Unfair. Steven Crowder asks, like, questions, ya know?
Remembering the Constitution
You know, that document that is supposedly the basis for all the “feddle gummint’s” meddling nowadays? The one that enumerates specific, limited powers for the Federal government of the States? The one largely ignored or twisted by our wonderful *spit* congresscritters, the judiciary and executive branches?
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
My recommendation would be to, on this day, the “birthday” of the Constitution, take some time out to simply READ it. Don’t pay any atention to dumbasses, liars and charlatans who say it’s written in archaic language that’s hard to understand (it isn’t, for anyone who’s moderately literate). That’s worse than the lame excuse the Medieval church gave for keeping common folk from reading the Bible, “It’s in Latin and you’re illiterate anyway, so just let us experts interpret it for you.” *feh* Academia Nut Fruitcakes, Mass MEdia Podpeople, politicians *spit* and the like would prefer you remain ignorant of its provisions so you’ll be unable to see when (every day) the establishment elite trample its protections for our liberties. Politicians especially don’t want you to really know what the Constitution says, because when you do it will lay bare the fact that approaching 100% (there are a very few holdouts) of congresscritters *spit* are in daily breach of their oaths of office:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.
Of course almost all congresscritters are in breach of their oaths; they ARE the primary enemies of the Constitution! Witness all the talk from BOTH sides of the Uniparty aisle about federal “reform” (takeover) of health care. Hint: there is NO enumerated power in the Constitution that would allow such a thing.
Read the Constitution for yourself and see: it’s true. The Federal government has no such power, legitimately, but that is not going to stop Congress from acting illegaly in this case any more than it has stopped Congress from enacting other laws it has no legitimate power to enact. Note in the Christian Science Monitor article linked above that,
Ironically, consumers today cannot freely buy health insurance from across state lines. If there’s any legitimate application of the “commerce” clause, it would be to overturn such restrictions. But the framers never gave Congress the general power to regulate industry.
How Did The 0! Get Elected, Anyway?
Go HERE and take the simple, easy-peasy (seriously!) “Civics Quiz” and see how The 0! got elected. Americans are simply illiterate when it comes to American history and knowledge of our governing documents, etc.
“If there is any presidential speech that has captured a place in popular culture, it is the Gettysburg Address, seemingly recited by school children for decades. The truth is, however, Lincoln’s most memorable words are now remembered by very few.
“Of the 2,508 Americans taking ISI’s civic literacy test, 71% fail. Nationwide, the average score on the test is only 49%. The vast majority cannot recognize the language of Lincoln’s famous speech.
“The test contains 33 questions designed to measure knowledge of America’s founding principles, political history, international relations, and market economy…
“…The results reveal that Americans are alarmingly uninformed about our Constitution, the basic functions of our government, the key texts of our national history, and economic principles.”
Well, maybe for a majority of the proles that is true, but surely our well-educated college grads fare better? Nope.
“College graduates in all age brackets—except Baby Boomers (ages 45 to 64)—typically earn an ‘F’ on the exam. Baby Boomers who ended their formal education with a bachelor’s degree score an average of 61%, or a ‘D-.'”
(Well, that certainly squares with the report that 69% of college graduates couldn’t read directions to find their way out of a paper bag… *feh*)
But wait! There’s more! From the “Civics Quiz” report:
Continue reading “How Did The 0! Get Elected, Anyway?”
Writers for C- Movies Should Stick to the SyFy Channel…
…not become “New York Times Best-Selling” authors.
*sigh*
All these idiots do is accelerate the pejoration of the English language as a whole, dumb down the reading public even further (actually, quite an accomplishment, when you think about it) and increase the bloated landfill “wannabes” that our public libraries and book stores seem to aspire to being. Commas splices, split infinitives (where none are needed for jargon or idomatic speech and where such abortions of syntax and semantics actually harm clear communication), and inapropriate word usage when compounded by drearily banal plots, laughable and completely inexcusable historical and factual faux pas, and stereotypes in place of characters, just make for poor reading.
But that’s what passes for “New York Times Best-Sellers” in a post-literate age. *sigh* I know, because I just struggled through another one such book in an attempt to find a new author I might enjoy reading. Why did I not close the book and end the torture after the first page? Frankly, I wanted to give it a fair and honest read and the author a chance to redeem himself, but Raymond Koury just would not cooperate, and so–on to the dreadfully predictable end, slogging through some of the crappiest writing I have ever subjected myself to–I persisted. And I regretted it “alright” (one of Koury’s many, many assinine pejorations of the English language appropriated from such subliterate American pop culture “literary giants” as The Who, The Killers, Janet Jackson and Jennifer Lopez *feh*).
I feel certain that reading Koury’s writing has killed enough brain cells (they suicided as prodigious rates the more I read of Koury’s drek) to lower my IQ by 10 points. Oh, I can afford the loss, though, since I live in a society dominated by stupified dolts who, for one example of many, voted to ensconce The 0! in the White, urm, “Café au Lait” House. The lower ones IQ, the more sense the passing scene makes…
But just a fair warning: if you don’t think you can afford to kill off a lot of brain cells, take a pass on books written by Raymond Koury.
Note 1: It didn’t help Koury much that I had just read a very nice piece of fiction by Lawrence Block. The comparison between Block’s literate style, wry wit, tight plotting and spare but nevertheless vivid charactizations and Koury’s “anything BUT the above” only served to highlight Koury’s faults as a writer.
Note 2: the SciFi channel’s recent name alteration to “SyFy” is just another of the many unutterably stupid word alterations that subliterate idiots in marketing and advertising (and “news” and contemporary “music” etc., etc.) have inflicted on American English. *feh” on them all. Of course, ignoring the SciFi (or SyFy if one wants to be a complete idiot) Channel is no great loss, as a general rule. Has anyone among the readers (assuming more than one *heh*) of this blog yet “succeeded” in watching ANY of the “made for SciFi/SyFy ‘movies'” all the way through? Thought not. Dreck of the lowest order. Labeling them “C- movies” is probably an insult to the makers of C- movies everywhere.
The Three R’s
An antidote for the trials and tribulations we face today is… more trial and tribulation, as found in the “Three R’s”–Reading, Righting and Revolution.
One of the biggest barriers to good governance nowadays is the ignorance of the People. The answer to that is to teach the People to read. No, not just how to read but to read. And not to read just the poisonous pap they find in Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind rags but to read history. And not just to read history but to read the actual documents of history: the documents of our nation’s roots and its founding, extending at least as far back as the Magna Carta, first and foremost.
Then we need to be serious about righting the wrongs of a government grown bloated and overbearing, that neglects its principal duties and besets its citizens with oppression. A good pruning is sorely needed.
But those two steps will take a revolution, I fear, or rather, will be a revolution the like of which our political elites–in government, Mass Media Hivemind and Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries–will not easily allow.
Think: the generation that was inspired by the Boston Tea Party had not passed when George Washington–the Father of our country, as he is rightly styled–put down the Whiskey Rebellion, which was nothing but another “tea party” protesting oppressive and unfair government taxation. (Note that George Washington’s whiskey production was, like others of his class, taxed at only 2/3 the rate of poor Western farmers’ whiskey. Therein, and in the earlier shameful response to the so-called “Shay’s Rebellion”, I fear, was the seed of Elite Oppression of the People sown even in those early days of the republic… *sigh*)
It would be a Good Thing if we were able to effect the Three R’s by means of personal influence and see the real revolution take place at the polling booth, but even then, it may well take more than JUST personal influence and voting, the way the “community organizers” of the left have devised such slick ways to steal votes.
Interesting times.
Fear-mongering
In the decade or more before his death, Michael Crichton spoke widely about fear-mongering in science circles (often coupled with making a religion out of science), exacerbated by the pressing need in media to market fear (the pun was intentional; if you groaned, shame on you :-)). The Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind (and the politicians who bow before its altar) openly embrace fear-mongering both for immediate audience share and to enhance the addiction of the masses to its poisonous screeds.
Both those who embrace a strictly dogmatic scientific approach to issues and those who rebel against such dogmatism seem to often embrace fear-mongering as a primary persuasive tactic. Take “natural” foods proponents and “scientific nutritionists” or medical establishment dogmatists and “holistic medicine” proponents and put them in the same room, and you’d likely end up with a kilkenny cats donnybrook of fear-mongering. Just one example can serve as a cautionary: chelation therapy is presented by some alternative medicine proponents as THE answer to a host of ills–ills they often imply the medical community only want to treat with very expensive therapies that work less well. The medical establishment counters with scary threats of death from chelation therapy, often pointing out that more than 30 deaths from chelation therapy have occurred… since the 1970s while noting that more than 800,000 inpatient/outpatient chelation treatments are administered per year. Let’s see now… that’s about 0.0000000125% of treatments have resulted in deaths!
*feh* Fear-mongering. Since chelation therapy for other than heavy metals poisoning is most often for alternative medicine treatment of heart and artery disease how about comparison to another common treatment for heart and artery disease? Heart bypass surgery results in at least a 1.0% death rate. That’s about 80,000 times more risky than chelation therapy. *heh*
The dire warnings from the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming (which previously was the Church of Anthropogenic Global Cooling and is now transitioning to the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Change) have all been nothing but crying wolf. Not one of the warnings have come to pass–not one!–and so, like other whack job religious nuts who keep pushing back the date they prophesy for the end of the world, the Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming keeps having to move the goal posts in their deadly game to keep the fictional fear-mongering within the realm of the sheeple’s oh-so-flexible suspension of disbelief.
Lies, lies and more lies, built upon grains of sand, less than even kernels of truth, lies designed to induce fear in the credulous sheeple who, thanks to long term media brainwashing aided by a public education system that seems to be designed to produce idiots and individuals who cooperate in their own lobotomization, are completely unable to even parse this moderately complex sentence, let alone deconstruct the lies fed them by The Powers That Be.
As a popularly-voiced, accessible (to anyone who really can read and do simple arithmetic at a genuine upper grade school level) preparation to skeptical perusal of contemporary science-as-religion as presented for sheeple consumption, I recommend once again James Hogan’s Kicking the Sacred Cow. It’s an easy read for any even minimally literate person, and the footnotes are well worth following.
it’s not just literacy that’s a problem, although that certainly is a problem, but, as I found out in a recent conversation with someone locally, most people can’t even tell when they’re being manipulated with numbers. The “more than 30 people have died since the 1970s” attempt to frighten people away from thoughtful consideration of chelation therapies noted above is one such example. By contrast to the 30 or so deaths out of 24,000,000 or so chelation treatments in the U.S. since the 1970’s, 90 people a year are killed by lightning strikes. That’s roughly 0.000000003% of the population… per year! Ooo! Scary, huh? Not. Sure, ones chances of dying from a chelation therapy treatment are more than ones chances of dying from a lightning strike, but compared to other risks, both are neglible in the extreme. (I’m not advocating chelation therapy for anything but heavy metals poisoning. I’m just noting that scare tactics are reprehensible… and that the only defense is knowledge.) WHat’s my point here? Most folks wouldn’t even bother to count the zeros in the numbers offered above, and even more wouldn’t be able to discern how they were educed. The “recent conversation” that spurred this observation? Someone who’s back in school commented on how much trouble her statistics course was for her. Numbers are haaaard. *heh* Without a calculator, most folks can’t even balance their checkbooks. Heck, with a calculator many folks can’t. (OK, even I don’t do as many maths problems in my head as I used to do. I’m slowing down.) Even with calculators, math is just too hard for most folks, Why? Because most folks can’t do simple math at all and have no idea what that calculator they’re using is doing with the garbage they input–garbage because they don’t know what to input to get answers they need.
The simple answer is to learn to read. No, not how to read: to read. Read copiously, and choose books that are both well-written and have something worthwhile to say and that are well-grounded in reality. Even science fiction or fantasy novels can be more well-grounded in reality than much of the fear-mongering toxic waste poured down the gullets of credulous UNliterate sheeple by the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind and its partners in crime found in Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries and Congress.
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Democrat=Socialist, The World According to Carl, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
I always thought “Mississippi” had too many letters…
A nod to failblog.org for many wasted hours over time… and many thanks for this piece of good news:
What’s the Problem with Gay Marriage, Anyway?
I really don’t get it. Last night my Wonder Woman and I were having a really gay time watching some Red Skelton material. I think our society needs more gaiety in marriages.
Homosexual “marriage”–now that’s another matter entirely different to gay marriage. I do wish folks would learn the difference… but then most of the folks who make the mistake of referring to homosexuals as “gay” probably also make the mistake of speaking about making war on an emotional reaction (terror) to horrific acts (terrorism).
Continue reading “What’s the Problem with Gay Marriage, Anyway?”
Innumeracy
With insincere apologies to Mark Twain, a society that doesn’t count is no better than one that can’t. Consider the wisdom of the internet:
Eh? Come again? *heh*
Or better yet, consider this:
I don’t even know where to begin… *sigh*
One cent=$0.01
$0.01X0.002=$0.00002
$0.00002X35893 (the kb use cited in the video above)=$0.71786
It’s very, very, very simple arithmetic. “Do-it-in-your-head” arithmetic. Doesn’t even qualify as “math,” IMO.
Why did the two Verizon reps just not get it? Well, not only is adult literacy on the decline in these (dis)United States, but a growing number of folks just can’t count… largely because they’ve not been compelled by education and experience to do so. Heck, even this otherwise thoughtful article at Money Instructor.com uses a model that is part of the problem, a big part.
There is nothing wrong with using a calculator, of course. Calculators are useful in that they save time on arithmetical computations. But in a modern society where most citizens have graduated from an advanced system of formal education, one would expect that educated people would have an understanding of what the calculator is doing. To be sure, the four basic operations are well understood by people who consider themselves educated, but recent studies show that a majority begin to have difficulty when faced with such concepts as square roots, simple algebraic terms, and grade school geometry.
Did you catch that? “To be sure, the four basic operations are well understood by people who consider themselves educated… ”
It doesn’t matter one bit whether people “consider themselves educated” or not. Those who cannot tell the difference between $0.002 and $0.00002 can’t perform “the four basic operations” and indeed do NOT understand them. They are innumerate. And their numbers are legion. And it is they who combine their illiteracy (“The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”–Twain) with their innumeracy and thus allow the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind, politicians, illiterate and innumerate Academia Nut Fruitcakes, so-called educators and all their ilk to fill their minds with illiterate, innumerate, toxic sludge.
When a people cannot measure the impacts of public policies in clear and meaningful ways, then that people can fall prey to all kinds of flim-flammery. And such is the American public becoming.
Millions of Americans engage the services of income tax accountants every year because they are unable to perform the simple calculations themselves. Many others have difficulty interpreting statistical information, percentages, or any kind of information expressed in terms of graphs and charts. When it comes to calculating areas, capacity, or weights and measures, the average North American is not sure where to begin. For a modern society, this should be an intolerable situation, yet it seems that for most people it is quite normal and acceptable.
In short, millions of Americans are enstupiated sheeple, ripe for shearing. Worse, these same people cannot really blame the failures of “public education” (AKA “prisons for kids”), because almost anyone who wants to, who puts in a little effort, can become literate and numerate. Well more than half the population of enstupiated American sheeple are self-made enstupiated American sheeple.
In a representative republic, such is a recipe for disaster. In an ever more democratic (rule by mob) representative republic, we are beginning to reap many of the ills feared by the Founders, largely because a lazy, illiterate, innumerate electorate enables the obscene autoeriticism of politicians who gain almost orgasmic pleasure from misusing tax monies as yet uncollected from future generations.
I met a woman in her 60s the other day who declaimed that “We older people will lose all our benefits if the Republicans gain power.” *huh*?!? What benefits? Social Security has long been bankrupt, stealing from younger generations to buy older folks’ votes. Medicare and other “benefits” are likewise nothing but Ponzi schemes writ large. “Benefits” that steal from my children and grandchildren (and yours) to pay me are beyond obscene; they are simply wrong. Dhimmicraps/Repugnican’ts: makes not one bit of difference. The Ponzi scheme remains. And people who can’t or won’t do the math to see behind the smokescreen are the problem–or at least a large part of it–that keeps the government’s shameful Ponzi schemes going. For now. But someday, numbers will force an accounting, and when that happens, katie bar the door.
“There are three kinds of people in the world: those who count and those who don’t.”
*heh* Which are you?
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Rosemary’s Thoughts, Political Byline, Wingless – Belgium Says Israel Uses Child Soldiers, Refuses to Sell Weapons, Democrat=Socialist, and DragonLady’s World, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
Annual “Illiterate Boobs” Month
This month I have to once again suffer through a month filled with people who either cannot or refuse to pronounce “February,” preferring the illiterate “Feb-YOU-ary” mispronunciation because, I suppose, they are simply too stupid or too butt lazy–or both–to pronounce the first “r”.
Stupid, butt lazy, illiterate dolts. Gives me a rash, chaps my gizzard and makes me wish for a “Magic Dope Stick” to whack ’em all upside the head with. Unfortunately, it seems all of ’em who deseve a swift whack upside the head have already performed their own self-lobotomies and so even were such a magic stick available, I doubt it would do any good.
*grumble, grumble, gripe, complain*
Trackposted to The Pink Flamingo, Wingless – American Teen Killed By Released Guantanamo Detainees, Nuke Gingrich, Wingless – Belgium Says Israel Uses Child Soldiers, Refuses to Sell Weapons, and Wingless – Hamas Steals Aid Meant For People of Gaza, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.