This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Society

  • Bob Herbert; the ugliest side of racebaiting

    You’ve probably already read the drivel that Bob Herbert stole his weekly check with this week called The Ugly Side of the GOP. He begins his ignorant, valueless rant yapping about giving a Congressional vote to the District of Columbia;

    Enough is enough. Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is.

    The Republicans are anti-black because they won’t give the District of Columbia a Congressional vote. The District is 65% black – that means there’s 175,000 whites and hispanics in the city that don’t gt a Congressional vote either. Does racist Herbert say a word about that? Nope, the Republicans didn’t change the law because they want to disenfranchise Blacks – most of those disenfranchised moved from a place where they had a Congressional vote to the District where they knew they wouldn’t have a Congressional vote.

    By moving 5 miles in any direction, a resident of the District could get a Congressional vote if it meant that much to them. So the residents of the District of Columbia choose to not have a Congressional vote.

    The only people who need a Congressional vote for the District are the politicians (most of whom are Black – so that must be the people Herbert is concerned about) who want to rape the American taxpayers. That’s the truth – the politicians in the District whip the masses into a frenzy with intellectually bankrupt platitudes to enrich themselves.

    I suppose Herbert blames the Republicans for Katrina, too, instead of the Democrat governor and mayor (a Black) who stood at a distance (in his comfy hotel room in Baton Rouge) and left the people of New Orleans to their fate despite pleas from the Republicans to evacuate the city.

    Someone should remind Herbert that it was a Republican Senate and President that enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1957 that formed the Civil Rights Commission. It was also Republicans that passed President Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964 despite Democrat opposition.

    He also complains about “states’ rights” – that Ronald Reagan announced he was for states’ rights. I remind Herbert, despite his misuse of the word, the Constitution guarentees states’ rights in the 10th Amendment. Herbert should read it sometimes.

    He goes on (and on and on…);

    At the same time that the Republicans were killing Congressional representation for D.C. residents, the major G.O.P. candidates for president were offering a collective slap in the face to black voters nationally by refusing to participate in a long-scheduled, nationally televised debate focusing on issues important to minorities.

    Why should they waste their time addressing issues that Democrats (like Grand Kleagle Robert Byrd) have been paying lipservice to for decades. That’s all racebaiting thugs like Herbert care about – they don’t want solutions to problems, they just want someone to feel sorry for them and someone to tell them how helpless they are, and throw money at them. The Democrats do that well – other people’s money.

    Blacks have disenfranchised themselves – they bought into the Democrat rhetoric and they follow Democrats like sheep – for scraps. And then they demonize Blacks who choose to become Republicans. The Democrats take them for granted and Republicans just don’t work for their vote – because it’s a lost cause.

    And clowns like Herbert, who are in a position to change the way Blacks are treated in the political system, instead take the easy route and run to “Massa” and point out the fieldhands that are sneaking off the plantation.

  • Protest at National Press Club tele-luncheon

    A small group of protesters gathered outside of the National Press Club on 14th and F Streets in Washington DC today, a few blocks from the White House, to protest members of the National Press Club lending a forum to Iranian cheif thug Ahmadinejad.

    There were probably two dozen and they were able to attract some minor media attention (outside of the NPC, though, it seems they’d attract more) while members of the National Press Club were listening to the Iranian President’s 45-minute speech. It was supposed to be followed by 30-minutes of questions from the Press Club, but given Ahmadinejad’s responses the night before on 60-minutes, I suspect that each of his “answers” began with the question “Are you a Zionist?”

    Regardless, here are the pictures.

    They were the politest protesters I’ve ever seen in DC – but they still endured some insults from this guy and the guy whose back you see on the otherside of the door. The comments were something about “why don’t they protest Abbas” or some such goalpost movement. When I got my camera out to photo him, the guy who insulted the protesters turned tail and ran inside the Press Club.

    The security guard had a very boring day.

    Here’s a video of some of the press coverage of the protest. I suppose the members of the press club went in through the parking garage because I didn’t see anyone enter at this door or at the other door where I kept my vigil by the ashtray. It was a small protest by very well-behaved protesters – something the media habitually avoids.

    Kesher Talk and Atlas Shrugs have pictures of the protest in New York at Ground Zero. Little Green Footballs discovers that DailyKos diarist thinks Ahmadinejad sounds “entirely too reasonable”. Michele Malkin has the whole “Mahmoudapalooza“. Hot Air on the “no gays in Iraq” comment. Ace of Spades has Republican candidates’ reactions to the Columbia farce.

    A Columbo-Americana’s Perspective had the NYT Live blog if you missed the whole thing like I did. She also has more pictures of the signs – Kate’s my protest buddy – she keeps me in line and out of jail.

  • Ahmadinejad short and stout

    Yes, it’s all about the Iranian President these days. The US is finding more evidence that we’re already at war with Iran while their head of state can’t summon the courage to admit it;

    Military spokesman Rear Adm. Mark Fox said U.S. troops were continuing to find Iranian-supplied weaponry including the Misagh 1, a portable surface-to-air missile that uses an infrared guidance system.

    Other advanced Iranian weaponry found in Iraq includes the RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade, 240 mm rockets and armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, Fox said.

    Iran has denied U.S. allegations that it is smuggling weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq, a denial that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” aired Sunday.

    “We don’t need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity,” said Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York Sunday to attend the U.N. General Assembly. “The insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests.”

    We were at war with bin Laden for a decade before anyone recognized it, too. Kat-Missouri at Ace of Spades thinks this is the final confrontation that Ahmadinejad has been hoping for. Boker Tov, Boulder! says NYT banishes Ahmadinejad to the Metro section and quotes Ahmadinejad hatin’ in his own words.

    Meantime, the Iranians have shut down the border between Iran and the Kurds;

    Iran closed major border crossings with northern Iraq on Monday to protest the U.S. detention of an Iranian official the military accused of weapons smuggling, a Kurdish official said.

    At least four border gates have been closed and one remains open, the governor of the Kurdish province of Sulaimaniyah, Dana Ahmed Majeed, told The Associated Press. The move threatens the economy of Iraq’s northern region – one of the country’s few success stories.

    In Tehran, the public relations department in Iran’s Interior Ministry said no decision had been taken to shut the border.

    But Kurdish authorities said the Iranians began shutting down the crossing points late Sunday near the border towns of Banjiwin, Haj Omran, Halabja and Khanaqin.

    The closings came four days after U.S. troops arrested an Iranian official during a raid on a hotel in Sulaimaniyah, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad.

    The Iranians are so untrustworthy that they can’t even admit when they close the border – something people can see with their own eyes.

    Yesterday I linked up a Columbia students’ plea for Ahmadinejad to speak, but I wonder how those same students feel about the Iranian government closing down an Iranian website critical of the little fella?

    Iran’s judiciary has sealed off the offices of a popular news Web site critical of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies after journalists continued to update it despite official filtering, the Web site said.

    Rights groups and diplomats say there is a broad crackdown on dissenting voices in the Islamic state, which is under growing Western pressure over its disputed nuclear programme. The authorities deny such moves, saying they allow free speech.

    Blocking access to Baztab.com earlier this year was seen as part of the clampdown. Updates to the Web site, which is published in English and Farsi, were still available to Internet users outside Iran until the offices were sealed.

    The last item on the Web site carried the headline: “The wish of the presidential office was realised and Baztab’s offices were sealed off”. The site, when accessed via a link outside Iran, indicated it was last updated on Sept. 23

    Kamangir reports more on Baztab and adds;

     It is quite hillarious to remember Ahmadinejad’s claim that “Complete freedom exists in Iran and all individuals and groups can express their ideas

    He claims a right to speak out against our president and our policies in our own country, but denies his own people the right to do the same. And just as with Chavez, the American left defends behavior from the Iranian government that would send them into hyperdrive if it happened to them here.

    The Washington Times editorial board suggests questions that Columbia University students should ask the Iranian President;

     But in the event that anyone at Columbia seriously decides to challenge him, it would be nice to ask him things like: Why have you called the Holocaust a “myth” and a “sheer historic lie?” Why did you invite “scholars” like former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard David Duke to Iran last year for a Holocaust-denial conference? A senior adviser to you and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has talked about a strategy for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization “by means of our suicide operations or by means of missiles.” Is this part of your government’s message of “peace?”

    Of course, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the answers – nor will I wait for anyone allowed into the “forum” to summon the testicular fortitude to ask the questions. The Wall Street Journal even reports that some low-profile Democrats are miffed at Columbia University offering the forum to the little terrorist;

    But critics like Christine Quinn, Democratic speaker of the New York City Council, counter that the prestige of the institution offers the Iranian leader too high a perch. “He can say whatever he wants on any street corner — but should not be given center stage at one of New York’s most prestigious centers of higher education,” Ms. Quinn wrote Mr. Bollinger in a letter last week.

    Some lawmakers bemoan that Mr. Ahmadinejad and his delegation were even granted a visa to come to New York, a step the U.S., as host to the U.N., is essentially obliged to take.

    And the Republican New York Speaker of the Assembly threatened to cut off Columbia from the state teat;

    In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia’s insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would consider reducing capital aid and other financial assistance to the school.

    Israel Matzav responds to the CU Alumni Association. Judith at Kesher Talk has the scivvy on today’s protests and a couple of photos of some of Ahmadinejad’s supporters here. Gateway Pundit reports that anti-Ahmadinejad ads don’t get the same discount rate at the NY Times as anti-Petraeus ads.

    Well, I’ll be in front of the National Press Club this morning where there’s supposed to be a protest against Ahmadinejad’s tele-luncheon (I’m guessing it’ll be in the club’s First Amendment Room on the top floor – if that’s not enough irony for you). The NPC website says their conference will start at noon- Ahmadinejad will speak for a half hour and take 45 minutes of questions from the assemblage. I can only imagine what those questions will be. Sort of like the 60 Minutes interview last night (I couldn’t watch the interview – the Giants were busy holding back the ‘Skins at the two yard line);

    Wallace tried to ask him about Hezbollah’s use of missiles, rockets furnished by Iran, but he wanted to talk about Israel’s attacks with American bombs.

    “The laser-guided bombs that have been given to the Zionists and they’re targeting the shelter of defenseless children and women,” the president said.

    “Who supports Hezbollah?” Wallace asked. “Who has given Hezbollah hundreds of millions of dollars for years? Who has given Hezbollah Iranian-made missiles and rockets that is making — that are making all kinds …” he continued as he was interrupted.

    “Are you the representative of the Zionist regime? Or a journalist?” Ahmadinejad asked Wallace.

    “I’m a journalist. I am a journalist,” Wallace replied.

    “This is not journalism, sir. Hezbollah is a popular organization in Lebanon, and they are defending their land,” the president said. “They are defending their own houses. And, according to the charter of the United Nations, every person has the right to defend his house.

    “What I’m saying is that the killing of innocents is reprehensible. And making this — the displacement of people and making them refugees, again, is reprehensible,”

    Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs has more on the ’60 Minutes’ interview. 

    Because I’m not a member of the NPC nor an “accedited” member of the press, I’ll just be standing on the corner taking pictures and reporting back to ya’all. Ya know, like the accedited media should be doing. I expect I should have pictures up by about 2PM today if anyone is interested.

  • Columbia U; Ahmadinejad’s just an idea guy

    Well, we’ve just watched political correctness jump the shark. Columbia University’s President, this Bollinger guy, through the vocal chords of this Dean John Coatsworth fellow has declared that Columbia would have given a forum to a 1939 Adolph Hitler. But the difference between a 1939 Hitler and a 2007 Ahmadinejad is that the 2007 Ahmadinejad has already been responsible for American deaths – would Columbia University lend a forum to a 1944 Hitler? That is the appropriate comparison.

    Regardless, the little knucklehead from that backwards sandpit will speak, if he doesn’t show up at Columbia, he’ll teleconference to a National Press Club luncheon. Whatever will that accomplish? Who in the National Press Club thinks that anything newsworthy will come out of the opportunity for the Iranian President and former kidnapping terrorist to speak to members of the National Press Club?

    In fact, what will be accomplished, what will be newsworthy or beneficial to any student at Columbia University from listening to the half-pint soccer star wannabe? Even when Columbia University allows a new opinion, a legitimate opinion, a US opinion contrary to what students might hear in their sequestered university surroundings, is presented, they reject it outright because of their tiny closed minds and they won’t allow others to hear the opposing opinion.

    So why would Columbia University allow Ahmadinejad speak? To stick their finger in the eye of the Estabishment. The Man. The Bush Administration. Whyelse? It’s fashionable…New York City, Columbia University fashionable.

    In today’s Washington Times, Robert Stacy McCain writes;

    At Columbia, more than 800 students have joined an online group organizing a protest against the appearance by the Iranian president, who has called for the destruction of Israel.

    University President Lee Bollinger has said the Ahmadinejad invitation is in keeping with “Columbia’s long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate.”

    Well, unless it’s the Minute Men or John McCain, of course. The Times’ McCain reminds us of the hypocrisy;

    While Columbia is going ahead with its plans to host Mr. Ahmadinejad, the University of California rescinded its invitation to another prominent figure — former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

    Mr. Summers, who drew worldwide attention for his comments that biological differences may partly explain the dearth of women among the very highest achieving scientists, was supposed to speak about pursuing academic excellence to university chancellors and the UC system’s board of regents at an informal dinner last week. But the invitation angered some faculty at UC’s Davis campus, who circulated a petition opposing Mr. Summers’ visit and collected more than 300 signatures.

    “Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the University community and to the people of California,” the petition reads.

    But Ahmadinejad is strong defender of women’s rights, isn’t he? Well, as long as they wear the clothes he approves and they don’t mind being stoned for their own rape. Seems to me that the NOW gals would have something to say about allowing this goofball to have a forum.

    And what could he possibly say that has value? We already know he has an ignorant world view;

    Ahmadinejad said the American people have been denied “correct information,” and his visit will give them a chance to hear a different voice, the official IRNA news agency reported.

    “The United States is a big and important country with a population of 300 million. Due to certain issues, the American people in the past years have been denied correct and clear information about global developments and are eager to hear different opinions,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by IRNA as saying.

    And what “incorrect information” have we been given?

    Ahmadinejad, who has called the Holocaust “a myth,” encouraged the destruction of Israel and supported terrorists in Iraq….

    If I met a guy on the street and he expressed those views, I’d dismiss him as a crackpot and walk away – but we give foreigners a special forum when they express those views;

    Ahmadinejad is using America with his visit as a propaganda tool, Brad Blakeman of Freedom’s Watch told FOX News.

    “He’s using America, he’s using our democracy as a tool against us,” Blakeman said.

    Exactly – and that’s why Columbia is giving him a forum in which to propagate this basura. It’s how northeast liberals assuage their guilt over their own wealth and padded stations in life.

    Northeast liberals like the “Columbia Coalition Against the War” (h/t Hot Air) who honestly fear Ahmadinejad because refusing him a forum might cause a war;

    We fear the demonization of Ahmadinejad, because we think this demonization contributes to the likelihood of war.  In the current climate, with many on the political right in the U.S. and Israel pushing for air strikes, a campaign against Ahmadinejad is dangerous, regardless of the intentions of most involved.  A call to action, unless it prominently rules out war, implies military action.

    A rally where each speaker denounces Ahmadinejad’s reactionary policies and just a few call explicitly for military action will still be perceived, on campus and around the U.S., as pro-war.

    Pro-war? As opposed to “pro-peace at any cost”? I wonder how these “students” (who apparently think they know everything already – not realizing that students are idiots who have much to learn simply by being students in the first place) would feel about Hamid Karzai or Pervez Musharraf speaking at Columbia about the students’ misperceptions about their respective countries.

    I guess they don’t realize Ahmadinejad’s penchant for being a bloody dictator as told by Amil Imani;

    The 7th century barbaric rule of Sharia has caused millions of Iranians to flee their country. Those remaining have been subject to mass slaughtering, thousands upon thousands of fabricated arrests and thousands more torn away from their homes and their families. They have been subjected to tortures, made to confess to crimes they never committed, and then been either exterminated or sent back to medieval Islamic torture chambers where they simply faded away. It is difficult for many people to even talk about these horrible tragedies and genocides, which continue to exist to this date in Iran.

    Similar to the Nazis who possessed a vast and destructive power apparatus, its new rival, the Islamic Republic, is on the same path of destroying the civilized world. Why the world “looks the other way” about the homicidal, genocidal actions of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is a very good question many Iranians would like to have answered.

    Even northeast liberal Michael Bloomberg shows a little bit of common sense;

    Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Friday that the university was free to invite Ahmadinejad to speak, but “personally, I wouldn’t go to listen to him—I don’t care about what he says.”

    A White House spokesman challenged Ahmadinejad to allow the same free speech he emands from us in his own country;

    This is a country where people can come and speak their minds,” [Tony Fratto] said, adding, “It would be wonderful if some of the countries that take advantage of that here allowed it for their own citizens there.”

    It’s not a free speech issue – everyone in this country has the right to say what they want, anywhere they want. What they don’t have guarenteed is an audience. Nearly every blogger has learned that. My condemnation of Columbia University is that they take some third world goat roping murdering terrorist off of the street and present him as if he has something of value to offer the world, knowing in advance that he certainly does not. He has no ideas worth discussing – and we all know that no one at Columbia has the huevos to discuss anything with him beyond, as Robin from Chickenhawk Express said in her comment here earlier this weekend “Boxers or briefs?”

    Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs says “Sue the Bastards” (she means CU) and finds the planet’s tallest dwarf at the Ritz-Carlton and wonders if the 12th Imam has an adjoining suite. Pam Meister says it’s just another reason to withdraw from the UN. Boker Tov, Boulder! says the midget wannabe mullah will be on ’60 Minutes’ tonight, too. Curt at Flopping Aces reports that the hypocrisy is pretty blatant. Gateway Pundit finds Muslims against the little fella’s forum. Little Green Footballs speculates on the type of people who’ll show up seriously interested in what the dwarf has to say. Michele Malkin says he also plans to meet “9-11 families and war critics”. My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy’s Beth says they really did invite Hitler to speak – imagine my surprise. Wild Thing at PC Free Zone wraps Ahmadinejad in bacon and claims Reagan would have stopped him from visiting New York. Right Voices has the details on the National Press Club tele-luncheon (Note to NPC members, the deli down stairs is much better than the luncheon fare at NPC – trust me. And in this case, the entertainment will be much better). Rick Moran at the Right Wing Nut House writes “The Devil Went Down to Columbia” Patterico says that maybe using Hitler as an example isn’t the best way to convince Americans that Columbia made a good choice. And I’m sure Hatemonger’s Quarterly would have something to say about Ahmadinejad, except that the “crack young staff” has a government mandate to discuss OJ Simpson.

    Update: LGF reports that Ahmadinejad (I’m so proud that I can spell that without looking it up anymore) is converting DailyKos lesbians.

    By the way, today is my birthday so please give me the gift I crave most – the gift of traffic and comments.

  • A nation of criminals

    The purpose of government is to create an environment in which the citizens can prosper and live in relative security. James Madison explained, in the Federalist Papers that governments exist because “men are not angels”. Governments make rules to protect the many from the few by taking a certain measure of rights from the many – everytime government makes a rule, someone losses rights and choices.

    Until recently, the rules made sense, and were generally accepted by all except the sociopaths who pray on the unsuspecting innocent. But lately, our law makers reach has exceeded the grasp we intended for them to exercise. We can all remember the stories of Prohibition when our grandparents (well, my grandfather, anyway) decided that government had exceeded it’s authority when it banned alcohol and began brewing their own concoctions in their bathtubs until government realized it’s folly and repealed the faulty amendment.

    But it continues on today. More recently, the most liberal Republican President ever, Richard Nixon, forced States to lower their speed limits to 55 miles per hour, ostensibly to lower fuel consumption. Hardly anyone obeyed the new speed limit. When I returned from four years in Germany, I took particular care to drive 55 on the New York State Thruway – with my German-built auto designed for the limit-free Autobahn. I was the slowest driver on the road – 80 year-old ladies were zipping by me in their ancient Buicks. 

    Now , cell phone bans, smoking-free areas and buildings, traffic cameras, even government-sponsored health care programs are reducing our choices and while creating an aura of safety and security, do not. We pay ghastly sums of money in taxes to pay for volumes of new legislation that pours out of our local, State and Federal legislatures at a staggering pace everyday that regulates everything from the width of theater seats (yes, there’s a Federal regulation for that) to the recent proposal in New York State to ban smoking in cars.

    No one obeys these laws, and no one enforces these laws. The laws are written to make us feel good about ourselves and our willingness to do the right thing – even though we have no intention of actually doing the right thing. The law is there, it’s on the books and we approve of it, but we’re not going to restrict ourselves by complying with it.

    Writing laws is a business, now. Government agencies, despite the fact that they each have a huge staff of lawyers and technical writers, hire contractors to write the laws for them. Legislators, with huge staffs, research and receive lobbyists on a given subject, churn out volumes of background and facts, and emotional appeals spend hours debating one side or the other. The end result is always someone losing their rights to a particular degree.

    The actual result is a law that no one will obey because no one will enforce it. Writing laws is a big business – one we can do without. There are laws that restrict nearly everything we do – and it’s turned us into a nation of criminals, to varying degrees.

  • Head jihadist at Columbia U. – finally we’ll hear him speak

    Yesterday I wrote that Ahmadinejad scrapped plans to visit Ground Zero and that now instead, he’ll poison young minds at Columbia University. First, I should warn him that it’s not a target-rich environment – for young minds, that is.

    Watching the evening news, I heard comments from CU students like “I think it’s cool!” I’m sure the young airhead’s parents were excited to hear such an analysis coming from the mouth attached to the brain that they’re spending tens-of-thousands of dollars to fertilize.

    Michele Malkin tells us that there’s a protest planned for the little buckethead at CU. Bill Kristol recommends a boycott.

    But the protesters needn’t worry – apparently the university president has promised that he’ll ask the Iranian president hard-hitting questions and not allow him a free rein of the ideas in the room.

    I’m sure we’ll hear the answer to all of the questions we’ve been wondering – like “Does your beard ever get real itchy?” and “I’ll bet you’re real comfortable not having to wear a tie like we infidels must, aren’t you?”

  • Chavez takes over the school system

    Hat tip to Atlas Shrugs for alerting us that Chavez is doing to the school system what he did for television in Venezuela – and just like when he warned private communication companies, he’s warning private schools;

    Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.

    Not bizzare enough for you? How about this quote;

    “Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants,” said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.

    Beautiful, huh? AP reports;

    But one college-level syllabus obtained by The Associated Press shows some premedical students already have a recommended reading list including Karl Marx’s “Das Kapital” and Fidel Castro’s speeches, alongside traditional subjects like biology and chemistry.

    The syllabus also includes quotations from Chavez and urges students to learn about slain revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Colombian rebel chief Manuel Marulanda, whose leftist guerrillas are considered a terrorist group by Colombia, the U.S. and European Union.

    So I guess the students’ education won’t focus on the three “r”s. Bloomberg writes;

    Teachers and academics may see the measure as an attempt to politicize the classroom, speeding up a brain drain that has been underway for years as educated, skilled workers move abroad to escape Chavez’s “Bolivarian” revolution, said Ercilia Vasquez, director of the school of education at the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello in Caracas.

    “This ideology is very strong,” she said in a phone interview. “We’re going through a process where a lot of people are looking for other alternatives outside the country. This could accelerate it.’”

    The AP story continues;

    Venezuelan officials defend the program at the Latin American Medical School — one in a handful of state-run colleges and universities that emphasize socialist ideology — as the new direction of Venezuelan higher education.

    “We must train socially minded people to help the community, and that’s why the revolution’s socialist program is being implemented,” said Zulay Campos, a member of a Bolivarian State Academic Commission that evaluates compliance with academic guidelines.

    “If they attack us because we’re indoctrinating, well yes, we’re doing it, because those capitalist ideas that our young people have — and that have done so much damage to our people — must be eliminated,” Campos said. 

    Typical communist rhetoric – and it’s becoming too late to stop to stop Chavez. The left is so adoring, so emotional over the idea of an oil-rich communist empire that they forget the 100s of millions who’ve already been sacrificed at the altar of Marxism. Venezuela is beginning to look more and more like the Lord of the Flies. 

    From The Devil’s Excrement, a Venezuelan’s view of Chavez latest endeavor;

    But much like in Hitler’s Germany, Fidel’s Cuba or Franco’s Spain, Venezuela will now have official textbooks for all subjects, guaranteeing no impure ideas get through to the kids and all information gets the imprimatur from Bolivarian officials. I wonder if they will be signed by a Bishop or a General as a sign of approval or by the autocrat himself maybe.

    Because according to the autocrat, texts used to preach the theories of the Empire, whether the North-American or Spanish one (Did Chavez look up pre-1724 textbooks?), but then the ranting got better when Chavez truly and really said:

    “First, it was an ideologic education, the euro-centric vision, colonial, which taught us to admire the conquerors and then the cult to the animated characters of Superman, Mandrake or the Phantom, denying us the knowledge of Guicapuro, Negra Hipolita or Sucre”

    Jeez, I wonder where he heard about these, as I do not recall learning about any of these characters in school, but I do remember learning about Guicaipuro, Negra Hipolita and Sucre, and was always taught a very negative view of the Spanish conquerors which cost me quite a few expulsions from class when I lived in Spain.

    So where’s Jimmy Carter now that Venezuelans really need him? He’s busy bashing Jews and Israel on public access – apparently Chavez is off his radar now that Carter has insured Chavez’ employment for life. I’ve asked before – where are the human rights Democrats? Where are these so-called socially liberal conservatives?

    Well, they’re all for taking education out the hands of the public sector, too. They want to indoctrinate students into Marxism – more overtly than they can now. The left wants to shut down news sources that they think oppose them. They want the wide latitude that Chavez enjoys – he’s running their dream nation where the only choice is the choice they offer.

    But Chavez’ choices will be bathed in blood eventually.

  • DC vote advocates pressure Senate

    The Washington Post reports in “11th Hour Pressure Applied on DC Vote” that DC advocates are putting pressure on the Senate to pass a measure to allow consideration for a vote giving DC a voting member of Congress;

    Facing a critical Senate vote today, supporters and opponents of the D.C. voting rights bill made impassioned speeches and lobbied on Capitol Hill in a last-minute push on the District’s efforts to get its first full member of Congress.

    The motion coming up on the Senate floor would merely clear the way for lawmakers to consider the bill. But if supporters fail to get the necessary 60 votes, the legislation will probably be doomed for this year, according to senators and staff.
     
    Both sides expect a close vote. So, in an eleventh-hour offensive yesterday, advocacy groups launched a nationwide call-in campaign to senators’ offices. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D), meanwhile, joined the District’s nonvoting House delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), at a rally in which they recalled the Senate’s notorious history of filibustering civil rights legislation.

    “Not since segregation has the Senate blocked a voting rights bill. And this is a voting rights bill,” Fenty declared outside the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Behind him, about 60 activists waved signs reading “I Demand the Vote.”

    Now, personally, I think everyone should have representation in Congress – every single human. If residents of DC are really so upset that they don’t have a voting representative, they should move – it’s only ten miles from Maryland to Virginia across the District, so no DC resident is moving too far to get the vote they covet, if they really wanted to vote.

    It’s not like Congress just up and changed the rules recently – it’s always been like that. There’s no one in DC who had their voting rights taken away – well, except maybe Eleanor Holmes Norton – she might have been living here when the Constitution was written.

    Why am I against DC having a voting member in Congress? Well, DC voters are morons, for one thing. They’ve elected a cracksmoking whoremonger to the Mayor’s Office after he was released from prison and then voted for him to sit on the City Council while he’s being investigated for tax evasion. When the District elected a straw Senator a few years ago, who’d they elect? Jesse Jackson, an Illinois resident who has never claimed residence in the District.

    The previous mayor was found to have hired people who falsified his filing documents for reelection and was denied entry into the election on the Democrat ticket – he ran as an independent and won anyway – despite his record of surrounding himself with known criminals and incompetent numbskulls.

    My opinion has nothing to do with the District’s political leanings – Utah would balance that out -it has to do with their electoral boobery. Why should the rest of the country suffer DC’s fools gladly. Aren’t Jim Moran and Chris Van Hollen enough?