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| THE LEFT AND FASCISM |
| Wednesday, January 25, 2006 |
| In many of the conversations the Snipet has had with leftist friends it has tried to illustrate that liberalism/socialism leads eventually to fascism. Few of them can see this. It is interesting though the icons that the left seems to embrace. From Danny Glover and much of Hollywood's love for dictator Fidel Castro, to the latest from Cindy Sheehan.
US anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan hails Venezuela's Chavez - Yahoo! News: |
posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/25/2006 08:41:00 AM   |
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| Warriors and wusses - Los Angeles Times |
| Tuesday, January 24, 2006 |
| Quite a while ago I called into question the automatic "I support the Troops" statement made by many on the left who criticize the Iraq War. Given that, this is an interesting read:
Warriors and wusses - Los Angeles Times |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/24/2006 09:38:00 PM |
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| INCONSISTENCIES - A SNIPET CLASSIC |
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Not long ago a liberal friend of mine had new carpet and flooring installed in his home.
1. He shopped six different places before he settled on the individual he felt qualified to put his flooring in.
2. He refused to make a down payment or ANY kind of payment to the individual until the job was done and the results PERFECT.
3. After the job was completed, he made the guy who put it in come back TWO times to fix things that I couldn't even detect were wrong.
4. He also got more out of the guy than he paid for--wood transitions (which cost the carpet guy extra) instead of brass or aluminum.
It lead into a GREAT discussion about education which made me ask the following questions:
1. Sam, did you go with the guy who was the most expensive? Was the best deal the most expensive one? No? You went with who you thought would do the best job for the money, huh.
2. Don't you think that there should be just one carpet supplier and installer? (The most expensive one...) because if you give money to one of the small guys, it takes money away from the big guys so they can't do as good a job.
3. Why did you refuse to pay until the job was done? You always seem to be more interested in paying for processes rather than results? Doesn't spending more money always bring better results? Why not pay and just accept what you get?
4. If the carpet and flooring was in, why did you make the guy come back over and over again to get it perfect? Why not pay him more money to come back and fix it?
You get the gist...
Sam is interested in choice (competition) and performance (outcomes) when it comes to his own money, but loses that concern when it comes to spending other peoples' money. Or is there some other motivation? |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/22/2006 02:43:00 PM |
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| THE EDUCATION MONOPOLY |
| Thursday, January 19, 2006 |
| The Snipet has argued much with leftist friends who adore our failed American educational institution.
Reason: Stupid in America: Why your kids are probably dumber than Belgians
For "Stupid in America," a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid."
We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.
The American boy who got the highest score told me: "I'm shocked, 'cause it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."
The Belgians did better because their schools are better. At age ten, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age fifteen, when students from forty countries are tested, the Americans place twenty-fifth. The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from countries that spend much less money on education.
This should come as no surprise once you remember that public education in the USA is a government monopoly. Don't like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
In New York City, it's "just about impossible" to fire a bad teacher, says schools chancellor Joel Klein. The new union contract offers slight relief, but it's still about 200 pages of bureaucracy. "We tolerate mediocrity," said Klein, because "people get paid the same, whether they're outstanding, average, or way below average." One teacher sent sexually oriented emails to "Cutie 101," his sixteen year old student. Klein couldn't fire him for years, "He hasn't taught, but we have had to pay him, because that's what's required under the contract."
They've paid him more than $300,000, and only after 6 years of litigation were they able to fire him. Klein employs dozens of teachers who he's afraid to let near the kids, so he has them sit in what they call "rubber rooms." This year he will spend twenty million dollars to warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It's an alternative to firing them. In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence.
When I confronted Union president Randi Weingarten about that, she said, "they [the NYC school board] just don't want to do the work that's entailed." But the "work that's entailed" is so onerous that most principals just give up, or get bad teachers to transfer to another school. They even have a name for it: "the dance of the lemons."
The inability to fire the bad and reward the good is the biggest reason schools fail the kids. Lack of money is often cited the reason schools fail, but America doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years. Test scores and graduation rates stayed flat. New York City now spends an extraordinary $11,000 per student. That's $220,000 for a classroom of twenty kids. Couldn't you hire two or three excellent teachers and do a better job with $220,000?
Only a monopoly can spend that much money and still fail the kids.
The U.S. Postal Service couldn't get it there overnight. But once others were allowed to compete, Federal Express, United Parcel, and others suddenly could get it there overnight. Now even the post office does it (sometimes). Competition inspires people to do what we didn't think we could do.
If people got to choose their kids' school, education options would be endless. There could soon be technology schools, cheap Wal-Mart-like schools, virtual schools where you learn at home on your computer, sports schools, music schools, schools that go all year, schools with uniforms, schools that open early and keep kids later, and, who knows? If there were competition, all kinds of new ideas would bloom.
This already happens overseas. In Belgium, for example, the government funds education—at any school—but if the school can't attract students, it goes out of business. Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents. "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, "You can't afford ten teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."
"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."
Last week, Florida's Supreme Court shut down "opportunity scholarships," Florida's small attempt at competition. Public money can't be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of "uniform, . . . high-quality" schools. But government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
A Gallup Poll survey shows 76 percent of Americans are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school, but that's only because they don't know what their kids are missing. Without competition, unlike Belgian parents, they don't know what their kids might have had.
John Stossel is an ABC News correspondent and co-anchor of 20/20. His special Stupid in America airs Friday, January 13, at 10 pm. |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/19/2006 04:25:00 PM |
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| LEGISLATING MORALITY |
| Wednesday, January 18, 2006 |
| Even conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the model for President Bush's wish that judges would rule according to the law and the Constitution, not according to their own beliefs, can't always keep his own personal opinions out of his judicial opinions.
In his dissent from the Court's 6-3 ruling that upheld Oregon's assisted suicide law, Scalia wrote, ""If the term 'legitimate medical purpose' has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death."
Really? Is that a medical, legal, or moral opinion? It is clearly a moral opinion with no legal foundation whatsoever. If you ask a person suffering from an incurable, painful disease, and he has found no other means to ease the suffering, he would likely argue that prescribing drugs to produce death serves a very legitimate medical purpose - to end suffering.
The Oregon assisted suicide case is very similar to the medical marijuana case, in that the U.S. Attorney General, in both cases, argued that the federal powers to regulate controlled substances trumps the states' rights to decide which drugs can be used and for what purposes. It was former Attorney John Ashcroft's opinion that neither the medical use of marijuana nor the use of drugs to assist in suicide is a "legitimate medical purpose."
The problem is, that's not up to a bureaucrat or a judge to decide. That's a subjective, i.e., a legislative decision, that should be left to the elected representatives of the people. Moral judgments are not the venue of bureaucrats or the courts. That principle should apply to Justice Scalia as surely as it should to Justice Ginsburg.
In the two cases, the court tested the same argument by the same bureaucrat, former Attorney General John Ashcroft. In one case, they agreed with Ashcroft. In the other, they disagreed. The only difference was the prevailing moral judgment of the court on the underlying issues: assisted suicide and marijuana.
Now, in both the case of medical marijuana and assisted suicide, the law of the land represents the prevailing moral judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court, not that of the elected representatives of the people. As you may have guessed by now, that, in my opinion is not a good thing. |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/18/2006 11:07:00 AM |
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| MORE LEFTIST PAT ROBERTSONS... |
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| BREITBART.COM - New Orleans Mayor Says God Mad at U.S.: "Mayor Ray Nagin suggested Monday that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and other storms were a sign that 'God is mad at America' and at black communities, too, for tearing themselves apart with violence and political infighting.
'Surely God is mad at America. He sent us hurricane after hurricane after hurricane, and it's destroyed and put stress on this country,' Nagin, who is black, said as he and other city leaders marked Martin Luther King Day. " |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/17/2006 02:22:00 PM |
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| DOES THE AP PROOF WHAT THEY PRINT? |
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| David Espo commented on yesterday's confirmation hearing for Sam Alito described the Jersey jurist as "Bush's pick to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for the swing seat on the court."
I read and reread my Pocket Constitution and have not yet found any reference to "swing seats" on the Supreme Court.
Can someone help? |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/11/2006 05:05:00 PM |
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| MISERY |
| Tuesday, January 10, 2006 |
| Americans are more miserable today than we were in the early 90s. It's probably George Bush's fault.
The University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center is the keeper of the misery index. Since you help pay for it from the taxes received by the National Science Foundation, I thought I'd tell you what they learned about your opinion of life in general.
If you had just kept that money that you gave to the NSF to pay for the research, you might be happier because some of the unhappiness is traced back to a lack of money. More of you say you can't afford health care, don't have health insurance, have too many bills or lost your job. More of you also have trouble in the romance department. On the bright side, fewer of you are the victims of crime. Money and love were the two biggest trouble spots in the survey.
Here's my opinion, for what it's worth. Happiness can be reduced to a simple math formula. Expectations (minus) reality = happiness, or lack thereof. When it comes to money, the average American can afford more than he could in 1991, but we constantly expect more. I don't know that romantic expectations have altered significantly in the past 10 years or so, but I suppose it's possible. That's probably Bush's fault too. Not too many people want the relationship that Bill and Hillary have, but more people are probably envious of the Bush's marriage.
At any rate, I believe the misery index has been driven higher by higher expectations, not by lower reality. It's another product of the entitlement mentality, and those who try to cure it by delivering more entitlements are the problem, not the solution. Ralph Bristol |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/10/2006 11:17:00 AM |
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| ROBERTSON / CLINTON |
| Monday, January 09, 2006 |
| What do Bill Clinton and Pat Robertson have in common? The Associated Press provides one answer:
Clinton, in France for talks with President Jacques Chirac, said Israelis should view [Ariel] Sharon as an example.
"Mr. Sharon had not only withdrawn from Gaza, he had started a new party with the purpose of continuing to push for peace," Clinton said. "All of us who believe in peace in the Middle East are in his debt, and so more than anything else, I pray for his health."
The Israeli leader's illness "puts yet another obstacle in the path of the peacemakers," Clinton said. "And it's almost as if God were testing them one more time to rise again, to keep on." |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/09/2006 04:55:00 PM |
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| IN BRIEF |
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| CNN reports that Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2 man, has "called on U.S. President George W. Bush to admit defeat in Iraq." This puts him on the same page as Ted Kennedy, John Murtha and Howard Dean. The Associated Press, meanwhile, reports on a message from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, head of al Qaeda in Iraq, or, as the Democrats call it, al Qaeda Which Has Nothing to Do With Iraq in Iraq Which Has Nothing to Do With al Qaeda:
The Iraqi Al-Qaeda leader then laid down two conditions for giving up the jihad.
"First, chase out the invaders from our territory in Palestine, in Iraq and everywhere in Islamic land.
"Second, instal sharia (Islamic law) on the entire Earth and spread Islamic justice there (. . .). The attacks will not cease until after the victory of Islam and the setting up of sharia," he swore.
The first part of this echoes fascist fishwife Cindy Sheehan: "You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine." We're not sure of her position on global Shariah, but she has referred to terrorists as "freedom-fighters."
The wacko "right" is on board as well. In an online poll on the John Birch Society Web site, 69% agree with the proposition that President Bush should be impeached "because he lied us into war, has used the NSA to eavesdrop on the conversations of Americans without a court order, and has violated the Constitution in other ways." WSJ |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/09/2006 04:53:00 PM |
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| KWANZAA BELLS |
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| President Bush's 2005 Kwanzaa message began with the patently absurd statement: "African-Americans and people around the world reflect on African heritage during Kwanzaa."
I believe more African-Americans spent this season reflecting on the birth of Christ than some phony non-Christian holiday invented a few decades ago by an FBI stooge. Kwanzaa is a holiday for white liberals, not blacks.
It is a fact that Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by a black radical FBI stooge, Ron Karenga, aka Dr. Maulana Karenga. Karenga was a founder of United Slaves, a violent nationalist rival to the Black Panthers and a dupe of the FBI.
In what was probably ultimately a foolish gamble, during the madness of the '60s the FBI encouraged the most extreme black nationalist organizations in order to discredit and split the left. The more preposterous the organization, the better. Karenga's United Slaves was perfect. In the annals of the American '60s, Karenga was the Father Gapon, stooge of the czarist police.
Despite modern perceptions that blend all the black activists of the '60s, the Black Panthers did not hate whites. They did not seek armed revolution. Those were the precepts of Karenga's United Slaves. United Slaves were proto-fascists, walking around in dashikis, gunning down Black Panthers and adopting invented "African" names. (That was a big help to the black community: How many boys named "Jamal" currently sit on death row?)
Whether Karenga was a willing dupe, or just a dupe, remains unclear. Curiously, in a 1995 interview with Ethnic NewsWatch, Karenga matter-of-factly explained that the forces out to get O.J. Simpson for the "framed" murder of two whites included: "the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Interpol, the Chicago Police Department" and so on. Karenga should know about FBI infiltration. (He further noted that the evidence against O.J. "was not strong enough to prohibit or eliminate unreasonable doubt" -- an interesting standard of proof.)
In the category of the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much, back in the '70s, Karenga was quick to criticize rumors that black radicals were government-supported. When Nigerian newspapers claimed that some American black radicals were CIA operatives, Karenga publicly denounced the idea, saying, "Africans must stop generalizing about the loyalties and motives of Afro-Americans, including the widespread suspicion of black Americans being CIA agents."
Now we know that the FBI fueled the bloody rivalry between the Panthers and United Slaves. In one barbarous outburst, Karenga's United Slaves shot to death Black Panthers Al "Bunchy" Carter and Deputy Minister John Huggins on the UCLA campus. Karenga himself served time, a useful stepping-stone for his current position as a black studies professor at California State University at Long Beach.
Kwanzaa itself is a lunatic blend of schmaltzy '60s rhetoric, black racism and Marxism. Indeed, the seven "principles" of Kwanzaa praise collectivism in every possible arena of life -- economics, work, personality, even litter removal. ("Kuumba: Everyone should strive to improve the community and make it more beautiful.") It takes a village to raise a police snitch.
When Karenga was asked to distinguish Kawaida, the philosophy underlying Kwanzaa, from "classical Marxism," he essentially explained that under Kawaida, we also hate whites. While taking the "best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism" -- which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment for homosexuals and forced labor -- Kawaida practitioners believe one's racial identity "determines life conditions, life chances and self-understanding." There's an inclusive philosophy for you.
(Sing to "Jingle Bells")
Kwanzaa bells, dashikis sell
Whitey has to pay;
Burning, shooting, oh what fun
On this made-up holiday!
Coincidentally, the seven principles of Kwanzaa are the very same seven principles of the Symbionese Liberation Army, another charming invention of the Least-Great Generation. In 1974, Patricia Hearst, kidnap victim-cum-SLA revolutionary, posed next to the banner of her alleged captors, a seven-headed cobra. Each snake head stood for one of the SLA's revolutionary principles: Umoja, Kujichagulia, Ujima, Ujamaa, Nia, Kuumba and Imani -- the same seven "principles" of Kwanzaa.
With his Kwanzaa greetings, President Bush is saluting the intellectual sibling of the Symbionese Liberation Army, killer of housewives and police. He is saluting the founder of United Slaves, who were such lunatics that they shot Panthers for not being sufficiently insane -- all with the FBI as their covert ally.
It's as if David Duke invented a holiday called "Anglika," and the president of the United States issued a presidential proclamation honoring the synthetic holiday. People might well stand up and take notice if that happened.
Kwanzaa was the result of a '60s psychosis grafted onto the black community. Liberals have become so mesmerized by multicultural nonsense that they have forgotten the real history of Kwanzaa and Karenga's United Slaves -- the violence, the Marxism, the insanity. Most absurdly, for leftists anyway, is that they have forgotten the FBI's tacit encouragement of this murderous black nationalist cult founded by the father of Kwanzaa.
Now the "holiday" concocted by an FBI dupe is honored in a presidential proclamation and public schools across the nation. Bush called Kwanzaa a holiday that promotes "unity" and "faith." Faith in what? Liberals' unbounded capacity to respect any faith but Christianity?
A movement that started approximately 2,000 years before Kwanzaa leaps well beyond merely "unity" and "faith" to proclaim that we are all equal before God. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). It was practitioners of that faith who were at the forefront of the abolitionist and civil rights movements. But that's all been washed down the memory hole, along with the true origins of Kwanzaa. Ann Coulter. |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/09/2006 03:55:00 PM |
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| SANFORD FOR PRESIDENT |
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| Dear Friend,
Last week I submitted to the General Assembly the Executive Budget for fiscal year 2006-2007. A full copy of the budget can be found online at www.scgovernor.com and I invite you to read it. In the meantime, however, I thought you'd be interested in what our state's leading newspapers are saying about it.
The August Chronicle asks: "Do South Carolinians favor efficiency over waste? Simplicity over complexity? Slimmer government over bloated bureaucracy? Tax rebates over unnecessary government spending?" ... and then answers its own question: "If they do, then they'll strongly support Gov. Mark Sanford's proposed 2006-07 budget."
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/010806/edi_6174535.shtml
The Spartanburg Herald-Journal says: "Gov. Mark Sanford issued an executive budget last week that sets a standard for fiscal restraint. Sanford's budget limits state spending growth to a combination of the increase in the state's population and inflation. State lawmakers should adopt such a goal as they consider their own state budget."
http://goupstate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060108/NEWS/601080310/1022/OPINION
And the Charleston Post & Courier states: "Gov. Mark Sanford continues to have his budget priorities in order - first finish paying off the debt and restoring trust funds and then give substantial extra dollars for essential services such as education, law enforcement and job recruitment."
http://www.charleston.net/stories/?newsID=64013§ion=editorials
The referenced editorials can be accessed online at the provided links, and they are also reprinted below. Please take the time to forward them to your friends and family.
Take care,
Mark |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/09/2006 02:46:00 PM |
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| Belafonte Calls Bush 'Greatest Terrorist' - Yahoo! News |
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| Belafonte Calls Bush 'Greatest Terrorist' - Yahoo! News: "CARACAS, Venezuela - The American singer and activist Harry Belafonte called President Bush 'the greatest terrorist in the world' on Sunday and said millions of Americans support the socialist revolution of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.
ADVERTISEMENT
Belafonte led a delegation of Americans including the actor Danny Glover and the Princeton University scholar Cornel West that met the Venezuelan president for more than six hours late Saturday. Some in the group attended Chavez's television and radio broadcast Sunday.
'No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people ... support your revolution,' Belafonte told Chavez during the broadcast." |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/09/2006 11:23:00 AM |
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| PAT ROBERTSON |
| Friday, January 06, 2006 |
| I will not talk about Pat Robertson. I will not talk about Pat Robertson. I will not talk about Pat Robertson. I will not talk about Pat Robertson.
Okay, I give up. Against my better judgment, I'm going to talk about Pat Robertson, and his latest statement that has the lefties giggling, while feigning outrage.
On his TV Show, the 700 Club, Robertson opined that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for "dividing God's land."
"God considers this land to be his," Robertson said. "You read the Bible and he says 'This is my land,' and any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, `No, this is mine.'"
All of the usual lefties who monitor Robertson's show for the purpose of using him to attack Christianity (because they don't want to see Christian principles in public policy) fired off their faxes to the news media, which dutifully printed their criticisms.
Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said, "Pat Robertson has a political agenda for the entire world, and he seems to think God is ready to take out any world leader who stands in the way of that agenda."
I empathize with neither Barry Wynn nor Pat Robertson, and I believe that most other Americans don't either. I think both Wynn and Robertson represent fairly extreme ends of the religious spectrums, but the news media, which is far more left than right, always side with Wynn's side of any story that features a Pat Robertson statement, so that helps Wynn's agenda and hinders not just Robertson's agenda, but a more main-stream agenda that Wynn successfully attaches to Pat Robertson with the help of the media.
For instance, President Bush [claims to be] a Christian, but stood solidly with Arial Sharon in Sharon's action that incited Robertson's statement, but Wynn and his ilk are able to use Robertson to rev up suspicion of President Bush's agenda, because Robertson and Bush are both Christians and Robertson supports Bush, even when he disagrees with Bush's positions.
Pat Robertson has every right - in fact he probably has a responsibility - to say what he believes about the effect of public policy on religious issues. His pronouncements may sound outrageous to most, but they have NO influence whatsoever on President Bush specifically and Republican office-holders in general.
That is the truth that is never revealed in the frequent skirmishes between Wynn and Robertson. Because of that, Wynn wins every time. Robertson is not Wynn's enemy. Robertson is Wynn's tool. Ralph Bristol |
| posted by Jack Mercer @ 1/06/2006 04:40:00 PM |
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| About Me |
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Name: Jack Mercer
Home:
About Me:
See my complete profile
"Snipet" (pronounced: snipe - it) is not a word.It is a derivative of two words: "Snipe" and "Snippet".
Miriam Webster defines Snipe as: to aim a carping or snide attack, or: to shoot at exposed individuals (as of an enemy's forces) from a usually concealed point of vantage.
Miriam Webster defines Snippet as: : a small part, piece, or thing; especially : a brief quotable passage.
In short, "Snipets" are brief, snide shots at exposed situations from a concealed vantage point.
WARNING! With due reverence to the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment there is NO comment policy on the News Snipet.
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