My Beauty Best Teacher

Via RightWingNews I read this piece by Michelle Malkin called The Autoworkers Obama Left Behind that I think is important for you to remember in the face of the propaganda that the Obama administration is going to churn out:

The White House fairy tale about the Happily Ever After Auto Bailout is missing a crucial, bloody page. While President Obama bragged about “standing by American workers” at a rowdy United Auto Workers meeting Tuesday, he failed to acknowledge how the Chicago-style deal threw tens of thousands of nonunion autoworkers under the bus.

In a campaign pep rally/sermon billed as a “policy speech,” Obama nearly broke his arm patting himself on the back for placing his “bets” (read: our money) on the $85 billion federal auto industry rescue. “Three years later,” he crowed, “that bet is paying off for America.”...

...The bailout pain was not distributed equally. It was redistributed politically.

Bondholders standing up for their property and contractual rights got shortchanged and demonized personally by the president. Dealers and suppliers faced closures based on political connections and lobbying clout, rather than neutral efficiency evaluations. And as I first reported in September 2010, in the rush to nationalize the auto industry and avoid contested court termination proceedings, the White House auto team schemed with Big Labor bosses to preserve UAW members’ costly pension funds by shafting their nonunion counterparts.

These forgotten nonunion pensioners (who worked for the Delphi/GM auto parts company) lost all of their health and life insurance benefits. Hailing from the economically devastated Rust Belt — northeast Ohio, Michigan and neighboring states — the Delphi workers had devoted decades of their lives as secretaries, technicians, engineers and sales employees. Some have watched up to 70 percent of their pensions vanish. They’ve banded together to seek justice in court and on Capitol Hill under the banner of the Delphi Salaried Retiree Association.

Through two costly years of litigation and investigation, the Delphi workers have exposed how the stacked White House Auto Task Force schemed with union bosses to “cherry pick” (one Obama official’s own words) which financial obligations the new Government Motors company would assume and which they would abandon based on their political expedience. Obama’s own former auto czar Steve Rattner admitted in his recent memoir that “attacking the union’s sacred cow” could “jeopardize” the auto bailout deal....

...As ebullient UAW officials hooted and hollered on Tuesday, Obama smugly attacked Republicans for “anti-worker policies” and their “same old you’re-on-your-own philosophy.” The Delphi workers know better: One union’s government-subsidized, government-manipulated “success story” is the rest of the workforce’s nightmare.

In Michigan, I daily hear the meme that "Obama saved the auto industry," and it bothers me, because in spite of so many factually wrong aspects of that statement people still believe it and are going to vote on it in November. The truth matters.

It matters that the TARP program was sold to the public and passed by Congress to save our banking industry, and then was turned into a slush fund to bail out politically favored industries and businesses. George W. Bush proposed saving GM and Chrysler, and I didn't agree with it then- there were two many questions as to why those companies were picked to be saved by taxpayer cash, why smaller companies didn't receive bailouts of their own, and the effect that bailing out a few companies would have on the rest of the larger un-bailed out economy. Still, Bush's program was small and would follow established laws and standards for bankruptcy, so it was bad, but not corrupt.

It matters that President Obama then took Bush's program and expanded it and turned it from a 'bailout to save the auto industries' into a 'government takes over GM and gives half of it to the union and gives Chrysler a lot of cash to get bought by an Italian company.' And rather than simply giving the money out as a loan with conditions, like Bush was going to do, Obama and his officials instead made far more daily decisions and played political games with the closing of dealerships and who got pensions- they played political games at a time when our nation was facing a deep crisis. That was gangster capitalism at its finest.

It matters that General Motors Corporation then went bankrupt, taking down thousands of properties and ruining whole communities, while dealerships were shuttered and thousands lost their jobs. This was 'you're-on-your-own' philosophy at work, only now instead of it being free people making free decisions on their own, it was Obama and his officials who decided who would be 'on-their-own' and who would get government help and support. Even today, the company that the government had the most contact with and control over- General Motors- lags its competitors who had less of the stink of government on them and less Obama influence. That matters.

In this coming election, it is going to be hard work to correct those who spin the lie that "Obama saved the auto industry", but we need to, because the truth is out there.

Although domestic policy results are a mix of Congress and the President, the results of foreign policy is almost inevitably the result of purely the President. So trying to blame Bush or the Republicans for the results of any major new policy decisions is useless- these results and actions can be laid directly at the feet of the President of the United States and Democratic nominee for 2012, Barack Hussein Obama.

Via Legal Insurrection's post We know who lost Egypt:

Obama’s foolish policy of forcing Mubarak out of office precipitously without giving non-Islamist parties time to organize has resulted in Islamists achieving a sweeping victory in the first round of parliamentary elections. Strength by the Muslim Brotherhood was expected, but the extremely hard line Salafists had a very strong showing.

As reported by The NY Times:

Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following. Poorly organized and internally divided, the liberal parties could not compete with Islamists disciplined by decades as the sole opposition to Mr. Mubarak. “We were washed out,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the most politically active of the group.

The Times article points out that this first round of elections was in the most liberal areas of Egypt. As voting moves to more conservative rural areas, the Islamists likely will gain an even more overwhelming majority.

This all was very predictable. In fact, I predicted it while Obama was insisting that Mubarak leave ”yesterday,” NY Times columnists were writing delusional columns about the Arab Street and the Arab Spring, and venomous anti-Israeli pundits at Media Matters and elsewhere complained that the “Israel Lobby” was trying to stifle freedom.

On Feburary 20 I wrote The Yuppie Revolution In Egypt Is Over, The Islamist Revolution Has Begun. I wish I had been wrong.

The liberated women of Egypt will be the first to suffer. The Times notes:

The Brotherhood has pledged to respect basic individual freedoms while using the influence of the state to nudge the culture in a more traditional direction. But the Salafis often talk openly of laws mandating a shift to Islamic banking, restricting the sale of alcohol, providing special curriculums for boys and girls in public schools, and censoring the content of the arts and entertainment.

Obama lost Egypt, and he had plenty of help.

This post echo's my own thoughts on this issue- see my posts The Rising Threat of Fascism: Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Other States or Evidence is Pretty One Sided Against Obama's Foriegn Policy, Don't You Think?.

Earlier this week I wrote about the incoherence of liberals in my post Teaching and Brain-Dead Liberal Students. Today I direct you to Victor Davis Hanson's article The Imaginarium of Barack Obama, where he touches on the incoherence of the Grand Marshal of the Liberal Parade of Economic Doom, President Barack Obama:

The presidency of Barack Obama is full of funny things that need not follow any sort of logic. Images and ideas just pop in and out, without worry of inconsistency, contradiction, or hypocrisy. It’s a fascinating mish-mash of strange heroes and bogeymen, this imaginarium of our president.

In the imaginarium there are no revolving doors, earmarks, or lobbyists. So Peter Orszag did not go from being OMB director to a Citigroup fat-cat. Once chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel did not make $16 million for his well-known banking expertise. The more you damn the pernicious role of lobbyists and the polluting role of big money, the more you must hire and seek out both. Public financing of campaigns is wonderful for everyone else who lacks the integrity of Barack Obama who understandably must renounce such unfair impositions.

Those who now vote against raising the large Obama debt ceiling are political hucksters and opportunists; those who not long ago voted against raising the smaller Bush debt ceiling were principled statesmen. “Unpatriotic” presidents borrow $4 trillion in eight years; patriotic ones we’ve been waiting for can trump that in three.

Catching known terrorists and putting them in Guantanamo is very bad; killing suspected ones by drone assassinations — and anyone unlucky enough to be in their general vicinity — is exceptionally good. Tribunals, renditions, preventative detention, and all that were bad ideas under Bush-Cheney, but could become good ideas under Barack Obama, the law professor who often sees no need to follow the law when an immigration or marriage statute is deemed regressive.

A million Iranians protesting a soon-to-be-nuclear theocracy is false revolutionary consciousness and to be left alone; a few thousand Israelis wanting to buy apartments in the Jerusalem suburbs is subversive and worthy of presidential condemnation. And when atoning for supposed American lapses, what better place to begin apologizing than in Turkey, the incubator of the Armenian, Greek, and Kurdish mass killings? We need to deny history to make the case that America is not exceptional, and to invent it to persuade us that the Muslim world is extraordinary....

...There are lots of ways to bring Americans together across class and racial lines. One in the imaginarium is to focus on the “teabag, anti-government people.” Another is to encourage Hispanics to “punish our enemies” — or have the attorney general lambaste Americans as racial “cowards” and to defend “my people.” Joining foreign governments to sue a fellow American state is no more red/no more blue state unity. Still another is to divide up the people between the suspect who make over $200,000 and the noble who make less, or yet again target the dubious “1%” at “the very top” who do not pay “their fair share,” a mere 40% of the aggregate income tax.

Inside the imaginarium, the way to demonize the “1%” is to vacation among them — whether at Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol. Buying a corporate jet is a waste of the people’s money — unlike daily flying on a much bigger private jet paid by the people....

...The president regrets that we are not innovative any more, and have gone “soft” and “lazy.” You see, his efforts at ensuring cradle-to-grave health care entitlements, of granting 99 weeks of unemployment insurance, and of extending food stamps to nearly 50 million are apparently incentives that should have led to a “hard” and “industrious” populace that was more self-reliant and willing to take risks on their own. “Spread the wealth” is a time-honored way of galvanizing people to become more self-disciplined and sufficient....

...In the imaginarium, community organizer Barack Obama never lived in a small mansion. John “two Americas” Edwards never lived in a big one. “Earth in the balance” Al Gore never lived in a few of them, and yacht owning John Kerry never lived in lots of them. You see in the imaginarium of Barack Obama you can be whatever you wish to be. Just wishing and saying something can wonderfully make it so.

FYI: Grand Marshal of the Liberal Parade of Economic Doom is going on the list of nicknames for Obama that I've been compiling.

Searching for Facts image from Bigstock.

Social media impacts lives. When you have someone in a controversial matter like the wrong thing or say the wrong thing it can cause a snowball that can influence and even harm.

I've seen this first hand. I know people who've lost jobs, seen marriages destroyed, and organizations teeter on the brink of nonexistence through poorly thought-out likes, unfriending, and comments. Perhaps it is because I live in a small town where there are no secrets.

It makes me angry when people who should know better casually post or comment and assume things that just aren't true. So, I'm going to get these lies out on the table. Every one of these 11 has a example  that I have personally witnessed. This is real and real life. Please wake up and understand what social media is and is not.

#11 Social media is free.
Everything comes with a price. Facebook is funded by advertising. In the advertising model they need to sell advertising and need to have happy advertisers. To have happy advertisers the advertisements need to "work" so Facebook must make sure that the ads served on their site hit the proper target. Good companies know the ages, genders, and even more details about their target market. This means that as you use Facebook you are being tracked through the use of cookies (a tiny file on your computer that stores information) and your profile data (all that data you give your "friends" also belongs to Facebook.)

Although the FTC has now required Facebook to allow users to "opt in" for Facebook privacy changes, you are giving up quite a bit of freedom as you surf, particularly when you log into Facebook. What I've seen happen to students is that if a student surfs to a somewhat inappropriate site or goes to a site that they would never go to for research projects, it can effect the kind of ads they start seeing on their page.

Ads on my Facebook page today.

So, for example, a child logs into Facebook with parents over shoulder - now the child is getting seedy ads or things showing on their page that aren't age appropriate because of some iffy searching habits from earlier in the week. Parents should notice the ads coming up on Facebook pages because it tells you a lot about your child's interests. The same is true for us adults.

The result is that the ads that show on your Facebook page tell a lot about you. Shown to the right are the ads I have on my facebook page today. First of all, I'm a coupon clipper and a Mom and I do shop online - so I have two ads relating to the fact that I shop. Another ad is for an event in Tallahassee - I do like cultural events and I live close to there. Finally, I am a bit of a health conscious person and I have recently shopped for some new vitamins online and do buy green matcha tea online. I have acupuncture atlanta showing up. See how this works?

Of particular interest is an article that will be in Forbes magazine on December 5, 2011 (Facebook's new advertising model: You) that talks about how your likes of a product will now be shown in ads for your FRIENDS. So, a movie ad may show a friend who has liked that ad. Or, a store may actually show someone who "likes" that store. Their research shows that a person is more likely to remember an ad with the name of a friend in it! I see a whole new set of privacy concerns coming with this advertising model.

Just how deeply they will dig into your shopping and buying habits or if this is just being generated off of likes is anyone's guess. Personally, I don't want my "endorsement" on anything without my permission. Just because I buy it doesn't mean I "endorse" it. I buy male sports garments for my 16 year old athlete, for goodness sakes - I could only imagine how that would turn out.


#10 Social media is just social

Jane Hart's Top 100 Tools for Learning survey results

Social media has a real impact in all areas of our life. Professional, personal, educational. In fact Twitter was listed as the top educational resource for the last two years in Jane Hart's annual poll of the top 100 tools for learning.

You may use a website socially but if you go home and make a comment about a bad day (See how to lose your job in 140 characters or less) or obnoxious client or sucky boss or give out private information and everyone knows who you're talking about you will have very real consequences in your life that can extend to your pocketbook, where you live, your job and all aspects of your life. The sooner people realize that social media is life media the better off we'll all be.

Likewise if you learn something powerful or make a connection, you can reap big dividends in your life both financially, personally, and in positive learning experiences for your students.

#9 People understand context.
Imagine kids doing a project about cyberbullying and they take a photo and upload to their Facebook to grab a screenshot and film (instead of using photoshop.) It gets uploaded in school, looks like an awful event, and everyone thinks it is really happening. The students take it down but the damage is done.

Every photo you use should be real. Be careful about using your social media sites for a "project" especially on a controversial topic. If it isn't real, don't upload it. Period. Don't experiment in places where you can do permanent damage. This is why people studying to be doctors operate on cadavers not real people as they begin.

I know a student who posted a fake status update to "see what would happen." Another student posted an April fool's joke that his house was robbed only to have the neighbors show up at their door 10 minutes after the post was made from his cell phone.

This is especially important for teachers to tell students if you allow the use of social media at your school.

#8 Profiles are accurate
People use photos from 10 years a go. They lie about their age. They may even lie about who they say they are or what they are doing for a living. Be a smidge wary when you first "meet" people particularly if you don't "know" them and decided to friend or follow because of mutual "friends." (See #2.)

I have students who are presenting at the Global Education conference who are filming an expose called "Cute little liars" where they created a fake profile and friended kids they knew to be under 13. Over half the students accepted the request. They are doing investigative reporting to uncover why.

Facebook Terms of Service

Right now, people can make fake profiles and enter fake data, but interestingly, here in the US, the Department of Justice wants to make it a federal crime to violate a website's terms of service. If that is the case, they may have to lock up half of the 10-12 year olds I know who are all lying to get a Facebook profile. (In my opinion, this is a slippery slope- who is watching those who write terms of service to make sure that they are fair to users and how many users take the time to read the TOS anyway? They are important they are just so long the average person doesn't read or understand them.)




#7 People not on that site don't see your stuff
In fact, I've seen things people posted printed out and handed around. Just because someone is not on Facebook or Twitter does not mean they cannot see your stuff. Someone can print it out or screenshot it and everyone can see it as it is handed around at the local gas station. The fact that someone is social media illiterate gives you no protection at all from their prying eyes. (See also #2.)

Reporting requires a Facebook account.

#6 You don't HAVE to have a page on their site to be treated fairly.
In fact, you do if you're going to protect your identity. I had a student here at Westwood who didn't want to get on Facebook. However, someone on Facebook with lots of pornographic links snagged her photo from a project and uploaded it as his profile picture.

She had named her picture her first name so it turned up in google search when her name was typed. Facebook would not let her report it and would not respond to her until she had a profile for a month with multiple pictures of her on it proving that she was that person in order for them to get the other person to stop using her photo. In effect, you have no right to complain about content unless you are on that site and a "real person" to them.

It says that you can have your friend report it and her friends did report it. However, they said because my student wasn't on Facebook and didn't have any photos of herself uploaded, that they couldn't verify that those photos were actually stolen from someone because she didn't exist to Facebook.

I heard an 80 year old woman call into Leo Laporte "the Tech guy" complaining that people were making things up about her on Facebook and his answer was that if she wasn't online and didn't use the Internet that there wasn't really anything she could do about it.

#5 You have a license to your work
Screen snipping software comes with every operating system I know of. It is easy to take photos. It is easy to PhotoShop off watermarks. Licenses should be respected, yes, but know that there are always pirates. It is no reason to run to the hills but remember that if you don't want it stolen that you should take some steps to protect it - especially photos of you and your children. Those are photos that you may have problems with people taking (at least I would.) I take steps to protect those photos.


Also, if you use just about any site that lets you upload photos, you may have lost the license already. For example, did you know that on Facebook according to their Terms of Service:

1. "For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it. 

2. When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others)."

This was brought to light when a woman who shot a picture and video of a shuttle launch from the air was surprised to see her video used without permission. They had contacted Twitpic, the place she uploaded the content, an according to their terms of service if Twitpic gives permission - they can have it without contacting the user. Sites like flickr support and have licenses but remember that you may not have the license you think you have if the terms of service claim rights for the service.

#4 Your password is secure
Many people use the same password for everything. Some websites have protection measures in place and others do not. You are only secure as the least secure website you have used that password on. You should have unique passwords for banking, Facebook, and email in my opinion. So what if it is a pain. What is your identity and reputation worth?

See also Lifehacker's Guide to Sniffing Out Passwords and Cookies (and how to protect yourself against it.)  If you're not logging in using https, your password is easy to intercept. Also make sure your web browser is updated. Many sites don't support https and if they do not, your password can be easily intercepted. (One suggestion worth taking in the article is: "Everywhere is that it only redirects sites in its list, so if you'd like to be able to redirect any site to HTTPS, you may want to check out Force-TLS for Firefox or HTTPS Everywhere for Chrome. Both of these extensions allow you to add new sites to the automatic HTTPS redirect.")

#3 Delete will delete something
Delete doesn't really happen. Some companies (like Facebook) keep the original photo and just delete the link to your account. The permalink is still there. Plus you have the fact that files when deleted are still there - either in the recycle bin on on that hard drive or on a backup. Someone on this planet can always get to it.

Friends photo from Bigstock

#2 Your friends are really friends
Just because Facebook calls them friends doesn't mean that they are. If you tick the wrong person off, they'll screenshot your "private" rant faster than you can open and shut your back door.

A companion to this statement is that "your friends friends are really their friends." Overfriending is a problem and many people got online and started friending. Although they may be more selective now, people tend to not want to unfriend people. Just because you have mutual friends doesn't mean a thing. If you accept on the basis of "mutual friends" you are leaving your vetting up to people who just may not care or were uneducated at some point about how to friend.

#1 You have privacy settings
Yes, you can "lock down" your account, but truly nothing is really private. If anyone besides you is on your page, you still have all those anonymous administrators or hackers who can get to your account through the back door or a security hole. Sure, set your private settings and "lock it down" but remember that if you don't want it shared that you shouldn't share it.

Plus, it is easy to cross post from one platform to another. You may have protected tweets on Twitter but if you cross post to Facebook and are set to Friends of Friends EVERYONE can read your tweets.

Nothing is private if it is online.

Why use social media at all?
All this being said, I am a huge social media fan. My life has been improved by social media. I have received book contracts, new friends from around the world, new best practices for my classroom, and trips to incredible places. Social media has been a very positive influence in my life. I've had my own share of gaffe's and mess ups -- that is a fact!

But I think it is time to wake up and realize that this stuff is for real and that offhand comments can crush and hurt people.

Be careful what you say especially when it is in writing or electronic format. A like can have just as much impact as if you said it yourself. Like means you agree in the eyes of many because of the word that Facebook chose to use.

In my post Graph: Non-Defense Spending Relative to GDP, Color-Coded by Party in Power, or the Obama Hockey Stick, reader Levi commented "Which policies (of Democratic President Barack Obama) are stunting the recovery?"- he doesn't believe that Barack Obama is pushing any sort of policies that are slowing our economic recovery.

Levi probably isn't a regular reader of my blog, since he has obviously missed posts from just this month detailing Obama's efforts to harm our economic recovery, ranging from his banking policies (Obama Pressuring Banks to Give High Risk Loans to Poor and Minorities) to regulations that the EPA has put in place (Latest EPA Rules to Cost 1.4 Million Jobs and a 12% Increase in Utility Bills) to executive orders that add to the cost of doing business in America (Government Does Not Create Jobs; In July Alone It Added $9.5 Billion to the Cost of Doing Business). These stories were well-researched and filled with details, but perhaps Levi and progressives like him need more evidence. I can provide that.

Via Powerlineblog:

The Justice Department’s raid on four Gibson guitar factories is in that category. The raid took place last Wednesday; this Memphis Daily News story, published this morning, is a good place to start:

Around 8:45 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 24, agents executed four search warrants on Gibson facilities in the two cities [Nashville and Memphis]. They seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars.

But Gibson’s CEO says his company has not been told what it did wrong and that he assumes the allegation is that some of the wood being used to manufacture the company’s guitars is illegal.

“Everything is sealed. They won’t tell us anything,” Juszkiewicz said, never raising his voice but pulling no punches in his defense of the storied guitar maker.

He valued the equipment and raw materials seized from Gibson at almost $1 million. At one point, the chief executive said he’s letting the U.S. Justice Department know he’s telling his employees to keep making the instruments. …

“We feel totally abused,” he continued. “We believe the arrogance of federal power is impacting me personally, our company personally and the employees here in Tennessee, and it’s just plain wrong.”

Now, it may turn out that Gibson's has broken some obscure portion of the Lacey Act, a piece of legislation that is designed to protect exotic trees by putting burdens and fees and regulations on US companies, who extract a fraction of the exotic trees compared to other nations (Gibson's imports only 5% of the rosewood, while an unburdened China that shows much less respect for the environment is encouraged by progressive laws like the Lacey Act to extract 95% of rosewood). If this is so, one wonders why other companies are not also being punished- companies like one of Gibson's principal competitors, C.F. Martin & Company, which engages in the same practices but isn't raided (it's CEO is a big Democratic donor), or Michelle Obama, who gave French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic guitar with a rosewood fret, in clear violation of the Lacey Act.

But the point is that the President and his administration are not helping businesses navigate these useless and harmful laws; the President and his administration are not working with Americans to produce more goods and products in a more efficient and profitable manner; and the President and his administration are not helping our nation to recover from the recession. No, he is instead harassing legitimate businessmen on frivolous ground that are motivated perhaps by political malice and smell strongly of the misuse of federal power. He is not helping America recover- he is acting to hurt our recovery and make a recession into a Depression through his policies.

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck."

If bad luck is the reason that our nation has struggled lately, I wondered to myself just what exactly our President and Commander-in-Chief was doing to combat this recent run of bad luck.

Never in my knowledge has any other President had to battle 'bad luck' before- a google search of past Presidents' speeches did not turn up any results of past Presidents, whether they were Republican like George W Bush or Ronald Reagan or Democrats like Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter, ever blaming 'bad luck' for the problems that the United States faced. Perhaps it was because these past Presidents were religious people, who did not believe in paganism and 'luck' so much as the divine will of God and his plan.

To combat a run of 'bad luck', past Presidents like George W Bush turned to prayer and Bill Clinton took to reading Scripture, but it appears from President Obama's speeches and comments that he has decided not to talk to God or read God's word to turn around the run of bad luck, but rather bemoan the run of 'bad luck' and sing 'woe to me'.

Although in our nation we do have a separation of church and state, that does not mean that there is a separation in our nation between those who believe in a higher power and those who serve in our political institutions. For most of our nation's history, our leaders on both side of the political spectrum have been religious and have prayed and read the word of God and saw in the actions of the world God.

President Bush often said that "these are trying times" when our nation faced tough circumstances like terrorist attacks, hurricanes, the total collapse of our banking system, a recession in 2001, or the difficult times of fighting two major wars against dedicated and evil groups. He did not say that our nation suffered through 'bad luck'- he recognized that God's plan and the free will of men sometimes tried our faith and offered a trial to our nation and its people, whether to fight harder for what is good and right or to not.

Bill Clinton, for all of his faults and failures, was well versed in the Bible and believed that he was doing his best to advance the values that he saw in it- love, hope, forgiveness, etc- and that when he faced trials, that those trials were presented to him by God or by those who freely choose to deny God, and that our nation would overcome those trials by sticking to our values and believing in God.

And yet, President Obama, who resigned from Trinity United Church of Christ after he judged that his affiliation with Jeremiah Wright would reflect badly on him politically, does not quote Scripture or talk about his time in prayer. So how exactly should Obama cope with this run of bad luck- an unaffiliated Christian who does not go to Church or regularly read the Bible or study theology of any sort of any religion?

At some point questions need to be asked about President Obama and his views on God and religion, and I don't just mean the sort of 'is he a Muslim' kind of questions that will lead us nowhere. He does not appear to be a Muslim, and his connection to Christianity is either very very private and unmentioned or thin at best, and since he isn't Buddhist or Jewish, one has to begin to wonder just what exactly does Obama see as the divine plan for our nation. I would suggest that Obama is atheist, but his reference to supernatural 'luck' does not fit with that theory either.

What are President Obama's religious beliefs and what role does 'luck' play in his view of the universe?

UPDATE: Get out of my head Charles Krauthammer! For the record, I posted my post before he came out with his editorial today, but it is amazing that both of us arrived at the same thought days after the event and then posted about it. In his article called Bad luck? Bad faith? he goes a slightly different direction, but struggles like me with Obama's comment about 'luck'.

Via memeorandum.

Those who are interested in learning more about Obama's religion should try The Faith of Barack Obama.

As we learn more about the financial meltdown of 2008, it becomes increasingly apparent that one of the main causes for this economic disaster was government policy that forced banks to extend loans to those people who were unable to pay those back. Government agents put pressure on banks and government banking institutions like Freddie/Franny to give loans to people who under normal circumstances would be unable to pay back these loans and who were especially unable to protect themselves from the exposure to risk that these loans entailed. Misguided government policies ambushed innocent people who believed the dream that politicians peddled and banks were coerced into following, and in 2008 the house of cards came crashing down and peoples lives were ruined. It was not the failure of the markets, the lack of government policy on the issue, evil rich people, George W Bush, or the Republicans who were the minority party in Congress at the time- it was government policy that put pressure on banks that led to the collapse in 2008.

And the lesson apparently was not learned by the Democrats.

From Townhall's Bob Beauprez comes this stunning mind-blowing information:

The Department of Justice is executing a "Witch Hunt" against banks. Through the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Eric Holder is forcing banks to "relax their mortgage underwriting standards and approve loans for minorities with poor credit as part of a new crackdown on alleged discrimination," according to a published report by Investor's Business Daily after reviewing court documents.

The DOJ has already extorted $20 million for weak and poor credit loans from banks that "settled out of court rather than battle the federal government and risk being branded racist." The DOJ admits another 60 banks are already under "investigation." Holder's demanding the banks sign "non-disclosure" settlement agreements barring them from talking while allowing the DOJ to operate behind a curtain of secrecy.

The settlements already extracted from banks force them to make "prime-rate mortgages to low income blacks and Hispanics" with credit problems, even if they are living on welfare. According to IBD, the DOJ has ordered banks to advertise that minorities cannot be turned down for a loan "because they receive public aid, such as unemployment benefits, welfare payments or food stamps." No job; no problem!

In other words, the DOJ is forcing banks to make loans to people that they know don't qualify for them and likely won't be able to afford to repay them, which is precisely the kind of failed public policy that precipitated the financial collapse and recession in 2008.

Can you believe it? Obama took an economy that was going through a usual recession, killed the recovery, set us up for a double-dip recession, and is now working on creating another epic economic collapse!

Read the whole analysis- it'll really scare you!

For more on the background of the Great Recession and how Obama plans to recreate it with his policies, check out The Great American Bank Robbery: The Unauthorized Report About What Really Caused the Great Recession or A Decade of Delusions: From Speculative Contagion to the Great Recession.

Imagine that you lived in a state of nature- your plane crash landed on some previously unclaimed island that has no inhabitants and there is no hope of being rescued or contacting your previous home nations. Or you go to the moon, or an asteroid, or the bottom of the ocean, or some other location where there are no laws and no legal rights are written down. What sort of rights would you have?

Another way of asking this question is for you to think of things that others would do to you that you would think are wrong- that you would believe are wrong because you know that to do these things are wrong, with or without a government or any sort of legal authority telling you that they are wrong. These are what are called your natural rights.

What sort of natural rights would you have, whereby you would feel violated and wronged by others, even if there were no government or state or authority? Let's say you crash land on the island or find yourself on the moon- would you feel that you had been horribly wronged and violated if your fellow citizens didn't pay for your healthcare insurance in case you got injured? You're on an asteroid, and you demand that the other people on the asteroid buy a house for you or subsidize your loan, and they say no- have you been wronged and your natural rights violated? Of course not- you don't have any sort of right to have others pay for your healthcare insurance, house, car, food, or anything of that sort.

Imagine that you begin to work on your island, tilling a field and growing a crop, where others lay around and do nothing other than to watch you. After you are done growing your crop, they all band together in a large group and vote to have you distribute your crop to everyone, with everyone getting an equal share, even though you contributed all the labor. Were you wronged? Did someone violate your rights? Or let's say on the moon, you provide some sort of service that is essential- taking care of the banking, entertaining others by playing a sport, taking a risk and thinking up a new product- and you work hard at your service and in return others pay you some sort of compensation, that they voluntarily pay for your service because they recognize its worth; and after this, someone else comes along and demands a share of your 'money' in order to pay for someone else to conduct a study of the effects of drinking in prostitutes in China, or to build a road that you will never travel on the other side of the moon, or to cut a check to the older people stranded on the moon, or to hire a bureaucrat to supervise you and tell you all the things you are doing wrong. Would you be wronged then?

Of course you would have been wronged- your labor is yours, and the profit from your labor is yours, and the government does not have any 'right' to your labor, not unless you are a slave to the state. You are okay with voting to provide a military to protect your property from outside aggression, or police or fire service to protect it from theft or fire, or to create a court system to resolve any disputes that may arise regarding your property. But for the government to come and demand the fruits of your labor and lay claim to it is tyranny- it is your property, it existed before government, it will exist after government, and you are the only person who can lay any sort of right to that property. This in your natural right to property.

The purpose of our government is to protect these natural rights- life, liberty, and property. There is no such thing as a 'tax cut for the rich'- the government does not have any sort of claim on the rich citizens' property, so a more proper name for this would be a 'lessening of the unequal taxes levied on those earning high incomes'. You do not have any sort of right to healthcare or housing; but neither do you have any sort of right to social security or medicare- those are provided to some in our society by violating my rights and the rights of other young people in society to keep and earn property in order to provide forced charity to those who have had ample opportunity to earn and pay for their own retirement and healthcare- but they have no right to this sort of forced charitable giving.

Understanding property rights and the nature of them is important, because once the state becomes destructive to these property rights that state is on the road to tyranny. We can see it already in our nation, where our government has arbitrarily violated contracts because a car company is going bankrupt, failed to properly issue permits to energy companies who have gone through the (excessive and capricious) permit process, or the forcing someone young and healthy and full of life to buy a product like health insurance in order to subsidize the costs for others in society. Once it has been established that your property rights can be violated by a government- that rights to keep and earn property that existed before government was around and would be around even if government was not around- then the next step is to go after your freedoms and liberties, and lastly, your life.

Fight for the right to keep and earn property, and stop engaging in class warfare, because it will only lead to tyranny and injustice.

For more, check out John Locke, property rights, and economic theory.: An article from: Journal of Economic Issues or John Locke and Property as a Human Right Today: Towards a New Theory of Property Rights.

"They are afraid and so it is easier to block access to any area that might cause a problem than to investigate and fight for solutions that are workable. It is easier to hide behind the Great American Education Firewall."

Heather Davis, teacher in China

 LET FREEDOM RING?
Guest Post by Teacher, Heather Davis


Heather Davis
@toadie1951
http://teachlesslearnmore.edublogs.org/
Flat Classroom Certified Teacher Class of 2011-1
April 5, 2011




With permission, I am posting this blog post from an email that I received from teacher in China, Heather Davis. She has given me full permission to post this here and list her full name. Yes, that makes me nervous (China has been cracking down on many bloggers) but I will respect her desire to speak a message to the heart of all teachers - especially those here in America.  

This isn't about filtration. Keeping pornography out of school is required by our laws. This is about OVERFILTRATION and a lack of ability to request URLs to be unblocked. Is there a procedure that teachers can use to get sites unblocked efficiently that is approved by CURRICULUM. The sites we use should pretty much be driven by CURRICULUM  - not IT .

Do we care about the recent US study that actually showed that the two biggest obstacles to the integration of emerging technology are filtration and the ban on cell phones? I was discussing with my friend Stephen Windwalker (Kindle Nation Daily) and he said something that stuck with me - 

"Most kids will be making their living creating web content, not writing novels."

We've got work to do and need to roll up our sleeves and start using some plain old common sense to make up for the shortfall in our pocketbooks. We can't have everything but we can have something. And we can do many things with the free things we can use in our schools - it is just a matter of typing the URL into the whitelist feature of our firewall - and as someone who does this every day - it isn't such a big deal.


Here's to you, Heather - you are truly an inspiration to me and represent everything good in a teacher and leader. I have taken the liberty to put a few things I think are very important in red. Keep up the great work.

Vicki Davis

Public school districts are facing a major budget crisis in Michigan after almost a decade of disastrous fiscal management and poor policy decisions and school budgets are now facing considerable pressure. Almost every school district in the state is looking at cutting teachers salaries and benefits and many are also considering outsourcing or privatizing support services including custodial, food service, or transportation. Although these options likely do need to be considered, very few districts are looking at another potential source of savings- outsourcing school administration services.

In our district, our administration building supports teachers in many important ways, including budgeting and financial reporting, taking care of accounts payable and accounts receivable, managing the payroll, taking care of grant reporting, keeping track of banking and investments, and service the debt in the district. Administration runs the human resources office, which hires employees, keeps their paperwork current so they remain highly qualified, manages benefits, and provides other services to employees in the district. We have a purchasing office which oversees purchases in the district, whether they be big or small, and we have a technology department to provide technical support to teachers and staff. This whole operation is managed by an expensive and highly paid Superintendent, who works with the community and school board and manages the whole operation.

All of these jobs can easily be provided by private businesses that may possibly cost the district less money or provide them with better services.

Private management firms are out there, providing these sort of purchasing, payroll, HR, and management services to small businesses in our nation so that those businesses can focus on doing what they know best. These firms have many clients and because of the large numbers of clients they can provide more efficiency based on economies-of-scale, lowering the costs of providing these services to a district. They also can draw on substantially more experience and resources than found in school districts, potentially providing better services than would be found in-house. And because these firms would be hired by the district, they would always fear losing their contract and thus be more responsive to the concerns and pressures of the district, perhaps more so than the districts own employees, many whom view their jobs as virtual lifetime guarantees.

If teachers and custodians and bus drivers are being asked by administration to consider all options and are being looked at to see if they can be outsourced, administration also needs to know that there are companies out there that can do what they do and that they do not have some sort of monopoly on job security and pay. If I were a union official in a tough bargaining fight, I'd make sure that I brought to the table this line of thinking, because perhaps a district could save vital dollars by privatizing or outsourcing its school administration and spare cuts to teachers and other support staff who actually work with students.

This post was inspired by something that I read on Pamela Hornberger's blog, Pamela Hornberger for L'Anse Creuse School Board, which itself was inspired by a report from the Mackinac Center. One possible company that I found that may provide the sort of services I imagine is The Leona Group.

Sanou Mbaye writing in Project Syndicate:

He speaks on the need to liberalize the remittance channels:

The effects of banks’ hijacking of national payment systems to service only the modern economy are compounded by the exclusive agreements that banks and money-transfer companies such as Western Union have signed with most African countries. These agreements lock out non-banking entities from the highly lucrative market for migrant remittances from the African diaspora, which remain a key engine of growth

Furthermore on how key it is to nourish the informal economies:

African states must now recognize that modernizing their informal sectors by integrating them into the modern economy can be a major development tool. Yet only a few countries have started moving in that direction. Nigeria has refrained from signing any exclusive agreements with Western Union and others, and its newly consolidated banking industry is making significant inroads across the region...

Arguing for the broader inclusion of more financial actors in national payment systems

Giving micro-finance institutions access to national and regional payments systems and electronic retail facilities will go a long way toward meeting the requirements of the retail and business sector in terms of banking facilities. It will also help facilitate access by the poorest to financial services, thus helping to reduce the high proportion of the un-banked population.

All of this will invariably spur development and integration of national financial systems and intra-regional trade. This will be a welcome development, because a large proportion of intra-regional trade is carried out by informal operators and small and medium enterprises that do not have access to the banking system. Moreover, economic integration and increased intra-regional trade are the best entry point into global markets for all countries.

More here

Joe at jgeldhof@comcast.net sent me an email recently called 'identify yourself', where he displays all the typical racist, angry, sexist, and ignorant views that are common to liberals and Democrats. For amusement, here is his email, which is the kind of typical stuff I have to read from his kind. I apologize in advance for the language:

This person by themself is simply a harmless, angry, sexist, racist individual. But put this person in a position of power over me or you, and he is dangerous. Make him a bureaucrat in charge of your healthcare choices, or in charge of your energy uses, or in charge of regulating your company, and he degrades the human condition and represents a threat to your life, liberty, and property. This person is the reason why our Founding Fathers wisely made government divided, conflicted, inefficient, weak, and limited- not because in hands of great people government can't do great things, but because in the hands of Joe, government could be very terrible. Thanks for pointing this out Joe.

UPDATE: For those who are curious, Joe sent me further emails... here is some of the stuff that he wrote...
He further proves my points above about how dangerous someone like him is with political power.

I'm not a right wing wack job that listens to the pictures drawn by the likes of: palin, Cheney, lieberman, bush, bush, and bush, and Rush, and hannity, and o'reilly (who got his nuts twisted by women). keep defending these buttocks and we'll see how long this country lasts.... hooray for the African American in the white house. Makes you guys look like wimps... where do you store your white sheet and hood... you're a facist... you're a communist...

He is just further proving my point that it will not be a good thing for him and his kind to have power over me and my kind (and me and my kind don't want any power over him and his kind).

According to data from Moody's Analytics Inc, when taxes were cut under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, the rich responded by increasing their savings, putting more money into the banking system, helping investment in small businesses, homeowners get more affordable houses, and banks become more profitable and stable. On the other hand, when tax rates were raised under Bill Clinton, savings rates fell, and instead of these good things happening, government officials used the money that they took from the rich and productive to instead give to their political supporters and spend on their pet causes.

According to Bloomberg, somehow this is going to weaken arguments by Republicans and some Democrats in Congress who say drastically increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans will prompt them to reduce their spending, further harming the economy. For example, Democrat President Barack Obama wants to pick and choose who he thinks should have to pay more in taxes, and wants to arbitrarily establish that anyone who earns more than $200,000 deserves to pay more in taxes, simply because they earn more and the government can take it from them, and he thinks that this will make encourage job growth and productivity.

According to the Bloomberg article, Obama, at a White House news conference on Sept. 10, said the push by Republicans to extend cuts for the wealthiest Americans is a “bad idea” because it would cost $700 billion in government revenue at a time when he is spending trillions of dollars in record budget deficits on various schemes and projects that his government officials hatch up. He instead has the "good idea" to raise taxes on the rich, take billions out of their pockets, cycle it through hundreds of government officials, and send it to labor unions and special interest lobbyists, in the failed theory that this type of stimulus will somehow not increase the unemployment rate and depress economic growth in this nation.

The truth of the matter is that progressive tax rates discourage hard work and investment, take money from the most productive members of our society and transfer it to the least productive members of our society (government officials), and are at their very heart immoral, punishing people with higher taxes simply because they or their parents were more successful in satisfying the wants and needs of the good people of this nation. There are few moral or economic arguments in support of increasing taxes on those who earn more- in reality, the government increases taxes on the wealthy because it can, because these people have things that the government can take, and because there are fewer 'rich' than there are 'poor', especially when Democrats run things.

The Bush tax cuts should be extended, forever, and further more, since they were successful in both improving the economy and boosting government revenue (which could then be sent to the poor and the needy and education and defense of our nation and all the things that liberals and Democrats pretend to want), a new round of tax cuts should be enacted, for both the poor, middle-class, and the rich. Equality, freedom, liberty, life, and protection of property was what our nation was built on- if we return to these principles, our nation will once again be prosperous. But if our nation turns away from these ideals and embraces the Democrats and liberals vision of inequality, tyranny, control, death, and destruction of wealth, our nation will continue to suffer the consequences.

Chris Blattman highlights a report which stated that:

Without much notice,agriculture recently ceased to be the largest sector in the economy for the first time in Ethiopia’s history. This heralds a major structural transformation of the economy and we forecast that the services sector—which covers real estate, hotels, transportation, communication, banking, health and education—will make up more than half of Ethiopia’s GDP in just two years time, a development with many implications and opportunities for Ethiopian business.

countering that rosy picture he asserts:

...the big risk, for me, is succession. The Prime Minister claims he’s going to step down in five years, but we’ve heard that from him before. Like Kagame and Museveni, I doubt he is leaving anytime soon. While the drug trade worries me most in West Africa, in East Africa I worry about the leaders with endless terms and no plan for succession...To hang onto power, the leader must undermine institutions, even his own party, and personalize power. His fear that he is the only man to run the country becomes self-fulfilling, for the cabal and not the greater institution is what holds the state together.

Although Michigan's US House of Representatives 9th District has historically been a Republican district, in 2008 it elected a Democrat named Gary Peters. According to CQ Politics, in order to defend his seat, Peters has raised a whopping $2 million in receipts through the first quarter of 2010, which is considerably more than any of his GOP challengers (Raczkowski, Welday, Goodman).

People give money to candidates for two main reasons. One reason that people, businesses, and organizations give money to candidates because they believe in the candidate personally or support their policies. The second major reason that people, businesses, and organizations give money to candidates is because they feel that by giving the candidate money it buys them access to power or control over the candidate.

Although Gary Peters is one of the few elected officials who refused to take the Project Vote Smart Political Courage test (a test where a candidate makes known where they stand on important issues), and he has sponsored very little legislation in Congress, and has refused to meet with constituents or hold town halls, we do know some things about his positions on the issues.

As I discussed in my post Gary Peters Scores a 90% On the Pelsoi Index- A Vote by Vote Analysis of Peters Liberal Record in Congress, Peters has voted in favor of the stimulus bill, cap and tax, Obamacare, bloated budget bills, increased taxes, and raising the debt ceiling. He voted against Stupak's Anti-Abortion Amendment. With this information, we can now begin to look at who is supporting Peters in the 2010 election and think about what sort of policies they might be supporting or what sort of influence over the Congressman they might be buying.

According to OpenSecrets.org, the top industries that have currently donated to Michigan Democratic Congressman Gary Peters to support his re-election bid are (in order): Lawyers/Law Firms, Democratic/Liberal Groups, Industrial Unions, Real Estate Firms, Health Professionals, Building Trade Unions, Insurance Companies, Securities and Investment firms, Retired People, Public Sector Unions, Hospitals/Nursing Homes, Transportation Unions, Finance Companies, Lobbyists, Automotive Companies, Commercial Banks, and Finance/Credit Companies.

You make your own decisions, but my rough take on that is that Peters has consistently voted to support 'too big to fail' in a range of industries, and is getting paid back for that. Peters has voted to support government/industry/union partnerships in banking, healthcare, and automotive industries, throwing billions of dollars at the big politically connected firms to bail them out and protect them from competition from smaller, less connected companies.

That's wrong- Peters has got to go.