sure if the city will be blowing it up like ISIS has done to Roman monuments in Palmyra, Syria, in their crass attempt to eradicate symbols of a previous civilization. We shall see.

    We’re pretty much bending over backward to placate the whims of leftists and radical negros. I doubt if it will do any good. This summer look for BLM to team up with lefties, illegals and a growing Muslim minority to set our cities afire. I say let those dystopic sh=tholes burn! Unlike the sixties no money exists to rebuild them … just bulldoze the charred, smoking ruins under, plant some trees and some grass, and make a park.

    Miles of improved roadway in the Congo, 1960 (last year of colonial rule): 70,000. Miles of improved roadway, 2017: 700. That’s pretty much all you need to know, except in SAfrica the excellent infrastructure left by the Boers in 1992 has fallen completely into disrepair, proving Detroit, and now Chicago, are not outliers.

    brh

    • thwack February 11, 2017 at 4:53 pm #

      Miles of improved roadway in the Congo, 1960 (last year of colonial rule): 70,000. Miles of improved roadway, 2017: 700.

      ********************************************

      The roads were only built to facilitate the extraction of resources for the benefit of their colonial masters.

      • elysianfield February 11, 2017 at 7:54 pm #

        Thwack,
        As you are aware, our own Interstate Highway System was begun by Eisenhower as a means of quickly moving troops from East to West…. Other benefits accrued. Yes?

        • thwack February 11, 2017 at 8:26 pm #

          Yes, Im aware of that; and Im very glad to know that every time I drive under and “over pass” I know it was built robust enough to handle an M60 tank.

          Shitty (cheap) infrastructure makes it difficult for invaders. The insurgents in Iraq killed more than a few U.S service men by sending rainwater to small bridges over canals.

          Never underestimate the lethality of a pissed off farmer.

    • Ken Hall February 11, 2017 at 6:54 pm #

      “Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.”
      H.L. Mencken

      • thwack February 11, 2017 at 8:27 pm #

        Nicole Simpson can’t rap.

        • elysianfield February 12, 2017 at 10:54 am #

          If she were alive, she might….

          Glove don’t fit?
          Don’t Acquit!

          OJ cut the bitch,
          Every way but which.

          Cut the white boy too,
          Left prints with his shoe,

          If you was with her crew,
          He’da cut you, too!

          …word

          !

      • BackRowHeckler February 12, 2017 at 8:32 am #

        Ah, the esteemed HL Mencken. He liked to stroll the streets of his beloved of Baltimore … how far do you think he would get in 2017? and what would he make of ‘Polar Bear Hunting’ and the ‘Knockout Punch’?

        brh

  57. janet February 11, 2017 at 5:01 pm #

    “DeVos isn’t the answer, all she’s going to do is pimp vouchers to use our tax dollars to support religious madrassas that teach fiction and folklore instead of STEM” –My Point of View

    If this is true, then Hindu education in ashram schools, or Buddhist education in sangha schools, etc. should be possible. Buddhist and Hindu education is not in conflict with Western science. At least they know what happened before the Big Bang.

    If you are an atheist, you would be welcome in a Hindu school supported by a DeVos voucher. Atheism or disbelief in God or gods has been a historically propounded viewpoint in many of the orthodox and heterodox streams of Hindu philosophies. Hindu atheists and Buddhist atheists are not uncommon. I have immigrant friends who are actively part of these traditions AND who are atheists.

    Maybe even you could learn something from the immigrants. Like how to distinguish fiction, folklore, non-fiction, science etc. … and how to avoid generalized blanket condemnations of religion.

    • My Point of View February 11, 2017 at 5:35 pm #

      Religion earns a blanket condemnation as all of them are fiction, as are all 3700+ gods we humans INVENTED in the 6000 or so years of recorded history. All are fictions, invented to explain the unexplainable in past millennia due to not having any science to tell us what was the bright thing up in the sky.

      Bottom line: No Federal tax dollars for any religious schools, just like we have no Federal tax dollars spent for abortions.

      If it weren’t for religion the world would largely be at peace, but no, my entire 68 years I’ve lived in the shadow of the Jews vs the Muslims in what once was Palestine or the Shiites vs the Sunnis, or the Hindus vs Muslims, or the Southern Baptists and their KKK pals who tried to keep Catholics and Jews out of America. On and on it goes, century after century, with religion at the forefront of hate, slaughter and genocide.

      • beantownbill. February 11, 2017 at 5:58 pm #

        IMO you’re spot on. Organized religion has done a lot of good, but unfortunately, it has done at least 10 times or more evil. The Bible is not the word of God because there is no God – at least not anything remotely like human religions say. It was a bunch of orally handed down stories most likely created by drug-addled schizophreniacs trying to explain their delusions; and then transcribed in writing by power-hungry individuals to manipulate and control the general population.

        The people fell for it because we are generally hard–wired to respond to the ineffable.

      • thwack February 11, 2017 at 6:03 pm #

        All are fictions, invented to explain the unexplainable in past millennia due to not having any science to tell us what was the bright thing up in the sky.

        *******************************************************

        “Dark matter” and “dark energy” are current fictions used RIGHT NOW to explain the unexplainable.

        Darwinian Evolution is really nothing more than a cool story that says anything is possible if you give it enough time; if thats not fiction, what is?

        • Ken Hall February 11, 2017 at 6:52 pm #

          “Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.”
          H.L. Mencken

          • thwack February 11, 2017 at 8:37 pm #

            “Before a man speaks it is always safe to assume that he is a fool. After he speaks, it is seldom necessary to assume it.”

            ********************************************

            I study myself.

            I fool myself.

            Tonight Im serving goose berry fool

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIHKI_gd3iA

    • Ken Hall February 11, 2017 at 6:48 pm #

      “At least they know what happened before the Big Bang.”

      Seriously? If so there are 100’s of thousands of Astronomers, Cosmologists, Astrophysicists, Particle Physicists, Physicists, Engineers, … who would be ever in their gratitude to be enlightened about same and I am one!

  58. beantownbill. February 11, 2017 at 5:38 pm #

    Learning in school should be fun. I took 3 years of German in high school. The 1st year I had an old German man who was a little crazy. He told us many stories about life in Germany while he taught us how to speak German. I actually began learning how to speak it; the class was fun and I looked forward to it. The 2nd and 3rd years I had a class where all we did was read passages from textbooks. Each kid took turns reading a few lines while the teacher corrected our pronunciations. No thing else happened in the class – no conversational German, no learning new words, just reading from German textbooks. What a waste.

    Multiply that class by 4 or 5 other classes in other subjects and no wonder I couldn’t wait until 2 pm to get out of school.

    In 4th or 5th grade, one part of the curriculum was social studies. We had a 600 page book to learn out of. The book was fascinating because it described people and their cultures throughout the world. It interested me so much I read through the entire book on my own in less than 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I had to sit in class the remaining 38 weeks of school and listen to my teacher teach what I already knew. BORING!

    School administrators get paid very well. You’d think they could make the effort to design courses that interested young minds

    • Janos Skorenzy February 11, 2017 at 8:32 pm #

      The old German was probably a Nazi. They’re famous for their creativity, love of animals, reverence for women, and general sense of fun. You yourself have admitted that you can’t match me in the creativity department.

      • thwack February 11, 2017 at 8:48 pm #

        And their words with 14 letters in them; it makes it difficult for my tiny negro mind to comprehend; but for some reason, when I listen to a Hitler speech, I kinda get that it must be meaningful?, even though I don’t understand a word he is saying.

        He gets me in touch with my inner white child.

        • AKlein February 12, 2017 at 7:55 am #

          Sorry, Thwack, but the way German words are constructed actually makes it quite easy to learn very complex words. Those 14 letter words you refer to are often accretions of smaller words which can tell a story (i.e. explain their own meaning.) I remember when I was a kid, I learned the original German word for a tank (AKA Panzer). The original word for a tank was “Schuetzengrabenabwehrkraftwagen”. Here is the deconstruction: Schuetzen -> protection, graben -> trench, abwehr -> armed, wagen -> vehicle. Also, sometimes German puts words together that are left apart in English. For example, we say “television set” in English, meaning the actual device. German combines that into one word, “Fernsehengeraet”, which means “television device”.

          • AKlein February 12, 2017 at 8:02 am #

            Sorry, Thwack, i left out the meaning of “kraft”, which means “powered”. So “Schuetzengrabenabwehrkraftwagen” meant a armored (protected) trench armed powered vehicle. Pretty simple.

      • beantownbill. February 11, 2017 at 9:17 pm #

        Sorry, Janos, but the old guy was Jewish. He got his craziness and sense of fun from having survived the Nazis. You made an “oops”. Lol.

  59. Pucker February 11, 2017 at 8:42 pm #

    Speaking of “Education”, the MSM’s job is to cover it all up.

    Meanwhile back at the Ranch: “We can “chip ’em” and recruit them as informants. If they double cross us, then we can use the chip implants to triangulate their positions and then drone ’em.” If you have any questions, I’ll be down at Sugar’s on K Street.”

    “After 9/11, the Ultras began implementing their long-range plans to consolidate power. Bush signed the Homeland Security Act on 25 November 2002, creating the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to coordinate the anti-terror elements of dozens of federal agencies. The Act created the policy-making Homeland Security Council with four standing members: the president as chairman, along with the vice president, secretary of defense and attorney general. The Homeland Security Council is the National Security Council applied domestically. The Homeland Security Council can be understood as grander version of the Phoenix Committee in Vietnam, which consisted of the Deputy for CORDS (William Colby) as chairman, plus the CIA’s station chief, MACV’s assistant chiefs of staff for intelligence and operations, and the CIA chief of Revolutionary Development. The homeland security apparatus further evolved in May 2003 when, as part of the White House coordinating mechanism, Bush created the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) under future DCI John O. Brennan. Based at CIA headquarters, the TTIC was staffed by counterterrorism experts from the CIA, FBI, DOD and DHS. It reported directly to the White House political staff, beyond public and congressional scrutiny. The apparatus congealed in late 2004, when the TTIC was renamed the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and placed under the newly created position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI). 3 Operating like a global Phoenix Directorate with a computerized blacklist of suspects, the NCTC has access to all military and law enforcement databases, foreign as well as domestic, which it skims for High Value targets. High Value targets are captured and incarcerated, and if possible, recruited as penetration agents at home and abroad. Failing that, they are placed on Obama’s “kill list” and “neutralized” by the all-seeing “predator” drone or some CIA/Special Forces hit team packed with psycho killers. Instruments like the NCTC facilitate the merging of foreign and domestic counterterror operations. The NCTC collects, stores, and analyzes data on US citizens from every available surveillance data base as a “pre-crime” pacification effort. The CIA manages the NCTC Operations Center, and if a suspected threat emerges, it is able to direct every homeland component, the same way it used Phoenix to coordinate every cooperating agency in Vietnam. The network extends from the White House into America’s tiniest villages, and includes everyone from Congresspersons and corporate executives, to cops shooting black teenagers or chasing homeless veterans off the streets.”

    Douglas Valentine, “The CIA as Organized Crime”

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  60. Janos Skorenzy February 11, 2017 at 8:43 pm #

    Chechen soldiers butchering Russian POW’s. Difficult and painful to watch. Be warned. I couldn’t get through it – one of Russian soldiers wasn’t ready to die and seemed to be pleading with one who had no mercy. Alas my heart is too soft. I must say the Muslim victims of ISIS seemed to die with more dignity in the videos I’ve seen. More spiritual training? Islam isn’t all bad if it provides that. Not all bad for THEM that is. For us? Bringing these people here is madness. The video proves that.

    https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=173_1367845544&comments=1

    • thwack February 12, 2017 at 7:58 pm #

      “Chechen soldiers butchering Russian POW’s. Difficult and painful to watch.”

      ************************************************************

      Fuck em.

      The Russians butchered plenty of people from 10,000 feet.

      Two wrongs don’t make a right; but it damn sure makes it even.

  61. Pucker February 11, 2017 at 9:14 pm #

    David Carradine stars as Kwai Chang Caine, the Shaolin Buddhist Ass-Kicking Monk, Grasshopper, in the 1970’s Vietnam War-era, hit TV series, “Kung Fu”.

  62. janet February 11, 2017 at 9:34 pm #

    beantown, brh, ozone, and anyone else living in Massachusetts… here is your chance to earn $1,000 easy peasy.

    “Trump alleged that “thousands” of Massachusetts residents traveled to New Hampshire to vote illegally.

    Fergus Cullen, New Hampshire’s former GOP chair, tweeted out his own request for proof of those claims on Friday. Cullen said he would give $1,000 to the first person proving that even one out-of-state person took a bus from Massachusetts to vote in New Hampshire.”

    • stelmosfire February 12, 2017 at 7:46 am #

      I don’t know about crossing into NH to vote but I am in MA. When I voted In Nov. I see that my father is still in the registration book and he passed in 1999. I could easily vote twice as no ID is required. My vote doesn’t count in MA. anyway as I never vote DEM.

  63. My Point of View February 11, 2017 at 10:00 pm #

    George Carlin on why Education Will Never Get Any Better.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98

  64. My Point of View February 11, 2017 at 10:02 pm #

    Religion, I’ll let my last word be given by George Carlin:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r-e2NDSTuE

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    • janet February 11, 2017 at 10:50 pm #

      I watched the George Carlin video and agreed with everything he said, except for praying to Joe Pesci. But George Carlin is identifying religion as believing in a personal god, a guy in the sky, which is only true of the Judeo-Christian monotheistic religion that predominates in the USA.

      What George Carlin maintains, i.e. “religion is bullshit,” does not apply to non-theistic religions. Non-theism plays significant roles in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. As I said before, Hinduism is perfectly OK with Hindu atheists. There is no requirement to believe in any god in Hinduism. Buddhism and Jainism are explicitly atheistic. Daoism is also atheistic. No concept is god is a requirement for these religions. Hinduism is OK either way, whatever you want to believe or not believe. Hinduism is large and contains multitudes.

      None of George Carlin’s “guy in the sky” rant, his claim that “religion is bullshit” … none of it applies to Hinduism or the atheistic religions.

      Tulsi Gabbard for President in 2020, our first Hindu president

      “E Pluribus Unum”

      • janet February 11, 2017 at 10:52 pm #

        No concept ^of^ god is a requirement for these religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Daoism).

    • thwack February 12, 2017 at 4:17 pm #

      Atheists don’t want to live around other atheists; that tells you all you need to know about atheism.

  65. janet February 11, 2017 at 11:14 pm #

    “I just want everybody to understand and fully know that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100%,” US President Donald Trump said Saturday in response to reports of a North Korean missile test.

    Great. And China stands behind North Korea, and North Korean missiles can already reach Los Angeles. What is Trump going to do to make sure the North Korean missiles cannot reach other fly-over cities?

    I think the Japanese leader had it right. Trump is toothless, a paper tiger. The Chinese have also learned that Trump blinks as he walked back his stand on the one-China policy he’d earlier questioned.

    Trump has done a lot of walking back and changing positions on issues from what he said in the campaign.

    Remember him saying in August 2016 that he wouldn’t build the wall along the Southern border he has proposed until all the undocumented immigrants are out.

    “I will get them out so fast that your head would spin, long before I even can start the wall,” Trump said. “They will be out of here.”

    That would require a deportation force removing 15,000 a day for two years. This also is not happening, just as Trump is not preventing North Korea and Iran from developing nuclear weapons, just as Trump is not eliminating ISIS (which he said he could do because he is smarter than the generals), just as Trump is not doing dozens of other things he promised. Where is full employment? Where are the coal miners’ jobs? Where is “health care for all at a reasonable price”? Etc. etc. etc.

    • JimInFlorida February 12, 2017 at 11:52 am #

      I’ve always said that We Teh Sheep are permitted to vote for the propaganda we like… and that’s it.

      I like a lot of what Trump said (and symbolized) to the beleaguered Silent Majority but, I never felt that he could deliver on his promises. The Federal Government is not the same as The Trump Organization. The dysfunction of Washington is defended by systematic inertia and sclerosis. They are both serious organizational diseases and also the means for the organism to defend itself from any attempt to cure it.

      Regardless, President Trump crossed the line with me when he nominated a predatory fast-food THUG to be Secretary of Labor. If there is ONE agency that MUST be single-minded in its task to defend American Labor, it is the DOL. The DOL has been underfunded and understaffed for the past 15 years and without proper direction for the past 36 years.

      If Trump REALLY wants to protect American Labor, and the workers who benefit from their political efforts, then he needs to nominate a DOL Secretary that Eugene V Debs himself would recommend.

      • Janos Skorenzy February 12, 2017 at 3:44 pm #

        Yes, his choice was sickening. Some kind of horrible quid pro quo no doubt – hopefully one that benefits us and not just something personal. Horrible optics. Trump must know that as he is a master of optics.

  66. Pucker February 12, 2017 at 5:37 am #

    Dumb-down the population….

    “Information management –including official secrecy and false accusations –is the key to pacifying the people through implicit terror, while making the internal security apparatus appear legal, moral and popular. This is being done against American citizens through the most ambitious psywar campaign ever waged on planet Earth.”

  67. FincaInTheMountains February 12, 2017 at 5:56 am #

    3 – 0 and 2 Zugzwangs

    Women of ‘democratic’ beliefs use Trump as a mean for weight loss: After each of the Presidential Order they lose a couple of pounds of weight:
    https://www.yahoo.com/celebrity/lena-dunham-calls-trump-election-200009297.html

    Unfortunately, the Witch’s Party is not going to be limited to participation in fashion shows.

    After President Trump lost in the Court of Appeal case on restriction of entry to the US from seven Muslim countries, Bastinda to troll Trump chirped in her Twitter 3 – 0, clearly alluding to the fact that after losing the election, she has won over her opponent at least three battles, and he was unable to deal her a single blow that would have reached the goal.

    But she is wrong, and the final battle, that triggered the trolling, Trump actually won, but about that later – let her gloat: euphoria of the enemy general is exactly what every soldier of the Trump’s army needs.

    It is unpleasant of course, but necessary.

    But all is not so well. Media naturally interpreted this tweet as Hillary’s joy about the three victories of the judiciary over the executive power, but first Hillary celebrates only her own victories, and secondly, these three victories are actually three rounds of the same battle, and Hillary of course has a bunch of flaws, but meticulousness is not one of them.

    A much more realistic and psychologically reasonable assumption is the following considerations:

    Hillary Victory #1: Taking Palmyra by ISIS terrorists, murder of Russian Ambassador to Turkey, explosion of Tu-154 with Dr. Lisa and Alexandrov’s Ensemble.

    Hillary Victory #2: Activation of terrorist activity in Ukraine and the aggravation of the military situation in Donbass.

    These two victories are a Zugzwang, as if Putin has responded to these provocations as it should be, it would be immediately used against Trump, demanding tougher sanctions and sending weapons to Ukraine. And it would be a Zugzwang for Trump, but Putin did not answer, and it will inevitably become a Zugzwang #2 for him.

    Hillary Victory #3: is the cancellation of the Trump’s order on the temporary restriction on entry into the United States from the seven Muslim countries!

    But it is a Pyrrhic victory!

    Suffice it to say that Trump’s supporters now have a detailed theory that the ban on entry into the United States from seven Muslim countries is an extreme measure, caused by Immediate and present danger to US security from the militants, trained in these countries to arrange a civil war in the United States.

    In this context, the question arises: Who trained them? To which there is only one answer – those who gave them the American entry documents, that is, Hillary Clinton’s administration, which pushed Obama out and seized power in the US on June 10, 2016!

    With her idiotic tweets Hillary has achieved such a consolidation of her opponents wanting to put her on electric chair that Trump can relax.

    And Barack Obama, who for eight years, almost alone stood up against Bastinda, so openly celebrates his demobilization, that there is no doubt that he’s confident: Trump knows about his non-participation in these plans and will not make him into a scapegoat, no matter how much Bastinda wants that!

    What it tells that Barack Obama was given serious guarantees not only by Trump, but by all anti-Clinton quartet, and Trump is showing himself so far extremely decent and intelligent man.

    https://meduza.io/image/attachments/images/001/922/966/large/pVce073CVPPLqnrIY76Yig.jpg

  68. RobH February 12, 2017 at 7:41 am #

    Hi Jim

    Is there not a risk that if the young learnt language, grammer, and subtlety of expression, they would be rather depressed with what they see around them?

    Would that not be cruelty? Like showing photos of wildlife and the natural world to people whose world is only a concrete car-a-copia

    You are suffering sentimentality. Peer group self expression in whatever form is all that is available now mixed community is gone and communal values with it; communal ‘stuff’ is deemed ‘too expensive’ or just all too difficult. Everyone is too busy buying things

    Rob

  69. FincaInTheMountains February 12, 2017 at 11:00 am #

    North Korea is not only a classical country that belongs to the “axis of evil”, but is inescapable paradox in a sense of the media in all countries of “axis of good” – how Maoist-Stalinist regime, spitting on the mainstream of progress, manages to throw out on the world markets high-tech weaponry, even nuclear, having neither the resources nor the cooperation of the international community(basically not having access to English Wikipedia), not even the intention to carry out reforms, a la Khrushchev or, say, Deng Xiaoping?

    Moreover, these insolent North Koreans not only shoot finance ministers conducting economic reforms so that it causes hunger and discredit the regime, but also constantly show the world not only the button, but the finger, that is ready to push it.

    And the free world out of its peacefulness and general goodness of its heart is forced to pretend that the finger does not matter, because a button is of a wrong color.

    There is an impression that the outrage at the barbaric launch of the ballistic missile in the general direction of freedom-loving Japan was aggravated by something.

    Personally, I can think of some reason: North Korea in 2010 declared that its science community made a breakthrough in the area of the successful development of fusion technology

    If this were true, then of course it would be a terrible blow to the free world, where the most important freedom is a freedom to convert dollars into oil futures, and vice versa.

    Fortunately, this is all ridiculous misinformation: everybody knows that the major scientific discoveries are inseparable from freedom of publishing in American scientific magazines and receiving large grants from the American government.

    The ideological brainwashing in a totalitarian state can not be separated from the scientific stagnation, and people brought up on the ideas of Juche could not make anything more complex than fuses to atomic bombs or turbo-pump unit for an intercontinental ballistic missile.

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  70. barbisbest February 12, 2017 at 3:09 pm #

    The best part of any post this time is Ozone’s writing what the Irish say U.S.A. stands for, Unlimited supply of Assholes. That sums it up. Gotta love Trump’S rounding up up those with criminal records. Is it not criminal to abscond people’s money for a fake university. Is this a two-tiered ustice system. You tell me.

    • Janos Skorenzy February 12, 2017 at 3:41 pm #

      There’s many tiers, Barb. Read Phillip Jose Farmer’s “World of Tiers”. Trump is Bro Tier – he gives to those whom he favors. And after generations of ruthless persecution, Whites deserve some special regard.

      Yes, I know the Elite are mostly White and Jewish. But you see they don’t identify with us at all. So they might as well not be White for all the good it does us. They favor non-Whites – constantly, blatantly, overwhelmingly.

      • messianicdruid February 14, 2017 at 2:52 pm #

        “There is no hope for Ephraim for he hath loved strangers.” Manessah hath forgotten himself. “The children of Issachar, who knew the times and what he who rules with El should do.”

  71. bibliomaniac February 12, 2017 at 3:56 pm #

    The best book I have read about the problems in US education is Diane Ravitch’s “the Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education.”

    Basically too many people who know very little about education and almost nothing about teaching have messed with the system to the point that it is on life-support. There are some who could not be more pleased, because it gives them the excuse to “privatize” education–much like we are privatizing our national parks, our land and water–the planet itself. In essence, it is Garrett Hardin’s “The Tragedy of the Commons.”

    The disaster in our environment, our health system, our school system, our life styles are all-of-a-piece: in Buddhism “esho funi”–like inside, like outside.

    We have sold our children to the company store–to the idea that a culture based on consumption and growth is the ideal.

    Yes–Betsy DeVos will make US education much worse–but she is only a reflection of our values, and we do not value education.

  72. janet February 12, 2017 at 4:16 pm #

    “Flynn is widely thought to be somewhat unbalanced, inasmuch has he has retweeted bizarre conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton and has said that it is rational to be afraid of Islam. (Islam is the religion of 1/5 of humankind, so this is like being afraid of Chinese food or of Indian languages).

    Note that Flynn served alongside Afghan and Pakistani Muslim officers and if anything appears to have been overly cozy with them (he leaked classified intelligence on terrorists in Afghanistan to Pakistani officers), so the fear-mongering is for political and maybe financial benefit.

    If you thought the Muslim Pakistani officers were people you should be afraid of or that they were intent on killing 80% of the world, as Flynn has alleged in other contexts, then why would you give them classified intelligence on Afghan terrorists? Flynn’s private consulting firm also took a contract from a business in Turkey with links to President Tayyip Erdogan; no rational fear there.

    Surely this is the first time since the Reagan Iran-Contra scandal that National Security Council personnel have been on such legal thin ice, such that criminal charges could be filed.” –Juan Cole

  73. janet February 12, 2017 at 4:25 pm #

    “in Buddhism “esho funi”–like inside, like outside.” –bibliomaniac

    “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” –Ernst Haeckel

    “As above so below” –The Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus

  74. FincaInTheMountains February 12, 2017 at 5:54 pm #

    Stephen Miller: We Do Not Have Judicial Supremacy in This Country

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOPtrLnaN7c

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  75. elysianfield February 12, 2017 at 6:20 pm #

    “By her public utterances, Betsy DeVos seemed spectacularly unqualified to lead the bureaucratic enterprise called the US Department of Education”

    Mr. Kunstler,
    Considering how, in the last twenty or so years, those who led the department of Education were considered “qualified”, AND considering that few will accept that success has resulted from their tenure..,to quote Trump…”what the hell do you have to lose?” Would anyone in the readership argue that the state of the public schools in the country are beyond drawing parallels with inner city dysfunction? What will it take to break the grip of the bureaucracy, the Teacher’s Unions, and other, more corporeal, interests? Anarchy? What else ya got?

    I know I have a bad attitude, and I sometimes opine that to save a village, sometimes you have to destroy it. But, to quote BRH, “How do you like it now, Gentlemen?”

    Can change be made except from extraordinary means? DeVos, is , by all measure “extraordinary”.

    • BackRowHeckler February 12, 2017 at 9:23 pm #

      Hey E, you were quoting BRH, and BRH was quoting Ernest Hemingway (one of his pet phrases)

      It goes round and round.

      E, if you’re looking in, here’s a question. I notice in places like LA, and Kissimmee, Fla., there is both a sheriffs dept. and a PD patrolling the streets. It seems like they’re doing the same thing in the same place. Are they separate organizations with different missions, or are they two parts of a single department, with different missions and responsibilities? They seem redundant.

      brh

      • elysianfield February 13, 2017 at 11:00 am #

        BRH,
        Sheriff’s Departments patrol unincorporated areas…county wide. Police Departments patrol incorporated areas…cities. Both entities work closely together in gray areas at the city limits, or close to it. Incorporated areas without Police Departments might often contract with the local Sheriff to provide patrols.

        The office of “Sheriff” is, in many states, constitutionally required. The Sheriff is elected, not appointed…police chiefs are always appointed by city administrators.

  76. FincaInTheMountains February 12, 2017 at 6:34 pm #

    Washington Attorney General is not hiding his desire to develop a tactical success, designated by Hillary in her tweet “Three: zero” and “depose President Trump,” according to a leading “democratic” commentator on Channel 7 George Stephanopoulos.

    The methods can be very different: from sabotage of Congress approval of members of the Cabinet and blocking presidential decrees in various courts, controlled by Hillary Clinton, to proclamation of the cabinet members to be the Russian spies.

    In particular, they are now trying to force Trump to dismiss National Security Advisor Gen. Michael Flynn on account of a terrible crime: negotiations with the Russian ambassador even before Trump inauguration in the same way Trump was forced to dismiss Manafort on a tip from Ukraine and Poroshenko.

    However, judging how senior presidential adviser Stephen Miller defended Trump’s order against accusations of contempt for the judges of 9 Judicial District, famous for its defense of Hillary from accusations of neglect of the US ambassador Stevens safety in Benghazi, Libya, Washington State Prosecutor has to think about the possibility to wind up behind bars himself along with other members of the flying monkeys.

    In particular the investigation into election fraud is underway, and Mogherini, putting on notice the US president, has opened a Pandora’s box, because the blatant support by the European Union of one of the candidates quite possibly guilty of forging election results, pulls the weight of the attempt to make a coup d’etat in the US, that is an act of war which would be much more understandable to most Americans than alleged hacking of DNC by the Russian hackers.

  77. janet February 12, 2017 at 7:24 pm #

    George W. Bush’s foreign policy kills thousands of civilians. George W. Bush should be tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity.

    Barack Hussein Obama continued George W. Bush’s foreign policy, killing thousands of civilians. Barack Hussein Obama should be tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity.

    Donald J. Trump is contining Barack Hussein Obama’s foreign policy, killing thousands of civilians. Donald J. Trump should be tried in the Hague for crimes against humanity.

    Under a military dictatorship it doesn’t matter if Republicans, Democrats or independents are in the White House. The military budget continues to grow and innocents (in wedding parties, in hospitals, etc.) continue to die.

    “The deployment of US ground troops into the Helmand Province in recent weeks, [authorized by Donald J. Trump], aimed at slowing the expansion of the Taliban in the area, has also put the US troops back in direct combat, and calling in air support during fights around populated areas. On Friday, this resulted in a large number of civilian deaths.

    Locals from the village of Lakari, in the Sangin District, described heavy US airstrikes against the area surrounding the village mosque, from which the Taliban were believed to be operating. Instead of the mosque, however, the strikes leveled several homes, killing at least 22 civilians.”

  78. janet February 12, 2017 at 8:38 pm #

    Costs have fallen dramatically since I purchased our system. PV panels were over $10/watt. Prices are well under $1/watt today. You can install a 2 kW system for well under $10K today, enough generating capacity to drive an EV 12,000 miles per year for 40-50 years. Buying gas as today’s prices for 40-50 years would cost you $60,000-$80,000.

    The ICE age is over. (ICE=Internal Combustion Engine). The only thing keeping them around longer is oil companies’ ability to hire Merchants of Doubt to lie to the people and politicians, and to pay the monsters in Congress to keep them rolling.

    Tech advances so fast and electric vehicles are the logical rapid transition. Before long, we will have 1000 mile batteries and even better supercapacitors that can recharge super fast, provide thousands miles range and recharge 100’s of thousands of times (unlike batteries).

    There is already a supercapacitor polymer breakthrough (contact lens polymer). Elon Musk said supercapacitors are the future. If all autos only offered a PHEV (like the Volt a true electric platform with range extender) or a pure BEV as the ONLY option, then the transition would happen within a couple years, not 20. Oil would collapse.

    • FincaInTheMountains February 13, 2017 at 5:23 am #

      The ICE age is over

      The ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement – is just beginning!

    • My Point of View February 13, 2017 at 4:20 pm #

      Janet, Elon Musk plans to sell roof shingles that generate electricity to be stored by batteries to run homes and cars. I love it and hope he makes it before I age out and miss the near-total demise of coal-fired power plants.

      To bypass vested interests I expect Musk will end up building homes too so he can get his products to replace asphalt shingles and the power grid. Natural gas is far better but solar power is even better as it has no emissions at all and doesn’t require pipelines or railroads.

      Extractive industries have poisoned every place they’ve operated; time for them to go away in favor of a sun that warms us, feeds us, let’s us see what we’re doing all day, etc.

      It’ll be a great day when no more men die of black lung (76,000 as of 2010, and counting) and mine disasters (100,000 and counting).

      It’ll be an even better day when the oil industry heads to the retirement home, driven there in a battery powered vehicle.

  79. janet February 12, 2017 at 9:20 pm #

    Andrew Sullivan’s overarching point, in the “Reliable Sources” interview, was that democratic debates require a common set of facts.

    “When the central figure in our political system is creating an entire world of unreality, how are we supposed to respond?” he asked. “And I think we have to respond. We have to respond by saying ‘Excuse me, Mr. President, with all due respect, you keep telling us things that are not true. Can you please stop this?’ And if you can’t stop it, if you simply keep asserting the world is one way when it really isn’t, because everybody else can see it, then we have a serious problem at the very heart of our government.”

    Writers and reporters, he added, need to “say and call it as we see it.”

    http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/12/media/andrew-sullivan-donald-trump-mental-health/index.html

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  80. BackRowHeckler February 13, 2017 at 1:34 am #

    Watch out CFNers, Blac Bloc coming to your city!

    These fortified snowflakes aren’t afraid to mix it up with police, smash windows and set fires.

    So far tho they’ve limited their activities to rad friendly cities like Seattle and Berkeley. When they take the fight to more rural areas and smaller cities where the locals might not be so friendly and accommodating, that’s when we’ll find out what this Red Guard is really made of.

    A United Front is shaping up, BLM, ISIS, Black Bloc, suburban ladies in vagina hats … taking it to the streets. Agit/prop is the MSM and Hollywood sh-tsuckers.

    brh

    It seems battle lines are being drawn, as they say.

  81. FincaInTheMountains February 13, 2017 at 4:58 am #

    A coup d’etat against the Executive Branch and the Constitution

    Ben Stein on Judge Jeanine’s show: No Effin Way Does The Left Beat President Trump On Immigration

    https://youtu.be/xpZWevxqXho?t=23

  82. amb February 13, 2017 at 5:02 am #

    The less the federal government does, the better. The less any government does, the better. Return education to the states, to the people, and you Feds just stay out of it! The Fed gov ruins everything it touches. The Dept of Education should’ve never been created and needs to be abolished. As does so much else. Look at the stats:
    Civil Rights… failure.
    War on Poverty… failure.
    War on Drugs… failure.
    War on Illiteracy… failure.
    War on Terrorism… failure.

    You could abolish 75% of the federal government and it wouldn’t make any significant difference in the American people’s lives. Just a big waste of taxpayer money. Shut all the corruption, cluelessness, ineffectiveness, meddling and redundancy down.

    • jhon February 13, 2017 at 7:35 am #

      ‘If you are going to tell the truth, you’d better have one foot in the stirrup!’

  83. FincaInTheMountains February 13, 2017 at 5:10 am #

    Huge surge in immigrants from 7 Middle East and African nations with significant terror ties

    Following the decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, which overturned President Trump’s temporary travel ban for immigrants from 7 Middle East and African nations with significant terror ties, the first week of wide-open immigration shows a huge surge in immigrants from the very nations President Trump was warning about.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beXPg_huc24

    • amb February 13, 2017 at 12:35 pm #

      The Neo-liberal Commie establishment is deeply embedded and will continue to disrupt and fight Trump. It has to be vanquised if there is going to be any hope for America as a country and a population.

      The system is probably so corrupt and diseased that it will have to continue its power hold until it finally destroys itself due to its corruption, unusual solutions and unworkable policies.

      I hope that Trump is the beginning of a pendulum swing from the centralized commie globalists to a populist small government paradigm; and not just a brief respite before the darkness resumes.

      Time will tell.

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  1. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" | Earths Final Countdown - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

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  2. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" - Investing Matters - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  3. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" | ValuBit News - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  4. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" | The Daily Digest - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  5. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" - - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  6. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" - Telzilla - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

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  7. Kunstler Slams American Schooling’s “Epic Failure” Under Federal “Policy Experts” | It's Not The Tea Party - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  8. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" | Domainers Database - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  9. Kunstler Slams American Schooling's "Epic Failure" Under Federal "Policy Experts" - BuzzFAQs - February 10, 2017

    […] Submitted by Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com, […]

  10. Vers où va-t-on ?:Laissé derrière -ou l’Inéducation publique | actualitserlande - February 19, 2017

    […] Article original de James Howard Kunstler, publié le 10 Février 2017 sur le site kunstler.com Traduit par le blog http://versouvaton.blogspot.fr […]