Blame It On The Tea Party

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” — Vladimir Lenin

There is a constant barrage of claims from the Left and RINO Republicans that the Tea Party is a group of dissidents that are akin to terrorist who do not have the best interest of the county at heart. They are accused of being against gun control, wanting a reduction in the size and scope of government, onerous EPA regulations, wanting lower taxes, unregulated immigration, and wanting the repeal of ObamaCare. All of this is true. But, they are people who assemble for peaceful protests, visits to offices of their legislature, and support candidates for political or administrative office that agree with their principles.

Tea Party member come in all stripes. There are seniors and young people. There are whites, Hispanics, and Blacks. There are Gays and straight folks. There are doctors, lawyers, engineers, farmers, industrial workers, housewives, and even a few college professors. The one this they all have in common is a love of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution.

They are usually better informed as to the politics of the nation and what is happening in Washington, D.C., their state capital, their city hall, and local school board. And they don’t like what is happening to the country.

In 2010 their influence changed the political makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives along with many state houses and state legislatures. The election of Senators Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and Ted Cruz were due to the efforts of the Tea Party. This is what our Founders wanted, a vibrant Republic where the citizens made the wished known through the ballot box

Yet as late as yesterday Harry Reid (D-NV), majority leader of the Senate, accused the Tea Party of being archaists and obstructionists to Obama’s agenda and more interested in making a point that making progress — progress to what?

In 2010 the left-wing press accused the Tea Party of acting violently and racists towards a Black Congressman — something that never happened, Andrew Breitbart of Beitbart.com offered $100,000 to anyone who had video of such an occurrence. None ever came forth. Believe me, for 100 grand I would have presented such a video if I had one. This was allegation was just one of many thrown around by the Left – Allegations that were never proven.

On the other hand we have the Left and how they approach politics. They don’t believe in our system of constitutional government. They believe, like Lenin in street riots and the destruction of private property to make their agenda known. In most cases they don’t even know what they want. The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2012 was a prime example of this. They occupies public places without permits and trashed them. When asked by responsible reporters what they wanted most could no not give a cogent answer. All the wanted was free college, forgiveness of the college loans, a high paying job commensurate with their inflated worth, and the destruction of the capital system. The irony in their demands was that without the capitalist system their chances of getting that high paying job were zero. Yet the left-wing Democrats latched onto OWS movement in order to show their sympathies for this bunch of pot-smoking, disgruntled college students and losers.

The annual May Day parade of losers turned violent in Seattle, much as it did last year. It’s a thematically appropriate way to commemorate world socialism, although rather rough on the innocent bystanders. In addition to the violence, you’ve also got the rich irony of Starbucks patrons wearing designer labels using high-end smartphones to organize a rally “against capitalism, all nation states, and borders,” as their recruiting poster declared. No one could parody this pathetic “movement” more effectively than it satirizes itself.

Several dozen protesters, many using bandanas to cover their faces, began clashing with police in downtown Seattle hours after a peaceful immigrant-rights march ended. Protesters threw rocks and bottles at police officers and news crews.

As they moved through downtown Seattle to another nearby neighborhood, they flung construction street barriers, trash cans and newspaper bins on the streets in an attempt to block advancing police officers. Windows of local businesses were broken and vehicles with people in them were banged around.

The violence stemmed from a march that billed itself as an “anti-capitalism” protest. Initially, the protesters concentrated on a business sector of downtown Seattle.

Despite lacking a permit to march, Seattle police escorted them as through downtown.

“That first march came downtown. It was absolutely peaceful…it was almost a festive affair and they had some serious messages, too, that they wanted to express. No incidents whatsoever,” McGinn said. “The second march was very different, and it wasn’t just merely because it was unpermitted. I think it also had to do with the nature of the individuals in it and what they wanted to do.”

Not that there’s much point in trying to have a rational discussion with these people, but it’s amusing that they don’t seem to understand that anarchy is the harbinger of the centralized domination they fancy themselves protesting. Anarchists are merely the roadies who set the stage and hook up the equipment for the big-name totalitarian bands, whose sets always run long past the point where the audience is ready to die trying to escape. Anarchy isn’t “total freedom,” as the banner held aloft in the post declares; it is the prelude to total submission.

In Seattle, “total freedom” turned out to mean smashing a lot of windows and throwing rocks at the police. Oddly, there doesn’t seem to be much U.S. media coverage of the festivities yet, but the Independent of Ireland filed a report:

“Protesters threw rocks, bottles and chunks of asphalt at officers, officials said, smashing store and car windows, overturning trash cans and lining up newspaper display racks to block streets.

Police in riot gear, some riding in armored SWAT vehicles, responded by repeatedly firing “blast ball” grenades, which emit smoke tinged with pepper spray.

“We’re a bigger, better city than this,” Mayor Mike McGinn said at a news conference. “I’m disappointed that this is the picture the world sees of us.”

Most of the 150-200 protesters who had stayed on the street after darkness fell for a “non-permitted” protest had dispersed by midnight.

“We did not start to take action until that group itself started to act violently towards the officers and the community at large,” Assistant Police Chief Paul McDonagh said.”

150 to 200 people? The Glorious Peoples’ Revolutionary Army is looking pretty sad these days. Next year, if they want to draw a bigger crowd of like-minded supporters, they should consider holding their “demonstration” in North Korea. They would have their socialist brothers and sisters eating from the palms of their hands! (Literally, if they bring food.)

KING 5 News in Seattle has more details, including a tally of the arrests and injuries:

“Olivia One Feather of Covington joined the crowd Wednesday night because she wanted to see how police handled the protest. She said she wasn’t impressed, adding that she was pepper sprayed in the face while trying to video record officers.

“They don’t have any manners. They don’t say please or give you time to get out of the way,” she said.

Of the protesters, she added, “They’re doing what we need to do to stand up to ourselves. These are our streets and we have the right to take them.”

What, your streets? Public streets belong to all and the impairment of ingress and egress is a crime against public order. But, these morons don’t seem to understand or even know it. There have been many state court rulings defining the right of passage on public ways and a federal appellate court ruling in Frantz v. Gress.

By the way, misguided Republicans who think supporting amnesty for illegal aliens will somehow win them political support should note that Commie Day was also a big day for amnesty shills, who staged demonstrations in Seattle and elsewhere.

The violence marred a May Day that immigrant-rights activists hoped would put a focus back on immigration reform. Thousands of people marched about 2½ miles from the Central District toward Seattle’s downtown Jackson Federal Building after a May Day rally supporting immigrant rights and labor.

Many carried signs, with messages such as “We are America,” and “There are no illegal humans.” One sign suggested forgetting about marijuana and instead asking the United States to “Legalize my mom,” a reference to Washington’s recent legalization of marijuana.

You can read more reports and view videos of the Seattle demonstrations at Hot Air, Breitbart and The Blaze.

Of Course you have consider that Seattle is one of the most left-wing cities in the United States. Several years there were violent demonstration against the World Trade Organization aka The Battle in Seattle. It is also home to Starbucks and John Reed the commie newspaperman who, in 1917, went to The Soviet Union and proclaimed the wonders of the Communist Revolution and in 1920 was buried as a “Hero of the Soviet Union” near the Kremlin Wall. Much could be said about Reed, but as Obama’s Press Secretary J. Carney said about Benghazi; “that was a long time ago.” He was one of Lenin’s “useful idiots” as the bone-headed demonstrators in Seattle and Chicago are.

Political Correctness Run Amuck

“I detest politics, to be honest with you. It's a cesspool. And I don't think I would fare well in that cesspool because I don't believe in political correctness and I certainly don't believe in dishonesty.” — Benjamin Carson

George Orwell the author of 1984 and the Animal Farm once stated: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

P.D. James, the famous British crime writer had this to say about political correctness: “I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”

Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct; both forms commonly abbreviated to PC) is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts, and, as purported by the term, doing so to an excessive extent. In current usage, the term is primarily pejorative, while the term politically incorrect has been used as an implicitly positive self-description. Examples of the latter include the conservative The Politically Incorrect Guide published by Regnery Publishing and the television talk show Politically Incorrect. In these cases, the term politically incorrect connotes language, ideas, and behavior unconstrained by a perceived orthodoxy or by concerns about offending or expressing bias regarding various groups of people.

University of Pennsylvania professor Alan Charles Kors and lawyer Harvey A. Silverglate connect political correctness to Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. They claim that liberal ideas of free speech are repressive, arguing that such "Marcusean logic" is the base of speech codes, which are seen by some as censorship, in U.S. universities. Kors and Silvergate later established the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which campaigns against PC speech codes.

Some conservative critics claim that political correctness is a Marxist undermining of Western values. William S. Lind and Patrick Buchanan have characterized PC as a technique originated by the Frankfurt School, through what Buchanan describes as "Cultural Marxism". In “The Death of the West”, Buchanan says: “Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism, a regime to punish dissent and to stigmatize social heresy as the Inquisition punished religious heresy. Its trademark is intolerance.” [Source: Wikipedia]

Since the development of language it has been the main means of communicating ideas and influencing people. It has been used to promote positive values for mankind such as the Gospel and the ideas of classical liberals of the age of enlightenment like John Locke, Montesquieu, Frédéric Bastiat, and our Founders. It has also been used by those wishing to enslave people under totalitarian regimes like Vladimir Lenin and Adolph Hitler. It was Lenin who stated: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” In all cases he who defines is the master.

This is what political correctness does. It defines and those who control the definitions are becoming the masters. This is what the progressives have learned and been doing since the beginning of the 20^th century. Abortion has become pro-choice, the illegal immigrant has become the undocumented worker, terrorism has become workplace violence, a war on terrorism has become an overseas contingency, wealth redistribution has been defined as fairness, and homosexuality has been defined as Gay. In Britain, in some schools, the nursery rhyme Ba, ba black sheep has been changed to ba, ba rainbow sheep. Christmas trees have become holiday trees and Easter and Christmas have become the spring and winter festivals. The possession of a Bible in most public schools is banned while the Quran is not. It’s no wonder our school children are becoming confused, if not indoctrinated by our current crop of textbooks and educators.

If an illegal immigrant (a person who has entered the country illegally violating our immigration laws) is now considered an undocumented worker then I would suppose a bank robber should be considered an undocumented account holder and a home invader an undocumented tenant. This is absurd the terms have become in order to fit the agendas of special interest groups.

The current devotion to political correctness by the progressive left and their minions in the media go back to 1923 and the founding of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung) more commonly known as the Frankfurt School. The school initially consisted of dissident Marxists who believed that some of Marx's followers had come to parrot a narrow selection of Marx's ideas, usually in defense of orthodox Communist parties. Meanwhile, many of these theorists believed that traditional Marxist theory could not adequately explain the turbulent and unexpected development of capitalist societies in the twentieth century. Critical of capitalism and Soviet socialism, their writings pointed to the possibility of an alternative path to social development. It functioned as an independent group of Marxist intellectuals who sought, under the leadership of Felix Weil, to expand Marxist thought beyond what had become a somewhat dogmatic and reductionist tradition increasingly dominated by both Stalinism and social democracy. Most famously they sought to marry up a combination of Marxist social analysis with Freudian psychoanalytical theories, searching for the roots of what made people tick in modern consumer capitalist society as well as what made people turn to fascism in the 1930s.

The Frankfurt school went back to Marx's early theoretical works from the 1840s and tapped into his more humanist impulses found in the German-French Annals and in his correspondence with Arnold Ruge. It is in these early writings that we find many of Marx's most important writings on the role of religion in history and society. His ideas about the way materialism worked in the world were still being formulated and he had not yet become the economic theoretician he was later known as. It is not that Marx left ideas of religion behind after these early years, but he felt he had dealt with them properly and could move on to more tangible affairs. In a letter to Arnold Ruge in 1842 he wrote:

"Our motto must be: reform of consciousness not through dogmas, but by analyzing the mystical consciousness that is unintelligible to itself, whether it manifests itself in a religious or a political form. It will then become evident that the world has long dreamed of possessing something of which it has only to be conscious in order to possess it in reality. It will become evident that it is not a question of drawing a great mental dividing line between past and future, but of realizing the thoughts of the past. Lastly, it will become evident that mankind is not beginning a new work, but is consciously carrying into effect its old work."

But the idea that what was required was a reform of consciousness which had become unintelligible to it is the central working principle of the Frankfurt school. Religious thought, which Marx saw as a part of false consciousness, was to be combated not by a full frontal attack in some sort of crusade, but by removing the social conditions that created it. But the Frankfurt school did not believe that this reform of consciousness could come about simply by changing the socio-economic base of capitalist society. Religion was, for them, not only the opium of the people, but also a repository of hope that had become unintelligible to itself.

Freud comes into the equation here because these critical theorists thought that his categories of id, superego and ego, which were constantly interacting as the basis of the human psyche, fitted well with the Marxist dialectic of historical struggle and resolution. If societies moved forward historically as the result of class struggle, then individuals were constantly dealing with a struggle between the reality of the world around them and what they thought about that world. Paradoxically, the Frankfurt school saw this as necessary because of the relative success of capitalism rather than its imminent collapse, as the more dogmatic Marxists proclaimed (and indeed continue to proclaim). How was it, they argued, that the great mass of people could be sucked into complicity with their own exploitation? With the emergence of fascism in the 1920s and 30s the question became even more urgent. What led educated people to throw their lot in with the barbarism of fascism? This, for them, was the ultimate in false consciousness. One of the most influential works of the Frankfurt school to deal with this phenomenon was The Authoritarian Personality, a work that purported to be a study of prejudice and that documented the ways in which people, as individuals, were motivated to think and act as they do in a social context, to form in-groups and to exclude others to the point of genocidal extermination.

So what has all of this to do with our current wave of political correctness? Sometime in the mid-1960s, during the era of sex, drugs and rock and roll, we began to see the influence of radical student groups opposed to the Vietnam War, the draft, and university policies. Hey believed free speech meant they could occupy and trash a chancellor’s office as happened at the University of California, Berkley. This came to a culmination in 1968 when a group of eight radicals led riots in Grant Park outside of the Democratic National Convention. This group latter became known as the Chicago Seven as one of the leaders, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther Party, was separated from the others.

Over the course of five days and nights, the police made arrests, in addition to using tear gas, Mace, and batons on the marchers. Hundreds of police officers and protesters were injured. Dozens of journalists covering the actions were also clubbed by police or had cameras smashed and film confiscated. In the aftermath of what was later characterized as a "police riot" by the U.S. National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, a federal grand jury indicted eight demonstrators and eight police officers.

Ultimately a federal grand jury indicted eight demonstrators and eight police officers. The leaders were convicted of conspiracy to cross a state line to cause a riot, but the convictions were overturned by a Federal Appellate Court on the basis that the judge in the district court trial was biased. During the original trial the defense attorney for the seven (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, David Dellinger, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, John Froines, and Lee Weiner) put the war in Vietnam on trial — asking Judy Collins to sing "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" from the witness stand, placing a Viet Cong flag on the defense table, and wearing a black armband to commemorate the war dead.

The actions of these radicals were so distasteful to most Americans that Richard Nixon defeated the Democrat Hubert Humphrey in the Electoral College 301-191 with George Wallace running as an independent captured 13.5% of the popular vote and 46 electoral votes, mainly in the south.

It did not take long for the left to begin to turn the Chicago Seven into icons and glorify them in books and films. One of the Seven, Tom Hayden, married the uber liberal actress Jane Fonda and was elected to the California Assembly, and later the California Senate from his district in Santa Monica. The Left was learning a new tactic for advancing their radical left-wing agenda. They had captured the attention of the country and sympathies of the media and now turned to capturing academia where they believed — rightly so that here is where the real power lies. So instead of fulminating riots and protest marches they got Ph.Ds. and took seats at the table of he academic community where they could indoctrinate young, impressionable college students to their radical left-wing agenda and these students could go on to obtain a Ph.D. and do the same — thus the state of academia today. A list of their names is longer that the Great Wall of China and they are the ones, through their writings and classroom lectures are the ones driving the language of today’s left — a language that is defining the national debate.

Something else also happened along the way. The federal government began giving grant money to cities for something called “Community Organizing.” It was the misguided attempt by the federal government to provide block grants to cities for such things as after school programs, free clinics, and basketball courts all in the name of helping the urban poor. Once again the masterminds in government, academia, and the media promoted and supported this use of taxpayer funds with a passion.

This gave rise to a Marxist named Saul Alinsky to write a strategic manual called Rules for Radicals (1971) that could be used by these community organizers for the purpose of not only defining the terms but to be used as a manual by special interest groups, such as homosexuals, pro-abortionists, and statist to advance their agendas.

In his Rules for Radicals Alinsky laid down 13 rules for radical organizers to use for organizing and changing the culture of a community:

1. Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the expertise of your people.
3. Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.
4. Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.
5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on. Never let up.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive.
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

Born to Russian-Jewish parents in Chicago in 1909, Saul Alinsky was a Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the tactics of infiltration — coupled with a measure of confrontation — that have been central to revolutionary political movements in the United States in recent decades. He never joined the Communist Party but instead, as David Horowitz puts it, became an avatar of the post-modern left.

Though Alinsky is rightfully understood to have been a leftist, his legacy is more methodological than ideological. He identified a set of very specific rules that ordinary citizens could follow, and tactics that ordinary citizens could employ, as a means of gaining public power. His motto was, “The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results.” In essence the ends justify the means.

Alinsky studied criminology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, during which time he became friendly with Al Capone and his mobsters. Ryan Lizza, senior editor of The New Republic, offers a glimpse into Alinsky’s personality: “Charming and self-absorbed, Alinsky would entertain friends with stories — some true, many embellished — from his mob days for decades afterward. He was profane, outspoken, and narcissistic, always the center of attention despite his tweedy, academic look and thick, horn-rimmed glasses.”

After completing his graduate work in criminology, Alinsky went on to develop what are known today as the Alinsky concepts of mass organization for power. In the late 1930s he earned a reputation as a master organizer of the poor when he organized the “Back of the Yards” area in Chicago, an industrial and residential ethnic neighborhood on the Southwest Side of the city, so named because it is near the site of the former Union Stockyards; this area had been made famous in Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel “The Jungle.” In 1940 Alinsky established the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), through which he and his staff helped “organize” communities not only in Chicago but throughout the United States. IAF remains an active entity to this day. Its national headquarters are located in Chicago, and it has affiliates in the District of Columbia, twenty-one separate states, and three foreign countries (Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom).

By the late 1960s, the Black Power movement would drive Alinsky and his organizing crusades out of the projects in African-American neighborhoods, leaving him no choice but to shift his focus to white communities. For this purpose, he established the Citizens Action Program (CAP), in 1970. Stanley Kurtz writes in his 2010 book “Radical in Chief”: "Alinsky was convinced that large-scale socialist transformation would require an alliance between the struggling middle class and the poor. The key to radical social change, Alinsky thought, was to turn the wrath of America’s middle class against large corporations."

In the Alinsky model, “organizing” is a euphemism for “revolution” — a wholesale revolution whose ultimate objective is the systematic acquisition of power by a purportedly oppressed segment of the population, and the radical transformation of America’s social and economic structure. The goal is to foment enough public discontent, moral confusion, and outright chaos to spark the social upheaval that Marx, Engels, and Lenin predicted — a revolution whose foot soldiers view the status quo as fatally flawed and wholly unworthy of salvation. (See Cloward and Piven Strategy). Thus, the theory goes, the people will settle for nothing less than that status quo’s complete collapse — to be followed by the erection of an entirely new system upon its ruins. Toward that end, they will be apt to follow the lead of charismatic radical organizers who project an aura of confidence and vision, and who profess to clearly understand what types of societal “changes” are needed.

As Alinsky put it: “A reformation means that the masses of our people have reached the point of disillusionment with past ways and values. They don’t know what will work but they do know that the prevailing system is self-defeating, frustrating, and hopeless. They won’t act for change but won’t strongly oppose those who do. The time is then ripe for revolution.

“[W]e are concerned,” Alinsky elaborated, “with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace, cooperation, equal and full opportunities for education, full and useful employment, health, and the creation of those circumstances in which men have the chance to live by the values that give meaning to life. We are talking about a mass power organization which will change the world. This means revolution.”

But Alinsky’s brand of revolution was not characterized by dramatic, sweeping, overnight transformations of social institutions. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process in the manner of Great Britain’s Fabian Socialists. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions (especially teachers unions), school boards, the media, and political parties. He advised organizers and their disciples to quietly, subtly gain influence within the decision-making ranks of these institutions, and to introduce changes from that platform. This was precisely the tactic of “infiltration” advocated by Lenin and Stalin. As Communist International General Secretary Georgi Dimitroff told the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern in 1935:

"Comrades, you remember the ancient tale of the capture of Troy. Troy was inaccessible to the armies attacking her, thanks to her impregnable walls. And the attacking army, after suffering many sacrifices, was unable to achieve victory until, with the aid of the famous Trojan horse, it managed to penetrate to the very heart of the enemy’s camp."

During the 1960s Alinsky was an enormously influential force in American life. When President Johnson launched his War on Poverty in 1964, Alinsky’s allies infiltrated the program, steering federal money into Alinsky projects. In 1966, Senator Robert Kennedy allied himself with union leader Cesar Chavez, an Alinsky disciple. Chavez had worked ten years for Alinsky, beginning in 1952. Kennedy soon drifted into Alinsky's circle. After race riots shook Rochester, New York, Alinsky descended on the city and began pressuring Eastman-Kodak to hire more blacks. Kennedy supported Alinsky's shakedown.”

Alinsky died in 1972, but his legacy lives on as a staple of leftist method, a veritable blueprint for revolution (which he and his disciples euphemistically refer to as “change”). Two of his most notable modern-day disciples are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

In 1969 Hillary Clinton wrote her 92-page senior thesis on Alinsky's theories. A great admirer of Alinsky's blend of ruthless and stealth activist tactics, Hillary personally interviewed the famed author for her project. She concluded her thesis by stating:

"Alinsky is regarded by many as the proponent of a dangerous socio/political philosophy. As such, he has been feared -- just as Eugene Debs [the five-time Socialist Party candidate for U.S. President] or Walt Whitman or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths -- democracy."

Hillary would maintain her allegiance to Alinsky's teachings throughout her adult life. According to a March 2007 Washington Post report:

"As first lady, Clinton occasionally lent her name to projects endorsed by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the Alinsky group that had offered her a job in 1968. She raised money and attended two events organized by the Washington Interfaith Network, an IAF affiliate."

Ultimately, Hillary's investigation of Alinsky's methods and ideals led her to conclude that the Lyndon Johnson-era federal antipoverty programs did not go far enough in redistributing wealth among the American people, and did not give sufficient power to the poor.

When Hillary graduated from Wellesley in 1969, she was offered a job with Alinsky's new training institute in Chicago. She opted instead to enroll at Yale Law School.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama never personally met Saul Alinsky. By the time Alinsky died in 1972, Obama was only 11 years old. But as a young man, he became a master practitioner of Alinsky's methods. In 1985 a small group of 20-odd churches in Chicago offered Obama a job helping residents of poor, predominantly black, Far South Side neighborhoods. Accepting that opportunity, Obama became Director of the Developing Communities Project, where he worked for the next three years on initiatives that ranged from job training to school reform to hazardous waste cleanup. David Freddoso, author of the 2008 book “The Case Against Barack Obama”, summarizes Obama's community-organizing efforts as follows:

"He pursued manifestly worthy goals; protecting people from asbestos in government housing projects is obviously a good thing and a responsibility of the government that built them. But [in every case except one] the proposed solution to every problem on the South Side was a distribution of government funds.”

Three of Obama's mentors in Chicago were trained at the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation. (The Developing Communities Project itself was an affiliate of the Gamaliel Foundation, whose modus operandi for the creation of “a more just and democratic society” is rooted firmly in the Alinsky method.

One of Obama's early mentors in the Alinsky method, Mike Kruglik, would later say the following about Obama:

"He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better."

For several years, Obama himself taught workshops on the Alinsky method. Also, beginning in the mid-1980s, Obama worked with ACORN, the Alinskyite grassroots political organization that grew out of George Wiley's National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO).

In 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down it’s flawed landmark case of Roe. v. Wade legalizing abortion on the basis of a “right to privacy” under the 14^th Amendment political correctness took a giant step forward. We now got a new set of terms to deal with. Pro-choice, women’s rights, the right of privacy, and the war on women became a mantra that the Left and their mouthpieces in the media use to beat up on politicians who dissent from their baby killing agenda. This is the main reason the mainstream media is not covering the Gosnell baby murder trial. Some say that the details of “Dr. Gosnell” and his staff murdering live-born babies are too graphic for the sensibilities of the public. Yes they are! When a witness testifies that she assisted at an abortion where the baby was born alive and was tossed into the toilet bowl where it attempted to swim to save itself and then have its spine snipped while the good doctor jokingly proclaimed the “baby was big enough to walk home.” This is pure left-wing rubbish! We were inundated 24/7 with the details of the bombing at the Boston Marathon while lefties in the mainstream media tried to tie the bombing to a conservative white guy or the Tea Party because it took place of Tax Day. The media did not hesitate to show the photos of people covered in blood with missing limbs and expressions of shock on their faces while they ticked off the numbers of dead and injured. This is political correctness run amuck. The Left’s allegiance to their pro-abortion agenda and the political correctness that it is wrapped in will not allow them to do so— Alinsky rule No. 9. Never concede the issue no matter what the facts are.

Roe v. Wade was a decision by the very liberal Burger Court that has been the most divisive and controversial decisions of the 20^th century. I would compare its divisiveness to the Dred Scott decision. I have always stated that this one single issue of abortion would open the flood gates and allow the progressive left to capture the dialog as we went down the slippery slope of political correctness.

Justice Byron White, one of the two dissenters wrote:

“I find nothing in the language or history of the Constitution to support the Court's judgment. The Court simply fashions and announces a new constitutional right for pregnant women and, with scarcely any reason or authority for its action, invests that right with sufficient substance to override most existing state abortion statutes. The upshot is that the people and the legislatures of the 50 States are constitutionally disentitled to weigh the relative importance of the continued existence and development of the fetus, on the one hand, against a spectrum of possible impacts on the woman, on the other hand. As an exercise of raw judicial power, the Court perhaps has authority to do what it does today; but, in my view, its judgment is an improvident and extravagant exercise of the power of judicial review that the Constitution extends to this Court.”

The other dissenter, William Rehnquist who would later become Chief Justice, stated in his dissent:

“To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today.

…

"There apparently was no question concerning the validity of this provision or of any of the other state statutes when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. The drafters did not intend to have the Fourteenth Amendment withdraw from the States the power to legislate with respect to this matter."

In other words the Court used a power not included in the 14^th Amendment to grant a new constitutional right of privacy and trample on the 9^th and 10^th Amendments.

According to the National Right to Life Organization in the 40 years since the Roe v. Wade decision 55 million abortions have been carried out — most by taxpayer funded abortion mills like Planned Parenthood. Abortion-on-demand, which has claimed the lives of more than 55 million unborn children, has remained the law of the land for 40 years. Roe is a sad commentary on our society’s attitudes toward women and their unborn children. Instead of helping and empowering mothers, our society funnels them to the nearest abortion clinic — yet it stands as one of the cornerstone of today’s political correctness and woe be to the politician or academic who stands against it.

In a recent speech delivered to Planned Parenthood, in a message likely intended for both supporters and detractors alike, Obama made it clear that Planned Parenthood isn’t going to disappear anytime soon — at least not on his watch. The president pledged to fight alongside the organization:

“So every day, in every state, in ever center that Planned Parenthood operates, there are stories like those — lives you’ve saved, women you’ve empowered, families that you’ve strengthened. That’s why, no matter how great the challenge, no matter how fierce the opposition, if there’s one thing the past few years have shown, it’s that Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere. It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow.”

Language is a powerful tool and those who define the terms become the masters of the debate. The facts be dammed. As John Adams stated in his defense of the British soldiers accused of the first Boston Massacre in 1770: “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Today we are replacing facts with political correctness as we delude ourselves into a nation ruled by the masterminds and their media minions that yearn for power.

A Brutal Socialist Dictator is Dead

"In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant who is to move the whole machine means to regulate and manage the people is fear, by the servile dread of his power. But a free government, which of all others is far the most preferable, cannot be supported without virtue." — Samuel Williams

When I heard of the death of Hugo Chávez, the socialist dictator had died due his bout with cancer my mind flashed back to when I was working as a contractor for the DOD in August of 1999. This was six months after his inauguration in February of that year. I was working on a contract for providing geodetic services for the development of GPS approaches at several airports in Venezuela.

My team and I had arrived late on a Saturday night at Caracas where we were met by a major in the Venezuelan air force and two recent engineering graduates who would accompany us for the purpose of learning how to use GPS to establish the precise locations of runways and obstructions around the airport — obstructions that would present a hazard to an instrument approach.

The next morning when we all met in the breakfast room of the hotel the TV was playing a speech by Hugo Chávez. As the speech was in Spanish I did not have the slightest idea of what he was saying, but the major and the two graduates seemed agitated at what he was saying. When I asked them why they were upset they responded that Chávez was a socialist who would ruin the country. It was obvious they did not like him. It turned out that they were correct and eventually the two graduates left Venezuela for the United States — they were a part of the brain drain that would affect the country.

When Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela in December 1998, the country had endured nearly two decades of political and economic turmoil, including violent rioting, high inflation, huge foreign debts, a president impeached on corruption charges, and two failed 1992 coups—one of them led, and the other inspired, by a brash and ambitious army colonel named Hugo Chávez.

Yet when the Chávez era finally drew to a close Tuesday with his death from cancer at age 58, life for Venezuelans had only become worse. As life stories go, the lesson of Chávez's is to beware charismatic demagogues peddling socialist policies at home and revolution abroad.

That's a lesson one would have thought the world had learned by the time Chávez came to power. By 1998, the Soviet Union was a memory, Latin American countries from Mexico to Chile were successfully adopting free-market policies, and Chávez's friend and role model—Cuba's Fidel Castro—was a discredited dinosaur.

Chávez showed that it's possible to run against the tides of history, at least for a while, and at least if you happen to get lucky with an oil revenue bonanza. When he took power, Venezuelan oil prices were plumbing lows of about $10 a barrel. When he took to the podium of the United Nations in 2006 to compare George W. Bush to the devil, he was high on surging global oil prices that would peak in 2008 at more than $150.

That kind of money can buy a lot of influence, and Chávez was quick to use it to purchase the political support of Venezuela's poor, the army and a loyal nouveau riche. It also allowed him to become a classic petro-dictator. In 1999 he revised the Venezuelan constitution to give him expanded powers. He used a constitutional assembly under his control to appoint a chavista Supreme Court. He stripped independent TV and radio stations of their licenses and intimidated reporters with draconian libel laws.

Though elections were held on schedule, he made sure to tilt the playing field. For his fourth election last October, opposition politicians were limited to three minutes of advertising a day, while Chávez could commandeer the airwaves at any time. He permitted no debates. Public workers risked being fired if they voted against him. It was the sort of election only Jimmy Carter could bless — which our 39th president predictably did. The two graduates and the major were right Chávez had become a total dictator — a dictator loved by the left in this country. Here are a few quotes on Chávez’s death from a few of our luminaries on the left:

"Hugo Chávez was a leader that understood the needs of the poor. He was committed to empowering the powerless. R.I.P. Mr. President." — Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-NY)

"Rosalynn and I extend our condolences to the family of Hugo Chávez Frías. We came to know a man who expressed a vision to bring profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized. Although we have not agreed with all of the methods followed by his government, we have never doubted Hugo Chávez's commitment to improving the lives of millions of his fellow countrymen. We hope that as Venezuelans mourn the passing of President Chávez and recall his positive legacies — especially the gains made for the poor and vulnerable — the political leaders will move the country forward by building a new consensus that ensures equal opportunities for all Venezuelans to participate in every aspect of national life." — Jimmy Carter

"I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place. Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chávez will live forever in history. My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned." — filmmaker Oliver Stone

"Today, the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion. I lost a friend I was blessed to have." — actor Sean Penn

"Hugo Chávez declared the oil belonged 2 the [people]. He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health & education 4 all. That made him dangerous. US approved of a coup to overthrow him even though he was a democratically-elected President. You won't hear much nice about him in the US media in the next few days. So, I thought I'd say a couple things to provide some balance." — filmmaker Michael Moore

Yet despite the populism and government handouts, life for Venezuela—and particularly the poor—has only become worse. While wealthier Venezuelans could flee, the less-fortunate now endure routine food and medicine shortages, thanks to price and capital controls. Prices are more than 20 times higher than in 1999. Capital has fled the country. The murder rate in Caracas is one of the highest in the world. Bridges and roads are in disrepair, blackouts are routine, and untreated sewage pollutes drinking water.

Meanwhile, state-owned oil company PdVSA has been all but stripped for parts. Daily production fell by more than one million barrels over the course of Chávez's rule to 2.5 million barrels at the end of 2012.

Chávez's lieutenants have been insisting for months that the Venezuelan president would be making a full recovery from his cancer-related operations and that Venezuelans had no cause for alarm — but they've been getting notably less vociferous about the whole thing recently, and that charade is officially over. Of course he put his life in the hands of the Cuban medical system — a system so praised by Michael Moore and Sean Penn.

Chávez was also in the end an awful manager, who has left Venezuela in ruins. Mind you, Venezuela had long-since been enfeebled and obsessed by the curse of nationalized oil and corrupt governments, so it was already in terrible shape when Chávez took over. But he pushed his nation far deeper into indolence and dependency. He never grasped that wealth emerges from labor productivity, not from the ground, and after blowing a trillion dollars in oil windfalls like a personal charity/slush fund, he has left Venezuela much poorer. For the destitute and deeply uneducated Venezuelans who live on hunger wages and handouts, Chávez must have seemed like some sort of angel elevated from among their own — and he practically was. That was the best thing about him. The worst was that in the long run, he has left Venezuela's poor, and their progeny, most ruined of all.

During his 14 years in power, Chávez made a career out of trashing capitalism and the United States along with fomenting unrest and chaos throughout South America. He polarized Venezuela through divisiveness and fear mongering and ascended to power using a brew of boorishness, thuggery, racism and class envy cloaked in nationalistic and socialist rhetoric. Throughout his reign, 'El Comandante' pursued his dream of a socialist United States of South America, to be ruled, presumably, by him. He idolized Fidel Castro and sought to emulate every leftist dictator since Lenin by casting himself as the noble David in opposition to the United States as the world's capitalist Goliath. While his sycophants hyperbolized him as the most gifted in a long line of Latin American revolutionaries, he cloaked himself in the typical trappings of a grandiose dictator. His image and slogans are plastered all over Venezuela and he carefully and ruthlessly placed himself at the center of a Hitlerian personality cult, often declaring, ”I am Venezuela,” and delighting when his followers chanted “I am Chávez.”  Chávez was a master at promoting deadly sins such as greed, anger and jealousy as badges of honor to be worn proudly by 'the people' in their struggle against the specter of capitalism

So, what's next for Venezuela now that their corrupt, destructive, America-hating, socialist leader is no more? Either Vice President Nicolas Maduro (a former bus driver) or National Assembly leader Diosdado Cabello will become interim president for thirty days while the country engineers a special election — and without Chávez to figurehead his 'Chavismo' movement, the outcome isn't necessarily a sure thing. Be prepared for a “Venezuelan Spring”.

Rachel Carson — Environmental Hero or Fraud

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?” — Thomas Jefferson letter to James Smith — 1822.

On September 2, 2010 I posted a blog about Environmental Extremists in which I took a very negative view of Rachel Carson. Its rime to update that post in the light of several children’s books that have been released praising the work of this hero of the environmental movement.

The left wants to tell children a story about the founding of modern environmentalism, but their fairy tale version ignores the grim reality.

Storybooks abound about Rachel Carson, the marine biologist who wrote “Silent Spring” nearly 50 years ago. In fact, there are 130 children’s books about her available through Amazon.com that teach children to idolize Carson and how to become liberal activists, but without telling them the lives that could have been saved by DDT. Some of those books even promoted left-wing environmental groups like the George Soros-funded Natural Resources Defense Council.

The books are pro-environmentalist propaganda, sometimes targeted at toddlers and young children who would more typically be looking at books about animals and cars. One such picture book by Laurie Lawlor, called “Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World” tells little ones: “No one had taken a stand against big business, federal agencies that approved chemical use, or universities that performed shoddy research about the effects of chemicals. She knew she was walking into dangerous territory.”

“Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World,” released in February, is just the latest of many books for children of all ages about the lefty environmental “hero.” Left-wing eco-activists laud Carson as the foremother of today’s environmental movement. Former vice president Al Gore even wrote the introduction to a 1994 edition of “Silent Spring,” and credited her as his inspiration to become an environmentalist.

Gore wrote: “Rachel Carson was one of the reasons why I became so conscious of the environment and so involved in environmental issues.” Of course, the environmentalists who idolize Carson and her 1962 book ignore the negative impact it. Without it, DDT could have been used to help prevent millions of people from dying a miserable death from malaria.

From beautifully illustrated picture books to young reader’s books, there is plenty of pro-Carson (anti-chemical) propaganda available to children. Many of these books come complete with sections dedicated to Gore and “An Inconvenient Truth” along with suggestions for how small children can become eco-activists.

“Rachel Carson” by Marie-Therese Miller, part of a book series called: “Conservation Heroes”, is aimed at older grade school children. Gore also has a book in this series. This book outlined the lefts vision of what Rachel Carson accomplished and her history. In the final chapter dedicated to Carson’s supposed legacy, the author failed to mention the real lasting impression of Carson — a continual state of environmental hysteria.

“Who on Earth is Rachel Carson? Mother of the Environmental Movement” by Glenn Scherer and Marty Fletcher, indoctrinates grade school children into thinking that population growth is bad. They wrote, “Rachel also saw what happens to nature when the human population increases rapidly and development takes place with little or no control.”

After sharing one-sided tales of Carson the hero, both “Rachel Carson” and “Who on Earth is Rachel Carson? Mother of the Environmental Movement” teach kids how to become environmentalists like her. Both books end with suggestions on where a child can go to get involved in the environmental movement. A child could visit the website for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a Soros-funded environmental extremist group, or they could get involved at their local Sierra club.

Henry Miller, scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institute, argued in a Sept. 5th op-ed for Forbes.com called “Rachel Carson’s Deadly Fantasies” that Carson’s real legacy lie in her disingenuous claims that stopped a useful life saver around the world.

“DDT was used with dramatic effect to shorten and prevent typhus epidemics during and after WWII when people were dusted with large amounts of it but suffered no ill effects, which is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that the chemical is harmless to humans,” Miller wrote.

Miller continues:

“We recently passed the 50th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s best-selling book, “Silent Spring.” Widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement, it was an emotionally charged but deeply flawed denunciation of the widespread spraying of chemical pesticides for the control of insects. Today, the book is still revered by many, but its legacy is anything but positive.

As detailed by Roger Meiners and Andy Morriss in their scholarly yet very readable analysis, “Silent Spring at 50: Reflections on an Environmental Classic,” Carson exploited her reputation as a well-known nature writer to advocate and legitimatize “positions linked to a darker tradition in American environmental thinking.” The book “encourages some of the most destructive strains within environmentalism: alarmism, technophobia, failure to consider the costs and benefits of alternatives, and the discounting of human well-being around the world.”

Carson’s proselytizing and advocacy raised substantial anxiety about DDT and led to bans in most of the world and to restrictions on other chemical pesticides. But the fears she raised were based on gross misrepresentations and scholarship so atrocious that, if Carson were an academic, she would be guilty of egregious academic misconduct. Her observations about DDT have been condemned by many scientists. In the words of Professor Robert H. White-Stevens, an agriculturist and biology professor at Rutgers University, “If man were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson, we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth.”

In 1992, San Jose State University entomologist J. Gordon Edwards, a long-time member of the Sierra Club and the Audubon Society and a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, offered a persuasive and comprehensive rebuttal of “Silent Spring.” As he explained in “The Lies of Rachel Carson,” a stunning, point by point refutation, “it simply dawned on me that that Rachel Carson was not interested in the truth about [pesticides] and that I was being duped along with millions of other Americans.” He demolished Carson’s arguments and assertions, calling attention to critical omissions, faulty assumptions, and outright fabrications.

Consider, for example, this passage from Edwards’ article: “This implication that DDT is horribly deadly is completely false. Human volunteers have ingested as much as 35 milligrams of it a day for nearly two years and suffered no adverse effects. Millions of people have lived with DDT intimately during the mosquito spray programs and nobody even got sick as a result. The National Academy of Sciences concluded in 1965 that ‘in a little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million [human] deaths that would otherwise have been inevitable.’ The World Health Organization stated that DDT had ‘killed more insects and saved more people than any other substance.’”

In addition, DDT was used with dramatic effect to shorten and prevent typhus epidemics during and after WWII when people were dusted with large amounts of it but suffered no ill effects, which is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that the chemical is harmless to humans. The product was such a boon to public health that in 1948 the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Paul Müller for his discovery of the “contact insecticidal action” of DDT.

….

The legacy of Rachel Carson is that tens of millions of human lives – mostly children in poor, tropical countries – have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors. This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century. It is shocking that Dunn, an assistant professor of biology, remains ignorant of Carson’s shortcomings, and deplorable that university students are exposed to a scientist who manifests such ignorance and failure to respect the norms of science. Likewise, Nature’s decision to publish Dunn’s commentary reflects either an antiscientific bias or a failure of peer-review.”

Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow of Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover institution; he was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Gregory Conko is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Another expert, Dennis Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute, said Carson is indirectly responsible for millions of preventable deaths noting “The absence of DDT had led to the needless deaths of at least 30 million people from malaria and yellow fever in the tropics — most of them were helpless African children.

On April 13, 2007 Dennis Avery wrote in the Canada Free Press “Rachel Carson and the Malaria Tragedy.” In his article he stated:

“If Rachel Carson were still alive, April 12 would have been her 100th birthday. All over the Western World well-meaning, but misguided, souls marked that day with choruses of praise for the woman who almost singly-handed created the modern environmental movement. Her book, Silent Spring, warned us that man-made pesticides would kill our kids with cancer and eliminate our wild birds.

Since Silent Spring was published, of course, massive testing has documented that synthetic pesticides are no cancer threat to humans. Dr. Bruce Ames, who received the National Science Medal from President Clinton, has found that 99.999 percent of the cancer risks in our food supply come from natural pesticides which Nature has put in the fruits and vegetables to ward off the pervasive insects, fungi and diseases. Even so, the one-fourth of our population which eats the most fruits and vegetables has half the cancer risk of those who eat the least produce. So much for the toxicity of pesticide traces.

Rachel Carson's major impact on the planet has been to discourage the use of a safe, cheap pesticide called DDT to suppress disease-bearing mosquitoes. North America and Europe used DDT to eradicate malaria. After our children were safe, we told the Third World not to use it because it might harm their bird populations.

The absence of DDT has led to the needless deaths of at least 30 million people from malaria and yellow fever in the tropics. (Five times as many as Hitler killed in his concentrations death camps, albeit inadvertently). Most of them were helpless African children. In addition, malaria has been allowed to blight the lives of perhaps 1 billion chronic malaria sufferers, who are too often unable to work and further erode economic resources by requiring family nursing care. The millions of malaria cases in the tropics may, just by themselves, explain half of the poverty and human degradation on the planet today.

It's not widely known that Ms. Carson originally had a co-author for Silent Spring. His name was Edwin Diamond, and he had been Science Editor of Newsweek. Early in the drafting of the book, he resigned from the project. He declared later that Silent Spring was an "emotional, alarmist book seeking to cause Americans to mistakenly believe their world is being poisoned."

….

One of the most effective Third World uses of DDT is to spray the inside of homes. It's the most cost-effective mosquito repellent known. Instead of a mosquito entering the home; biting someone; spreading the disease; and dying hours later, the mosquito never comes in. One application every six months is enough to reduce malaria rates by 60 percent. DDT is the only highly effective strategy we have for suppressing this massive problem. If malaria made a comeback in America, the EPA would have to re-register DDT.

The U.S. Agency for International Development is now offering modest funding for the indoor use of DDT in poor tropical countries--30 years late. Happy Birthday, Ms. Carson.”

Dennis t. Avery was a senior policy analyst for the U.S. State Department, where he won the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement. He is the co-author, with atmospheric physicist Fred Singer, of the book “Unstoppable Global Warming—Every 1500 Years”, available from Rowman & Littlefield.

In July 2007 National Geographic Magazine published a feature article on the increase of Malaria throughout the world. The article states; “The global eradication effort did achieve some notable successes. Malaria was virtually wiped out in much of the Caribbean and South Pacific, from the Balkans, from Taiwan. In Sri Lanka, there were 2.8 million cases of malaria in 1946, and a total of 17 in 1963. In India, malaria deaths plummeted from 800,000 a year to scarcely any.”

"In several places where malaria had been on the brink of extinction, including both Sri Lanka and India, the disease came roaring back. And in much of sub-Saharan Africa, malaria eradication never really got started. The WHO program largely bypassed the continent, and smaller scale efforts made little headway.”

"The ban on DDT," says Dr. Gwadz of the National Institutes of Health, "may have killed 20 million children."

I August, 2006 Brian Handwerk wrote an article for National Geographic News stating that DDT to return as weapon against Malaria:

“DDT, a notorious symbol of environmental degradation, is poised to make a comeback.

International experts are touting the widely banned pesticide as a best bet to save millions of human lives threatened by malaria.

The disease, which kills mostly children and pregnant women, is largely spread by mosquitoes.

The overwhelming majority—90 percent—of malaria victims live in Africa, where the disease plagues both human and economic health (Africa facts, maps, more).

In May the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) endorsed the use of DDT for indoor antimalarial treatment in the developing world.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is expected to do the same in short order, according to a comprehensive report published in the current issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

The chemical's return is sure to raise some eyebrows, but people on the front lines of the malaria fight generally support the decision.

"It's about 20 years too late, but it's a good thing," said Don Roberts, a professor of tropical public health at Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland.

"I think it's going to make a huge difference in the health of people at risk of malaria."

I spent over a year working on a World Bank funded project in Sri Lanka, Two of the largest health concerns in that popular tropical island nation were malaria and dengue fever — both caused by virus carried by mosquitos. Dengue fever also known as breakbone fever, is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash that is similar to measles. In a small proportion of cases the disease develops into the life-threatening dengue hemorrhagic fever, resulting in bleeding, low levels of blood platelets and blood plasma leakage, or into dengue shock syndrome, where dangerously low blood pressure occurs.

Dengue is transmitted by several species of mosquito within the genus Aedes. The virus has four different types; infection with one type usually gives lifelong immunity to that type, but only short-term immunity to the others. Subsequent infection with a different type increases the risk of severe complications. As there is no vaccine, prevention is sought by reducing the habitat and the number of mosquitoes and limiting exposure to bites.

Treatment of acute dengue is supportive, using either oral or intravenous rehydration for mild or moderate disease, and intravenous fluids and blood transfusion for more severe cases. The incidence of dengue fever has increased dramatically since the 1960s, with around 50–100 million people infected yearly. Early descriptions of the condition date from 1779, and its viral cause and the transmission were elucidated in the early 20th century. Dengue has become a global problem since the Second World War and is endemic in more than 110 countries.

The only sure-file way of eradicating mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever is to kill the carriers. The most effective means of killing mosquitos is with DDT.

So, thanks to the environmental extremism of Rachel Carson and her fellow travelers in the press and the environmental movement millions of people — mainly children — have painful deaths from mosquito-borne diseases. For this reason Rachel Carson was a fraud who should not be eulogized and glamorized to our children. So when your child comes home from school with a book praising Rachel Carson tell him or her the truth.

School Days in the Windy City

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. — Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow — 1824

"Labor Day may have passed, but in Chicago school is still out for the summer. That's because, for the first time in more than 25 years, the brothers and sisters of the Chicago Teachers Union are striking. Though they are already among the best-paid educators in the country, making an average of $76,000 per year in salary — plus benefits — the union is unsatisfied with an offer from the city's board of education that provides them a 16 percent raise over four years, worth a total of $400 million. (The CTU's original offer was for a 30 percent raise over two years.) Accounts from both sides indicate that the sticking points are the maintenance of the union's lavish benefits structure and a teacher-evaluation system that labor officials worry could — horror — result in the firing of large numbers of its most ineffective members.

On the merits, the case isn't close. Chicago teachers currently pay just 3 percent of their own health-care costs, and nearly three-quarters of new education spending over the last five years has been gobbled up by their retirement costs. The proximate consequence of the union's intransigence is that a mass of youths won't be in classrooms, but on Chicago's increasingly murderous streets. The contrast with the city's 45,000 charter-school students, along with its parochial — and private-school enrollees — all of whom remain in their classrooms — is stark. The benefits of school choice are manifold, but not least among them is that your child's education needn't be held hostage by the whims of public employees who finance and staff the campaigns of their putative bargaining “adversaries.” That sort of thing doesn't happen in competitive markets.

Political reality alone ought to force the Democrats to push labor for a quick agreement that maintains most of the cost-saving concessions at least cosmetically preserves the teacher-evaluation model, and, most important, gets Chicago kids back to school. Whether this happens will say much about who wears the pants in the liberal coalition.

Columnist Michelle Malkin states:

"Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis walks, talks and barks like a rootsy Occupy Wall Street activist.

When she's not urging other teachers to ditch the classroom or organizing traffic blockades to impede everyone else in Chicago from getting to and from their jobs, Lewis spends her time trashing public charter schools and business leaders trying to reform our Soviet-style monopoly in education. The results speak for themselves: While CTU members earn an average of $74,000 a year and are now spurning 16 percent pay hikes, 71 percent of the third-largest school district's 8th-grade students can't attain the most basic level of science proficiency, and nearly 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in reading.

It bears repeating often: The goals of the teachers union radicals are not academic excellence, professional development and fairness. The goals are student indoctrination, social upheaval and perpetual grievance-mongering in pursuit of bigger government and spending without restraint: 2, 4, 6, 8! One agenda: Agitate!"

The Chicago teachers’ unions, by some accounts, believe themselves to be the last gasp of unionized education – a political fighting force that, if defeated on their turf, will mark the end of teachers’ unions.

If so, it may be surprising that teachers’ unions have managed to stay alive this long. Why? Because the Chicago teachers’ unions appear to have completely missed every lesson in optics one would get from even basic political campaigning.

You see, as part of their attempt to intimidate the city of Chicago, the unions are picketing every public event where powerful officials will be present. And we do mean every event. WLS 980AM in Chicago reports that, in what appears to be an effort to intimidate Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, the unions have started protesting at a 9/11 memorial:

“Dozens of striking Chicago teachers are protesting outside a Sept. 11 memorial event where Gov. Pat Quinn is speaking.

The Chicago Democrat hasn't weighed in on the walkout, which entered its second day on Tuesday.

As he headed into the event, Quinn walked through the crowd, which sang "Amazing Grace" and held American flags. He said "Good luck."

The teachers marched over from nearby Curie Metro High School on the city's southwest side.

Several protesting teacher groups citywide have been marching as well. They included science teacher Joe Wasik, who says teacher evaluations need to be fair, which is an issue under negotiation.”

One can only imagine what these people would have done if Rahm Emanuel had arrived.

Needless to say, acts like this are unlikely to do much to endear the unions to voters. This is a problem for them, considering their actions have already induced a high level of bipartisan consensus on the side of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Greg Lewis writes in American Thinker about The results of radicalism in Chicago's education system:

“You've got a mouthful of gimme, a hand full of much obliged."

-Clarence Williams, "Gulf Coast Blues"

The difference between the lowdown character in Clarence Williams' "Gulf Coast Blues" and the striking Chicago Teachers Union is that the teachers don't bother to offer a "much obliged." For the past three decades, Chicago's mouthful-of-gimme education elite has singlehandedly done more than any other school system in America to insure that the city's students will never rise out of poverty through gaining a meaningful education.

There's something like karmic justice involved here. Illegally elected Mayor Rahm Emanuel, along with Barack Obama and former Chicago education czar and now U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, is faced with the perverse clash between the leftist teachers' union all of these characters blindly love and Emanuel's, Obama's, and Duncan's leftist "philosophy" of education. Both are purposely committed with malice aforethought to do exactly the opposite of what a true education philosophy should — which is to say that they're designed to reduce students to placeholders in the classroom with no hope of receiving the skills they need to succeed in a real-world capitalist economy while making sure that the professionals who keep them in this position continue to do so.

Imposition of the left's education philosophy has a long history in the U.S., in Chicago and elsewhere. It involves the application of many of the principles of behavior modification which Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov pioneered to the classroom, which in turn has evolved during the past century into a place where changing behaviors and attitudes of students have replaced learning, and where trying to ensure equal "outcomes" for all students has replaced encouraging students to achieve at as high a level as possible. The classroom has become the bastion of groupthink and the enemy of intellectual freedom. We have the left, and its champions of intellectual tyranny, to thank for that.

Although the National Education Association (NEA), the fountainhead of that educational tyranny, has been in existence since the middle of the 19th century, it was not until it came under the influence of the American educator John Dewey, a professed communist, in the early part of the twentieth century that it found its true purpose: the perpetuation of Marxist educational philosophy in American schools.

An early statement of Dewey's educational goals can be found in his essay "New Schools for a New Era," first published in 1928. There are two fundamental things needed to shape a school system into such an agency: the need for "the development of public economy with reference to Socialist reconstruction in general" and "the development of the population in the spirit of communism." The latter Dewey calls "the cooperative principle," and it is the core idea in Dewey's stated aim to convert the American education system to one similar to that which he helped to develop in Russia. Dewey's communist educational manifesto for establishing "the identification between cultural and industrial education" in the United States is based on goals that have been integrated into the general educational philosophy of our school systems, thanks to such organizations as the NEA, which has carried out Dewey's assault on educational freedom relentlessly.

The NEA found the champion it needed in the person of another leftist educator, Benjamin S. Bloom. Bloom is called "the father of Outcome Based Education" (OBE). OBE, which began as what Bloom labeled "mastery learning," would become the single most destructive educational philosophy in the history of the discipline.

Bloom's Mastery Learning/OBE master plan was based on his examination of the reasons students learned at different rates and achieved different educational "outcomes." Under a system in which teachers tended to give the same instruction to all students and to grade them on how well they were able to absorb and demonstrate their knowledge, student results tended to conform to the familiar Bell Curve, which meant that a small group of students performed exceptionally well, while a majority of student performances clustered near the middle, and another minority performed badly.

Bloom's 1956 book, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, proposed a method of teaching that tested students more frequently as to their mastery of a given set of educational objectives and offered remediation for those who had not achieved the desired mastery. The catch was that until all students had mastered a given unit, no students were able to advance to the next one. Remediation was given to those whose performance lagged behind, while those who had already mastered the unit's objectives on the first pass were given supplemental work to do while their less gifted fellow students tried to catch up. In this way, Bloom reasoned, the differences between high achievers and low achievers would eventually be wiped out, and every student would achieve the same outcome.

So devastating were the results of "Mastery Learning" in Chicago that, after the particularly disastrous failure of the implementation of the methodology in the late 1970s and early '80s, nearly half of Chicago's high school students dropped out of school. The approach was subsequently renamed Outcome Based Education and has insinuated itself as the pedagogical method of choice in America's public schools since then.

The results? One of the headlines accompanying the current Chicago teacher walkout has focused on Chicago students' inability to read at their grade level. Chicago's school system has brought the level of reading proficiency among its 8^th-graders down to 21 percent. There's only one parallel to the OBE results in Chicago: slavery.

One of the most egregious laws passed during the time of slavery in the United States was the law that forbade slaves to learn how to read and which punished anyone who taught a slave to read. The reason this law had to be passed was twofold. First, being able to read is, in an important sense, liberating. That single skill gives the person who possesses it access to virtually limitless information, and that was something slaveholders could not risk.

But the second reason is equally important: it is very difficult -- nay, almost impossible -- to keep a person from learning to read. In colonial Boston, for instance, the literacy rate was nearly 100 percent. Virtually everyone knew how to read, and anyone who didn't could easily find someone to teach him. Girls, boys, women, men — everybody could read. So easy is it to learn to read that it was necessary to forbid teaching slaves. You can sit down with a book and someone who knows how to read, and that person, even if he or she is not a licensed teacher — or, as is more appropriate today, especially if he or she is not a licensed teacher — can very likely teach you to read.

What the Chicago school system has done to its students ranks among the most egregious crimes against a people — in this case, the largely African-American population of the city of Chicago — that I can imagine. And the idea that the teachers who perpetrate this criminality on their charges are holding out for higher pay and benefits serves only to highlight the reasons we've got to give the Obama administration and his radical Chicago cronies the boot in November.”

While I have inserted a rather long article by Mr. Lewis I thought it worth it as he does a good job of detailing the progressive ideology that infiltrated our academic system from the university level all the way down to kindergarten. His is the root of the problem today. Children and even college students are indoctrinated not educated. Education means the ability to learn, not the blind allegiance to ever changing text books that continually downplay our history, culture, and values. This one of the reason home schooling is becoming more and more popular. Parents, especially Christian and conservative, do not want their children exposed to Outcome Based Education and the critical theory and cultural Marxism of the Frankfurt School. It is the cultural Marxism (AKA political correctness) that permeated our society today. If you doubt me just pick up a third, fourth, fifth, or sixth grade text book and see what is said about our founding, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. You will be surprised at what you find. You will see quite a bit about slavery, civil rights, tolerance to the LGBT people, how to be green, and a plethora of progressive thinking. I know this from my sister-in-law, who is a 5^th grade public school teacher. She has a Master’s degree in education and a few weeks I quizzed her about the Declaration and Constitution and she knew virtually nothing. She even went so far as to tell me that the Constitution states that everyone has a right to a government funded education. When I asked her where she heard this her response was that her union representative had told her.

Perhaps it is best if the Chicago teachers remain on strike for the remainder of the school year. At least in this way the children will not be subject to further progressive indoctrination and it won’t really matter it they return as the reading, math, science, and history scores will not be any better if the get what they are demanding. It’s a lost cause.