Marketing seeks to create images in our minds by relying on the creativity of a writer. Political marketing often involves the creation of myths, transforming an ordinary man into a heroic figure with selfless ideals who is willing to endure suffering to serve his fellow man.

This transformation of normal ordinary men into heroes of mythical figures has never been more obvious than the stories of our most recent Liberal presidents Clinton and Obama.

We were just subjected to a reelection commercial featuring former President Clinton explaining the potential fallout and risk for President Obama if the SEAL raid in Pakistan had gone horribly wrong.

Suppose the Navy SEALs had gone in there . . . suppose they had been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him [Obama].

This was a unique opportunity for Americans to observe and compare our most notorious Narcissists, and watch one create the typical Narcissistic pool for all of us to admire the other’s reflection.

The myth of Narcissus is from the ancient Greeks. Greek Myths are stories that are a means to teach lessons of morality. If you will give your imagination a little freedom we will imagine the Myth of Narcissus in a contemporary setting.

Echo the Nymph was desperately in love with the handsome young hunter Narcissus, but he was proud and disdained all those who admired him, for he was in love with himself. Nemesis, a tricky god, directed him to a pool where he could observe his own reflection. From that point on, Narcissus spent all his time observing his own handsome features, unable to quit staring at his image and caring for nothing else, he eventually died by the pool. A flower grew where he fell and was to be known as the Narcissus.

If we replace Echo with the American people and the personality of Narcissus with President Obama, the basis for the myth is recreated after two thousand years.

While the American people have been dreaming of being loved and cared for by the object of their imagination, the harsh truth becomes more glaringly obvious with the passage of time, for the Narcissist exists for himself and only loves his own being.

Only Bill Clinton, the accused serial rapist who refused to kill or capture Osama and avoid the catastrophe that was 9/11, understands the strain facing the Narcissist Personality. For when he says:

“Suppose the Navy SEALs had gone in there . . . suppose they had been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him [Obama].”

Zeus Is The Universal Boogeyman, Here Disguised As A Swan He Rapes Leda

Zeus Represents The Powers That Threaten Mere Mortala And From Whom We Need The Protection Of An Omnipotent

Former President Clinton concentrated on portraying Obama as the wily Prometheus who risked stealing fire from Zeus to give it to mortal man. He thus risked the possibility of tragedy through this trial of personal sacrifice. For in the myth, Zeus was enraged with the theft and tied Prometheus to a rock on a mountain and during the passage of each day, an eagle ate his liver and each night his liver grew back, to be eaten again the next day. Oh, how Prometheus suffered for the crime of bringing the fire of Zeus to mankind: fire that was used only for warmth, cooking, and light. Prometheus became a man of constant sorrow for the crime of serving man. This is the fate Obama risked to serve his people. He was so near this position of constant sorrow that he needed to be pulled from the golf course during the commission of this service to mankind, lest the mission fail and he would be tied directly by a Zeus like boogeyman, supine on the mountain and the feathered beast allowed to savage his vital organs.

The personality of this same Prometheus has been a favorite reference for Karl Marx to portray the martyrs of Communism, representing those who suffer unselfishly for the cause of mankind.

True to form, the Narcissist views the world as it relates to him. Thus we have become inoculated to the “I” word and now are conditioned to view world events through the personal pronouns of Obama.

“Tonight, I can report . . . I directed Leon Panetta . . . I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . . I’ve made clear . . . Over the years, I’ve repeatedly made clear . . . Tonight, I called President Zardari . . . and my team has also spoken . . .These efforts weigh on me every time I, as commander-in-chief . . . Finally, let me say to the families . . . I know that it has, at times, frayed . . .”

In our personal lives, we tend to tire of people who see the world revolving around them and all to ready to overuse the personal pronouns in every conversation, but with Obama, we have been conditioned to excuse and overlook his boorish behavior.

Being programmed by these harpies of Madison Avenue to believe and accept the allusion of the strong leader who protects us from the evil of the world is a feature of being subjected to media. Most of the recent efforts Of the Obama marketers have been amateurish and obvious, but precious few of us caught the ambiguities of Clinton marketing Obama.

Sometimes, it is the utter audacity of the marketing ploy that creates the lasting impression. The vision of a man’s liver being eaten each day and of a maiden being raped by a God in the form of a swan are not easy to accept, but they have survived for 2500 years, and their story lines are still being used to teach and create allusions.

Unfortunately for Obama, the image of Narcissus is working against him, for Narcissus is his only enemy and it is his self-absorption that ultimately destroys him. The comparisons are all too obvious and transparent, and his adoring public like Echo grows weary of the self-absorbed man who loves himself above all others.

NARCISSUS. A large genus of flowers of the amaryllis family, native to Asia and Europe, is called narcissus. Included are the daffodil, the poet’s narcissus, the jonquil, and others.

Merriam Webster
Metrosexual:: a usually urban heterosexual male given to enhancing his personal appearance by fastidious grooming, beauty treatments, and fashionable clothes

We are all familiar with the phrase, “Metrosexual” and we all know at least a few who are willing to assume this role of a man who takes on feminine characteristics to fulfill a new role in our society, just how far he is willing to go in the assumption of this semi-feminine identity while maintaining a dainty masculine image varies, but we can be sure the image is being promoted by our faithful media. No, I am not speaking of the men who easily fulfill the Gary Cooper role model of FA men; I am talking about the effeminate “Straight” men who are pleased to have you question their sexual identity and the women who create these confused weaklings. The women, who perpetuate the myth that men are evil and dirty, then smother their boys with motherly attention, not for the sake of the boys, but to cater to their own feminine insecurities and neurotic weaknesses.

Some are quick to call our president a Metrosexual, but, I’d rather focus on the economy and jobs, than worry over his dubious manhood, it is the younger male demographic that I am speaking of and their mothers.

We’ve all heard and seen these boys in the public whining like little girls to their parents, instead of watching little girls.

This late breast feeding is labeled attached parenting. The woman in the photo carries it to more of an extreme by sleeping with her son. She says that hopefully this will be his last year. Now we are wondering who is in charge of this bizarre situation.

There is no scientific proof, but if we compile the anecdotal experiences of objective people who have begun to question this new gender bending concept in our society, the results will be persuasive. It is primarily a Liberal trait, but there are exceptions, Like the Whore Hopping serial rapist, President Clinton and the waitress sandwich boys Chris Dodd and Teddy Kennedy. It’s true, enjoying the assets of a tasty waitress in a menage a trois can bring up images of indirect latent homosexuality at the very least. However, Dodd and Kennedy were more old school in their perversions; they would never pretend to have a feminine side and would never pretend to have homosexual desires, even while they are exhibiting those same tendencies during their brotherly love sessions. The Metrosexual is more than willing to expose his feminine nature to the world and maybe even partake of the forbidden fruit.

What is wrong with this, you might ask, nothing if you are gay, but if you were designed to be a straight man by the genetics in your DNA and you have a “gay side” because of perverted parenting, it is a tragedy. A tragedy not only to the individual, but to our culture as well.

Many of you who think back will remember boys who were raised by overly possessive and protective mothers; the boys were effeminate in their actions. Usually the mothers were happy not to be raising those typical male hellions. It was if they wanted to change the world by raising their sons as daughters. Thus those boys eventually became angry teenagers or they were always willing to be looked after and cared for by the omnipotent mother. In time, mother is frail or impossibly possessive and the boy has the option of marrying another mother or finding a man friend for companionship and comfort. The state becomes a surrogate parent and we have created a loyal progressive.

This article in no way is meant to condemn gays or the gay lifestyle. We are born the way we were born and there is precious little you can do about it. I wanted to be 6 foot five, but I ended up three inches too short, that’s the way it is and I can’t do anything about it. However, raising boys in an overly protective atmosphere with a feminine dominance is wrong.

Notice the title on Time: Are You Mom Enough? They are encouraging women to raise their sons as dominated weaklings, rather letting them assume the roles of coarse hairy legged men of history. The new man is to be a Metrosexual, secure in his identity as a submissive wimp, Americans meet your Metrosexual his name is Liberal and the Super Mom is his creator, for few things are more destructive to the psyche of a man than an overly possessive mother.

Elizabeth Warren is done.

Elizabeth Warren has listed herself as a “minority professor” in the Association of American Law Schools’ annual directory and Harvard listed her as a minority professor as well.

The Ivy League law school prominently touted Warren’s Native American background, however, in an effort to bolster their diversity hiring record in the ’90s as the school came under heavy fire for a faculty that was then predominantly white and male.

“Of 71 current Law School professors and assistant professors, 11 are women, five are black, one is Native American and one is Hispanic,” The Harvard Crimson quotes then-Law School spokesman Mike Chmura as saying in a 1996 article. The Crimson added that 83 percent of the Law School’s students believed the number of minority women on staff was inadequate.

“Although the conventional wisdom among students and faculty is that the Law School faculty includes no minority women, Chmura said professor of law Elizabeth Warren is Native American,” the Crimson wrote.

The Crimson noted Warren’s heritage again in 1998 when Lani Guinier became the first black woman tenured at the law school, mentioning that Warren was “the first woman with a minority background to be tenured.”

She was listed as “Native American,” not “part Native American.”

Now there are ominous smoke signals ahead for her.

This “Native American” never had time for Native American events at Harvard:

Shelly Lowe, executive director of Harvard University’s Native American Program (HUNAP), told Breitbart News today that U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren had not, to her knowledge, participated in the program’s events while Warren was a professor at Harvard.

And it turns out that a much more significant part of her heritage participated in some nasty anti-Indian events.

But the most stunning discovery about the life of O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford is that her husband, Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, was apparently a member of the Tennessee Militia who rounded up Cherokees from their family homes in the Southeastern United States and herded them into government-built stockades in what was then called Ross’s Landing (now Chattanooga), Tennessee—the point of origin for the horrific Trail of Tears, which began in January, 1837.

This new information about Ms. Warren’s true heritage came as a direct result of a lead provided to me by William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection, who in turn had received the information from one of his readers. Jacobson, who has questioned Warren’s explanation for her law faculty listing, calls this discovery “the ultimate and cruelest irony” of the Warren Cherokee saga.

Jonathan Crawford, O.C. Sarah Smith Crawford’s husband and apparently Ms. Warren’s great-great-great grandfather, served in the East Tennessee Mounted Infantry Volunteer Militia commanded by Brigadier General R. G. Dunlap from late 1835 to late 1836. While under Dunlap’s command he was a member of Major William Lauderdale’s Battalion, and Captain Richard E. Waterhouse’s Company.

These were the troops responsible for removing Cherokee families from homes they had lived in for generations in the three states that the Cherokee Nations had considered their homelands for centuries: Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

While these involuntary home removals were not characterized by widespread violence, the newly displaced Cherokee mothers, fathers, and children found an oppressive and sometimes brutal welcome when they finally arrived at the hastily constructed containment areas. An estimated 4,000 Cherokees were warehoused in Ross’s Landing stockades for months awaiting supplies and additional armed guards the Federal Government believed necessary to relocate them on foot to Oklahoma.

Throughout her campaign Warren has been a hypocritical fraud. She’s whined about the 1% even though she pulls down $400,000 plus every year from Harvard and is worth $14 million.

She has been aptly labeled “Fauxchahontas.”

Stick a fork in her.

Two stories I heard this morning. Although they might be apples to oranges, they bear the fruits of comparison….

I caught this segment on the Today Show this morning and was impressed by the attitude expressed by the parents of 3 year old Cameron Shores who apparently is known as “the wail heard ’round the world” after a video went viral yesterday of an incident that happened at Wednesday’s Yankees-Rangers game.

The video shows a foul ball thrown into the stands in cameron’s direction. Instead of him catching it, a couple sitting next to him (Sean Leonard and Shannon Moore) snatched it. The couple have been unfairly villified, thanks to the video, and New York Yankees commentator Michael Kay:

“Oh my God. They can’t give it to the kid? That’s awful,” he lamented, adding, “They’re rubbing it in the kid’s face,” when the couple posed happily with the ball for a photo as Cameron looked on.

But sometimes a picture isn’t worth a thousand words. Sometimes stories require context.

Instead of feeding into the narrative of the couple as being heartless, the parents of Cameron went on the Today Show to give a voice of reason to what occurred:

“I felt sorry for Cameron and for the other couple because they were made out to be such horrible, cold-hearted people and I didn’t get that impression from them at all,” said Cameron’s mother, Crystal. “They were very sweet and they talked to Cameron a lot.”

The couple was attending their first baseball game and are getting married Saturday. They actually offered the toddler the ball, but his parents turned down the gift.

“He’s three and we’re kind of at that stage where he thinks gets everything and anything,” his mom explained.

And in baseball, much like in the game of life, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

“I never once thought that they should have given him the ball,” said Crystal. “We’re trying to teach him he doesn’t get everything every time.”

Now contrast this parental attitude with another one I heard on talk radio when I left the house this morning. What is the teachable moment to be had in this one? What example is the father setting for his son and is he justified?

First Lady Obama presumes that her husband’s Supreme Court Nominees will protect political rights not enumerated in the Constitution. She made this remarkable claim at Democrat fundraisers by stressing that Sotomayo and Kagan are indeed political appointees and can be counted on to protect the right to “Love whomever we choose” and “the right privacy”. This mysterious “Privacy” right is presumably a reference to Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, but these nebulous terms are often invoked to mean anything Democrat strategists want them to mean at a later date.

In a typical Michelle Obama statement, her bathos logic maintained its chaotic and barely decipherable cross word puzzle style:

“Let’s not forget what it meant when my husband appointed those two brilliant Supreme Court justices, and for the first time in history our daughters and our sons watched three women take their seat on our nation’s highest court.

But more importantly, let us never forget the impact their decisions will have on our lives for decades to come–on our privacy and our security, on whether we can speak freely, worship openly, and, yes, love whomever we choose. That is what’s at stake here.”

Of course, the appointment of the ACLU lawyer, Ruth Bader Ginzberg was a Clinton appointment and she has since claimed the Constitution to be a flawed document and that we need to look at other countries for laws to guide our judicial process.

Now with the latest political appointments being bragged about as stooges for the Obama regime and the refusal of Kagan to recuse herself from the hearing of the Individual Mandate Clause of Obama Care, the seriousness of the appointments of Sotomayor and Kagan are being viewed with skepticism by people wanting to preserve the integrity of the Constitution.

Ms Obama’s speech was not a collection of off the cuff and extemporaneous remarks, she gave the same speech again at another fundraiser in Detroit. She obviously has sound reasons to believe her decidedly un-American speech claims.

We are now left wondering what these Progressive “Plants” are programed to achieve with their “Love who you choose” clause and what other Progressive objectives they are programmed to pursue or do they await directions from the White House. Does this include children, animals, and multiple partners or can we expect an element of reasonable restraint from political operatives within the Supreme Court.
Michelle seems confident that these justices are in her husband’s pocket.

Michelle has reassured us that her husband’s political operatives believe we should be able to speak freely and worship openly, but then again, maybe political stooges may see that only certain speech and worship are considered to be within the proscribed politically correct boundaries and everything else should be considered offensive. Since the question is bound to arise, how ideologically programmed are these Progressive Stooges in the Supreme Court.

Should women from the Left take pride in the fact that they have a victory with mandated condoms and birth control for college students; therefore, they can play humpy rumpy with even less responsible men and forget that their sisters in many parts of the world are still struggling against mutilation, slavery, forced marriage, childhood marriage, state condoned sexual abuse, and religious sponsored murder. Perhaps these issues are a little too close to a real struggle as well as incongruent and counter productive to the president’s true ideological beliefs, since most of those crimes against routinely happen in the Muslim World and are much more difficult to deal with than the concept of free condoms for college women with healthy libidos.

We should also remember that Ginzberg told the Egyptians trying to write a new Constitution for their new country to forget using the US Constitution as a template; consequently, they are now debating how many hours after a wife dies is a man allowed to have sex with the corpse of his deceased wife. Yes, the Feminist movement should be proud of its progress and its stooges.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The gift that keeps on giving.

Here is the DNC’s chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz making a fool of herself, once again, on Bret Baier’s show last night whining that the GOP had blocked the President’s budget plan even though SHE, along with all of her fellow Democrats voted against her President’s budget plan.

Meanwhile The Heritage Foundation just released some Federal Spending in Graphs. A pictorial tour through Obama’s destruction of our economy. A taste:

Much more where that came from at the link.

Runaway spending is causing our doom, so why not spend a bit more. This time to pander to the youth in our country:

Obama told the students that since they were born, tuition and fees at colleges have doubled.

“And that forces students like you to take on a lot more loans, there are fewer grants, you rack up a lot more debt,” Obama stated.

“Can I get an Amen for that?” he asked the crowd who cheered, “AMEN!”

“Now, the average student who borrows to pay for college, now graduates with with about $25,000 in debt, that’s the average, he added,

“Some have more,” he said. “Can I get an Amen for that?”

“AMEN!” the crowd who cheered.

“Because some folks have a lot more debt like that,” Obama chuckled, as another person in the crowd shouted, “AMEN!”

Ugh, the pandering from this man is disgusting. Can I get an Amen for that?

Doug Powers:

What the students didn’t hear:

“In 2007 I missed two votes to extend the student loan bill that I now want you to believe is the most important things I’ve ever promoted. Can I get an amen?”

“More than half of all young college grads are now jobless or underemployed. Can I get an amen?”

“According to my own Vice President, government meddling in the free market actually increases college tuition. Can I get an amen?”

“Since I took office, over $5 trillion has been added to the national debt — or over $16,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. Can I get an amen?”

“Student loan interest rates are set to double because the then Democrat-controlled Congress voted to do so. Can I get an amen?”

Anyways, he wants to freeze student loan interest rates to buy some votes. Of course this would cost close to 6 billion dollars. How will they pay for that?

By raising taxes of course:

Senate Democrats introduced legislation Tuesday that would prevent student loan interest rates from doubling this summer. Its $5.9 billion cost would be paid for by making it harder for owners of so-called S corporations to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes on some of their earnings.

The proposal would affect such companies with earnings of at least $250,000 annually and whose revenues come from the work of three or fewer owners. It would also apply to some lawyers, doctors and other professional service businesses that are owned by partnerships.

House Democrats said late Tuesday that they would introduce a similar bill, also financed by boosting payroll tax collections from many private companies’ owners.

S-Corps are used by many small companies, from mom and pop stores to individual workers like doctors and to start up businesses to file their taxes.

So he wants to raise the taxes on these small business owners to help students who have racked up a ton of debt to get an education.

And what does Obama tell those kids?

And living with that kind of debt means some pretty tough choices when you’re first starting out. It means putting off buying your first house. Or it means maybe you can’t start up that business right away that you’ve got this great idea for.

When I was over at The Sink I was talking to three business majors, and they all had these business ideas. But it’s tougher if you’ve got all this loan that you’re already thinking about the minute you get out of school. Maybe you’ve got to start a family a little bit later. It takes you a longer time to save for retirement. And when a big chunk of every paycheck goes towards loan debt, that’s not just tough on you. It’s not just tough on your families. It’s painful for the whole economy because that’s money that could be going into the economy and could be going into new businesses and could be helping businesses grow.

So on the one hand he panders to the youth telling them the taxpayers will help get them out of debt so they can start those small businesses, and on the other hand he wants to raise taxes on those same small businesses. I’m sure many of those students who have racked up a ton of debt are doctors and lawyers. Those same people who WOULD have used the S-Corps tax breaks to become more successful. Not anymore.

Just another example how Obama and the Democrats are destroying this country.

Can I get an Amen for that?

If any video deserved to go viral it’s this one. If you didn’t believe in home schooling before you may very well change your mind after watching this whole video. Don’t skip it, watch the whole thing:

Click here to view the embedded video.

One topic that has been getting lost in the discussions about our economy is higher education. We hear a few sidebars about it when attached to larger stories, such as the Occupy Wall Street Crowd asking for forgiveness of their student loans, or discussions about the housing bubble dovetailing into a discussion about growing student loan debt in our country. A few people have offered up piecemeal solutions, but nobody has connected all of the dots to propose a sweeping reform change – until now.

One of my favorite things about being a weekend tour guide for groups made up of mostly young people from abroad is that when I get to chat with them I have the chance to hear some interesting views I might not otherwise be exposed to. For example, earlier this year over lunch after the tour one gentleman at the table was a student from Germany, and he explained how their education system differs from the American model. Under the German system students will receive an education similar to the K-12 model that we have in the US, but as they approach their final years the focus shifts. Students will select an area of concentration and most of their classes will focus in that direction, and if appropriate will lead to paid apprenticeships. Since students are moving toward an area that interests them and no longer have to study classes that do not, Germany enjoys a dropout rate far lower than ours here in the US. Ironically, just a few weeks after I had this conversation Cafe Hayekposted a link that discussed this point in greater detail if you’d like to learn more.

Rick Perry’s short campaign sadly died out before the public could get any meaningful exposure to his seven points on improving higher education.

His first four ideas focus on improving the quality of teaching and rewarding high performance. Ideas 5-7 address accountability from the schools, giving students greater control over their tuition funding, and exploring lower cost solutions for accreditation. Unfortunately Perry’s debate performances were highlighted by a combination of not remembering which agencies he wished he could abolish and a strange obsession with Mitt Romney’s lawn care preferences, which led him to an early exit. Sadly, these ideas never got the national traction that they deserved. But they should have then and they should now.

I’m also the rare conservative who actually likes to read leftist sites – however flawed their ideas may be it’s always useful to learn more about the opposing viewpoints. One article in The Nation (For anyone unfamiliar imagine a leftist version of National Review) cited a few sources that talked about issues with for-profit colleges and issues with the standards for reporting their job placement rates:

The methodologies that schools use to calculate these rates vary state by state and accreditor by accreditor, making them impossible to compare. And because neither accreditors nor state regulators put much of an effort into verifying these rates, the schools don’t seem to have any qualms about inflating them.

The Obama administration took aim at these problems in June 2010 when it proposed, as part of a package of draft regulations designed to improve the integrity of the federal student aid programs, requiring for-profit colleges to use a single standardized methodology when calculating these rates. Under the plan, the administration would have extended the standards the government requires short-term programs to follow in calculating their rates to all for-profit college and vocational programs that are subject to the Gainful Employment rules.

I actually agree with the author’s point of of calculating job placement rates, and it should be applied across the board to all colleges, both public and private. And we need to take this a bit further… Recently National Review’s cover story addressed higher education and offered its own two part solution. In a nutshell, the first proposal is to basically prevent states from insulating schools from competition, such as preventing competing schools from opening campuses on “the other school’s turf.” Personally I don’t agree with this one, as online learning is quickly tearing down the ivy-covered protected walls. Their second was to level the playing field between public and private schools by allowing private colleges to develop partnerships (like a charter school) with the state to remove the state college’s advantage of public subsidies. While I like the idea of leveling the playing field, I don’t agree with the methodology. Rather than get the government more involved, I’m thinking that we should move in the opposite direction. And I have a plan…

Before we get to the solution, first let’s look at some basic economics to identify the problem. Let’s say I run the shop that sells the best fresh lemonade in Washington, DC. I am of course, referring to the dessert stand named “Just Desserts” located at the food court in The Old Post Office at 12th & Pennsylvania Ave.* Despite the superior quality of their beverage a pint of their fresh squeezed lemonade only costs $2, with a large costing around $3. The word gets out that in addition to being refreshing, this lemonade is a great way for visiting students to cap off a morning of touring the monuments. Demand increases, and sales take off. Naturally with any finite good when demand increases so does price. We soon find ourselves at a point where not every student who visits us can afford our now $6 pint and $8 large lemonades. Since we as a society feel that every child should have the right to sample our fine lemonade, we set up government programs to assist them. We set up cash grants that they can use to redeem at various lemonade stands, or even outright subsidies to my stand to assist some of the needier lemonade customers. Now as I see more sources of revenue coming in I raise lemonade prices to $8 and $10 per cup. Granted, the extra money is not going toward improving the quality of the lemonade, but I can instead use the extra funds to build a world class Diversity Outreach department. Who cares where I spend the extra money as long as the students get their lemonade?

OK, that may not be a perfect comparison to higher education, but you get the idea. The point I’m trying to make is that we have a product that is becoming more expensive and we are taking no steps to bring down its cost, and instead are bloating the supply side. Sadly college costs become this chicken and egg upward spiral with no end in sight. Isn’t there something we can do? I’m glad you asked!

First off, we should start to look at the German model. Rick Santorum actually made an excellent point that college is not for everyone and that intellectual elites should not sneer down their noses at those who don’t have advanced degrees. When Sister Babe woke me up one Sunday morning to tell me that our kitchen sink was leaking you can bet I was quite thankful that the man who showed up in 20 minutes to fix our sink chose to learn plumbing and not Anti-Western Studies.

Next, let’s get the government out of the student loan business. Don’t we have budget crisis and exponentially growing federal debt? Something that the private sector has already proven it can handle might be a good start for shifting a government program out of the public sector. Put student loans back in the hands of private lenders and let them compete for students’ money. Don’t allow the government to subsidize the loans, either. So far to any leftist this sounds like a wonderfully predatory system for the banks to plunder students seeking loans. Hang on, I’m not finished.

When I say to let the banks compete for loans I mean it. Let them base their interest rates on whatever factors they choose – school placement rates, choice of major, and GPA. Think of this as if you were loaning this money yourself. Who is more likely to pay back a loan – the student who graduated from Stanford with a 4.0 in chemical engineering, or the Marymount student with the 2.1 in Transgender Studies? My money is on the engineer. If students need to transfer or change majors, that’s fine too – let the rate be dependent on whatever their final data is upon graduation. Needless to say, dropping out or failing out would have their own penalties, but it would give students better incentive to choose carefully and be diligent in their studies. If this means the Engineering major can shop around until he finds a place that will offer him a 3% rate while the best that the Transgender Studies major can get is 7% so be it. As an added bonus, this will discourage people from wasting money on these various navel-gazing degrees whose only career path would be college campuses or the permanent victimhood cottage industry run by the left.

As an added bonus, as we get fewer graduates with these worthless degrees we get fewer graduates marching in protest because they actually have useful skills that can get them employed. Better still, with fewer people seeking employment in useless roles like Consultant for Gender Equality in Education ** these parasitic professions will begin to die out.

So now we have the banks with extra information to help them decide how their money will get loaned, but what about the students? I’m glad you asked! Let’s arm them with information as well. We’ve started by revamping their High School education to help them find a direction to help them after graduation that may or may not involve college. By reducing the pool of high school applicants we’re already forcing colleges to compete from the supply side of the equation (Fewer applicants means colleges must improve their product, price, or both). We’re also having schools report on what their placement rates are on graduation. Let’s break it down further by degree so that students can manage what to expect at graduation. More specifically, let’s get the students involved in tracking this data. Offer a small discount for loan paybacks for any student who provides their employment data at the end of each year. Have them report not only on if they’re employed, but if they’re employed in their field, their salary for the year and if they’re working second jobs. Suddenly a Transgender Studies degree might not seem so desirable when one sees how many recent grads are employed, but at Bennigan’s or via a temp agency.

Let’s have the schools give more information about where their students’ tuition is going. How much is going toward teaching, toward research, and toward various overhead programs? Include explanations for changes to any categories. For example, did your school just combine two of its science departments to cut costs but found the money to hire five Diversity outreach employees? Thanks, but no thanks.

Let’s not stop there. When applying for these student loans each applicant should also be given recent data to show what kind of salary they can expect to make both upon graduation and later in their careers - like here. Let’s also provide them with a worksheet so they know what kind of burden they’re assuming, say in a grid showing length of loan, how much they will pay over the life of the loan, and how much they will be paying each month, like what UC – Denver does.

Unfortunately I don’t have a solution to offer everyone out there who is already carrying loan debt and is underemployed or unemployed, but at least what I’ve given you here is a plan to stop the bleeding and help the next generation. We owe it to the children – after all, they’re the ones who will be choosing our nursing homes someday.

* For the record I have no financial stake in Just Desserts, nor do I receive any compensation for plugging their lemonade. Trust me, if you go there you’ll be glad you did.

** Yes, I actually came across an individual online who listed this under the category of Job Title.

Crossposted from Brother Bobs Blog

The real Vladimir Ilyich Obama stands up

As part of his fantasy “deficit reduction” plan, Barack Obama proposed a number of new taxes. One of them was the so-called “Buffett Rule.” When it was initially proposed, it was part of the plan to reduce the deficit.

‘Buffett rule’

President Obama

“Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” he said. “It’s hard to argue against that.”

Mr Obama suggested a “Buffett rule”, which would see Americans who earn more than $1m pay the same rate of tax as those who earn less.

The proposal refers to billionaire financier Warren Buffett, who has complained that he and his wealthy peers pay relatively less tax than the people who work for them.

Many high-income Americans benefit from tax loopholes that see earnings on investment taxed at lower rates than wages.

On Sunday Republican Paul Ryan, chairman of the House budget committee and a proponent of deep cuts and no tax rises, described Mr Obama’s plans as “class warfare”.

The president referenced Mr Ryan’s criticism on Monday, justified his tax-and-cut package by saying simply: “It’s not class warfare, it’s math.”

So how much impact would the Buffett rule have on either the debt or the deficit? The White House refused to say.

But for the moment, the White House wants to keep the attention focused on Obama’s argument that it’s unfair to tax Buffett’s secretary at a higher rate than her boss.

“I’m not going to give you a schedule of how broad individual tax reform would break down and what impact it would have,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said at the Wednesday briefing. “The president simply believes that as a matter of principle that unfairness ought to be changed.”

Republican lawmakers — noting the absence of real numbers — attacked the plan as a political charade, an attempt to score points in the November election instead of a serious policy to reduce federal debt. One outside analysis by the non-partisan Tax Foundation indicates the rule would generate another $36.7 billion a year in revenue — far from enough to make a serious dent in a national debt of $15 trillion.

It’s estimated that the “Buffett Rule” would bet around $4 billion per year.

A bill designed to enact President Obama’s plan for a “Buffett rule” tax on the wealthy would rake in just $47 billion over the next 11 years, according to an estimate by Congress’ official tax analysts obtained by The Associated Press.

That figure would be a drop in the bucket of the over $7 trillion in federal budget deficits projected during that period. It is also minuscule compared to the many hundreds of billions it would cost to repeal the alternative minimum tax, which Obama’s budget last month said he would replace with the Buffett rule tax.

Obama’s proposed deficits run over a trillion dollars for as long as anyone can imagine.

Since the Buffett rule would have essentially no impact on the debt or the deficit, Obama has shifted tactics. It’s no longer about deficit reduction- now it’s all about fairness.

The Obama administration is emphasizing “fairness” over deficit reduction in its renewed pitch for the “Buffett rule” ahead of next week’s scheduled Senate vote.

Introducing a minimum 30 percent income tax on millionaires “was never our plan to bring the deficit down and get the debt under control,” Jason Furman, the principal deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon. “This is not the president’s entire tax plan. We’re not trying to say this solves all our economic problems, all our budget problems.”

So it’s not the math? It’s fairness? OK, then.

“Fairness” was Vladimir Lenin’s central campaign theme- equality of outcome. It’s what Communism is all about.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the political structure of the Soviet Union (1917–1989) tried to emphasize equality of outcome as a primary goal.

Via Wikipedia

It also led right to Josef Stalin. So how is $4 billion a year going to create “fairness”? How is it going to give everyone a “fair shot”? How does that actually work? Will the yearly $4 billion go into the “fair shot pool”? And once that doesn’t do anything, will Obama be back asking for a 90% tax so everyone can have more “fair shots”? Is the ultimate goal control of and business and everyone’s salaries so the Obamitburo can determine what’s “fair” for all of us?

The fly in the ointment? Life isn’t fair.

If life was fair, I’d have Barack Obama’s wealth. If life was fair, we could all be astronauts. If life was fair, my kids wouldn’t have lost soccer games 8-1. If life was fair, we’d all get into Harvard Law.

It can be argued that it’s a terribly unfair thing for someone to lose at the Master’s. Why is there a “champion” of the NBA each year? That’s not “fair” to the other teams. Why play the Superbowl? It’s not fair that one team has to lose. It’s even more unfair to the teams that did not make it. Why not just have every tennis match and baseball game end in a tie! That’s fair!

But then, what’s the point of playing? What’s the point of doing anything if the outcome is the same if you try as if you didn’t try?

It’s also not “fair” for only half the country to pay Federal taxes. As someone once said, we all ought to have some “skin in the game.” We all ought to pay the same tax rate.

That’s fair.

The Marxist genie is out of the bottle. Neal Boortz compared Obama’s words to those of Marx:

“Responsibility from all” = “From each according to their ability.”

“Fairness for all” = “To each according to their needs.”

Watch some future democrats’ attitudes toward redistributing their GPA

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama is no longer about recovery or growth. He’s all about fairness.

The ultimate result of a Obama’s fairness vision would see equal outcome for everything. No matter how hard you work, no matter the risk you take, you earn the same amount of money. No matter how hard you study you earn the same grades. Everyone owns the same house, the same car.

The good part is that everyone gets to be a doctor, lawyer or airline pilot. Without question, though, some democrats would be more equal than other democrats. That’s how it went in mother Russia too.

Somewhere, Vladimir Lenin is giddy with glee.

Who Made These Bones

This fossil skull is between 11,000 and 14,500 years old, according to radio carbon dating of samples from their campfires in caves of southwestern China. There are unique features of this skull and of at least two other specimens that make this find unique. Notice the bony protrusion of the cheek area, the width of the face in the region temporal mandibular joint, the excessive bony structure of the mandibular rami, the massive molar structure, the anterior portion of the jaw is protruding and massive, the bony structures suggest a massive mandibular musculature, the eye sockets are large and broad, perhaps indicating an individual with superior eyesight. The wear of the incisors suggest a seed and plant eater who relied heavily on those feed sources at least seasonally and probably more often, especially when the hunting or trapping failed. Every hunter/trapper who knows how to set snares, knows that it is much easier to snare deer or trap them in blind canyons and kill them as you need them, a type of primitive animal husbandry and meat preservation, but professional anthropologists have never visited a primitive hunting group like this because there are none.

Did this creature die because his lower incisors overwhelmed the upper incisors, causing infected gums and impacted teeth, making it impossible to eat roots,nuts, and seeds, thus did it become too painful for him to masticate the plant materials with the lower incisors cutting into the upper gum and against the impacted remnants of the upper teeth?

Were his teeth and that powerful jaw that served him so well, responsible for his demise? It happens to older horses all the time and judging from the right angle of the extending rami and the advanced wear of the teeth, this individual was an older male with a limited ability to grind seeds and nuts. Of one thing we can be sure, this is truly a unique creature of this world.

Before we allow the anthropologists to muddy up the water with highly predictable, politically biased, but extremely speculative claims of species migrating out of Africa, species that supposedly represent unique groups or a hybrid product of the evolutionary chain that branched off and eventually perished, let’s look at this new find through the eyes of a former trapper and professional hunter, who survived for years using many of the same analytical skills of the ancient hunter gatherer. Since we aren’t in the caves, we will need to rely on the findings of students and anthropologists; thus, our findings are compromised from the beginning, for no one reads “sign” (traces of life and movement) like a man who made his living reading “sign”.

Because of carbon dating, we know these creatures lived in proximity to modern humans, during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition of 11,000 to 15,000 years ago. We can also conclude that there were more than three individuals, for if the question of which came first the chicken or the egg is enigmatic, the question of the origin of these individuals is just as problematic, for the breeding of a species requires more than three specimens. The coward and the lemming will say they walked out of Africa without leaving a trace and then were overwhelmed by modern man; unfortunately, there is no sign to suggest this scenario, it is just accepted wisdom or should we say stupidity, for academics must accept and repeat unsubstantiated conjecture as fact in order to be accepted by your peers in academia.

We know these individuals were hardy enough to survive the coldest glacial period of approximately 20,000 years ago, back when ice covered one-third of the earth’s surface, the glaciers were over a mile thick, and a good portion of the earth’s water was trapped in these ice formations.

This early hunter liked to live in caves; the temperature of caves is constant, a bit on the cool side, but during an ice age it would seem like central heating. They liked to eat a large red deer, we may assume it is the size of an elk, since we have been given no specifics. The article mentioned that he was probably a stone tool maker, since there is evidence of worked stones at the sight, but the modern bushman knows it is nearly impossible to butcher, transport, cook, and eat a deer as large as an elk without stone knives.

It is the charred bone of the Red Deer that is the tell-tale sign of prehistoric beings with culinary skills, for charred bone survives the tests of time so well it is nearly as impermeable as stone tools. The men studying these people have named them the Red Deer People and one name is as good as another, but more important are the features of this well-preserved skull and the cavalier use of the word People. Notice the bony structures of the face, particularly the supra-orbital ridges above those large eyes and the huge nasal opening. This individual may have had the well developed sense of smell required to track game by using his sense of smell. The large eyes may indicate superior vision or perhaps a night hunter. There is no curvature of the cheek bones, the feature we rely on so heavily to define beauty; instead, we have a flat massive bone structure that would have served well for the attachment of a massive mandibular musculature for the grinding of seeds and roots. The wear pattern of the incisors suggest this possibility.

The forehead is well developed, but begins a distal curvature prematurely, when compared to a modern skull. The high forehead has been a trait of humans for hundreds of thousands of years. In man the frontal lobes protect the region of the brain associated with behavior and personality. The diminished area on top of the skull represents a compromised section of the brain associated with sensory data, but this information is only useful if we assume that this creature and modern man had similar brains with the exact formation and function; with the skull’s variance, should we assume the brain is the same?

This creature survived one of the coldest epics of the last ice age, referred to as the Glacial Maximum, a period that ended approximately 20,000 years ago, and the transition into the equivalent of our modern climate, known as the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, a period of change between 11,000 thousand years and 15,000 years ago. This transition saw a major die off of flora and fauna, but along with the die off came a rebirth of new plants and animals. The large Red Deer that this creature depended for protein, didn’t make the cut and it is safe to assume that most of his plant foods also perished. Was he unable to adapt, did he lack the mental capacity to alter his hunting and gathering knowledge and technology to meet the challenges of changing world? Perhaps, but remember, we are being objective by employing the skills of a modern day hunter and trapper and not relying on political or cultural biases that tend to contaminate the “scientific” findings of anthropologists.

Therefore, we can say with confidence that it is nearly impossible to say. With sadness, it is easy to realize academics with their clueless abilities to relate to real world problems often miss real clues for their lack of experience in the lifestyle that this creature survived in and thrived for eons. Unfortunately, the Indiana Jones persona is a myth. The best that we can hope for is to recover DNA samples and continue to chart the blood of the families and species of the world, but to assume this creature explains or provides proof of evolutionary theory or intelligent design requires more than a stretch of imagination. Remember, if we chart the stored information within the DNA of a one cell organism, it will require hundreds if not thousands of pages of data.

Let’s take into consideration the fact that for the forces of nature to form a fossil, a unique and specialized set of characteristics from the environment need to be present; to assume that early species were thoughtful enough to only travel and die where fossils can be formed to help us in recording the steps of man and other creatures that walked upright, requires either a very weak mind or a very devious mind.

Our anthropologists are quick to theorize about the possibility of interbreeding between modern man and the Red Deer People, it isn’t impossible to “conceive” of the idea, when we think of the breeding habits of some modern men and of some modern women like Ms Fluke who seem to have problems with self-restraint and logic. But there is that cheek problem, the laws of attraction, and how much cultural definitions of beauty or ugliness is someone willing to overlook just to have their ashes hauled, but then we are also left with the mule or hybrid problem, the fact that nearly all cross species breeding, that can produce a viable life form, results in an organism that is sterile. But just maybe, it really isn’t science when we reach out to consider the “but maybe” syndromes.