Judge Neil Gorsuch Deserves Honest Validation

 

The first and foremost thing the public and the world need to know about Judge Neil Gorsuch, back in 2006 he was confirmed by the Senate without recorded opposition. Not a single Senator found reason to raise even a single doubt about his decency and qualifications to serve as a Judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado. Imagine this, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had nary a complaint about confirming Judge Gorsuch and now claims he is, “very hostile appointment” and “well outside the mainstream of American legal thought.” At a CNN town hall gathering Minority Leader Pelosi further criticized Judge Gorsuch stating, “If you breathe air, drink water, eat food, take medicine or in any other way, interact with the courts, this is a very bad decision.” How in eleven years did Judge Neil Gorsuch somehow went from perfectly adequate and even unobjectionable when appointed by President George W. Bush, not exactly somebody on fantastic relations with Minority Leader Pelosi and often criticized quite severely by her, to be a Judge for the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and now is the spawn of all evils. What a transformation from unobjectionable to threat to the continuation of humanity “If you breathe air, drink water, eat food, take medicine or in any other way, interact with the courts…” What a transformation, or was the Democrats who have changed in the ensuing eleven years?

 

Supreme Court Justice Nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch and
United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado

 

We are wondering when they will get to commenting he enjoys murdering innocent fish as he enjoys fly fishing. Then there is his making long tracks in virgin snow when he gets a chance because he skis. He refused to sleep nights in Howard Johnsons Inns, well, because he worked as the overnight desk clerk. We could not think of a related evil but are awaiting the Democrat blame gamers to find fault with the fact he raises horses and goats and chickens on his Colorado farm. The Democrats have claimed they will stop at nothing to prevent Judge Gorsuch from taking the ninth seat on the Supreme Court. Some claim that until there is a President who received a majority of the popular vote the Senate should not permit any new Supreme Court appointees to be placed on the bench. The Democrats have already warned of a war in the media should the Republicans do as Harry Reid did to get judges approved over any Republican filibuster and use the same filibuster busting majority vote being sufficient for cloture in Presidential appointments. Apparently what is good for the Democrat Goose is not to be allowed for the Republican gander. It is another case of do as we say, not as we do for the Democrats and the mainstream media may also jump in on the act for attempting to deny the Republicans any comfort copying the Democrat play manual.

 

The fight over Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education has been a fight done well in service of the Teacher Unions with a full time assist of the media. Betsy DeVos’ main crime was being educated in private schools and realizing that the private schools outperform the public institutionalized education system. You see, Betsy DeVos has been an advocate for private schools, parochial schools, charter schools such as the Success Academy Schools and the chain of the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) Schools for most of her professional life. Should the Department of Education begin to make parental choice more readily available for inner city and other parents through voucher systems or money follows the student programs, then the public schools might lose students to higher performing schools and perhaps even bring the entire public school systems to their knees making them shape up or be replaced by these more successful schools.

 

Secretary of Education Nominee Betsy DeVos

 

Imagine if every student carried with them a dollar outlay equal to three quarters of what the public schools in their area spend per student. How long before schools with far better results start cropping up and accepting students for this lesser amount. The local government saves money and parents get to choose where and with what emphasis their children are educated. Schools will start offering specialized courses where students can be taught a trade as well as receiving a decent basic education. The department of education could become a clearing house for information rather than an actual education provider. Schools will still need to produce quality student outcomes as the parents will not place their children in under performing schools thus eliminating the schools which do not produce well educated students. This could spell the end of the public school systems as we know them or perhaps these schools will actually find ways of weeding out poor performing teachers and a more conducive manner of teaching their students. Perhaps the education system could benefit from an overhaul where those schools which produce the best students receive the most students and succeed while poorly performing schools lose students and quickly falter and are replaced. Apparently Betsy DeVos’s error of her ways is believing that schools should produce quality educations over teacher job guarantees, what a novel concept.

 

President Donald Trump Personal Advisor Steve Bannon

 

If this becomes the standard for all government products perhaps it would be an improvement worth giving its shot. Would we be happy should the military not produce the best qualified fighting force and instead simply offer guaranteed careers for officers no matter their ability to perform their duties? We would never accept incompetence from the military any more than we would frequent a restaurant which delivered poorly prepared meals. Restaurants are not in business to guarantee the chef a job once they have worked there for two years even if they do not learn new offerings as times change. It becomes keep up or shut up and hit the road. Hospitals would not keep a surgeon who refuses to learn new techniques and allow him to use older procedures just out of loyalty, they demand that physicians learn and keep up with the times or retire. Government should operate under similar means and perhaps that could be something that Donald Trump could introduce and the United States be all the better for such. We will see and let us all hope that such is in store. Improving government services should be job one of the President and all of the many different Congresscritters. Unfortunately, this has not been the standard procedure, so perhaps bringing in Steve Bannon to shake things up a little is an idea whose time has factually been a long time coming.

 

Beyond the Cusp 

 

The Unmaking of America

 

America was founded upon great principles which relied upon a well-educated and involved electorate founded in morality and steeped in Judeo-Christian ethic. The moral underpinnings of America have been eroded slowly but inexorable since the end of World War II and the beginning of the rule of the cities which many were destined to become megalopolises. Just like the original cities of iniquity, Sodom and Gomorrah, deprivations began to grow within the cesspools of the new civilization. The pews grew emptier and emptier until the churches became too expensive to support by the paltry remains of congregants. They became schools, restaurants, malls and some even became Mosques as the new religion which was growing was Islam. This was the story and history written across Europe and gaining a beachhead in America. The hope and presumed saving grace which was to protect America was her well-crafted Constitution. Presumable the balance of powers and the checks and balances would prevent the corruption from taking the nation over the edge and into oblivion. But as presented, the Constitution was written for, in the immortal words of John Adams, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Slowly but surely the United States has sunk beneath irreligious immorality rendering the Constitution less of a protecting blanket and more of a sheer veil pretending to cover and protect.

 

But the immorality, it ends up, will be the lesser problem as the lack of education of the people will bring forth an electorate which will be enticed by babbles, smoke and delights offered by tempters and shysters. Their votes bought with the treasures of a government which will become bankrupt in the process and the nations will be left with a populace which will be as empty in their pockets as they are in their heads. The education system will have failed them raising instead of scholars mere rubes indoctrinated to follow false prophets who they will elect for promises equally as empty. They managed to escape the charlatan this election only due to promises just as bold and bodacious as they will be difficult to fulfill. Yet to look at the colleges and their campuses and the future is written in their classes and the major fields the new intellectuals pursued and now educate the youth. Gender Studies and other philosophies of government painted as savior and the many needful groupings and minorities, the many colored and patterned quilt as the new model replacing the melting-pot. Instead of “E Pluribus Unum” the new cry is “instead of one-many.” Celebrate your separateness, be a special group demanding recognition and rights designed to keep each within their own and none shall stray from their special little click. Thus the populous has been set separate one from the others all against the other fighting for their special recognition and treatment exalted through government favors. Thus divided, the people are set to be conquered by the charlatans.

 

The colleges have also been bought by the oil sheiks and their monies as they have endowed new departments which they bought with their ill-gotten oil wealth making Middle East studies their means of indoctrinating the youth with their alternate reality. Their motive was simple; to win favor and defeat the one they believe is the greatest threat to their promised future. They have a religion in which they believe with every fiber of their beings. Their faith and trust in their god is the opposite of that in the Western developed world. They see their faith as resurgent and rising to replace all others starting with the Western religions starting with the Jews; it always starts with the Jews, but these believers of Allah also hold Christianity in equal disregard. This is why their main enemy which they teach in their classes and reinforce with staged demonstrations is Israel and the Jews. This is their theme in protests such as Israel Apartheid Week (month) and Palestinian Awareness protests through which they turn the irreligious against the Jews through repetition of tropes many thought dead and buried after the defeat of the Nazis and the revelation of the camps and anti-Semitic hatred which was a uniting trope of Nazis, a unifying hatred of the other, the Jew. Now the same trope is being sold on many college campuses including the Ivy League and top schools such as the California University System, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, CUNY, MIT, CMU, CWR, and many other well-respected places of higher learning. The spring semester and the coming of better weather throughout the college world across the United States is the time where the demonstrations turn against Israel and Jews feel and, in too many cases, become threatened and some have been attacked being blamed for perceived crimes of Israel. What crimes? The audacity to exist in the heart of what Islam considers their sacred Waqf.

 

Anti-Israel Demonstration

 

Israel is but the first step, just a taste of their believed inevitable conquests. Their god has promised them that Allah will give them the world and all the people within and in that end they are bound to conquer all nations and convert or kill the infidel, the unbelievers. Their eventual gift to the world is rule by the Imams and all given a choice, Islam or death. This is not taught in their Middle Eastern studies as there they receive only the palatable. They are steeped in the hatred and inviolability of Islam throughout the Middle East and the hatred of the Jews and their presumed affront to humanity, to Islam, Israel. They are indoctrinated with the Palestinian narrative of the Jews stealing their ancient homeland and are taught that the Biblical story of the Jewish People, the Israelites is actually the history of the Palestinian Arabs. Never mind that the Arabs did not arrive in Jerusalem until the year 637 and was then fought over for centuries thereafter. But the new teachers of history of the Middle East know that their students have little if any knowledge of the Bible, the Old Testament. Many know next to nothing about the New Testament so it stands to reason they would know even less of Jewish history and thus are willing to accept that which they are taught. The professors of other subjects accept this alternate history with the only major fields not thusly infected being the hard sciences. One of the most renowned of the linguistic professors was the late Edward Said who, along with fellow traveler and also linguist, Noam Chomsky, have taught the Islamic tropes and fully vilified Israel and the Jews, which is weird as Noam Chomsky was born Jewish. They are but a sampling of the humanity professors who back the Islamic Middle Eastern history letter for letter as many of their departments are dependent upon the oil monies which equal over a billion dollars yearly from Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia and even Iran.

 

This lifeblood corrupts the entire scholarly endeavor infecting the universities and through them future generations who will soon be the leaders of the Western nations leaving them vulnerable to Islam as these leaders will have already been corrupted. This is what could bring down America and the world will be a darker place for the loss. This past election was the primal scream of the middle of the United States, fly-over country, the moral and often silent majority. This was the expression of the last of those who fill the pews of the churches largely outside the main metropolises. These were the people who will hopefully demand their country back and force truth in the education system. Should the education system remain corrupted and ineffectual then all will be lost. The task ahead is one of rebuilding, of rejuvenation and of resurrection of what has been lost to corrupt governance. The schools need be retaken and once again teach the lessons which were the basis that built America. There need be a retaking of the youth for if the youth are lost then so will be the future. The teacher unions have forsaken the children and education in their lust for political power and higher wages. Teachers often now are more interested in job security, retirement benefits and ever increasing salaries with tenure assuring them of a comfortable life where their position is unassailable and thus does not require their fulfilling any obligation to actually teach to actually educate. What are the options? That is a difficult one but the most obvious is to drastically change the education system. The available alternatives are private schools or homeschooling. Should sufficient students be pulled from the current education system, perhaps it would collapse under its own weight and allow for replacement with a better system. Continuing on with the current systems, then the future will be determined by a basically ignorant electorate which has a false history fed them by teachers in the grasp of their unions and foreign money and influences in government. That will present a populace which silently accepts what their “betters” dictate to them without even a murmur. Let us pray that this last election was not the final scream as the world plunges into darkness for a thousand years, maybe longer.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Future and Hope for the Western World

 

The future is determined just as much by the nurturing and education provided for the next generation during their youth, formative years and on through their years of education and initial introduction into the workforce as it is by their genetic makeup which is still provided by the natural selection that leads to determining who their parents are. Where we may be on the cusp of great breakthroughs in genetic engineering and closing in on providing parents with choices for genetically altering their future child’s DNA makeup and thus provide for what are called designer children, we have yet to get beyond the cusp and make such opportunities acceptable to the general public. I am sure that should the time come and we are able to literally design a child, leaving only the most minor possibilities of any unseen crisis, and produce a next generation of geniuses, but thus far we are not quite beyond the cusp and stepping into what may be a very strange new world. Once we arrive at the point where the first designer child is produced successfully and a healthy, intelligent, beautiful and handsome wonder-child is born, I suspect rather than being met with cheers and adulation of being the first child in a new era of humanity, we will instead face mobs of protesters demanding this kind of monstrous building of abomination of nature be immediately outlawed and only naturally conceived children be permitted. Of course these demonstrators will eventually tire of their objections, or at least making a public display of those objections, and designer children will be as common as are naturally selected children of today. The problem would be when only designer children or minimally selected pairing of best case DNA from the natural parents for children will be required in a means of aiding natural selection and optimizing the next generations.

 

No matter how close to what is deemed perfect human children biological research may permit society to produce, all of that is worthless if the education system they are given is not up to the optimum level that might be possible. This is apparently a subject of great debate amongst two different generations, the parents of young children through college age young adults and their grandparents whose educational rigors did not grant the wide array of course selection nor did it have the advantages of computers, the internet, social media, and all the other advantages, difficulties, challenges and new educational theories such as the currently very seriously debated and in many cases rejected system known mostly as Common Core. All of that debate aside, the objection appears to be most prevalent amongst the grandparents who look at some of the signs they have observed and the sometimes unbelievable ignorance revealed by numerous interviews and test results given to children in elementary education through to college and university students even those studying for advanced degrees such as Masters and Doctoral programs.

 

One of the glaring recent examples was the interviews of random students at Harvard about current politics and historical questions mostly pertaining to American history. Only a minority could identify Vice President being currently Joe Biden. An even smaller percentage identified John Roberts as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Where I would forgive the average High School student not knowing who was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, these were students at Harvard and whom will be the leaders and shapers of the future of the nation and many of whom will become the lawyers and judges, possible even Supreme Court Judges even to the high position of Chief Justice. These were presumably the crème de la crème of American education; these were students at Harvard. As disturbing as those results may have been, there have been numerous tests performed on students from middle school, there cannot be anything named junior as in junior high school as junior gives of a connotation of inferior and might damage sensitive psyches, high school and through all levels of college which have produced similar indications that the education system is not up to par or students are simply not retaining anything about civics, government or history. The levels displayed often appear like they could use these youths as the stars for a sequel to the movie, and I am reluctant to even let it be known to the world I even have viewed this movie, Idiocracy.

 

Perhaps some examples of questions which stymied so many students, and granted that some of these interviews were handpicked to make the point that there is something amiss in the American, and very likely across the Western World, education systems are in order. When students cannot identify who was the President of the United States during the Civil War as President Lincoln, and I would have even taken President Jefferson Davis assuming the student was from Alabama, Georgia or any of the other southern states which made up the Confederacy, or they cannot name which country from which the United States fought to gain their independence and name Britain or England there is a problem with the education system. Students were unable to name the three branches of the United Stated Federal Government as the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. These are not trick questions setup to fool or mislead the students; they were straight forward and elementary questions. I almost understand when people attending an anti-nuke rally or other ecological rally against pollution or some other similarly themed action are willing to sign a petition to restrict one of the worst greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere named dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) as they are likely to simply take for granted the petition seekers are representing an actual cause celeb and are not pranking them so they do not fully ingest the question and are just signing to support a similarly themed petition, or so they think. In reality, water vapor in the atmosphere is the greatest of the greenhouse gasses but is also so vital to our existence and the existence of virtually every land animal and plant that we accept its presence as vitally necessary so the petition is not false, simply misleading as no such cause has arisen. Asking who the allied powers were in World War II and against whom they were fighting is not a question which should be as great a challenge for the student population in high school or college. Naming the date that we celebrate the United States gaining its independence as the fourth of July is not that difficult. Probably the worst display was on a late night show where they were giving examples of the dumbest of the dumbest set of answers found from archives to history and civics questions from random universities (and I know these were extremely handpicked but with this question that should have been impossible for anybody to miss the answer) and they could not name what nation the United States fought in the Spanish American War. I am at a loss for words to explain how utterly unbelievable it is that there actually were students who guessed at the answer. Some of the examples were, France, the southern states (they did not even call it the Confederacy), Europe (at least they got the right continent even if they missed the actual nation), the Soviet Union, and of course now we get Britain and England. Most of us have heard these questions and answer combinations which would usually be considered outtakes except they were the exact kind of answers they were seeking. I am aware that it probably took quite a number of interviews of students rushing between classes, but still some of these questions are way to basic to have been missed by anyone.

 

Then there is the final point which recently hit the news and was not so much of a surprise as it was the depth and near universality of the criminal deceits that a university would go to simply to have a stronger and more talented football or basketball teams. One of, if not the, best commentaries on the scandal that broke from the University of North Carolina (UNC) was Phantom courses disservice to black students by Walter Williams. In my ‘innocent youth’ I remember the jokes that at some universities there were student athletes taking courses such as Advanced Basket Weaving and other inane and ridiculous courses but never did we imagine phantom courses where students were given grades sufficient to have them retain player status and not be prevented from taking the field due to academic deficiencies. What makes these crimes even worse is that professors received payment for teaching a class that did not exist in reality. These courses were placed within the school for specific social science curriculum and the student’s grade was determined by what was required for their academic qualifications to play their sport as was the number of these courses each student athlete was assigned to raise their averages. These courses and the inflated grades also gave the university the required diversity representation within the student body to qualify for certain Federal Government grant programs which means that these courses were a part of intentionally defrauding the Federal Government and the tax payers of the United States. These frauds, which can be expected, or something similar, to exist in many a university which fields competitive football and basketball teams, are likely to be revealed elsewhere should this investigation be broadened, as it deserves to be, to other universities where such courses may exist. I am sure that other sports programs are likely to be scrutinized and such scrutiny will produce even more and similar problems and frauds.

 

This fraud and any others existing in the American university systems also uncover another even more serious problem, the lack of quality educational opportunity within the public school system as a whole and with particular problems within the schools which serve those troubled neighborhoods which allows certain students to disrupt the education of the entirety of the classes offered. When students are given a passing grade for the reasoning of social promotion both the student and society are being cheated. A major component of this problem is the Federal Government and its various programs and minimal requirements for schools to receive full funding and not be classified as a troubled, problematic or whatever title might be used to classify a school as substandard which places the teachers and administrators of such schools under focus and scrutiny. Needless to point out that such scrutiny due such a rating is anything but friendly and their demands go beyond the schoolroom and into the main office and often will force changed at the top thus great pressure is placed on teachers to assure that every student passes the testing. This produces what is often referred to as teaching to the test where the class becomes practiced in answering the actual questions on the test potentially without having ever studied or been exposed to anything outside of the test regimens. Additionally, over the past couple of decades there has been a litany of schools where cheating on the qualifying tests have been revealed. These deceptions range from teachers prompting the students while they are testing to changing students’ answers to allow for them receiving a higher rating and preventing the school from losing its standing academically.

 

These practices of altering test answers, teaching solely to the test, social progressions through the school system without failing, giving the students answers for the test while they are taking the test and so many other defrauding of students and society has other ramifications such as graduates from high schools not having the ability to read, write and perform elementary mathematical skills. Some of these student athletes learn very early on that they will be exempted from academic requirements and will receive special attention and reprieves which allow them to pass and continue their academic ratings such that they remain eligible for playing their sport. One has to wonder what future many of these athletes will have when they graduate from college still unable to read, write or do elementary arithmetic, not even mathematics, not even the very basics. Providing the student athlete who was granted grades which were not a true accounting of their abilities or actual learning manages to be accepted to a college because of their false grade point average (GPA) and are unable to make the team in their sport or even other less money generating sport, how can they ever pass an actual course when the first time they are being pressed to actually display learned knowledge and retention. In some cases such students may not even be able to write their name beyond block capital letters? They have a high school diploma which they are incapable of reading and will likely have failed and been academically dismissed from college and now need to find work and they realize they have no skill or capabilities that qualify them for employment except menial labors or, if they are fortunate, some trade, operating equipment or performing a specialized skill such as welding or were taken on to apprentice for such a skill such as carpentry or plumbing. The problems arise when there are nowhere near sufficient jobs which require largely physical strength and stamina and then many of such educationally-challenged students who are incapable of filling out an application to receive their paycheck or the required W-2 tax form are unable even to get those jobs. Even more distressing is that the level of knowledge which students taking the required classes to receive a teaching license will also have received an education which potentially will leave them with inadequate levels of knowledge to be fully capable of teaching most courses. This in turn hurts any student who was assigned to have the under-qualified teacher and the cycle begins anew. The areas which have the highest numbers of unqualified or under-qualified teachers are the sciences and mathematics. These particular courses to be qualified as a teacher of mathematics or the sciences are far more rigorous and require numerous hours in higher level mathematics and whatever science one would choose such as biology, physics, chemistry and the numerous others. Since there is a dearth of teachers who become qualified to teach mathematics or the many sciences, the result is that teachers with a general teaching degree end up covering teaching mathematics or some science class despite potentially never having seen that level or even having taken related courses and still be put in a place where they must show proficiency. This begs the question of what would be the advantage of designing students with astronomical IQs if the education system is so broken that it can only provide one with a sub-prime level of education and knowledge. Perhaps the near future we will have a society of brilliantly ignorant young adults holding graduation certificates that hopefully they can actually read. If there exists one school which does not prepare their students with a decent and complete education then as a society we have failed a good number of children which is something which should be eliminated. Our greatest legacies for the most of us are our children and grandchildren and the generation beyond, we must not fail them from the very start with a failing school system; we must not simply trust the education system and should teach them as best we are able. As for any disruptive students who make an education near to impossible we must have a school which deals solely with such students with provisions to take them to those classes thus allowing the rest of the students who are seeking knowledge to receive their lessons without disruption and even intimidations which make learning impossible and murders their future in the process.

 

Beyond the Cusp