George Rebane
Progressives are the real opponents of change. Contrary to their desperate message over the years, their very mindset is sclerotic when it comes to the change that matters in areas like entrepreneurship, invention, technology, economics, individual empowerment, and, of course, personal liberties. Progressives' latest attempts to keep yesteryear in gear for everyone is their opposition to what has become known as the ‘sharing economy’. This is where individuals can fill demand by joining innovative jitney services, renting out unused rooms, or offering their talents for some-time housecleaning. Liberals from candidates, big labor, plaintiffs bar, … have mounted attacks on all these and similar initiatives by a free people offering part-time services with what they have or can do. Anything that changes their conception of a regulated and regimented workforce is verboten. (more here)
Most teachers are not corrigible. A big three-year study involving thousands of teachers who attended various teacher development courses and programs concluded that school districts don’t get much of anything for the dollars they spend in sending teachers to better themselves. 70% of teachers came back unimproved or worse in their teaching performance. “The report found that no particular approach to professional development consistently helped teachers get better. When individual teachers improved, their success didn’t appear to be linked to systemic efforts by the districts.” That result can easily be explained by the overall percentage of teachers that fall into the academic low grade ore category. (more here)
Secret codicils of the Iran agreement. Contrary to lamestream reports, everything that is known about what Team Obama cobbled together with the ayatollahs is already pretty bad since it legitimizes their building nuclear weapons out of sight and without inspections. But now we’re told that besides not being able to inspect the facilities where real weapon development takes place, the UN’s IAEA has some added secret codicils that even our Congress will not be able to see. The only purpose of secret codicils to any agreement is to circumvent the publicly visible parts, since it is ONLY the publicly visible parts that give muscle to any agreement, pact, or treaty between sovereign nation-states. When provisions of secret codicils are violated, there is no one to hold accountable since the violating party can deny the previous existence of such violated provision. Team Obama understands none of this.
The country is on the wrong track, still. Our progressive elites and local liberal lyricists have been in terminal denial of this for some years. They blame such sentiments to be isolated in the small minority of conservatives and people they call “tea baggers”. Well, the latest WSJ/NBC poll confirms about two out of three continue to believe that our nation is on the ‘wrong track’, while less than 30% believe we’re on the ‘right track’. If progressives could do math, they would discover that you can’t have a small minority and a strong majority at the same time. But then, such thinking was never their strong suit. (more here) Voters confirm ‘wrong track’ sentiment in their unusually large support of the fringe candidates of both parties. Socialist Bernie Sanders is packing them in with promises to do away with capitalism and distribute from all according to their abilities and to all according to their needs (kinda has a nice ring to it). At the same time Trump is delivering what the other half is thinking, packed between outrageous observations designed to vacuum all the attention from the other candidates. Bottom line – this is what it looks like when the tipping point is visible in the rear view mirror.
Super PACs make possible a wide field of candidates. And speaking of Trump, that wealthy RINO agrees with liberals that political spending should be ever more regulated. With his ability to self-fund his campaign, why wouldn’t he back policies that could beggar his opponents? He knows money makes all the difference in how much of what political speech gets disseminated to the voters. (I can already hear the liberals gasp, ‘… and is that what you want?’) The alternative to money determining ‘how much of what’ is hidden money paying for bureaucrats and judges to do the same thing. I’ll take the open money and the large field of candidates any day.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki seventy years on. Bret Stephens writes the now obligatory reprise that recounts the undeniable yet denied logic that to date the atom bomb has been one of the greatest life-saving technologies ever invented. Our light thinking contingent has denied that fact, and for decades proposed instead that the US take the lead in unilateral nuclear disarmament and climb Mount Morality, thereby shaming other countries to follow us up the slopes (more here). That’s what could be the called the other ‘mad’ policy to counter the MAD that did work with nations that do not embrace ‘end-timer’ cosmologies. For the unread, Iran (and radical Islam) very much belong to the End-Timer Cosmology Club.
Engineers ‘Anonymously Saving the World’. This new book by Guru Madhavan extolls the contributions of the thousands of uncelebrated engineers who have been the real creators and ‘creative types’ of our human societies. He also outlines the mode of thinking we are taught that gives rise to such gifts. Being a lifetime, card-carrying, (registered) professional engineer and overboard evangelist myself, I was going to wax eloquent on the contributions of this humble profession of technical geeks. But what the hell, these pages are already full of that propaganda from me and similarly biased/trained readers – so I’ll spare you. Just think of us the next time you’re enjoying the real (or virtual) world.
[6aug15 update] MBA students catching up on math and stat skills in summer school, as reported by several business oriented publications. It’s a long time coming, but these days if you don’t do some level of math and stats, you’re basically not employable in any of the ‘upper hump’ of the jobs distribution (see, it even takes a bit of that to understand this sentence). RR readers may also recall the mantra – ALL social issues derive their significance from the numbers that characterize them. Corollary – If you don’t understand such numbers, your arguments about any issue are most likely the issue of your antipodal orifice.
Obama’s Iran agreement apologetics hit a new low. He acknowledged that Iran’s ayatollahs continue their ‘Death to America’ denigrations of the agreement, but then pointed out that this was not necessarily the sentiment of “all Iranians”, as if that mattered. He then grouped the Republican congressional caucus with the antagonist towel heads as linked arms opponents of his deeply flawed and still unknown executive something or other with Iran. The comparison was joyously lapped up by his hard left and terminally gruberized constituents.
Trump’s voluble support of single payer healthcare may allow him to garner some mid-road voters. It will be interesting at tonight’s debate to see if FN’s moderating mavens bring up all the past baggage in the public record about The Donald. Republican strategist and talking head Karl Rove did a good job in this morning’s WSJ recalling some of these flip flops and wondering which Trump will be at the podium tonight – “He has been on so many sides of so many issues that Thursday’s stage is a multiple-choice test.” (more here).
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