Just plain wrong

Another day, another letter full of misinformation.

This time, a letter of June 28 attempts to  explain Donald Trump's success so far. Unfortunately, several assumptions are simply wrong. The easiest to debunk is the "letting people enter from places that hate us without first checking...etc." allegations.  The fact is we don't. Period. Haven't for decades.

Additionally, regarding the claims that "millions walk into the country and get everything from education to room and board. The public school part is accurate, but room and board?  In truth native born Americans (non-immigrant) have a 50% higher rate of public housing assistance usage than "illegals" rate of housing assistance. This is in addition to the fact that non Social security enrolled ("illegal") residents  get none of the perks (income tax refund, Social security, etc) of citizens.

The "maybe we're tired of changing the way we live, work, an d celebrate our faith..." comment is revelatory. It seems that the writer longs for the good old days of institutionalized  discrimination against those whose lifestyle has zero impact on them, but whose difference offends them. There is a difference between "celebrating our faith, " which has never been threatened, and forcing our faith down the throats of those with whom we differ.  For decades this has been the American way; ask the KKK.

Simply put,  the immigration issues the writer cites are not about to be solved by Trump or the party he represents. The  flood of illegals peaked in 2007-2008.  In 8 "Bush years," 1.85 million "illegals" were deported. In only the first 6 "Obama years, "' 2.04 million were deported, which is more than Reagan, Bush 4,1 and Clinton combined! To be fair both Bush 43 and Obama begged Republican controlled Houses  to address the immigration issue. We're still waiting.       

The Truth about Drug Costs

Drug costs?

        A headline of June 22 announcing that US prescription drug costs now exceed $400 billion annually, failed to deal with some major  issues.

        The Medicare Prescription Drug Act, of  2003, in addition to creating  benefits to include drug costs also provided an underpublicized, but greater,  gift to Big Pharma. The law stipulates that Medicare  can't  negotiate drug costs, but will pay whatever the manufacturer charges.

         Recently, in Morocco, I bought a "Z pack" for $8.00 over the counter. It was Pfizer Azithromycin, made under patent in the USA.  Another identical later purchase in The Villages cost $27 and was made in India! For a monthly prescription for Nexium,  an insurer in the United States pays, on average, $215 per customer. The same prescription (identical drug) in the Netherlands costs just $23! As an aside, the VA DOES negotiate drug costs and pays far less!

         No drug company is selling at a loss, so why do these meds cost so much here? One obvious reason is because Medicare just pays, no matter what the cost. A second law, enacted in 2006, further stipulates that any and all drugs are to be covered under Medicare, even if a suitable generic is available.           

        As significant;  contrary to claims of high R&D costs, Pharma spends  tens of billions annually on promotions to physicians to convince them that minor differences between drugs are clinically significant. And it spends billions more in direct media advertising to fuel demand for "new" high-priced, low-value drugs.  Every single  major US drug company spends more on advertising  than on research!  One household name  US drug firm, Johnson and Johnson, actually spends more than twice as much on advertising as on research! Big Pharma is also the largest US lobby, outspending the Insurance industry by more than 50%!

        It is a foundation  principle of capitalism that as competition erodes profits on established products, enterprises will invest in innovation to earn higher profits from new products. In contrast, Federal law prohibits the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from approving a copy of a new drug for a period of seven to 12 years even if there are no patents!     

       To put this in perspective, consider the proliferation  of cell phones, all of which do essentially the same thing. The wide variety of these devices creates marketplace competition and as Adam Smith's "invisible hand" manipulates the market, prices are kept relatively low. To distinguish this actual market process from the perks granted Big Pharma by a grateful (for lobbying donations) Congress, consider a cell phone marketplace where only one manufacturer was allowed to produce and sell phones for (at least) 12 years. What would a phone cost?

        Now consider that Big Pharma in the US is also the beneficiary of about $30 billion annually in public dollars for research, the results of which may well be applied to yet another "big ticket" drug, sold at a premium in the US and for a quarter of the US price overseas.  U.S. prices for the world's 20 top-selling medicines are, on average, three times higher than in Britain. This includes the entire range from acid reflux meds to cancer treatments.  Ads for the recent Hepatitis cure, Harvoni, which we see frequently, fail to mention that the pills cost $94,000 for the shortest course of treatment. Harvoni in the UK will cost roughly a third of that figure!  

        A final insult is to be found in the tendency of some firms to gradually but greatly  increase the consumer price of a drug as it nears end of patent. This has resulted in extreme cases of hundreds of percentage increases as manufacturers anticipate the generic to come as their patent protection ends.  

        In short, Big Pharma is the highest net profit industry in America, with Finance a distant second. Even this is misleading in a way, since the figure for the major Big Pharma companies is more like 30%   (Pfizer topping the list for 2015 at an unbelievable 42% NET PROFIT!!) rather than the 20% overall industry figure. In fact, 12 of the smaller ones also show net profits of over 40%!  So for the heavy players, the actual margin of profit is more than 10%  net profit higher than the next closest industry.  For comparison, the average US Corporation is delighted if they yield  6% net profit.  

     Quite simply, the pharmaceutical lobby has used its money and influence to sell the false notion that high drug prices and monopolies are necessary to support the high cost of research. Yet public financial data shows that high drug prices simply produce high profits! Oddly enough, the other health related industry sector, Health Services, averages a slightly below average 4% . Of course it goes without saying that the only one of the top industries where human lives actually are in play is the drug industry.

Much More Than a Numbers Game!

Early morning musings:

Just watched a short piece on the Florida teacher awards granted this year based on (wait for it northerners you will find this hard to digest) The teacher's personal  ACT/SAT scores.  This is a prime example of why educators should make the rules re: education, with appropriate legislative oversight, not interference.

How to rate teachers? This ain't it! Life in the classroom, from Pre-K to Adult Ed isn't a multiple choice "I had a good day and high guess factor" sort of thing.  The list of reasons why this us as f****d up as a soup sandwich or a football bat, follows:

1. Persons who come into teaching as a second career, as I did, or who are long time teachers at the top of their game may well have had those scores purged.  No scores before 1966 are even archived. I took the SAT in 1958 (yeah, I'm that old). So the last year I taught, at my best as a teacher, I would have been unable to qualify for the  $8,000 bonus! Scores between 1966 and 1975 cost more than $30 to retrieve , newer ones $21. The hook here, is that both ACT and College Board freely acknowledge that tests you took in High School may well be irrelevant today.

2. Those who come to teaching as a second career are frequently, as I was, motivated by the desire to do more than just communicate information. We are also frequently the repositories of working  experience in the real world which no "fresh from college" teacher can possibly have,  and will never get in a classroom. The newbie may have an ACT of 33, but be unable to relate or communicate. They could however, receive the bonus because they're "smart."

3. The person who is bright and knows it can be, and is, too frequently, your greatest liability, not your greatest asset. In the Naval Nuclear Power Program, the person most likely to get you into trouble  was the one too smart to use the book!

4. Teaching is certainly an academic endeavor, but the word "vocation" (from the Latin "vocare" - "to be called") carries an additional connotation  of sense of lifetime mission. It requires a passion and ability for interpersonal relating and, at times,  compassion. There are a lot of truly brilliant sociopaths in this world,  whose  SAT or ACT scores are off the chart, and none of whom should be allowed in, or even, near a classroom.

5. Finally, some of the best teachers and professors I have studied under and taught with were brilliant. Conversely some of the worst teachers and professors in my personal educational journey were  also brilliant. And introverted. And unimaginative. And poor communicators. And unsuited for the job they were doing.

In summary: I have struggled for years as a labor negotiator and frankly, just as an intellectual exercise, with the question  of "How do we reward superior teachers?"  In my humble (sort of) opinion, Plato had this one right. He spoke of the "Philosopher King" - the high minded, well educated person who ruled beneficently and wisely based on intellect, competence  and high moral standard. The closest fit I can I can see to that description is the "classroom experienced" on scene administrator who, based on demonstrated personal competence in the classroom and observation coupled with student success, taking into account the students involved, recommends (or doesn't) that this specific teacher be qualified for the bonus. Of course that poses the question of how do we measure and select  those administrators? It doesn't get any easier, but at least there are metrics in play other than a 30 years' earlier multiple choice test.      

On a Much Lighter Note:

Additional Facebook Emoticons for curmudgeons

Who the hell cares what you think?

This is truly some silly shit!

I don't care for your opinion and I wouldn't fight for your right to express it.

Your dog and your child are annoying.

You're a Bigoted, bloviating redneck.

God hates you!

Some less well known Statistics:

50% of Americans have one Fallopian tube

The average IQ in America is between 90 to 110.Sampling only Donald Trump supporters reduces that to 75 to 93.

67.8% of all women who wear spandex should not.

The average American has 32 teeth, oddly enough this is also within a standard deviation of being the same number as the entire front row of  a Willie Nelson concert.

In Atlanta, GA,  it is illegal to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp. The law remains mute regarding pigs, cows or tourists.

0.3% of all accidents in Canada involve a Moose. One assumes condoms are used the rest of the time.

The average male penis length is 5.7 inches. The average penis length of men who Google "average penis length" is 3.2 inches.

Crocodiles cannot stick their tongues out. In a related story, snakes can't give you the finger, either.

Ketchup was originally sold in the 1830’s as medicine. After further failure as a lubricant and nasal spray, it settled into its current role.

The Bible is the most shoplifted book. It is also the most thumped, misquoted and misinterpreted.

96% of all smoke alarms are indicative of poor cooking skills.

The first 90% of a tube of toothpaste will last 15 days. The last 10% will last four months.

Upon seeing an eye patch wearer, 10%  will inquire about the injury, the other 90% will say, Arrrgh!

The most common emotion for 68% of all people after watching a good movie is "I gotta pee!"

Statistics show that three out of four Americans make up 75% of the population.

"They All Had Guns"

"They All Had Guns"

        As usual, Good Morning America provided me with a subject. This morning it was provided in an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Bill O'Reilly, who continues to pretend he's really a "history guy" instead of stuffed shirt Far Right sycophant. In the discussion of things political, the conversation turned to the current renewal of gun control interest following  the tragic shootings at Pulse in Orlando. Putting one's personal feelings on the issue aside for the sake of brevity, simply consider this ludicrous statement by O'Reilly: "Of course, we won the Revolutionary War because everyone was armed!"

        It is well known to those who care to look beneath the hype, that O'Reilly's popular books are mainly "ghosted" by real authors, with O'Reilly's name in large print to sell books to those who are used to reading small words in big letters. This statement, however, reveals either the true lack of depth in his actual knowledge base or the fact that he is just a liar. I could vote either way.

         As a simple high school history teacher, I can see a plethora of flaws in his statement. Let's start with the statement itself : "Everyone was armed."  That would only be significant if everyone was on the side of independence. However,  allowing John Adams to be our source,  “I should say that full one third were averse to the revolution…. An opposite third… gave themselves up to an enthusiastic gratitude to France.  The middle third,… always averse to war, were rather lukewarm both to England and France;….”   Some historians take issue with this, but the largest estimate I have ever found of actual supporters of the independence movement is 40%! This means that if "everyone was armed" and they shot it out, well,,,,you get the picture.

        Second, regardless of who was armed and how many there were, the Continental army was fraught with desertions  (so "armed" or not, they went home!)  with Washington's 16,500 at Boston dwindling to about 13,000 even before any really serious fighting began. Over the entire course of the war this percentage was relatively constant.    

        Third, and perhaps more important than colonial leadership and military prowess, were considerations involving the British. The first was commitment, as even former, but supremely influential, Prime Minister William Pitt opposed armed intervention. King George, grappling with Porphyria and in and out of lucidity  refused such American conciliatory  advances as the Olive Branch petition, and a succession of incompetent Cabinet ministers completed the trifecta.

        Fourth and equally damaging to the British chances of a military victory was the general incompetence of the British Army's  senior military chain of command. Details are well known and too numerous to cover in toto, but Burgoyne's Saratoga blunder and Howe's refusal to follow orders are just a sample of a consistently poor senior command. Eventually, following Yorktown, Britain simply "got tired" and quit.

        Fifth, the final straw, at Yorktown happens,  not because  of Americans with guns, but because of the French with ships and guns. 24 modern ships of the line mounting 1,542 guns to be precise. Some historians have maintained that Britain had no hope of victory after 1777, but that assumption constitutes another myth of this war. Twenty-four months into its Southern Strategy, Britain was close to reclaiming substantial territory within its once-vast American empire. Royal authority had been restored in Georgia, and much of South Carolina was occupied by the British. In fact the British had experienced very little difficulty in raising "loyalist" regiments in Georgia.

          As 1781 dawned, Washington warned that his army was “exhausted” and the citizenry “discontented.” John Adams believed that France, faced with mounting debts and having failed to win a single victory in the American theater, would not remain in the war beyond 1781. “We are in the Moment of Crisis,” he wrote. (French General) Rochambeau feared that 1781 would see the “last struggle of an expiring patriotism.” Both Washington and Adams assumed that unless the United States and France scored a decisive victory in 1781, the outcome of the war would be determined at a conference of Europe’s great powers. That decisive victory came  on land, but was enabled at sea by The Battle of the Virginia Capes, in which French  Admiral Francois-Joseph Paul, Comte de Grasse defeated British Admiral Hood, trapping  Cornwallis'  army at Yorktown, so that Washington, bolstered by over 5,000 fresh French troops (with guns) could force surrender.   

        The second amendment to the eventually approved US Constitution specifies, "A well regulated militia being....." There is very little chance that this was ever meant to be "They" all had (or should have) guns. Washington was essentially forced to fight the opening phases of the war with militia because there was no Continental military force of any kind at the beginning there war. Early attempts to form a standing Continental army were met with some objection by Continentals who today we would probably call "Libertarians."  Patrick Henry was one such person, and although he is oft quoted, his definition of  "liberty" included the right to own people of color and do as he pleased regardless of how others suffered for it.

        As militia operations, especially in the North became more and more ragged and troop strengths unpredictable it became more and more obvious that militias were anything but "well regulated" Hamilton wrote extensively on this issue, both before and after ratification of the Constitution. So what changed?

        Another,  more gradual,  major momentum shift  occurred when Congress abandoned one-year enlistments and transformed the Continental Army into a standing army, made up of regulars who volunteered—or were conscripted—for long-term service. A standing army was contrary to American tradition and was viewed as unacceptable by citizens who understood that history was filled with instances of generals who had used their armies to gain dictatorial powers. Among the critics was Massachusetts’ John Adams. As a delegate to the Second Continental Congress, In 1775, he wrote that he feared a standing army would become an “armed monster” composed of the “meanest, idlest, most intemperate and worthless” men. By autumn, 1776, 7 years before Yorktown,  Adams had changed his view, remarking that unless the length of enlistment was extended, “our inevitable destruction will be the Consequence.” At last, Washington would get the army he had wanted from the outset; its soldiers would be better trained, better disciplined and more experienced than the men who had served in 1775-76. This standing, organized, professional army, in fact, is what Madison meant by "A well regulated militia. "regardless of verbage, it did not mean "rednecks with guns."  Today we would expand this to include the National Guard, regulated at the State level most of the time and Federal when appropriate

        O'Reilly should and, in fact, may well know how ludicrous his statement was. The problem is that he usually plays to an audience of drones, eager to be led by anyone who can use words of more than two syllables.

Godless Killers?

Godless Killers?

I wrote this in response to a former student and Orlando resident who essentially blamed the Pulse shootings and those like it on "Godless" persons and the lack of "God fearing" people who don't tell their children the difference between right and wrong.  There are so many things wrong with this that one hardly knows where to start, from a kindly, benevolent God who requires that you "fear ' him, and in whose name you are willing to kill, to the imbecilic assumption that mass killers truly don't know the "difference  between right and wrong" when in almost every case it is their religious belief which guides them to their evil acts.  I decided to address the most ludicrous claim.  

     "Godless? Do you ever even listen to yourself?"  The worst mass killings in our history have been committed by persons who professed belief in a supreme being. Just because it isn't your flavor doesn't make them, any less devout. Tell me how many mass killings have been committed in this nation by professed atheists.  I'll give you a hint - none.

      The soldiers who slaughtered 150 Sioux at Wounded Knee were, no doubt, professed Christians. The Ku KluxKlan is estimated to have killed 3,446 persons, all in the name of White Protestant muscular Christianity.  The 1949 King David Hotel bombings (96 dead) were carried out by extremely devout Jewish terrorists. Remember, they invented God as you know Her! Of course they had historical precedent, and were guided by Moses, at whose command either 3,000 or 30,000 Hebrews, depending on translation, were slaughtered in that little Golden Calf incident.

      Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were both professed Christians when their Oklahoma City plot killed 168 and wounded over 600. James Holmes (Aurora shooter) killed 24 and tried to kill 124 more. He was raised a good Lutheran boy.

       And the Orlando shooter and for that matter most Islamist radicals are devout in their belief. I believe them to be grossly misguided, but then I believe the same of Mormons, Catholics, Baptists,etc. 

     In the last 30 years of the 20th century devout Catholics and equally devout Protestants in the UK (specifically Ireland) killed 3,568 people, of whom 1,879 were civilians, and well over 500 were children. were they Godless? Hardly. Try as I may, I can't think of a non-believer who has personally committed this kind of carnage, so why blame them?   

      Of course the immediate response is "well, I'm not 'that kind' of Christian!" Really? Then act like it. Use the brain that you allege God gave you, engage in critical thinking and, if that works, revise and redirect your kneejerk animosity.  If you are in, some alternate really, rationalizing that the easy access to assault weapons isn't in large part responsible, not for the act, but for it's scope, you are delusional. 

      And for the record: If anyone in this nation has incited others to violence by their rhetoric in the last 30 years, it is the far right Christian Mullahs like Robertson, Falwell, Fred Phelps, Huckabee,  Santorum, Giuliani and their rabid co-religionists.

Let the Lady Alone

       It seems that the latest Far right schmuck indoor sport is bashing Senator Elizabeth Warren. From Trumps' repeated "Pocohontas" insult, to the new fave, throwing stones at her because she was a highly paid Harvard Law professor before her Senate gig.

       The new slurs go along the line "Warren was paid $430,000 annually for teaching a class at Harvard." This is actually the setup for then wondering how she can claim to represent the economically disadvantaged when she is a "one percenter."

       What has passed relatively unnoticed is that Senator Marco Rubio that hero of the poor and downtrodden, termed out in the Florida House, was paid $69,000 annually by Florida International for teaching a class during which by his co-teacher's admission, he missed  30% of the sessions altogether. The class was not a law class (Rubio's area of study, although he has no teaching credentials) Although his salary was reduced in subsequent years, he continued teaching (or at least on Florida International University's payroll) into 2013 - two years after being sworn in as a US Senator! It is no secret that Rubio has had financial "issues" since his time as speaker of the Florida House, so perhaps he needed the extra job. He has also received compensation from FIU for "consulting' whatever that is.

       So to review; we have a sitting US Senator  still nominally working at a teaching gig 1000 or so miles south of his office to which we Floridians elected him and for which we pay him $174,000 annually plus benefits.  So what about the senator from Massachusetts. was she just a highly paid, child of privilege, no (or sometime) show, like Rubio,  doing little work and being over paid? 

        First issue, she was paid in the high three hundred thousands , vice the stated $430,000, the rest coming from paid consulting jobs.  A significant portion of that pay was compensation in the form of a faculty mortgage subsidy and housing allowance. Warren was not a fiscally struggling state legislator when she went to Harvard and the big bucks, but a tenured professor with 34 years of university level Law School Teaching .

      Warren started her academic career as a lecturer at Rutgers School of Law–Newark in 1977. She moved to the University of Houston Law Center (1978–83), where she became Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in 1980, and obtained tenure in 1981. She taught at the University of Texas School of Law as visiting associate professor in 1981, and returned as a full professor two years later (staying 1983–87). In addition, she was a visiting professor at the University of Michigan (1985) and research associate at the Population Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin (1983–87). Early in her career, Warren became a proponent of on-the-ground research based on studying how people actually respond to laws in the real world. Her work analyzing court records, and interviewing judges, lawyers, and debtors, established her as a rising star in the field of bankruptcy law. Rubio academically, can't carry her undies to the laundry.

       Warren joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School as a full professor in 1987 and obtained an endowed chair in 1990 (becoming William A Schnader Professor of Commercial Law). She taught for a year at Harvard Law School in 1992 as Robert Braucher Visiting Professor of Commercial Law. In 1995, Warren left Penn to become Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. As of 2011, she was the only tenured law professor at Harvard who attended law school at an American public university. At Harvard, Warren became one of the most highly cited law professors in the United States. No one, as far as I can determine,  has ever cited Marco Rubio about anything of substance, let alone in the area of law! Although she had published in many fields, her expertise was in bankruptcy. In the field of bankruptcy and commercial law, only Douglas Baird of Chicago, Alan Schwartz of Yale, and Bob Scott of Columbia have citation rates comparable to that of Warren. Warren's scholarship and public advocacy were the impetus behind the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

        In 2009, the Boston Globe named her the Bostonian of the Year and the Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts honored her with the Lelia J. Robinson Award. She was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2009, 2010 and 2015. The National Law Journal repeatedly has named Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America, and in 2010 it honored her as one of the 40 most influential attorneys of the decade. In 2011, Warren was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame.

In 2009, Warren became the first professor in Harvard's history to win the law school's The Sacks–Freund Teaching Award for a second time. In 2011, she delivered the commencement address at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark, where she was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

In debates, some  have mentioned Warren’s Harvard salary — tax returns show it was close to $350,000 her last full year — and criticized her teaching workload. Harvard Law professors spend, on average, five hours a week in the classroom, with the bulk of their time reserved for research, writing, student advising, and administrative tasks. “Professor,” as critics use it, has become a somewhat pejorative  title, something less than an honorific — an image conjured of Warren as Harvard elitist, liberal ideologue, scolding schoolmarm.

       The truth? At Harvard, she is known as none of those. Widely admired by students and faculty, she is considered tough but fair, whip smart but warm, inspiring, and accessible. Warren, who is on leave, because she actually shows up for her Senate gig, has won student-nominated teaching awards at four of the five universities where she has taught, including Harvard’s Sacks-Freund Award — twice — as voted by the graduating class.

       Senator Elizabeth Warren has missed just 11 of over 1093 roll call votes in her time in the Senate, while Rubio has only shown up 7.1% of the time! Based on attendance Warren is worth a whole lot more than she's being paid., and Rubio considerably less.

       The real reason, of course for the slanderous treatment of Senator Warren, is to attempt to demean and diminish the impact of her advocacy for the financially disadvantaged. I guess the twisted logic is along the lines of "How can she care about the poor when she's so wealthy?"

Here's how; she's been there! Warren was born on  in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, to working class parents.  She was their fourth child, with three older brothers. When she  was 12, her father, a janitor, had a heart attack—which led to many medical bills, as well as a pay cut because he could not do his previous work. Eventually, this led to the loss of their car from failure to make loan payments. To help the family finances, her mother found work in the catalog order department at Sears. When she was 13, Warren started waiting tables at her aunt's restaurant. So spare me the "how can she identify with the economically disadvantaged?" drivel!    Warren became a star member of the debate team at Northwest Classen High School and won the title of "Oklahoma's top high school debater" while competing with debate teams from high schools throughout the state. She also won a debate scholarship to George Washington University at the age of 16. Initially aspiring to be a teacher, she left GWU after two years to marry her high school boyfriend.

Warren later moved to Houston with her husband, who was then a NASA engineer. There she enrolled in the University of Houston, graduating in 1970 with a bachelor of science degree in speech pathology and audiology. For a year, she taught children with disabilities in a public school, based on an "emergency certificate", as she had not taken the education courses required for a regular teaching certificate. Again, super creds!

Warren and her husband moved for his work to New Jersey, where, after becoming pregnant, she decided to remain at home to care for their child. After their daughter turned two, Warren enrolled at the Rutgers School of Law–Newark, still a stay at home mom.  Shortly before her graduation in 1976, Warren became pregnant with their second child. After receiving her J.D. and passing the bar examination, she began to work as a lawyer from home, writing wills and doing real estate closings. Hardly the high life.  

So the next time one decides to slander Senator Warren and chastise her for succeeding in a male dominated profession, one might want to consider that she has risen not through social position or daddy's money, but by intellect, determination and skill.    

A Modest Proposal

My proposal:  "Congress shall enact a bill declaring that from now until his death, every word uttered by Pat Robertson is irrelevant, mean spirited and devoid of spiritual significance."

As we should have expected, Pat Robertson has weighed in on the Pulse nightclub shooting here in Orlando. While not actually blaming President Barack  Obama, he did blame the USSC for "legalizing" Gay marriage. We should have known it would happen. we've had more than three decades of warnings!

This venal, wicked man has, for far too long,  sold his personal style of  vindictive and evil faux Christianity for the sake of monetary gain.  He has done this with the connivance of people close to him who should have years ago simply said,  "Pat, shut the F**k up!"  

Robertson is hardly  a novice at pretending to read the mind of the cosmic muffin. Below are just a few of the times he's been really, really wrong. I'd add the times he's been right, for fairness, but he hasn't ever been right!   

Each year Robertson takes to the airwaves with something he calls "Words of Knowledge", predictions that he says come from God. Here are a few of the doozies Robertson has floated over the years, and never really come back to revise, revisit, or review.

1980 - Robertson predicted that the USSR would invade the Middle East.

1981 - Robertson predicted global economic collapse, and that the USSR would invade Israel, control all the oil in the Middle East, and foul up the world economy.

1988 - Robertson said God told him to run for President. Apparently God did not tell him to win.

1996 - God told Robertson that Bill Clinton would not be elected for a second term. He also said that a terrorist with a nuclear weapon would strike within the United States.

1998 - Robertson said God would strike the United States with tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and "maybe even a meteor" due to Orlando, Florida's city council voting to fly rainbow flags during a Gay Pride celebration. Orlando was never hit, though Virginia Beach, Robertson's home, was.

2005 - Robertson said God told him that George W. Bush would pass Social Security reform, tax reform, and that the Supreme Court would end up packed with conservative judges. He also said there would be a wide scale conversion of Muslims to Christianity.

2006 - Robertson said God told him that tsunamis would ravage the coasts of the United States.

2007 - Robertson predicted that there would be a massive terrorist event aimed at the United States that would result in "mass killing" during the second half of the year. "The Lord didn’t say nuclear, but I do believe it’ll be something like that - that’ll be a mass killing, possibly millions of people, major cities injured," Robertson said.

2012 - Robertson said God told him who would win the Presidential election that year, but he would not tell. However he later said, "I won’t get into great detail about elections but I sure did miss it."

2012 - Robertson also said that 2012 would bring about a collapse of the American economy. This information came only after a question and answer session with God that included Robertson asking if the disaster would be the result of an "EMP blast" or a "Mayan galaxy alignment", all of which God took a pass on.

2013 - For this year, Robertson revisited some older financial themes again, saying that a financial reckoning is coming, debts called in, money devalued, people on fixed incomes will suffer. Creditors will seize assets to pay back debts.

So who really is this false prophet moron?

         Before I amplify on this, I swear that every word I write about Robertson is true and documented. Born a Senator's son, Marion (yes, that's right) Robertson led a fairly normal life, but it got a bit shaky when as he claims he went Korea and was decorated in combat three times.   You see,  former Republican Congressman Paul "Pete" McCloskey, Jr., who served with Robertson in Korea, wrote a public letter which said that Robertson was actually spared combat duty when his powerful father, a U.S. Senator, intervened on his behalf, and that Robertson spent most of his time in an office in Japan. According to McCloskey, his time in the service was not in combat but as the "liquor officer" responsible for keeping the officers' clubs supplied with liquor. Robertson filed a $35 million libel suit against McCloskey in 1986, dropped it in 1988, before it came to trial and Robertson paid all McCloskey's court costs. So we have established a pattern of lying early on.

Although a grad of Yale Law (same school as "W", weird, huh?) Robertson soon saw the money to be made fleecing the flock via radio and TV as a Baptist minister. Out of deference to real Baptists, many of whom have distanced themselves from him, as stated above, Robertson claims to have regular conversations with God and at least once predicted the "end of days", saying the Lord told him so . (Relax, it was to start in 1982 and be over by 1989!)

  Robertson is also an advocate of Christian dominionism — the idea that Christians have a right to rule.(The World!)  In several  published writings, especially his 1991 book The New World Order,  Robertson  has offered  theories about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy,  plagiarizing  chapter and verse from well-known anti-Semitic works.

          Lest you think all religion and no job make Robertson, like most Protestant ministers, a man of average means, be advised  that his personal fortune is estimated between $200 million and $1 billion.  How does he do it, you say? Much of his  income comes from sales of  commercial time and the fleecing of viewers from his 700 Club TV show. 

Much of  it also comes (or came) from blood diamonds. What??? Blood Diamonds - Not our Pat?  Yep : Robertson had extensive business dealings with former Liberian president (and genocidal maniac) Charles Taylor. Taylor gave Robertson the rights to mine for diamonds in Liberia's mineral-rich countryside. According to two Operation Blessing (Robertson's  "cover" for his money making schemes) pilots who reported this incident to the state of Virginia for investigation in 1994, Robertson used his Operation Blessing planes to haul diamond-mining equipment to Robertson's mines in Liberia, despite the fact that Robertson was telling his 700 Club viewers that the planes were sending relief supplies to the victims of the genocide in Rwanda! 

 When the United States Congress passed a bill In November 2003 that offered two million dollars for his (Taylor's) capture. Robertson accused President George W. Bush of  "undermining a Christian, Baptist president to bring in Muslim rebels to take over the country." At that   time Taylor was harboring Al Qaeda operatives who were funding their operations through the illegal diamond trade.  On February 4, 2010, at his war crimes trial in the Hague, Taylor testified that Robertson was his main political ally in the U.S! It is not known if any Blood diamond money financed Robertson's other favorite murderers - The Nicaraguan Contras, but it is a matter of record that when  Ronald  Reagan and Oliver North needed a way around the Boland amendment, Robertson funds provided it.

          As if these talents weren't enough, Robertson has also demonstrated clairvoyance, control of the elements, insider knowledge of the mind of God and an incredible well of hatred and bile. It's fun for me to describe his pronouncements, but I think you need to hear it from the devil himself. ladies and gentlemen, the lad himself in quotes.

On January 4, 2012, Robertson reported that God had spoken to him and "He showed me the next president" but wouldn't name who it is. He did give an indication that it wouldn't be President Obama since Robertson said God told him Obama's views were at "odds with the majority"  Really? Quick question here Pat. Was God wrong, or are you just full of hubris and bullshit?

"It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-biased media and the homosexuals who want to destroy all Christians." (don't tell my Christian gay friends)

"Lord, give us righteous judges who will not try to legislate and dominate this society. Take control, Lord! We ask for additional vacancies on the court." (Robertson calling in a divine air strike on the USSC)

"(T)he feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." (I'm a feminist and I did not approve this message)

"the ACLU has to take a lot of blame for this" in addition to "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays, and the lesbians [who have] helped [the terror attacks of September 11th] happen." (who could have guessed Al Qaeda even knew what the ACLU is?)

"I would warn Orlando that you're right in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don't think I'd be waving those flags in God's face if I were you, This is not a message of hate -- this is a message of redemption. But a condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes, and possibly a meteor." referring to  

"gay days" at Disneyworld (oh the horror, the 
horror!)

          Of course, we all know that if you are a man and your wife has Alzheimer's, it's ok to divorce her (what would be the advice if the genders were switched? Any bets?) Likewise, of Course general Petraeus had an affair, he's a man, she's a girl, June, Moon, alone at the drive in. It's natural (for men).

          And now something that hasn't made the media. Years ago, when Robertson still was a preacher in the VA tidewater area, a young man, a foster child, was hospitalized after being badly beaten by his foster father and mother (for running away, imagine that.)  The foster father had two cards to play; he was an ex Navy commander, and they were members of  Robertson's church , quite a big deal at the time in the area. Robertson , as a character witness, pled with child services to overlook the violence and return the boy to the foster home. They did and within several months the child was dead, abused to death by Robertson's parishioners. I guess God wanted the kid dead, huh?

  A doctor friend of a very close friend once described Robertson as "The embodiment of evil."  On a lighter note, I think it best to include  one last quote from Pat Robertson, although I know when he said it he didn't mean it to be used like it is being used on his behalf these days.

 "I have a zero tolerance for sanctimonious morons who try to scare people." - Pat Robertson.

Truer words have seldom been used against the speaker. I think the late Christopher Hitchens must have had a Robertson, Osteen, or  Huckabee  in mind when he said, “We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.  Violent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism and tribalism and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children: organized religion ought to have a great deal on its conscience.”

As usual, Hitchens was, at least in Robertson's case, absolutely correct.

I was wrong

        I was wrong. I once thought that our Governor, Rick Scott, was the poorest example of elected civil servant in the nation. That honor has been taken away by Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick who, in the wake of the horrible events  of early Sunday morning in Orlando, tweeted "You reap what you sow!"  Patrick later claimed, in the face of overwhelming  "Tweetiverse" condemnation, that the tweet was "preset," however the time stamp of 7:00 AM,  local Texas time, would have made the tweet at 9:00 AM EST, 4 hours after the end of the standoff at the Pulse Nightclub. Anyone awake would have known something was terribly wrong back East.

        I would like to believe the Lt. Gov, really I would, but it IS Texas, where state sponsored murder  is a major indoor sport and Texas leads the league with Florida not too far behind.  One wonders exactly what the twisted mind of this Brazos bumpkin perceives it to be that is "sown" by the LGBT community.  I have never seen violence, intolerance or bigotry "sown" by any members of the LGBT community. It doesn't happen. Never. I have, on the other hand, seen acceptance and inclusion after years of rejection and discrimination.  What should have happened Sunday morning, if what was sown was truly reaped, would have been the convening of the safest gathering  on earth, where individual differences were washed away by understanding , tolerance and acceptance of the individual on their own basis.

        Patrick's attitude is reminiscent of the Reagan administrations several years' "don't worry about it, they're only queers"  point of view as AIDS ravished the community. It is also an example of all the bad things religion can do as well as the truly good works done in many communities by persons of faith. Patrick and the shooter are exceedingly dissimilar save in this one aspect: both , if judged by their actions, believe(d) that it was insufficient for them to simply live their lives as they believed their version of the cosmic muffin dictated. To complete the heavenly daily double they also felt compelled to act out in anger, revenge, or mean spirited sniping.

         In the Orlando shooter's case, this meant that he apparently believed God compelled him to take the lives of individuals who he had never met, but who he, the shooter, in loco God,  had judged and decided to kill. That is psychopathy and insanity.  Patrick on the other hand, smarmy prick that he is, decided to simply make a hurtful statement, regardless of impact on others, based on his personal pipeline to the divine and go on about his day, self satisfied and smug in his delusion that he speaks for God. That is sociopathy.

        Meanwhile, the shattered lives of the families and friends of the victims of the shooting at Pulse will  be forever affected and haunted  by the actions of someone who, as so many have before him, believed himself to be the self appointed  righteous arm of a vengeful God.

         And you wonder why I'm an atheist?  

Benghazi, a Brief Prequel for Comparison

Note: this is excerpted with some modifications for brevity and clarity from a longer New Yorker  article by Jane Mayer        

        Around dawn on October 23, 1983, in Beirut, Lebanon,  a suicide bomber drove a truck laden with the equivalent of twenty-one thousand pounds of TNT into the heart of a U.S. Marine compound, killing two hundred and forty-one servicemen. The U.S. military command, had left a vehicle gate wide open, and ordered the sentries to keep their weapons unloaded!

         The only real resistance the suicide bomber had encountered was a scrim of concertina wire. the Marine barracks were flattened. Under  smoking slabs of collapsed concrete,  American voices were begging for help. Thirteen more American servicemen later died from injuries, making it the single deadliest attack on American Marines since the Battle of Iwo Jima. This was horrific, but.......

        Six months before, militants had bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut, too, killing sixty-three more people, including seventeen Americans. Among the dead were seven C.I.A. officers, including the agency’s top analyst in the Middle East, an immensely valuable intelligence asset, and the Beirut station chief.  No investigation. Compare this to the 4 dead embassy staffers in Benghazi. Let me make this clear: The Reagan administration and those responsible to it in various capacities had a six month warning about the dangers facing Americans in Lebanon. This warning included more than four times the American death toll of Benghazi!  There was every opportunity (and justification) for laying  blame for the horrific losses at high U.S. officials’ feet. There was loss of life precedent six months earlier for enhanced security. Military staff were unprepared, essentially unarmed.

        Unlike today’s Congress, congressmen did not talk of impeaching Ronald Reagan, who was then President, nor were cabinet members subpoenaed.  Just as today, the opposition party controlled the majority in the House. Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House, was no pushover. He, like today’s opposition leaders in the House, demanded an investigation—but a real one, and only one. Instead of a witch hunt/smear campaign for political points,  The US  House  undertook a serious and measured  investigation into what went wrong at the barracks in Beirut, and why. Two months later, it issued a report finding “very serious errors in judgment” by officers on the ground, as well as responsibility up through the military chain of command, and called for better security measures against terrorism in U.S. government installations throughout the world.

       In other words, Congress actually undertook a useful investigation and made helpful recommendations. The report’s findings, by the way, were bipartisan. The Pentagon, too, launched an investigation;  its report was widely accepted by both parties.

        In March of 1984, three months following the closure of the investigation and the issuance of its bi-partisan report,  militants again struck American officials in Beirut, this time kidnapping the C.I.A.’s station chief, Bill Buckley. Buckley was tortured and, eventually, murdered. Reagan, tormented by a tape of Buckley being tortured, blamed himself. Congress held no public hearings, and pointed fingers at the perpetrators, not at political rivals.

        If you compare the costs of the Reagan Administration’s serial (3) security lapses over little more than a year  in Beirut to the costs of Benghazi, it’s clear what has really deteriorated in the intervening three decades. It’s not the security of American government personnel working abroad. It’s the behavior of American congressmen at home.

        The story in Beirut wasn’t over. In September of 1984, for the third time in eighteen months, jihadists bombed a U.S. government outpost in Beirut yet again. President Reagan acknowledged that the new security precautions that had been advocated by Congress hadn’t yet been implemented at the U.S. embassy annex that had been hit. The problem, the President admitted, was that the repairs hadn’t quite been completed on time. As he put it, “Anyone who’s ever had their kitchen done over knows that it never gets done as soon as you wish it would.”  Imagine how Congressmen Trey Gowdy,  Darryl Issa and Fox News would react to a similar explanation from President Obama today!

Wasted Time and Money in an Ignoble Cause

     OK,  before Trump delivers his Clinton smear speech tonight: Let's get one thing straight. Regardless of what you may think about Hillary Clinton, know this about the Benghazi fiasco: There were barely token investigations of attacks on US embassies during the Reagan and Bush administrations, and none attacked the SecState. 

     Mrs. Clinton was targeted specifically because, even then, Republicans feared that she would be a Presidential contender, and in that, they were correct. Consequently, House and Senate Republicans wasted more time and money on "The blame game" than was spent on the combined investigations of: The JFK assassination, Watergate, 9/11, and Iran Contra scandal. 

     Several House Republican committee members and staffers , sickened by the actions of Rep. Trey Gowdy, have broken ranks and admitted that these investigations, chaired by Gowdy, were convened for the express purpose of discrediting Mrs. Clinton politically. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence concluded its two-year Benghazi investigation in November 2014 when it released a report exonerating the Obama administration of wrongdoing in its response to the attack. The report found evidence of contradicting intelligence among government officials and concluded officials did not intentionally mislead the public with information in the days following the attack. 

     Instead of taking concrete steps to enhance the safety and security of our diplomatic corps overseas, the Select Committee on Benghazi continues to squander millions of dollars and has nothing to show for it other than a partisan attack against Secretary Clinton and her campaign for president. As of right now as I write, the cost of just this committee's fruitless efforts is set to top 7 million dollars. Excluded from this one Committee's expenditures are the costs of the independent Accountability Review Board; the eight previous reports by seven Congressional committees; the time, money, and resources consumed by federal agencies to comply with Select Committee requests; or the opportunity cost of not spending this money elsewhere, like improving security for our diplomatic officers abroad. 

     When the Marine Barracks in Beirut was attacked in 1983, , no one blamed the Reagan administration, even though 241 American servicemen died. Rather we just fled Lebanon.

“TWO AND TWO MAKES FIVE” ― George Orwell, 1984

The below is my final post in a string of posts related to Common Core and education in general

       "Winning the testing game" and "losing our creativity and entrepreneurial skills" are, in fact relatively unrelated. I have already expressed my displeasure re: the way testing scores are used, That is not a Common Core issue, that is a state and local school board issue . It's the sort of thing you get with a formerly corrupt, now politically rehabilitated  "play it to the press" governor, a career political failure as Superintendent and a school board whose only educator is a media specialist who continued working in one district while supposedly serving the needs of another. Any effort to block a student from an appropriate vocational track vice a strictly academic one is a state/local issue and essentially unrelated to CC as well. I remember when we actually awarded three types of HS diplomas, Academic, Vocational and Clerical. Change "Clerical" to  "Technology" and you might have a plan with applicability to the apparent problem.  

     You say you support standards, well, since that's really all the Common Core is, then it follows that you support Common Core, or at least the concept. Opposing CC because state and local boards misuse/misrepresent it is a "Baby with the Bathwater" mentality. Then, in a later post **** hints at the conspiracy ravings of  the mythologizers who would have us believe it is all part of some shadow government plot. Hogwash. The negative reactions to CC start with those who would "purge " our history and turn us all into Pollyannas who simply repeat  patriotic jargon without considering that many of those who made a difference, did so by swimming against the stream. “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”  George Orwell understood this, as do the school boards of Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, who would purge or deemphasize the unpleasantness in our history: you know -The Scottsboro Boys,"Wounded Knee" Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., Vietnam, and/or Iraq.

     When you have entire state educational structures which want to remove history from history books, then and only then are you headed in the direction **** cites, with semi hysterical and egregiously inappropriate allusions to Nazism and Chinese conformity. One Texas legislator wants to remove the teaching of critical thinking skills from curriculum, again citing CC as the villain. I would submit that the easiest way to subvert an entire population group is to suppress legitimate question among its younger members. "Why?" is the right question 99% of the time. In the remaining 1% doing the emergency action followed by "Why" is the proper response. As I often told my students, usually in day one or two of class, respectfully questioning authority is always appropriate. It's how we learn, and it's certainly how we become aware that authority can be misused.

     It is also the precise antithesis of the protestations voiced by the opponents of CC. If one looks beneath the surface at the motivations of those who most violently oppose the implementation of CC one sees the very opposite of what **** says we should be doing - i.e. encouraging individual thinkers, doers and entrepreneurs. Most of those in arms against CC are persons whose religious/political beliefs would include the idea that their children should be discouraged from questioning authority. It doesn't take a genius to extrapolate why that is. I have seen it in the classroom, when after discussing prehistory, a parent e-mailed to warn that "we're a Bible based family, and the earth is 4800 (and change) years old."  Fortunately, the son was a bit brighter than they realized and processed all of this appropriately.

      “You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.” Orwell again, understanding that the hidden agenda in those mid west school boards and of the most vociferous opponents of  CC is to fill empty vessels with the standard "our way or the highway" social/religious/political orthodoxy which is so threatened by CC emphasis on critical thought and cross cultural learning. They see a clear and present danger in teaching kids "how" to think instead of "what" to think.

     Ask yourself simply: "If the Texas or Kansas standards, similar to the Sunshine State Standards, were to be adopted nationwide, do we really think anyone in either state would protest that action.?"  Of course not, because this entire tempest in a teapot is really about having people think as "we" (you know, us religious zealot, right wing, bigots) think. Testing is another issue altogether, CC as an idea is fine. I loathe the emphasis on testing because of the same reasons **** dislikes it - too much emphasis on how to use the results. My challenge would be to simply say "OK, find a better way."  In my 20 years in education at advanced studies levels, I never saw an alternate proposal which worked. But I know this:  If one opposes a set of standards which stress learning goals, critical thinking skills and cross curriculum interaction, then they need to get out of education and into the food service industry.     

Hey, Hey, we're the.....?

        There are some ideas so bad that one can merely shake one's head and try to forget them. Unfortunately, it's more difficult to unsee and unhear one of these bad ideas actually brought to fruition in a public forum.  an example would be Liza Minelli deciding to sing again. Another such an ill conceived scheme is the unfortunate decision to "reform" the Monkees! Today I was assaulted, visually and auditorially, as I worked the crossword, by their "performance" on Good Morning America.

        Let's be clear; the two relatively talented members of this rather horrid "pre-boy band" boy band were Davy Jones (dead since 2012) and the truly multi talented Michael Nesmith, who apparently had the good sense to tell the originator of this ill conceived fever dream scheme to "f**k off."

        That leaves 2 remnants of the original tripe fest . Peter Tork  became a Monkee  primarily because Stephen Stills didn't photograph well and turned the job down, recommending  Tork in his stead. A real shame, that, I wonder what ever happened to the Stills kid?  Mickey Dolenz became a Monkee hard on the heels of his rousing, yet unsurprisingly short lived and unacclaimed, dramatic triumph as "Circus Boy." 

        Meanwhile, the real brains behind the Monkees, other than the occasional Nesmith penned song, were the team of Boyce and Hart, who actually played and sang lead on most songs in the studio and then watched as the Drab Four overdubbed them for airplay. These guys churned out top forty hits for others, but never really received the acclaim they probably reserved for not killing the Monkees for murdering their work.

        But back to today's nightmare. Dolenz, who played at drums on the show, simply stood and may have been actually singing (more on that later) while Tork (bass player) seemed to be faking it on a keyboard beside him. They were surrounded by six other real musicians, who were not only playing, but, since they were all on microphones, were also singing, to the point that it was difficult to tell whose voice was actually carrying the melody.

        Tork now resembles Don Quixote as portrayed on Broadway by Richard Kiley, only even scragglier and older, while Dolenz'  face now resembles an overripe heirloom tomato. (no offense intended to tomatos). In short, the Monkees now resemble the Orangutans and their "talents" are woefully and sadly gone. 

     Sometimes "Let's get the band back together!" is just a really bad idea. This is especially true  when half of them - the talented half - are either dead or missing.