2/12/2017

Thoughts On A Sunday

I admit that I started this on Saturday mid-afternoon. I figure the snow will be falling hard enough come this time Sunday to make maintaining power, and hence Internet connectivity, an iffy thing. If the forecast snow was going to be light and fluffy this might not be an issue, but the Weather GuysTM have been saying it might be wet and heavy snow. If that is indeed the case, and adding in the high winds also forecast for this storm, fallen tree limbs and power outages are a given. So I figured I'd start this early and get it posted some time before the snow starts to fall.

Better safe than sorry.

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If you need an example of how not to run a school system, particularly when it comes to maintaining discipline, one only need look at the St. Paul, Minnesota school systems.

By embracing a pie-in-the-sky feel good racial equity system of discipline, meaning the problem wasn't the fault of disruptive, unruly, and dare I say, criminal students, but of the inherent racism of the teachers and staff. The results?

Chaos.

There was a precipitous drop in student enrollments as parents removed their kids from the toxic and violent environment. No learning took place. Teachers were ignored, minimized, and assaulted. The thugs knew they wouldn't be punished for their actions, so they ran the schools.

To say this was a failed experiment would be an understatement. It should the moral bankruptcy of the Progressive line that racism is institutional and the only way to cure it is to allow the so-called victims free rein as a means of balancing it out. It is pretentious poppycock. It is pseudo-intellectual drivel masquerading as science.

In the end St. Paul had to buy out the superintendent who pushed this drivel, one Valeria Silva, to the tune of $800,000. It will take millions more to undo the damage done to the city's schools by this idiot.

One has to wonder how it is so many have forgotten Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's dream, that being judged by the content of one's character and not the color of one's skin.

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If you want to see what kind of debate goes on at a New Hampshire Town Meeting, take a look at these two posts from Skip (Part 1 here and Part 2 here) to get a taste of what we discuss, debate, argue about, and eventually vote upon.

This is small town America democracy in action. The local townspeople have a direct say in how much the town and school will spend over the upcoming year. They can approve or disapprove a budget item, change it, or even eliminate it. They can approve, disapprove, or modify new ordinances, eliminate old ones, or even file a petition warrant article to change some aspect of town governance.

As I like to ask folks who call my office to complain about spending or property taxes in our town, “Did you show up for town meeting and did you vote?” If they answer 'No', then I tell them politely that they have no right to complain. They had the opportunity to make their opinion known and to vote on spending measures which in turn affect out property taxes. They may think that their vote doesn't count, but I've seen more than a few warrant articles pass or fail by only a few votes, or in a very few case, one vote. But if they can't be bothered to vote then they have no right to complain.

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Helping the missus with her math homework has reminded me just how much I had forgotten about some of the simpler math. While calculus is the working math for much of what I do for work, math consisting of complex fractions had the rust falling away from the long unused math machinery.

It's nice to be reminded of the beauty of basic mathematics.

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Just when I thought they couldn't get any stupider.

The Progressives keep pushing the meme that “White Privilege” and “Cultural Imperialism” are the cause of all of our social ills. They're even making 'social justice' classes that explore these memes mandatory at some colleges, like UMass Amherst.

What they never are willing to admit is that the very people they say they are trying to help, basically anyone who isn't a white heterosexual male, are being hurt far more then being helped. When you make everyone a victim, then no one is a victim.

If WHM's become the new Jews, how long before they are targeted for elimination? That eliminationist rhetoric has been on the rise among the SJW Geheime Staatspolizei should be sending warning signals to everyone. After all, should they make their dream come to fruition, who will be next on their hit list?

The one difference between the Jews of Nazi Germany and the WHM's of America that will not make it easy for these fascist pigs? We have a boatload more guns than they do and we know how to use them. They depend upon others to fight their battles while we do our own fighting, and a lot of us have combat experience.

(H/T Instapundit)

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That federal civil servants are filled with “a sense of dread” since Trump took office shows me that something is right in Washington.

Trump promised to slash the federal bureaucracy that has been increasingly choking off business, the economy, and our every day lives. It is something that is long overdue>

Across the vast federal bureaucracy, Donald J. Trump’s arrival in the White House has spread anxiety, frustration, fear and resistance among many of the two million nonpolitical civil servants who say they work for the public, not a particular president.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, a group of scientists strategized this past week about how to slow-walk President Trump’s environmental orders without being fired. At the Treasury Department, civil servants are quietly gathering information about whistle-blower protections as they polish their resumés.

At the United States Digital Service — the youthful cadre of employees who left jobs at Google, Facebook or Microsoft to join the Obama administration — workers are debating how to stop Mr. Trump should he want to use the databases they made more efficient to target specific immigrant groups.

I find it interesting that the USDS, an agency under the control of the President, would work to undermine the person who is their boss. They work for him, not the other way around. If Trump wants to use the databases they improved to go after illegal immigrants, people who broke the law to get here, then that is prerogative and perfectly legal under the law.

That employees of the EPA are worried about their jobs is also a good thing, seeing as how the EPA has been a rogue agency for the past 8 years and they feel they are not beholden to the law. If they go outside their charter, ignore court rulings, and run roughshod over the people of the United States, then they should fear for their jobs because they aren't doing them. They have their own agenda that has nothing to do with the charter of the EPA and should be fired.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

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The snow from the Storm O' Doom started falling just around noon, about two hours before I wrote this. It has been slowly ramping up but is not bad at the moment. The tough part will come when the winds start howling a few hours from now.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the snow is falling, the winds are quiet (for now), and where we're all hunkering down for yet another snow storm.