Because I Always Expect A PRIVATE Institution to Accomodate My Different Faith When I Voluntarily Attend It…

Because it would be totally reasonable for me to attend a PRIVATE Islamic university and expect them to provide a chapel on the grounds for me, right? Right?

New charges have recently been filed against the [Catholic] University [of America] on counts of illegal discrimination against its Muslim and female students. The allegations are being reviewed by the District of Colombia Office of Human Rights (OHR), which has the strictest discrimination laws in the country. President John H. Garvey and the University is being urged to respond to the charges.

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The official allegations claim that CUA, “does not provide space – as other universities do – for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion,” according to a press release on PRLOG.com.

If I were the University Board of Regents, and the Provost, I think I’d come to the conclusion that perhaps there is no need for these students to return next semester. But maybe that’s because I know there would be no reciprocity at an Islamic University.

From the University’s Newspaper, The Tower.

Linked by The Anchoress, thanks!

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This What Educational Failure Looks Like

The expression is that “A picture is worth a thousand words”.

This one is the ultimate intellectual expression of the American Left. In it, one sees the contempt that they have for other people’s achievements, and those who help perpetuate society by safeguarding those achievements and keeping the peace. Any discussion of the inconvenient truth that no matter WHO leads it, Marx/Commu/Socialism will never work is wasted on people who can find eloquence in excrement.  They are blind to a political and economic system that allows the individual to “pursue happiness” by taking responsibility for their own destiny, rather than being yoked to a collective standard chosen by other people.

I have had exchanges with some of the #OWS (Occupy Wall Street) supporters this week on Twitter.  All condemn the “greed” of Wall Street, while being completely blind to their own envy and sense of entitlement to what these “evil” greedy people have. They rail against corporations for their lack of “accountability to the people”, and refuse to acknowledge that corporations answer to their shareholders and the government, and were designed that way, instead of focusing their attentions on the people who were always intended to be accountable to them: elected officials.

They tell their sob stories of hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt for their MFA degrees and living in parents’ basements, unable to get food stamps for their cats, or jobs that allow them to pay back their student loans. Each adds their plaintive voices to a chorus of whiny stories that call themselves “We Are the 99%” as opposed to the evil, greedy 1% of rich people who they feel entitled to “take” from. I’d call them “We Are The Falsely Entitled”. They talk about “new” economic models where workers have a say in how businesses are run, and how they have to “collapse the system” in order to build a society that is “fair” and doesn’t pick winners and losers, which is utter nonsense.  If society didn’t pick winners and losers, then you should be able to go to the corner store and purchase an ice cold Chrystal Pepsi for yourself.  They are immune to the suggestion that it is reasonable and understandable to be angry about a government that picks winners and losers, when its role is to act as referree.

This insistence on “fairness” is the expression of the naive and those blinded by envy, both of whom are eminently willing to surrender a potential that they have been tricked into thinking that they do not have, or that they are too afraid to command for themselves, to people only too willing to harness for their own ends. In either event, their childish notion of “fairness” pervades their demands and beliefs. A fairness that betrays opportunity for a physical equality, doled out by beneficent “rulers” who decide what is best for all and make it the assigned task for society.

But what I find the most offensive is that this segment of society, clinging to their Noam Chomsky readers, talking about the need for greater Democracy everywhere, and approving of every new law made by activist federal courts over the last 40 years utterly rejects the Democratic apparatus we already have.  It is urgent to “collapse the system” because “The Corporations” make all the choices for them, leaving the voter with only Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee when the time comes to cast the ballots. When you point out the flaws in this thinking, such as the success that the Tea Party had in backing and electing candidates in 2010, they only offer the electronic equivalent of a blank stare, followed by “That can’t be right. I saw all about the Tea Party is bad on MSNBC.”

When you suggest that if they really are the 99%, then it should be any problem for them to field and elect their own candidates, the only response is mumbling about corruption. And when you suggest that they simply don’t have the right to “collapse” a system that everyone else in society relies on, and has built their lives around, then they don’t have much to say at all, other than to condemn you as one of the 1% or as someone being led by the nose by that 1%.

As ridiculous as they appear to be, their ignorance and their appetites are dangerous. This is a mob that largely has no understanding of civics, of their political history, both the one that is their birthright, and the one they stupidly embrace, and yet believe that society can and should provide them with a life free from want, difficulty, or hard labor. They demonstrate no understanding that the democracy they cry out for is, at its core, only what 50%+1 wants, or that without safeguards for the minorities that are part of the system they want to collapse, they will inevitably be part of the 49%. While I don’t want to spare them the impact of learning that lesson firsthand, I do not want to live in the environment that would teach them, because revolutions are messy, and the temptation for the rest of the world to interfere is too great.  That means that we HAVE to engage them, and let them know that they are nowhere near being 99%, and that the only reason this has gone on this long is because the rest of us had to get up and go to work in the morning.

Crossposted at Taxes, Stupidity, and Death.

Rigid, Inflexible Ideologue Pushes Us Closer To Financialgeddon!

We been hearing a lot about inflexible ideologues holding us hostage over this debt ceiling “crisis”, and how childish they are, and how they are terrorists who are taking hostages as part of this process.

Yesterday, they struck again.

It really is amazing just how small of stature some people are.  It must be difficult in among the shadows who are leading from behind with a plan that they dare not clearly present for fear of rejection, and it must be even harder for poor little Harry.  Am I the only one who thinks that without the shoes he clearly has trouble filling, no one would give him another thought five minutes after he speaks?

Turning a Yawning Chasm into a Growing Gulf

“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”

-Johnny Rotten, at the close of the last Sex Pistols concert.

I’m starting to feel this way every single day.

 Each day, the cries that people who are rejecting or have rejected the status quo “Are stupid, insane, or my personal favorite, “handing the election to Obama” because they just don’t see the wisdom in any debt ceiling fix that gives more spenditol to the hopelessly addicted in D.C. without honest, true (not gimmicky) and most importantly immediate cuts to the Federal Government’s spending grow louder, and I find myself growing more annoyed with people I have more similarities than differences with, not because of the differences, but because their inability to convince me that the compromise they are rallying behind will prevent the calamity they fear has driven them to derision, name-calling, insults, and questioning our patriotism.  In other words, they are acting like the Democrats do when we tell them “No.” too.

Whether it’s the New York Times’ favorite “maverick” referring to the Tea Party as Hobbits, and claiming that “Others know better” than the Tea Party Freshmen in the Congress, or people I respect telling me in serial FB postings that anyone who isn’t for Boehner’s plan to raise the credit limit again in exchange for promises to make some piddling cuts at some time that history tells us will never be made anyway, and then bring us back to this point yet again during election season is the same as a Democrat such as the President, contempt is the tune played with the complete expectation that we will dance, and its put me into a position I never wanted to be in.  I’m being pushed into declaring for the Tea Party.

It isn’t that I had any particular beef with the Tea Party.  My objections have really been more dealing with the movement’s long-term prospects.  As I said to a Republican Tea Party basher on FB:

‎1. I am not a Tea Party member. I enjoyed the fact that it was grassroots and genuine. I never signed on, because I knew that it was destined to be co-opted or marginalized because it threatened the political establishment and their power base.
2. Your willingness to appoint them with a responsibility to “shut people up” chills me a bit. The appeal of the tea party was a central message, and the ability for people who had felt marginalized or removed from the mainstream political process to participate and bring some of their own ideas to the fore. A “leadership” would be counter to that idea.
3. Much of what I’ve feared has come to pass…a degree of co-opting, both actual, and presumed by those for whom it would be handy to do so, and marginalization…by a corrupt media that needed a group of “extremists”, and a political establishment that needed a boogeyman to save us from.
4. And even though I don’t agree with a lot of them, I’d rather have a political system that doesn’t “silence” the fringes, or anything outside the mainstream, largely because I firmly believe that we HAVE to trust the people, in the firm knowledge that they are going to make mistakes (Thanks, 52%ers!) or that none of this political system means anything and we can simply officially appoint those who presume to be our betters as such, and dispense with the charade.

And how did we arrive at this point, anyway?  Really, before we entrust these responsible stewards of the public purse with the ability to spend even more money, isn’t that a question we all should be asking?  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, while expecting a different result, then the “compromise” they are offering doesn’t make any damn sense.

The Tea Party owes its existence to government’s reckless and irresponsible spending, and the way that government demonstrated its feeling of entitlement to not only continue spending more money than it takes in, but to continually increase this spending in order to mitigate the consequences of really poor decisions. (Too Big To Fail, anyone?)

It was a terrific thing to behold as it gathered steam, because people who had never given politics a second thought, or only considered it when filling out a ballot were now looking at the ways their elected officials had squandered their trust, and enhanced their own power and finances at the expense of our own personal sovereignty and wallet.  They had realized that government by the professional and the expert first benefits the professional and the expert, and then trickles down only to the extent that doing so will also benefit the professional and the expert.  But this newfound clarity threatens not just the chattering class, whose false narratives and very selective reporting kept the majority of the nation slumbering and dreaming dreams in which every man woman and child was a lottery winner, and never had to be asked to pay for the welfare state that continued to grow in its quest to provide for them from cradle to grave, and so the new narrative began, about these “extremists” who opposed what government hath wrought not because it stifled freedom and opportunity, and confiscated wealth on an enormous scale to redistribute it to others who did nothing to earn it , but because they were “racists who didn’t want a black President to succeed.”  They were haters, who if given an opportunity to do so, would commit unspeakable acts of violence against those who disagreed with them, even kill them if they thought it necessary. 

It was certainly a surprise to the everyday mothers, fathers, grandpas, and grandmas who came to the rallies, and participated in the peaceful protests.  It was a surprise to those who came to townhalls to confront their elected officials about the trust that they so casually abused, only to find themselves shouted down, disrespected, and questioned by their public servants, and their supporters, many of whom freely feed at the public trough.  I know many people who consider themselves part of the Tea Party, one of who graciously lets me co-blog with her when I get the urge to speak up, and the media portrayals of them couldn’t be farther from the truth.  And as irritating as that is, its ok.  One of the things that came clear during the emergence of the Tea Party and the rush of the legacy media to portray them as unhinged extremists is the fact that the self-appointed cognoscenti were defending a power base, and the shriller the denunciations, the more obvious it became to observers that the media members, and their patrons in the Democratic Party were the ones standing naked while commenting to each other about their resplendent wardrobes.  The more they condescended, complained, and projected, the more hollow their lofty pronouncements rang.

And it had a result, as the elections of 2010 proved, and the consequence was a series of election gains in the House of Representatives that completely changed the make up of that body. 

Now we find ourselves facing yet another crisis.  Another in a string of crises that miraculously can only be solved by the federal government spending more money that it does not have, to pay for consequences that it bears the responsibility for.  The only truly good comparison that I can think of is the domestic violence victim who keeps going back to her abuser, because he promises that this time, things will be different…after he tells her that it is her fault that he beats her.  We keep going back, and if we hesitate, we’re told to “get our asses back in line.”  And for all the noise about the approaching deadline, “inflexible ideologues”, and swift and certain financialgeddon, and the absolute and positive need to address this RIGHT NOW, OR ELSE!  and the only option, no matter how it is dressed up, is to increase the credit limit now, and make cuts later, or whenever they can get around to it, if they feel like it, and the moon is in the right phase, with the only real distinctions being how much, and whether or not the timing is politically beneficial to one side or the other, several key facts and follow-up questions keep getting lost.

1.  We actually hit the debt ceiling in May of this year.  In all the hysteria, hyperventilation, finger-pointing, and name-calling, that fact seems to get lost.  One might ask how this got to be a “crisis”, considering the fact that it couldn’t have been a surprise.

2.  The US’s credit rating has already been downgraded.  While I don’t expect it to be a harmless event if the other rating agencies follow, I also noted that the sky didn’t fall, and I didn’t have to take a wheelbarrow full of $100,000.00 bills to the Safeway to buy a loaf of bread after it happened. 

4.  The Democrats have not passed a budget since 2009, despite the fact that it is one of Congress’ duties.  This works to their advantage.  No budget means no parameters on spending.  Anything goes until you hit the ceiling.  Besides, they were too busy with Spendulous, Cash for Clunkers, and Obamacare to actually attend to their duties.  And who do you think you are for asking pointed questions about it anyway, peasant?

5.  Do your creditors maintain your credit score when your debt to income ratio is already too high and you decide that you can and should borrow more?   So why should we believe that a government that is characterized by an abject avoidance of restraint when it comes to spending the public’s money will not suffer the same fate when if they pass a bill that bumps out that limit, and purports to address a portion of the spending problem, somehow, some way, some time?  It would be like believing that the chronic alcoholic will be ok if the bartender doesn’t serve him the last two shots he’s used to downing nightly; the real problem is in the 5 shots he was served before.  And yet the Tea Party is now the enemy of America, and actively working for the re-election of Barack Obama for recognizing that what is being offered and discussed is a “more of the same” of what we’ve had before, and declining to go along with it.

6.  Teh Fred! and others keep crowing about a victory in shifting the conversation away from tax increases, and demanding we take that, and ignore the fact that even with the “cuts” being proposed, the leviathan that is Fedzilla still grows.   More and more people are getting clued in to the magical growth formula in government accounting based on premise that Zero = Last Year’s Budget.  Taxes weren’t negotiable because despite what Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi believe, this was NEVER a revenue problem; it is a spending problem, and taking away what never should have been on the table to begin with, and then rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic will not prevent a really, really cold swim.

It comes down to this:  Government Spending first empowers the government.  Democrats have known this for years, and used it to their advantage to cultivate a block of constituents beholden to them for their sustenance due to the advent of multigenerational welfare, and they have carefully nurtured it until we have reached a point where nearly 50% of the citizens in this country don’t have any of the precious “skin in the game” that the Teleprompter President likes to babble on about, because they pay no taxes.   They have no intention of changing this state of affairs.  TPOTUS himself has all but admitted that his idea of “shared sacrifice” is that the people who are paying the check need to pay even more.   The real-life warnings that the failed welfare states of Europe pose do nothing to change any of this.  They will spend it, even when they don’t have it, and they will do anything for their fix.  If unchecked, this can only end one way.

Get used to scenes like these, because if we don’t address the festering sore that is Federal Spending now, we lose choices. There won’t be an option that helps Granny get the check that the Federal Government has no business paying her. The government will probably not have the ability to perform its enumerated duties, let alone pay for mohair subsidies, studies on the flow rate of catsup, or refurbishing mosques in foreign countries.   This nonsense cannot be sustained.  Enacting special welfare and calling it general welfare is a path to ruin.  Growing a federal bureaucracy that must continue to worm its tentacles further and further into all aspects life and business in order to justify itself is not conducive the maintenance of freedom and liberty.  This is what “go along to get along” has gotten us…legions of experts who prove day in and day out that there is no problem that government cannot create, and then make worse with its “solutions”.  Learned professionals without any practical experience who pass laws and regulations without a thought to the cost that it imposes on those who they would regulate, because they only choose to see what they have done as a goal that they have fulfilled.

We aren’t stupid for deciding that more of the same isn’t a serious answer.

We’re not unpatriotic for not trusting a professional political class peopled by Republicans as well as Democrats when they tell me that if we just do this for them this time, then they can get majorities in the next election and things will be different.  Tell it to Newt Gingrich.  We’ve swallowed that turd sandwich before.  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.

And calling me a Hobbit because I see the snare and refuse to step into it doesn’t change my mind or my heart in the Reagan tradition.  It just tells me that you know you’re more concerned with your power than you are for the future of this country, and that lacking a convincing argument, you believe that I’m as willing to compromise as you are, in the pursuit of being loved, of course.  Just ask “the maverick”.

My friends…

No thanks. The madness can’t continue if enough people just opt out.

Unmitigated Arrogance And Gall On Display

The grumpy old guy has gone off the reservation again.

John McCain, is quoted in the New York Times berating the Tea Party Republicans for having the temerity to not play the Washington game of doing the same old thing, and declaring it something different.

Mr. McCain mocked Tea Party-allied Republicans in the House for believing — wrongly, he said — that President Obama and Democrats will get the blame for a default if Republicans refuse to increase the nation’s debt ceiling.

By that flawed logic, “Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced budget amendment and reform entitlements and the Tea Party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth,” he said, quoting a Wall Street Journal editorial.

“This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into G.O.P. nominees,” he jeered, referring to two losing Tea Party candidates for the Senate in 2010.

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Mr. McCain assailed the conservative Republicans in the House who are threatening passage of the debt cutting plan by the House speaker, John A. Boehner, calling their political logic “bizarro” and noting sarcastically that they have only been in office a short time.

“Maybe some people who have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that,” he said. “Others know better. Others know better.”

Shame on you, Senator.  You are part of the greatest deliberative body in the world, and rather than making your case and persuading your colleagues (and the American Public), instead you belittle and insult your colleagues who stand firm on doing what they were sent there to do, which was stop the madness.

Instead you give us the same arrogant condescension that we despise from the Democrats.  “We know better than you.  Shut up and do what you’re told.”

I think someone’s been in D.C. long enough.

Linked in Michelle Malkin’s Buzzworthy! Thanks!

Am I the Only One…

…who wants to choke the s*** of the people on “our side” of the political spectrum when they keep attacking the non-expert/experienced politicians who have decided to endure hostile, partisan reporters spelunking in their sphincters and uteruses, and the scorn and derision of pundits, who often have done nothing remotely risky in their lives other than ordering iffy fish at swanky restaurants or daring to buy a suit off the rack, rather than visiting their tailor for their latest Armani.

I’d like to know when so many conservatives bought into the idea that our leaders must be drawn from the pool of experts and experienced politicians.  A careful reading of the Federalist Papers and other assorted writings make it clear that the Framers certainly never envisioned a government consisting of career politicians and professional experts rich in “knowledge” largely or completely unsupported by real world experience.  But honestly, as far afield as we have strayed from so many other things that they intended, I find this gradual acquiescence less frustrating than the unrestrained contempt that so many of these so-called conservative “journalists”, talking heads, and their devoted followers have for people like Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, or even Michelle Bachmann.

Whether it’s the vacuous and groundless criticisms leveled at Sarah Palin, (She’s dumb, she’s a hillbilly, Trig isn’t hers, OMG, she didn’t give a polished and pat answer to the hostile reporter’s query, its her fault the nutbar shot Gabby Giffords, or that she’s a quitter because she decided to stop costing the taxpayers of Alaska money fighting boundless and, ultimately frivolous ethics complaints and resigned the governorship), the “he doesn’t have a policy plan for every single contingency” leveled at Herman Cain, someone who I would wager has more ideas that would actually grow the economy and jobs in his little finger than The President and all of Congress have between themselves and their legions of advisors and staff.  Besides, I’m quite sure that the only reason an “electable candidate” like Mitt Romney can cogently answer a specific foreign policy question because at least one or more paid advisor has advised him on a safe, or expected answer to such question.  Be honest, do you think at his first inauguration, George W. Bush was planning to spend the majority of time in office in charge of conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, or that he thought that we would suffer a devastating terrorist attack on our soil that would kill thousands of American civilians, or that a cadre of career Democratic appointees going through a revolving door at Freddie and Fannie would feed an unsustainable bubble by guaranteeing bad loans and personally enriching themselves in the process, despite it being brought to his attention once in office, and his numerous warnings to Congress about their dreadful oversight after it was brought to his attention.

The fact that these criticisms come from people who haven’t decided to subject themselves to the inevitable criticism and scrutiny directed at these candidates is irritating.  These people aren’t making the decision to run because they want power.  Despite the claims to the contrary, they don’t do it for “the fame”.  I’m quite certain that Governor Palin hasn’t appreciated “the fame” that has made her daughters the focus of David Letterman’s creepy sexual innuendos, or Andy Sullivan all but petition the courts to make his own gynecological examination of her nethers.  I’m equally certain that Herman Cain didn’t decide to move into the public eye and run for office because he’d like to be President.  Representative Bachmann on the other hand, clearly enjoys driving partisan hacks like Chrissy “Tingles” Matthews insane when she purposely doesn’t play the role that he hamfistedly tries to maneuver her into.  But then, to hear some talking head with a complete lack of understanding of the tax code prattling on and pretending to know more than her would lead me to frustrate the sputtering simpleton at every opportunity as well.  No, these people made the decision to step away from their lives because they could no longer ignore the fact that decades of leadership by the experienced and the experts isn’t working.  And what thanks do they get?  A complete eclipse of consideration by self-appointed deciders obsessed with talking points, elaborate plans which may or may not survive the events of the potential candidate’s administration, ‘electablity’-otherwise known as the careful positioning that ensures that the candidate doesn’t really have a position that would evoke a strong feeling by any potential voter, and policy expertise informed by, well, more experts.  And then they lament months later the fact that the new boss is largely undistinguishable from the old boss.

I have an idea.

How about you journalists, pundits, loyal followers and other deciders who purport to be on our side try a novel strategy this time?

Shut the hell up and let us decide, m’kay?