Category Archives: Schools

Reflections

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Moochelle is in the news again. She and her food Nazis have failed in at least two schools. The story appeared on Drudge yesterday. Two schools, and they are not the first, have dropped out of the government school lunch program. Why? “It’s nasty,” say the kids.

Missouri, Alabama schools drop Michelle O’s lunch program

September 17, 2014

CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. – New federal school food regulations promoted by First Lady Michelle Obama are becoming a massive headache for many schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program.

dumplunchAnd many, like Missouri’s Notre Dame Regional and Saxony Lutheran high schools, are taking matters into their own hands.

Those schools and numerous others across the country are ditching the federal regulations and the funding that comes with them to save their cafeteria programs, which have experienced a nose-dive in sales and skyrocketing waste since the new rules were implemented in 2012.

At Notre Dame, school officials turned to the professionals at My Daddy’s Cheesecake, Papa John’s, Tractors Classic American Grill and Chick-fil-A to bring in nutritious and tasty meals students enjoy for “restaurant Wednesdays,” SEMissourian.com reports.

Notre Dame’s lunch participation had dropped to about half of its 565 students and 65 faculty members under the federal guidelines, but jumped drastically to about 75 percent once officials did away with the tight restrictions on calories, fat, sodium,  whole grains, and numerous other aspects of school meals.

“The biggest change is that you don’t have to be so strict with your menus. You don’t have to keep track of all the sodium and calories,” Notre Dame food service director Joan Dunning told SEMissourian.com.

“You can go back to a little more home cooking and not have to analyze it all to death, and by doing that can make it a little more tasty. You can put a little more butter or margarine in the vegetables,” she said, which means students are “not throwing it in the trash like they did before.”

Saxony Lutheran is also offering Chick-fil-A for lunch on Tuesdays and breakfast on Fridays, as well as chicken wings on Thursdays. By discarding the federal regulations, the district can now also offer chips, snack crackers, protein bars, muffins, cereal and Pop Tarts, many of which were banned until this year, the news site reports.

“We want to make sure we’re serving a well-rounded, healthy, balanced meal,” Saxony principal Mark Ruark told SEMissourian.com. “We don’t think the current federal guidelines give kids enough calories to sustain (them), especially those in extracurricular activities.”

“Kids will not eat what doesn’t taste good,” he said.

That’s the same conclusion parents and school officials in Alabama are coming to.

At Cleburne County Schools, where lunch participation dropped by 29 percent under Michelle O’s rules, Maria Gilbert said her children will no longer eat school food. Her 11th grader says it’s “nasty” and has opted to bring microwave food from home, at least until the school removed the appliance from the cafeteria. Gilbert said she’s often forced to find a quick meal for her famished kids after school, AnnisonStar.com reports.

“The drive-through at McDonald’s is always full after school as Gilbert and other parents stop to feed their hungry children on the way home, she said,” according to the news site.

“Many of the student athletes need four times more calories than an average school lunch provides and therefore are bringing their lunch,” superintendent Claire Dryden told the Annison Star.

The district’s lunch sales have plummeted from 106,362 meals served in 2012-13 to 75,610 last year because of the federal lunch mandates, she said.

Statewide, lunch sales went from 131.9 million meals in 2011-12 to 127.1 million last year – a decrease of 4.8 million meals, the news site reports.

In Ohio, it’s the same story.

“We are seeing a trend where meal counts are going down just because students aren’t accepting all the changes that are taking place,” Ohio School Nutrition Association member Jeni Lange told ABC.

“There are fewer students eating.”

Experts at the National School Lunch Association estimate 1 million fewer students eat lunch at school than when the regulations went into effect in 2012.

A National School Nutrition Association survey also found food waste is up in 81.2 percent of schools nationwide, and a study by Cornell and Bringham Young universities estimates the waste at $4 million per day. Students in Los Angeles schools alone are throwing away $100,000 in food per day, ABC reports.

“I have to think that across the country, it has to be a staggering amount of food going to waste and I think there are people out there who could really use that food,” said Gene Kirchner, superintendent of  Fort Thomas Independent Schools near Cincinnati, another district that dropped out of the National School Lunch Program.

“The biggest change is that you don’t have to be so strict with your menus. You don’t have to keep track of all the sodium and calories,” Notre Dame food service director Joan Dunning told SEMissourian.com.

“You can go back to a little more home cooking and not have to analyze it all to death, and by doing that can make it a little more tasty. You can put a little more butter or margarine in the vegetables,” she said, which means students are “not throwing it in the trash like they did before.”

Saxony Lutheran is also offering Chick-fil-A for lunch on Tuesdays and breakfast on Fridays, as well as chicken wings on Thursdays. By discarding the federal regulations, the district can now also offer chips, snack crackers, protein bars, muffins, cereal and Pop Tarts, many of which were banned until this year, the news site reports.

“We want to make sure we’re serving a well-rounded, healthy, balanced meal,” Saxony principal Mark Ruark told SEMissourian.com. “We don’t think the current federal guidelines give kids enough calories to sustain (them), especially those in extracurricular activities.”

“Kids will not eat what doesn’t taste good,” he said.

That’s the same conclusion parents and school officials in Alabama are coming to.

At Cleburne County Schools, where lunch participation dropped by 29 percent under Michelle O’s rules, Maria Gilbert said her children will no longer eat school food. Her 11th grader says it’s “nasty” and has opted to bring microwave food from home, at least until the school removed the appliance from the cafeteria. Gilbert said she’s often forced to find a quick meal for her famished kids after school, AnnisonStar.com reports.

“The drive-through at McDonald’s is always full after school as Gilbert and other parents stop to feed their hungry children on the way home, she said,” according to the news site.

“Many of the student athletes need four times more calories than an average school lunch provides and therefore are bringing their lunch,” superintendent Claire Dryden told the Annison Star.

The district’s lunch sales have plummeted from 106,362 meals served in 2012-13 to 75,610 last year because of the federal lunch mandates, she said.

Statewide, lunch sales went from 131.9 million meals in 2011-12 to 127.1 million last year – a decrease of 4.8 million meals, the news site reports.

In Ohio, it’s the same story.

“We are seeing a trend where meal counts are going down just because students aren’t accepting all the changes that are taking place,” Ohio School Nutrition Association member Jeni Lange told ABC.

“There are fewer students eating.”

Experts at the National School Lunch Association estimate 1 million fewer students eat lunch at school than when the regulations went into effect in 2012.

A National School Nutrition Association survey also found food waste is up in 81.2 percent of schools nationwide, and a study by Cornell and Bringham Young universities estimates the waste at $4 million per day. Students in Los Angeles schools alone are throwing away $100,000 in food per day, ABC reports.

“I have to think that across the country, it has to be a staggering amount of food going to waste and I think there are people out there who could really use that food,” said Gene Kirchner, superintendent of  Fort Thomas Independent Schools near Cincinnati, another district that dropped out of the National School Lunch Program.

In one Vermont school district, officials devised a plan to “repurpose” their lunch waste as feed for about 3,000 hogs at a local pig farm. In Medina, Ohio, volunteer parent Marcie Henning is taking advantage of the massive waste in her district to feed the homeless and less fortunate.

“Operation Lunch” lunch was launched two years ago, when the new lunch rules were implemented and waste went through the roof, and has so far provided 35,000 items, including 1,314 fruit cups and 841 oranges and tangerines, to those who can’t afford a “healthy” lunch, ABC reports.

“Students donate nutritious food to those who need it so it won’t go in the trash,” Henning told ABC.

In one Vermont school district, officials devised a plan to “repurpose” their lunch waste as feed for about 3,000 hogs at a local pig farm. In Medina, Ohio, volunteer parent Marcie Henning is taking advantage of the massive waste in her district to feed the homeless and less fortunate.

“Operation Lunch” lunch was launched two years ago, when the new lunch rules were implemented and waste went through the roof, and has so far provided 35,000 items, including 1,314 fruit cups and 841 oranges and tangerines, to those who can’t afford a “healthy” lunch, ABC reports.

“Students donate nutritious food to those who need it so it won’t go in the trash,” Henning told ABC.

The School Lunch program was bad before Moochelle stuck her hands into it. It is the usual ‘one-size-fits-all’ federal program that fits none. No two kids are alike. None are the same in their food likes or needs. Active kids need more, especially those engaged in athletics. The feds take none of that into account in their regulations. Like most (all?) federal programs, it fails to meet its original intent and the results are the opposite of the goals of the program. That won’t stop the feds from forcing this—and other programs down our throats.

When I was in grade school, I attended a small county school. It was originally an endowment of fifteen acres. In the late 1920s, the school was a one room brick building. It had plenty of funding…there was an oil well on the school property and the endowment included mineral rights. By the time I attended the school, the one-room brick building had expanded. It had three classrooms, indoor restrooms, school office, a basement with a cafeteria and central heating (coal, no A/C), a gym and stage. The enrollment had grown to 80 students. The employees were three teachers, a circuit music teacher who traveled between three small schools, two cooks and a full-time janitor/school bus driver. At one time, my mother was the Principal, and my older sister was the music teacher.

But this reflection isn’t so much about the school as it is about the cafeteria and the food.  The two cooks were local widows. Neither had dietary degrees but both had raised large families and had either grandchildren or nephews and nieces attending school. They received menus from the state as part of the school lunch program.

That program was much different then. It was menus provided by the state as guidelines, and the ability to buy bulk food from the US Department of Agriculture. The food was delivered in large, multi-gallon cans…all of it. Not only canned fruits and vegetables, but also meat. I remember some had US Army and US Navy stamped into the metal of some of the cans.

If it came in a can, we found it on our lunch table. I think the only items that didn’t was our Thanksgiving turkey and Christmas hams. On the last school day before each holiday, a truck arrived just before lunchtime from a local bakery. The truck delivered cooked turkeys and dressing, or baked hams. It was an arrangement the school had with the bakery.

The typical menu was one or two meat offerings, two or three vegetables and dessert. We paid a dollar a week for milk except for the kids on Relief. They got theirs free. The school received a voucher for their milk costs each month. For another 2¢ a day, we could have chocolate milk. Twice a month, we were marched down in the afternoon to the cafeteria for orange juice, a single 8oz glass for each of us.

We, the students, were a bit weird with our food. One of the menu items was spaghetti with meat sauce. The state required the usual two vegetables on the menu. By popular request, one of those vegetables was peas. To this day, I like to add and mix peas to my spaghetti.

Another menu offering was meat balls. For some reason, meat balls never appeared on the menu with spaghetti. I guess it was because both were meat items. The meat balls were hand made and were about the size of a baseball. They were baked in an oven, and just before lunch, they were allowed to simmer in a 5-gallon pot of spaghetti sauce. Another of the standard vegetables were potatoes. When we went through the line, the meat ball came first, mashed potatoes came next. We would ask the cook to dump the potatoes on top of the meatball and add some spaghetti sauce as gravy. I don’t remember what the other vegetable was. I have a faint memory of having corn on the cob sitting next to a mound of mashed potatoes covered with spaghetti sauce.

Each meal was accompanied by one or two desserts. We usually knew what was on the menu by the smell rising up the stairwell from the cafeteria. Desserts were baked in the cafeteria each day in two of the four ovens in the kitchen. One of the cooks worked in a local bakery during the summer. Every day, the cooks baked pies and sheet cakes. On occasion, they would make pudding, vanilla or chocolate, with graham-crackers added.

Unlike the students in the article above, we rarely dumped food. Usually, we went back for seconds and thirds until the food was gone. Anything that was left over, went home with the cooks for their suppers. I don’t remember any days when the cooks did not take something home but it wasn’t much. Just enough for one or two people. I do remember a few occasions when, for some reason or another, we had leftover desserts. The students were allow to take some dessert home as did the teachers. Since all the kids rode buses to and from school, I don’t think any dessert survived long enough to reach home.

To us, dumping food was rare. The only thing I remember that was not well received was the day we were served ham and lima/butter beans. Some of the kids loved it. I didn’t nor did most of the other students. I remember one day when my mother was teaching at the school when she was offered a gallon of ham and lima beans to take home. She didn’t. She nor Dad liked them. I wondered, on occasion, who did get the beans. Whomever it was, I was thankful it wasn’t us.

I suppose the success of that grade school cafeteria was the cooks. They were both widows and had lost husbands and sons in WW2 or Korea. The state provided menus, suggested menus, but the cooks provided the recipes. One dessert I’ve never forgotten and my wife has never been able to recreate was applesauce pie. Take a normal pie crust and fill it, not with apples, but with applesauce. Normally, when you try to serve a wedge of applesauce pie, the applesauce runs out leaving the crust behind. The applesauce pie served in our cafeteria didn’t have the filling run out. When a wedge was cut out, the filling remained inside the crust just like any other fruit pie. I don’t know how they did that. I’ve considered they may have added some gel to the applesauce but that wouldn’t work until the pie had cooled.

Ah, memories. I have fond ones of that old grade school cafeteria. What kind of memories are being made from today’s school cafeterias? Not fondness, I would bet. More likely, revulsion.

Let’s never forget. Governmental tyranny comes in many forms. Moochelles food nazis are just one example.

 

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Friday Follies for August 29, 2014

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It has been a long week. It shouldn’t have seemed that way but it did. I’ve been beating the bushes trying to get conservatives involved in politics. I’ve not been very successful.

Case in point. I’m a member of several conservative political organizations. In every one, there is a small group that is active. Each group has an occasional drop-in who may visit for a meeting or two but their attendance is irregular at best. Most, pleading a busy schedule, drift off.

There is a distinct age gulf in the membership. All the active members are older—in their 50s and up. The younger crowd is too busy to bother—and that is a problem. Not for us, but for them.

We want to get younger members to join, whole families if possible. But we are rarely successful—“We’re too busy! The kids have too many activities. I have to take Junior to baseball/softball/soccer/football/basketball/swimming practice.” It is just the same for the girls. Then, during school session, add voice/band/music practice, Boy Scouts/Girl Scouts/4-H, plus the kids come home with a 30lb backpack full of homework (do the kids ever do work at school anymore?).

Oh, we can still get a turnout for an isolated meeting for a cause such as Common Core or Agenda 21. But when it come to electing officials who will represent us in government, people claim they don’t have time.

It’s a cop-out. People can and will act if their private ox is being gored but politics? Heavens, no! In reality, it is a matter of priorities. What is more important. Being a helicopter parent who is determined their kids are under constant scrutiny or insuring those same children have any freedom when they become adults.

I constantly hear, “I’m not interested in politics!” and every time I remember the remainder of that quote—“but politics is interested in you.”

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Homeschoolers! Lissen-up!

http://www.umsystem.edu/newscentral/legislative-update/files/2014/03/LU-3-13-Emery.jpgNeed a project for your kids? Take them to the upcoming Missouri Legislature Veto Override session. There are a number of interesting issues that will be voted upon to override Governor Jay Nixon’s veto.

Meet the legislators; visit your state Representative and Senator, watch the bills being discussed and voted upon from the visitor’s gallery. See your state government in action. Coordinate your activity with another group (WMSA pitch here.) Find other homeschoolers, combine resources and perhaps share costs.

When I was in grade school and later in high school, I was required to pass a test of the US and state constitutions. One test was required to graduate into high school. The other was a state requirement for a high school diploma. In my high school, we spent a complete semester being taught the mechanics of government. Anyone who failed had a second chance in summer school. There was a third chance to pass the test for a high school diploma in a night class with adults, an early form of G.E.D.

That requirement no longer exists. It should, but it doesn’t. I suppose it’s more important to be taught diversity and other social engineering agendas than for students to understand how government works.

Homeschoolers take note of this opportunity. Every year I see a number of Jeff City public and private school kids touring the Capitol. I’ve seen other homeschoolers there as well with their kids. Witnessing government in action is too good an educational opportunity to miss. Perhaps you, too, will learn something as well.

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ISIS is back in the news and Obama is, as usual, ignoring that crises. “We’re not at war with ISIS,” he claims. Obama ignores the statements from ISIS that they are at war with us and the rest of the world.

Islamic State’s ‘Laptop of Doom’
By Rick Moran, August 29, 2014

We don’t have a strategy yet to attack Islamic State. But they are developing a strategy to attack us.

A laptop found by Syrian rebels last January in an ISIS hideout proved to be a goldmine of information. Foreign Policy’s Harald Doornbos and Jenan Moussa got their hands on the machine, downloaded 146 gigabytes of material, and were shocked at what they found:

The laptop’s contents turn out to be a treasure trove of documents that provide ideological justifications for jihadi organizations — and practical training on how to carry out the Islamic State’s deadly campaigns. They include videos of Osama bin Laden, manuals on how to make bombs, instructions for stealing cars, and lessons on how to use disguises in order to avoid getting arrested while traveling from one jihadi hot spot to another.

But after hours upon hours of scrolling through the documents, it became clear that the ISIS laptop contains more than the typical propaganda and instruction manuals used by jihadists. The documents also suggest that the laptop’s owner was teaching himself about the use of biological weaponry, in preparation for a potential attack that would have shocked the world.

The information on the laptop makes clear that its owner is a Tunisian national named Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied chemistry and physics at two universities in Tunisia’s northeast. Even more disturbing is how he planned to use that education:
The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals.

“The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge,” the document states.

The document includes instructions for how to test the weaponized disease safely, before it is used in a terrorist attack. “When the microbe is injected in small mice, the symptoms of the disease should start to appear within 24 hours,” the document says.

The laptop also includes a 26-page fatwa, or Islamic ruling, on the usage of weapons of mass destruction. “If Muslims cannot defeat the kafir [unbelievers] in a different way, it is permissible to use weapons of mass destruction,” states the fatwa by Saudi jihadi cleric Nasir al-Fahd, who is currently imprisoned in Saudi Arabia. “Even if it kills all of them and wipes them and their descendants off the face of the Earth.”

When contacted by phone, a staff member at a Tunisian university listed on Muhammed’s exam papers confirmed that he indeed studied chemistry and physics there. She said the university lost track of him after 2011, however.

It is very difficult to weaponize any biological agent. You need a modern lab and a trained team of scientists to build a usuable weapon. But that doesn’t mean that the terrorists aren’t trying very hard to build one:

Nothing on the ISIS laptop, of course, suggests that the jihadists already possess these dangerous weapons. And any jihadi organization contemplating a bioterrorist attack will face many difficulties: Al Qaeda tried unsuccessfully for years to get its hands on such weapons, and the United States has devoted massive resources to preventing terrorists from making just this sort of breakthrough. The material on this laptop, however, is a reminder that jihadists are also hard at work at acquiring the weapons that could allow them to kill thousands of people with one blow.

“The real difficulty in all of these weapons … [is] to actually have a workable distribution system that will kill a lot of people,” said Magnus Ranstorp, research director of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College. “But to produce quite scary weapons is certainly within [the Islamic State’s] capabilities.”

As you can see, ISIS is not a bunch of sheepherders hiding in caves. Educated professionals are also flocking to their banner and you have to think they can accomplish just about anything any modern army does – including building weapons of mass destruction.

Islamists call us “Crusaders.” There have been many Crusades over the last millennium. Perhaps it is time for another one. It is already being fought from the Islamist’ side. If we are to survive as a people and culture, it is time to recognize that fact for what it is.

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Money laundering. Says it all.

 

 

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It is a new day

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…or is it?

http://dailysignal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014_06_10_CantorLost.jpg

Yesterday’s Virginia primary had a big upset. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA-7) lost his seat in the primary to challenger and economist Dave Brat. There are numerous articles being published this morning how that happened.

Some pundits say is was a Tea Party victory. In reality, it wasn’t, it was a grassroots victory assisted by some big-name conservatives like Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin. There is a difference.

The national Tea Party organizations like the Tea Party Express and AFP ignored the race assuming, so say some, that Cantor was a shoo-in. Apparently, so did many of Cantor’s supporters because they stayed home and didn’t vote. The turnout was very low, 65,000 out of a population of over a quarter-million.

Cantor’s flip-flops came home. He hadn’t had much opposition since he first won his seat in 2001. He was unopposed until 2010 and 2012. In 2012, he courted the Tea Party and won by 79%. Since then, Cantor turned, vilifying his former supporters and sucking up to the GOP establishment.

David Brat, the winner of the primary against Cantor wrote this statement in an article for the Daily Caller earlier this year.

Congressman Cantor’s profile has been erratic even by Washington standards — flitting from eager establishmentarian coat-holder to self-glorified “Young Gun” and back again. His loyalties, both upward and downward, have shifted in his eager embrace of the Ruling Class. Washington’s only genuine article of faith: maintaining control regardless of how that control affects the life of the folks back home.

Like so many other GOP Representatives, Cantor let ambition override his duty to his constituents. Being elected in a strong, conservative district is no guarantee for incumbents. (Are you listening Vicky Hartzler?) So far this year, we are seeing numerous successful challenges to the GOP establishment, Cantor is one of them.

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The worm turned…in California of all places!

Tenure for teachers in California received a severe blow in court this week. Judge Rolf M. Treu, Los Angeles Superior Court, found five California statues concerning teacher tenure unconstitutional.

Treu found that the statutes permit too many grossly incompetent teachers to remain in classrooms across the state — and found that those teachers shortchange their students by putting them months or years behind their peers in math and reading.

He ruled that such a system violates the state constitution’s guarantee that all children receive “basic equality of educational opportunity.” In a blunt, unsparing 16-page opinion, Treu compared his ruling to the seminal federal desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, decided 60 years ago last month. “The evidence is compelling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience,” Treu wrote. — Politico.

For decades the California educational system has been the prime example was what not to do. With test scores pummeling, teachers fought to block testing, lest it prove the abysmal results of their social engineering agenda.

Test scores should be used to review the effectiveness of education. Too many school districts—and state educational systems, would rather teach the tests than actually educate their students. Systems that do ‘teach the tests’ then blame the tests for their failures to educate. Long before this case, it was evident that local and state education systems were more interested in their own sinecure than teaching.

We will soon hear the howl of outraged teacher unions calling for this judge’s head for speaking truth. Once again, unions have been found to be the refuge of many incompetents. The good teachers will get tarred equally along with the bad. They have no other recourse…California is not a RIght-to-Work state. Teachers are required to join the teachers union if they want to teach.

But that was yesterday. Perhaps…just perhaps the students of California will have a new day now that it will be easier to be rid of the lazy and incompetents in the California school system.

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The Weekend in Review

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Most of the internet news today revolves around two subjects—the continuing catastrophe of Obamacare, more and more people lose their coverage, and the latest book about Chris Christie when he was being vetted for Veep by Romney in 2012.

Both of these stories are significant. However I like to explore outside the headline news if I can. While performing that search this morning, what did I find?  The U. S. Navy has a new ship today—the USS North Dakota, a Virginia Class nuclear attack sub.

Navy christens attack submarine North Dakota

Posted: Nov 02, 2013 11:17 AM CDT Updated: Nov 02, 2013 11:17 AM CDT

GROTON, Conn. (AP) – The U.S. Navy has christened its newest attack submarine, a $2.6 billion vessel that can launch cruise missiles, deliver special forces commandos and carry out surveillance over areas at land and sea.

It is the first Navy vessel to carry the name North Dakota in nearly a century. Saturday’s christening coincides with the 124th anniversary of North Dakota becoming the 39th state of the Union.

With the smash of a champagne bottle against its hull, the 377-foot-long nuclear submarine was officially named North Dakota at the Groton shipyard of sub builder Electric Boat. It will become USS North Dakota and officially join the fleet when it is commissioned in May.

The submarine is the 11th in the Virginia class of ships, which have capabilities that allow them to perform better in shallow water than other subs.

It is significant that we have this new submarine. China is expanding their deep-water navy at a furious pace and adding more nuclear subs with missile capability at a time Obama continues to emasculate our military.

On the political sidelines today are two stories about Rove and McConnell attacking fellow ‘Pubs while supporting democrats. In one article from the American Spectator, Mark Levin accuses Karl Rove of supporting democrat McAulliife against Virginia Atty General Ken Cuccinnelli.

Levin: RINO’s, Rove, Push For McAuliffe Win

By on 11.4.13 @ 10:09AM

Leave it to Mark Levin to say exactly what many conservatives have believed but not said.

The RINO wing of the GOP — and Karl Rove specifically — do not want a Ken Cuccinnelli victory in Virginia.

In this corner we have believed this for some time. In its own way this reminds of the 1980 presidential race. The RINO in question than was one of Ronald Reagan’s GOP primary opponents — Illinois Congressman John Anderson. Anderson lost resoundingly to Reagan in the primaries, but as usual picked up a core of fans in the liberal media.

With Reagan now the nominee — and with Establishment Republicans like ex-President Gerald Ford having gone on record to insist Reagan was too “extreme” to ever win a national election — Anderson refused to support Reagan. Instead, he set out to make the claim that Reagan couldn’t win a self-fulfilling prophecy. Anderson decided to run for president in the fall election as a third party candidate, a deliberate attempt to sabotage Reagan. The bid failed, Reagan won in a 44-state landslide, humiliating both incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and Anderson.

But the message was delivered. Establishment Republicans demand party unity — unless they lose to a conservative. Ken Cuccinelli — the man who led the fight against Obamacare — is now gaining rapidly on Terry McAuliffe in the Virginia governor’s race, in no small part because Virginia voters are losing their health insurance because of Obamacare.

I could go on here – and on and on. But Mark Levin has done such a superb job of making this case that I thought this Monday before the Virginia election he should speak for himself here.

So below, Levin on the RINOs, Rove and what is really going on in Virginia:

The RINOs want a Terry McAuliffe victory in Virginia.

Many in the GOP establishment, from major fundraisers and consultants, to GOP officeholders such as the GOP Lt. Gov and mayor of Virginia Beach, have either trashed Attorney General Ken Cuccinnelli or endorsed McAuliffe outright. The GOP national machine has done next to nothing for Cuccinnelli. And GOP bag man, Karl Rove, is all over Fox without a word of support for Cuccinnelli, while he schemes and whispers behind the scenes against conservatives nationwide.

Having tried to sabotage Cuccinnelli’s candidacy from the start, these GOP actors are hoping for a Cuccinnelli loss and a big Chris Christie win (built on a Huey Long style of politics) to make the case that only big government Republicans can win and limited government, constitutional conservatives, such as Tea Party activists, are too extreme to prevail. They’ve already written the script.

In fact, the GOP establishment’s attacks on the Tea Party, which is an obvious assault on conservatives and conservatism generally, are increasingly difficult to distinguish from Obama and the Left’s attacks on the same folks. The ruling class in Washington is clearly united in one respect: to wipe out conservative resistance to their corruption, cronyism, and nation-killing policies.

Keep an eye on RINO columnists like Washington Compost mouthpiece Jennifer Rubin, as well as Rove and other commentators on cable TV, who have and will continue to reveal it all through their myopic ruling class lenses in the days ahead. As I said, their propaganda is written and ready to spread. And they’ll be given soap box after soap box to spin away. 

Meanwhile, despite it all, including tens of millions of dollars in relentless leftwing smear ads funded by truly extreme groups hoping to beat Cuccinnelli and turn Virginia into Hillary Clinton territory in 2016, much of the big GOP money stays on the sidelines. Better to try to clear the field of conservatives who threaten the ruling class and its preferred nominees. Better to protect the RINO investment in big government than beat Hillary. The conservative grassroots is to be crushed and dispirited.

So, that’s the game. Still, recent polls show Cuccinnelli closing fast. This makes the Left and RINOs very nervous. The rest of us are cheering, and hopefully helping, the underdog. We identify with him, not the sleazy McAuliffe, his radical donors, and the ruling class. We won’t retreat. We won’t give up. We will fight for the last vote. What a sweet victory it would be! But make no mistake, this is one of many, many battles to come, win, lose, or recount.

What these people will never understand is that for most of us this isn’t about politics per se but preserving what’s left of our society, Constitution, and individual free will. It is about our families and our way of life. It is about who we are as Americans. We are not surrendering to this because we will not sit quietly while the ruling class continues to destroy our nation. We fight against growing oppression as many did before us. And we will fight like hell through the constitutional process. We will continue to learn, we will take names, and we will battle these people and groups at every turn, and in every election. We are not going anywhere.

And as the ruling class catastrophe continues to unfold, as with Obamacare, the monstrous debt, and suffocating regulations, and with the cycle of unsustainable spending and confiscatory taxing, the coerciveness of the ruling class and its federal agencies will only intensify. There will be a commensurate backlash.

The sleeping giant that is the American people is only beginning to awaken. It is only a matter of time until more people are roused to join this all important constitutional fight. We fight to hold Virginia today and we fight on thereafter.

There is another article, via this link, that reports the same events—Rove and establishment ‘Pubs supporting democrat McAuliffe.

The other story is how McConnell, and others, are attacking the Senate Conservative Fund, created by Jim DeMint, using the same tactics democrats used, and failed, against Rush Limbaugh.

Mitch McConnell Embraces the Anti-Rush Limbaugh Playbook

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  November 4th, 2013 at 03:30 AM

For the last year, the left has engaged in an organized campaign to drive Rush Limbaugh off the air. Knowing they cannot go after Rush Limbaugh directly, the left has launched repeated boycotts against any advertisers who dare advertise while Rush Limbaugh is on. Consequently, some advertisers decided to stop advertising at all on political talk radio, depriving the genre as a whole of resources.

And it still hasn’t hurt Rush Limbaugh.

Mitch McConnell has decided to embrace the same strategy in his war against the Senate Conservatives Fund. He can’t attack the Jim DeMint created Senate Conservatives Fund outright, so instead he will launch an all out war against anyone who does business with the Senate Conservatives Fund.

This story, from the New York Times, is intriguing. McConnell has demanded, via the National Republican Senatorial Committee, that anyone who wants GOP support stop hiring Jamestown Associates. The organization is used by a number of Republican elected leaders and candidates. In fact, Senator Ted Cruz uses Jamestown Associates. So does Governor Chris Christie. For that matter, Senators Marco Rubio, Roy Blunt, Mark Kirk, Dan Coats, and Pat Toomey have all benefited from Jamestown Associates. Outside groups hired Jamestown Associates to make independent expenditures on behalf of those Senators. [edit: JA did not directly work for those Senators, but handled independent expenditures on their behalf]

But McConnell is perfectly happy destroying a private company his Senate Republican colleagues use because Jamestown Associates also helps the Senate Conservatives Fund. And the Senate Conservatives Fund just endorsed Matt Bevin against Mitch McConnell.

McConnell would rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven. He’d rather be minority leader, than have a Republican Senate majority without him. Updated: From the comments by Darin H: “Apparently McConnell would rather serve in Hell than even bother with Heaven.”

It’s all the sadder still in that McConnell worked against Ted Cruz’s effort to defund Obamacare. 280,000 Kentuckians are losing their insurance. But McConnell would rather drive a private enterprise out of business than fight for those Kentuckians losing their health insurance. If only McConnell had put as much energy into stopping Obamacare as he has stopping a business that does work with the Senate Conservatives Fund.

Outside observers have listed the Kentucky Senate race as a toss up. It does not lean McConnell’s way. This is very important to note. This is very important to understand. The polling in the race is terrible for McConnell. Charitably it breaks even against an empty suit of a Democrat. McConnell has already spent over $6 million. He is the weakest Republican incumbent up for re-election in 2014. Were it another Senator, McConnell would be pressuring him to retire.

…

Mitch McConnell is the thug in the bar who controls through intimidation. He badgers, bullies, threatens, and cajoles others into giving him his way. Because of his position, most yield to his intimidation. And when others do not yield, he goes after their associates.

But there is a new paradigm of empowered grassroots activists at work. They are not intimidated. They will not be silenced. They do not fear McConnell. They hate him and want him out of office. McConnell has always relied on an alliance of staffers who’ve moved to K Street to get rich. He gives them access, they make lots of money, then they return money to his campaign coffers. It is a loyalty that extends to a lobbyist class now attacking the Senate Conservatives Fund because their gravy train may be ending. But it is a loyalty that does not exist at the grassroots level within the conservative movement or even Kentucky.

The only tactic McConnell can respond with is driving private businesses into the ground if they dare help those opposed to him — no matter who else they help. Senate Republicans and challengers in the races to be decided next year need to understand the bottom line here — Mitch McConnell is making it the NRSC’s job preservation of Mitch McConnell, damn the rest of the candidates. Don’t believe me? Where are the other groups the NRSC is blackballing? Right now, the only ones being blackballed are the ones who are on the opposite side of Mitch McConnell in Kentucky.

There’s more at the Red State website. Go here to read the entire article. McConnell, like fellow RINO senator, Roy Blunt, must go.

In closing today, here’s a tidbit on what capitalism can do if left alone by government and regulation.

Audacious wildcatters trigger fracking revolution

By MICHAEL BARONE | NOVEMBER 1, 2013 AT 6:00 PM

Capitalism, said economist Joseph Schumpeter seven decades ago, is a process of creative destruction. New inventions, new processes, new methods of organization lead to the creation of new profitable and efficient businesses and to the destruction of old ones unable to compete.

There are few accounts of the creative side of Schumpeter’s phrase more vivid than Fracking: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, a new book by Wall Street Journal writer Gregory Zuckerman.

For years politicians, policy experts and corporate executives have tried to reshape American energy policy and development. They have operated on a series of assumptions seemingly based on experience and logic.

One is that oil and gas production in the United States was inevitably in decline. Another is that we can move toward energy independence by increasing use of renewables like wind and solar energy.

Those assumptions seem to have been refuted in the course of this young century by a group of audacious outsiders who have made great fortunes — and in some cases lost them.

The Frackers tells their story. It tells the story of George Mitchell, son of a Greek immigrant, who was convinced that hydraulic fracturing — fracking — could bring in vast amounts of natural gas from the Barnett Shale in north Texas.

It tells the story of Aubrey McClendon and Tom Ward, whose Chesapeake firm bought mineral leases atop vast shale deposits, becoming America’s No. 2 gas producer but overexpanding disastrously.

It tells the story of Harold Hamm, a sharecropper’s son who rose from picking cotton to a $12 billion fortune by prying oil out of the Bakken shale of North Dakota.

And it tells the story of Charif Souki, Lebanese immigrant and proprietor of the Los Angeles restaurant where Nicole Simpson ate and Ronald Goldman served their last meals, who charmed others into financing a liquid natural gas export terminal in Louisiana.

…

Go, follow the link above and see what some entrepreneurs and capitalist are doing—in spite of government and the EPA.

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The Crazy Years

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No, the title isn’t about the years of Obama’s tyranny. It is taken from Robert A. Heinlein’s future history. In his timeline, the period of the Crazy Years started in the 1960s and continued through 2000. Heinlein was correct when this period started. He was incorrect stopping it in 2000. The Crazy Years are still with us.

RAH_Future_History

Today’s post isn’t about Heinlein…although he is always a good topic, being a “neighbor” and all. He lived in Nevada, MO. I met him twice in the years just before his death, but that’s another story.

There are two stories in the news today that illustrate today’s post title.

HURT: Anti-gun zealots going ‘cuckoo’ from coast to coast

By Charles Hurt, Tuesday, February 19, 2013

In New York, they are rounding up the crazies. In Seattle, they want armed police invading the homes of law-abiding gun owners for annual “inspections.” In Denver, plans are under way to levy new taxes on gun owners to raise millions for the state’s strained coffers.

If this sounds like science fiction from the Cold War era or grainy reels of the Gestapo in the run-up to World War II, then you have not been reading the papers.

The column continues at the website and I urge you to read it. It appears the liberal group-think follows wherever they go. The Colorado metro areas have been receiving California and Westcoast refugees for a couple of decades, more since the liberal policies there has been dragging those state down into the sewer.  When they migrated to Colorado, they brought their groupthink with them thinking the policies that failed in their former states would work in Colorado.

They don’t.

Now, the metro clusters around Denver, Boulder and Ft Collins down to Colorado Springs, controls the entire state. The 2012 election placed libs in control of both state houses and the Governor’s mansion. Those same libs immediately began their march to “enlighten” Colorado, to do a make-over of the state into California’s image. They’ve legalized marijuana and this week voted to enact a series of infringements on gun-owners.

In Washington state, liberal democrats proposed new gun-control laws that violated the 4th Amendment of the US Constitution as well Article 1, Section 7 of their own state constitution. In essence, the proposed bill would grant Law Enforcement Officers the right to enter any domicile, at will and without warrants, to “inspect the storage of firearms.” The law would eliminate the protections granted citizens by both Constitutions.

The second example of craziness is the article below. It documents the craziness occurring nation-wide in our schools. The concept of “Zero-tolerance” is the epitome of stupidity. On one hand, progressives preach moral relevance while claiming moral decision based on our Christian-Judeo heritage corrupt, mean-spirited, irrelevant and hateful.

The column below appeared in The American Thinker today. It documents events occurring in schools that would have been unthinkable fifty years ago before the progressive infestation in education. What was morally valid fifty years ago is still valid today. These occurrences of “Zero-tolerance” simply provides educators an out, an escape when difficult situations arise. Zero-tolerance removes risk when administrators enforce their own moral equivalences—agendas contrary to the morality and desires of those they supposedly serve.

The article below is written by a home/private school advocate. That, however, doesn’t invalidate his premise.

Schools Jump the Shark

By Michael Geer, February 20, 2013

Around the ranch we usually mutter and shake our heads, but now they’ve gone too far.

Public school officials at Heritage Middle School in Meridian, Idaho put the school on ‘lockdown’ because a teenage boy was seen ‘roaming the halls’ with a … ready? … a folding military style … shovel.

A shovel.

No report filed on whether it was a high capacity shovel. Might have been high capacity in the hands of Big John, loading sixteen tons. Certainly not in the soft un-calloused hands of a school bureaucrat.

A middle school teenage boy was spotted in the halls with a ‘suspicious’ object and the school “resource officer” leapt into action. Only trouble was the boy was on an errand for a teacher who had forgotten the folding entrenching tool, meaning shovel. A prop for a history lesson on WWII.

Local police said no charges would be filed. So the kid’s got that going for him, which is nice.

Meanwhile, quoting the KTVB article:

 … Nearby Rocky Mountain High School, Paramount Elementary, Prospect Elementary, Sawtooth Middle School were put in “shelter in place” mode, which means students weren’t allowed to leave those schools while police responded to Heritage Middle School. Exline says those schools took the measure as a precaution.

Dear God. Whatever happened to a proud and resilient people who took pride in the phrase “One Riot. One Ranger“? Are our public schools really captained by idiots and Peter Principle bureaucrats? Has it really come to this, that a boy with a shovel is a threat to the community?

Yes.

There’s the boy who brought kombucha tea to school in his own lunchbox.

The six year old Maryland boy suspend for making gun-hand gesture and saying … gasp … Pow!

The Hyannis School District’s threat to rid themselves of a boy, age five, who made a gun out of Legos!

The Arizona high school freshman suspended for being in possession a blankety blank picture of a gun.

A Loveland, Colorado 2nd Grader playing at being hero during recess in a make believe game of saving his friends by throwing an imaginary grenade into a box.

(take the blood pressure pill, Geer)

The five year old suspended in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania and actually accused of being a terrorist for playing with her ‘Hello Kitty Bubble Gun’. No, I did not make that up. Wait, I typed that wrong. Suspended for talking about playing with her bubble gun.

Melody Valentin was searched, harassed, interrogated, chastised, yelled at by school officials, ridiculed by her classmates and suspended for the crime of having a piece of paper with her that sorta kinda resembled a gun. Quote: “He [school official] yelled at me and said I shouldn’t have brought the gun to school and I kept telling him it was a paper gun, but he wouldn’t listen.” She was even called a murderer.

Paper bullets, anyone? A grown man yelling at a little girl, making her cry in public? He needs to meet Trace Adkins.

A Waco, Texas four year old boy suspended for hugging a teacher’s aide.

A San Diego teen suspended for bringing his Bible to school, and the horror of sharing his faith while at school.

Alyssa McKinley thought her Monument, Colorado friend was having an asthma attack and shared her asthma inhaler with her. That’s how they got thrown out of school. For an act of kindness.

Suspended for taking a picture of a teacher napping on the job. Yep, Mustang, Oklahoma. Not the teacher. The student.

And the infamous Jello suspension. Don’t do Jello, kids. Not in school anyway.

Yes, being employed in the teaching professions is hard work, and Lord knows these brave men and women get little to no help from parents who treat school like a Government Baby Sitting Entitlement Program. But c’mon. Be serious.

A West Michigan school district is seriously considering raising teacher salaries to $100,000 in order … and I quote … “attract the best talent”.

How about we start with school administrators and their minions on down to the teacher being tested for common sense, traditional values and hard headed character? You know, like the Rev. Martin Luther King wanted? Content of character? Instead of The Indomitable Fortress of Rule-Gods and their Holy Book of Ever Expanding Rules? 

For pity’s sake, even Wikipedia now has an entry for The War On Kids. You can go here to see what Wiki is referencing.

Here is my analysis. Not American Thinker’s analysis. My analysis. The war on kids, authoritarian bullies sucking up massive paychecks on our dime, the impenetrable wall of ideological ignorance married to an intensely juvenile and callow state of mind fostered and nurtured by American Higher Education has produced a hell children must not be exposed to. The active propaganda and literal Pavlovian behavioral training that goes on in public schools to force and reinforce a Progressive agenda is disgusting at best and terrifying in reality. If they know how to rewire a child’s brain in pursuit of reading skills, do I need posit the next obvious postulate?

Expelling a child for supposed gun related issues at 4, 5 even 6 years old is behavioral modification taken to the level of brainwashing.

Get your children out of public schools. Do not sacrifice your children. Get out now. Because John D. Rockefeller meant it when he said “I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.”

Why do I mention John D.? Because it was John D.’s money through the Trust that founded the National Education Association. The largest labor union in America.

In 1936, the National Education Association stated its position, from which they have never wavered; “We stand for socializing the individual.”

The NEA in its “Policy For American Education” stated,

“The major problem of education in our times arises out of the fact that we live in a period of fundamental social change. In the new democracy [we were a Republic] education must share in the responsibility of giving purpose and direction to social change. The major function of the school is the social orientation of the individual. Education must operate according to a well-formulated social policy.”

Paul Haubner, specialist for the NEA, tells us,

“The schools cannot allow parents to influence the kind of values-education their children receive in school; that is what is wrong with those who say there is a universal system of values. Our goals are incompatible with theirs. We must change their values.”

“Education for international understanding involves the use of education as a force for conditioning the will of the people.” – National Education Association, Education for International Understanding in American Schools, page 33 (1948)

“Schools will become clinics whose purpose is to provide individualized, psycho-social treatment for the student, and teachers must become psycho-social therapists.”- National Education Association, “Education for the ’70s,” Today’s Education, January 1969

“Far too many people in America, both in and out of education, look upon the elementary school as a place to learn reading, writing and arithmetic.” – Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, National Education Association Yearbook, 1947

“The NEA’s ultimate goal is to tap the legal, political and economic powers of the U.S. Congress. We want leaders and staff with sufficient clout that they may roam the halls of Congress and collect votes to re-order the priorities of the United States of America.” – Terry Herndon, NEA Executive Director, 1973

“We are the biggest potential political striking force [union] in this country, and we are determined to control the direction of [public] education.” – NEA President Catherine Barrett (1972)

“In the struggle to establish an adequate world government, the teacher can do much to prepare the hearts & minds of children for global understanding and cooperation…. At the very heart of all the agencies which will assure the coming of world government must stand the school, the teacher, and the organized profession.” – The Teacher & World Government by former editor of the NEA Journal, Joy Elmer Morgan, 1946

“NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power, and we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year.” – Bob Chanin, NEA General Counsel

“I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.” – John D. Rockefeller, created the General Education Board (GEB) in 1903 to dispense Rockefeller funds to the National Education Association.

You serve up your child to a godlessness always roaming  in the world since the days of child sacrifice to Moloch. I beg you, get your children out of public schools.

I cannot say more. When our local schools attempt idiocies as those above, it’s time for heads to roll. The first heads MUST be the administrators who allow such retaliation against students, the second are those teachers who report and initiate the retaliation and the third set of heads to roll are school boards who allow such acts or when reported, refuse to remove those teachers and administrators. School boards are the representatives of the parents—those whose taxes finance the schools, and through those parents the children. School boards are not rubber-stamps of the NEA/AFT nor any education union.

It is our right, as voters and taxpayers, to insure the education of our children—education, not political, progressive indoctrination.

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Protected, Part II

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A few weeks ago I wrote a post titled, Protected. That post was a story about my grade school principal who drew his .45 when attacked by three adults at my school’s entrance.  There’s a similar episode in this morning’s news. This time it was in Atlanta where an armed guard disarmed a student shooting with a gun.  Those students were protected, too—all survived.

By KATE BRUMBACK, The Associated Press, First Published Jan 31 2013 12:58 pm

Atlanta • A student opened fire at his middle school Thursday afternoon, wounding a 14-year-old in the neck before an armed officer working at the school was able to get the gun away, police said.

…

The armed resource officer who took the gun away was off-duty and at the school, but police didn’t release details on him or whether he is regularly at Price. Since 20 children and six adults were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December, calls for armed officers in every school have resonated across the country.

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The wounded boy was taken “alert, conscious and breathing” to Grady Memorial Hospital, said police spokesman Carlos Campos. He was expected to be released Thursday night.

The wounded student was fortunate. His wounds were not severe. He was more fortunate there was an armed adult at the school who stopped the shooting spree quickly.

I heard about this episode on the radio yesterday. The MSM pushed the story all afternoon.  None of their reporting mentioned the presence of the armed guard nor his role in stopping the shootings. In fact, I can find no mention of the guard at all until this morning, first from the Salt Lake Tribune and later by others who picked up the Tribune story.

And, what is the MSM doing? They continue to push for the removal of weapons in schools. What have their policies created in our schools? Victim zones.

South Dakota has approved a bill in their House to allow teachers to be armed and carry at schools. I think they are the first state to reach this step.  My local state Rep. Rick Brattin, is a co-signer on a bill to do the same in Missouri.  That bill is still in committee. It is likely to pass the House but has uncertain prospects in Missouri’s Senate.

Our children used to be protected—until liberal education policies made them vulnerable and placed our children at risk. Locked doors and metal detectors fail.  There were both at the Atlanta shooting and the “authorities” still don’t know how the shooter was able to by-pass both. He was stopped only by that armed guard.

It’s time to return to those policies that worked. They worked before the days of Political Correctness and the so-called progressive educational policies. Those same policies that once protected our children can protect them again. All we need is the will to stand up against the NEA, the AFT, and the state and federal liberals who concoct such insane policies.

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