It’s Thursday, July 11th, 2013…but before we begin, a brief housekeeping item. We always appreciate contributions from our readers; indeed, they are one of primary sources for columns. Over time, we’ve discovered YouTube is the only format for embedding videos that gives us certainty of success. Other video formats either don’t show up insertion, don’t allow embedding or start playing immediately after the home page or column are opened.
We would greatly appreciate anyone forwarding videos try to send the YouTube version of the clip. Thanks.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
Black Education Tragedy
First up, courtesy of Speed Mach and RealClearPolitics.com, Katy French responds to Ms. Beth Merfish’s recent paean to infanticide with a starkly dissimilar side of the story. We inserted the photos, the story requires no embellishment by us:
My Mother’s Adoption: A Tale of Two Texans
The New York Times recently published an opinion piece by Beth Matusoff Merfish, entitled “My Mother’s Abortion.” I sure could relate to the story Merfish told – there are a lot of similarities between our mothers. They were both college girls in Texas when they got pregnant in the pre-Roe v. Wade years. Neither was ready to be a mom then, though they are both now celebrating 40+ years of marriage and motherhood. They both later recounted their cautionary tales to shocked adolescent daughters as a warning about what not to do with the newfound freedom of high school (me) or college (Merfish).
That’s where the similarities end. Both women passed on their core values to those daughters, values which were on full display in the absolute opposite way they responded to their youthful crisis pregnancies.
Merfish writes that her mom was 20, engaged to her dad, 21, both co-eds at Texas’ “public Ivy,” the University of Texas at Austin. My mother, Terry Cavnar French, was 18. She couldn’t afford to go to an elite college, and instead, lived at home and worked her way through the local commuter college, the University of Houston. She didn’t have a fiancé to lean on (the father was not in the picture), and was barely acknowledged by her dysfunctional parents. Her ninth month was spent at a home run by Catholic Charities.
Merfish writes that her parents, though about to graduate from college and marry, were simply not ready to be parents. They drove across states lines for an abortion. My mother wasn’t ready to be a parent either. She could have driven to another state, too. Instead, she drove to college, sitting in traffic every morning with the windows rolled down to try to beat the Houston heat in those pre-air conditioning days. Merfish writes that her parents were made to “feel like criminals” by the abortionist they visited. My mom was made to feel morning sickness-induced nausea from traffic fumes during her commute, often pulling to the side of the road to throw up and then back on the road to class.
Merfish writes with pride about her mom’s choice to kill her brother or sister because he or she was a few years early for her parents’ taste. Today, I’m writing with pride about my mom’s choice to save my brother’s life and give him a loving, intact family that could provide him the life he deserved. Merfish’s mom had to endure the judgmental attitudes of the abortionist. My mom had to endure months of morning sickness and ten hours of labor and delivery. Then she endured the pain of letting another woman, a woman who was ready to be a mom, take her baby boy home.
Merfish writes of the solidarity she felt with her mom while the two of them shouted down a Texas bill that would protect unborn babies who are old enough to recognize their mother’s voice, and would require unregulated Gosnell factories to meet the same hygiene standards as medical facilities in the state. Today, I’m writing of the solidarity I felt when my mom and I recently prayed at the hospital bedside of my sister’s baby. He had just been diagnosed with a genetic disease that would cripple and kill him in a few years. If the diagnosis had come a few months earlier, when he was still in the womb, many physicians would have handed my sister an abortion referral along with the test result. We later found out that the diagnosis was wrong. Luckily for him, he has a family that celebrates his life instead of a family that celebrates the killing of children on the altar of Almighty Convenience.
Merfish’s mom married her dad shortly after her abortion. They finished college and went on to have better-timed children and, presumably, successful lives. My mom later met a dashing grad student at that commuter college. They married, graduated, had two daughters, successful careers, and are now approaching a secure retirement. Choosing life, no matter how inconvenient, doesn’t have to end anyone’s chance at the American Dream.
Merfish’s mom taught her that the right to kill an inconvenient child is sacred. Merfish ends her piece in The New York Times with a call for more such “bravery.” My mom taught me that every child, no matter the inconvenience, is sacred. She made a heroic sacrifice to give my brother the life he deserved; she offered her suffering and sorrow to protect an innocent child’s rights instead of her own. Memo to The New York Times: that’s bravery worth celebrating.
All have sinned and come short of the glory of God; and all it takes to condemn us to eternal separation from Him is one little white lie. That being said, we cannot but believe there’s a particularly warm spot in Hell for those…
…who actively advocate the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents.
Next up, appropriately enough, Tales From the Darkside, courtesy today of Jim Gleaves, CNSNews.com and Dr. Walter Williams, who details what he correctly terms America’s…
Black Education Tragedy
As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see.
Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman’s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin’s mother. She responded that she doesn’t read cursive, and that’s in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills.
Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without being able to read cursive writing? That’s a skill one would expect from a fourth-grader. Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. Here are a few achievement scores from her school: Thirty-nine percent of the students score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic. In math, 37 percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery. (And hey, who needs more than a basic command of The Three R’s in the real world?!?)
Few Americans, particularly black Americans, have any idea of the true magnitude of the black education tragedy. The education establishment might claim that it’s not their fault. They’re not responsible for the devastation caused by female-headed families, drugs, violence and the culture of dependency. But they are totally responsible for committing gross educational fraud. It’s educators who graduated Jeantel from elementary and middle school and continued to pass her along in high school. (After all, failing her for her inability to reed, right or cipher might have materially adversely impacted her self-esteem!) It’s educators who will, in June 2014, confer upon her a high-school diploma.
It’s not just Florida’s schools. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, nationally most black 12th-graders test either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science. Drs. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom wrote in their 2004 book, “No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning,” “Blacks nearing the end of their high school education perform a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography.” Little has changed since the book’s publication.
Drexel University history and political science professor George Ciccariello-Maher disapprovingly says that the reaction to Jeantel’s court performance “has been in terms of aesthetics, of disregarding a witness on the basis of how she talks, how good she is at reading and writing.” Harking back to Jim Crow days, he adds: “These are subtle things that echo literacy testing at the polls, echo the question of whether black Americans can testify against white people, of being always suspect in their testimony. It’s the same old dynamics emerging in a very different guise.”
Then there’s Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, who says: “Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it’s already dying, despite having been taught for decades.” That’s the kind of educational philosophy that accounts for much of our nation’s educational decline.
The educational system and black family structure and culture have combined to make increasing numbers of young black people virtually useless in the increasingly high-tech world of the 21st century. (Which is exactly the way the Liberal power structure wants them!) Too many people believe that pouring more money into schools will help. That’s whistlin’ “Dixie.”
Whether a student is black or white, poor or rich, there are some minimum requirements that must be met in order to do well in school. Someone must make the student do his homework, see to it that he gets a good night’s sleep, fix a breakfast, make sure he gets to school on time and make sure he respects and obeys his teachers. Here are my questions: Which one of those requirements can be achieved through a higher school budget? Which can be achieved by politicians? If those minimal requirements aren’t met, whatever else is done is mostly for naught.
I hope Rachel Jeantel’s court performance is a wake-up call for black Americans about the devastation wrought by our educational system.
As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see.Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman’s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin’s mother. She responded that she doesn’t read cursive, and that’s in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills.Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without being able to read cursive writing? That’s a skill one would expect from a fourth-grader. Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. Here are a few achievement scores from her school: Thirty-nine percent of the students score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic. In math, 37 percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery.Few Americans, particularly black Americans, have any idea of the true magnitude of the black education tragedy. The education establishment might claim that it’s not their fault. They’re not responsible for the devastation caused by female-headed families, drugs, violence and the culture of dependency. But they are totally responsible for committing gross educational fraud. It’s educators who graduated Jeantel from elementary and middle school and continued to pass her along in high school. It’s educators who will, in June 2014, confer upon her a high-school diploma.It’s not just Florida’s schools. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, nationally most black 12th-graders test either basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science. Drs. Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom wrote in their 2004 book, “No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning,” “Blacks nearing the end of their high school education perform a little worse than white eighth-graders in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and geography.” Little has changed since the book’s publication.
Drexel University history and political science professor George Ciccariello-Maher disapprovingly says that the reaction to Jeantel’s court performance “has been in terms of aesthetics, of disregarding a witness on the basis of how she talks, how good she is at reading and writing.” Harking back to Jim Crow days, he adds: “These are subtle things that echo literacy testing at the polls, echo the question of whether black Americans can testify against white people, of being always suspect in their testimony. It’s the same old dynamics emerging in a very different guise.”
Then there’s Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California, who says: “Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it’s already dying, despite having been taught for decades.” That’s the kind of educational philosophy that accounts for much of our nation’s educational decline.
The educational system and black family structure and culture have combined to make increasing numbers of young black people virtually useless in the increasingly high-tech world of the 21st century. Too many people believe that pouring more money into schools will help. That’s whistlin’ “Dixie.”
Whether a student is black or white, poor or rich, there are some minimum requirements that must be met in order to do well in school. Someone must make the student do his homework, see to it that he gets a good night’s sleep, fix a breakfast, make sure he gets to school on time and make sure he respects and obeys his teachers. Here are my questions: Which one of those requirements can be achieved through a higher school budget? Which can be achieved by politicians? If those minimal requirements aren’t met, whatever else is done is mostly for naught.
I hope Rachel Jeantel’s court performance is a wake-up call for black Americans about the devastation wrought by our educational system. – See more at: http://cnsnews.com/blog/walter-e-williams/black-education-tragedy#sthash.X5PcbtJC.ejeMQitS.dpuf
Black Education Tragedy
With all due respect to Dr. Williams, yeah…
As the immortal Matt Hooper might have observed of those whose politics have blinded them to the problem their policies have created…
Though even then those responsible won’t suffer the consequences…’cuz dey don’ LIVE ‘n da ‘Hood!
In a related item, the WSJ‘s Dan Henninger details another inevitable repercussion of Progressivism:
Big Government Implodes
ObamaCare’s failures are not the only sign of a great public crack-up.
Mark July 3, 2013, as the day Big Government finally imploded.
July 3 was the quiet afternoon that a deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy announced in a blog post that the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate would be delayed one year. Something about the “complexity of the requirements.” The Fourth’s fireworks couldn’t hold a candle to the sound of the U.S. government finally hitting the wall.
Since at least 1789, America’s conservatives and liberals have argued about the proper role of government. Home library shelves across the land splinter and creak beneath the weight of books arguing the case for individual liberty or for government-led social justice. World Wrestling smackdowns are nothing compared with Hayek vs. Rawls.
Maybe we have been listening to the wrong experts. Philosophers and pundits aren’t going to tell us anything new about government. The one-year rollover of ObamaCare because of its “complexity” suggests it’s time to call in the physicists, the people who study black holes and death stars. That’s what the federal government looks like after expanding ever outward for the past 224 years.
Even if you are a liberal and support the goals of the Affordable Care Act, there has to be an emerging sense that maybe the law’s theorists missed a signal from life outside the castle walls. While they troweled brick after brick into a 2,000-page law, the rest of the world was reshaping itself into smaller, more nimble units whose defining metaphor is the 140-character Twitter message.
Laughably, Barack Obama tried this week to align himself with the new age in a speech calling yet again for “smarter” government. It requires whatever lies on the far side of chutzpah to say this after passing a 1930s-style law that is both incomprehensible and simply won’t work. ObamaCare is turning into pure gravity. Nothing moves.
On July 5, the administration announced into the holiday void that because of “operational barriers” to IRS oversight, individuals would be allowed to self-report their income to qualify for the law’s subsidies.
If the ObamaCare meltdown were a one-off, the system could dismiss it as a legislative misfire and move on, as always. But ObamaCare’s problems are not unique. Important parts of the federal government are breaking down almost simultaneously.
The National Security Agency has conservative philosophers upset that its surveillance program is ushering in Big Brother. What’s more concretely frightening is that a dweeb like Edward Snowden could download the content of the NSA’s computers onto a thumb drive and walk out of the world’s “most secretive” agency. (An aspect of the event very few others have bothered to report!) Here’s the short answer: The NSA has 40,000 employees. (Some say it’s as high as 55,000, but it’s a secret.)
Echoing that, when the IRS’s audits of conservative groups emerged, the agency managers’ defense was that the IRS is too big for anyone to know what its agents are doing. Thus both the NSA and IRS are too big to avoid endangering the public.
It is hard to imagine a more apolitical federal function than the nation’s weather satellites. The ones we have—to predict hurricanes and such—are about to wear out and need to be replaced. Can’t do it. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and the Pentagon have been trying to replace the old weather satellites, since 1994. The Government Accountability Office says “we are looking at potentially a 17-month gap” in this crucial weather data. NOAA has good scientists whose bad luck is they work for a collapsing constellation of bureaucracies.
The State Department missed signs of the Arab Spring’s insurrections in late 2010 despite warnings from outside groups. Egypt is in flames, in part, because State for years has been mainly a massive, drifting bureaucracy. Little wonder Hillary Clinton spent four years in flight from the place.
Even some conservatives have given up and boarded the death star. The Senate immigration bill throws $46 billion at the Department of Homeland Security to implement a “border surge” strategy that has no chance of achieving its goals. Securing the border is the conservatives’ Solyndra.
To call the U.S. federal government a black hole is a disservice to black holes, which have a neutral majesty. Excepting the military’s fighting units, the federal government has become a giant slug, like Jabba the Hutt, inert but dangerous. Like Jabba, the government increasingly survives by issuing authoritarian decrees from this or that agency. Barack Obama, essentially a publicist for Jabba’s world of federal fat, euphemized this mess Monday as the American people’s “democracy.”
Thomas Jefferson, who must be rolling in his grave, said the way to ensure good government was to divide it among the many. Some states and cities are indeed reworking their functions in efficient, innovative ways. But Washington is oblivious to life beyond the Beltway.
Those indispensable but dying weather satellites are a metaphor for the U.S. now. Whether ObamaCare or the border fence, Washington is winding down into a black hole of its own making. The debate’s over. Liberalism will be swept into this vortex, too.
And hopefully, like the Communism it has strived to revive, right into the dustbin of history!
Turning to International News of Note, James Taranto comments on Team Tick-Tock’s latest foreign policy fiasco:
Smart Diplomacy
Barack Obama may be a divisive figure in America, but the Washington Post reports from Cairo that he’s managed to bring Egyptians together:
After a year of outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood following the election of its candidate, Mohamed Morsi, as president, the United States is widely perceived here as siding with Islamists it once eyed with distrust.
At the same time, the Obama administration’s cautious refusal to condemn Morsi’s ouster last week quickly spent the goodwill it had built with the Brotherhood–without buying any trust from the other side.
Instead, the liberal forces who drove the revolution to topple Morsi view the United States with even more wariness. “We love the American people,” said Bolis Victor, 34, a middle-class merchant in the Egyptian capital, who said he has relatives in Chicago. “But we hate Obama and Patterson.”
That would be U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne W. Patterson, a career diplomat who assumed the top post in Cairo in 2011. “She needs to pack her bags. She needs to go home. We hate her more than Morsi himself, and that is something very remarkable,” Victor said.
Aren’t you glad Obama restored America’s moral authority after George W. Bush squandered it? In a timely Wall Street Journal op-ed See yesterday’s column), Walter Russell Mead recalls Obama’s big June 2009 speech in Cairo, where the new president “sought to overcome the polarization between the Muslim world and the West.””You cannot be a great speaker unless you are a great doer,” Mead observes. “At worst, as in Mr. Obama’s [2009] Cairo speech, the contrast between exalted rhetoric and mingy deeds undermines both speech and speechmaker.” It’s almost enough to make you wonder if Obama really deserves to be considered the World’s Greatest Orator.
As Jonah Goldberg observes in the opening of his recent column on the same subject…
The president’s zigzagging approach to foreign policy sacrifices the idealistic to the demands of the moment.
Who says President Obama isn’t a unifier?
Last week, this newspaper’s Edmund Sanders reported from Cairo “As rival camps of Egyptians protest for and against the toppling of President Mohamed Morsi, there is a rare point of agreement: America is to blame.” Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the coalition arrayed against it believe that the United States is against them.
We can only assume from Der Obafuhrer’s perverted perspective, it’s better to be hated…
…than feared!
Then there’s this forward from Balls Cotton, courtesy of Vanity Fair; a snippet from the soon-to-be-published
“Spontaneous demonstration” our…
And a very large, lying one at that! Certain people deserve to swing for this.
Moving on, Best of the Web recounts reaction to the Illinois Legislature overriding Governor Pat Quinn’s veto of the state’s recently-passed concealed-carry law:
…The Trib (the reliably-Liberal Chicago Tribune) adds: “While gun owners may have questions about how soon they’ll be able to carry guns in public, other state residents may also have questions about where they can expect to find people armed with deadly weapons.”
That’s an easy one to answer: You can expect to find people armed with deadly weapons in just about any dodgy Chicago neighborhood. As the AP reports:
Some lawmakers feared failure to pass something [and thereby triggering the Seventh Circuit’s injunction] would mean virtually unregulated weapons in Chicago, which has endured severe gun violence in recent months–including more than 70 shootings, at least 12 of them fatal, during the Independence Day weekend.
Wait, how could Chicago have all those shootings when it’s illegal to carry a gun? Don’t street criminals have any respect for the law? Oh wait, of course they don’t–which is why Chicago already had “virtually unregulated weapons.” The new law will allow honest citizens, those who do comply with regulations, to defend themselves.
Meanwhile, nach Deutschland, Speed Mach forwarded this rather humorous item from Reason.com:
Former German Chancellor Stays One Step Ahead of European Nannies, Hoards Cigarettes
The 94-year-old former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt has hoarded 38,000 menthol cigarettes in his house, fearing that they could be banned by the European Union. From The Local:
Schmidt, 94, has a carte blanche when it comes to smoking. Whether on live television or indoors at political conventions, the former-Chancellor is allowed to light up where he pleases. But it would seem even he is not above EU law, as central parliament in Brussels is considering banning his favourite vice – menthol cigarettes.
One step ahead, Schmidt has apparently stashed 200 cartons of his preferred brand, Reyno, in his house, the Hamburger Morgenpost revealed. This means that he has enough to keep him on a packet a day until he turns 100.
Responsible for outing his secret is Chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrück of Schmidt’s old party the Social Democrats.
Schmidt, a well known lover of menthol cigarettes, is not being overly prepared. The European commission is hoping to ban menthol cigarettes. The proposed ban on menthol cigarettes is only the latest example of the nannying instinct exhibited by many legislators in the European Union, which has already proposed or implemented bans on unsupervised children blowing up balloons, refillable olive oil jugs, and pictures of babies on baby formula.
Should the European Commission ever need a new president, Michael Boobberg…
…seems tailor-made for the job.
On the Lighter Side…
Finally, in what we can only describe as a cross betwixt The Wide, Wild World of Sports and another titillating tales torn from the pages of the Crime Blotter…
Ex-Ben-Gal testifies at retrial
Mom must be SOOOO proud!
The former Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader who resigned from her teaching job in 2011 amid allegations of a sexual relationship with a student — and then got engaged to that student last month — took the stand Monday in a retrial of her lawsuit against the website TheDirty.com.
Sarah Jones is suing the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based gossip site for a reported $11 million over two posts from 2009 — before her relationship with the student began — alleging that she had sex with every Bengals player during her time as a cheerleader and that she likely had contracted two sexually transmitted diseases from her ex-husband, Nathan Wilburn.
Like we’ve always said, professional cheerleaders: just one short step above pole dancers.
Magoo
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