10/23/15

The Council Has Spoken!! Our Watcher’s Council Results – 10/23/15

The Watcher’s Council

Unsavory Agents: http://unsavoryagents.com/?projects=feel-the-bern

Unsavory Agents: http://unsavoryagents.com/?projects=feel-the-bern

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.

Is there any point in public debate in a society where hardly anyone has been taught how to think, while millions have been taught what to think? – Peter Hitchens

The very power of [textbook writers] depends on the fact that they are dealing with a boy: a boy who thinks he is ‘doing’ his ‘English prep’ and has no notion that ethics, theology, and politics are all at stake. It is not a theory they put into his mind, but an assumption, which ten years hence, its origin forgotten and its presence unconscious, will condition him to take one side in a controversy which he has never recognized as a controversy at all. – CS Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Schools train you to be ignorant. – Frank Zappa

Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool – Plato

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This week’s winning essay, Bookworm Room’s Public schools — un-educating Americans, one student at a time, is a compelling look at exactly what the Left is doing to indoctrinate children in the K-12 levels to support their agenda. Here’s a slice:

I was livid this morning. One of my children asked me to quiz her about rhetorical fallacies, which she was studying for a test. The teacher had put the examples together himself and they included such gems as saying it’s a logical fallacy to argue that guns are tools in the same way hammers are tools. Another example was that it’s a logical fallacy to argue against gay marriage. To give students an insight into good arguments against logical fallacies, he directed the students to Jon Stewart’s hyper-partisan The Daily Show. Indoctrination much?

When I complained to my resident Leftist, all I got was bewilderment. Guns are evil, gay marriage should be accepted by all, and Jon Stewart was the smartest, most informative man in television — so why am I fussing? The fact that all of those represent partisan views and the principle that they therefore should not be introduced on the taxpayers’ dime completely eluded him. School, after all, is there to teach students how to “think.”

School indoctrination is a sore subject with me, since it’s endemic in Marin, as it is in any school district that has a teacher’s union. Math is tainted both by Common Core and the fuzzy math approach that’s meant to give a pass to women and minorities who apparently struggle with actual math (you know, the kind where the results are correct).

As someone who’s bad at math (Common Core’s crazy complications are familiar to me because that’s the way they were teaching back in the San Francisco public schools’ 1960s/1970s experimental phase), I recognize the advantage of being able to reach roughly correct answers for such inconsequential things as calculating tips, measuring something that doesn’t need precise dimensions, or keeping vague track of a family budget. I also recognize what a weak reed this fuzzy math is. When the situation demands precision, I struggle.

English as taught in America’s public schools is a joke. I’ve already shared here my fury at the way an English teacher in Sandy Hook’s wake, handed out to the students strong gun-control articles. I politely protested (because my child, after all, was a hostage to grades in his class, but got nowhere). While the students get Leftist politics and lots of sex in their English classrooms, the students emerge without fundamentals such as grammar, spelling, structure, and narrative. Eileen Toplansky describes in heartbreaking detail trying to teach under-educated American youngsters when they reach college.

As the recently AP U.S. History fight showed, history is taught through a purely Marxist, anti-American lens. The books subtly and not-so-subtly tell those pliant young minds that America is the root of all evil and that the purifying answer to our nation’s wrongs is top down collectivism.

It doesn’t seem to occur to these geniuses that the things about which they complain — whether slavery, Indian relocations, Jim Crow laws, etc. — were only able to happen because of government power. The corollary is that diffusing government power dilutes a nation’s ability to do things that bug Leftists.

Typically, each Leftist cadre assumes that, when it acquires unlimited power, it will get it right. That’s why Bernie, who shrilly screams for a government that uses its guns to confiscate individual wealth, is looked upon as some type of savior, rather than the power-hungry, crazed madman he really is.

Lastly, there’s the wreckage of science in America’s public schools. The kids still get taught useful basic stuff, such as chemistry and biology, but the higher up they go, the more tainted it gets.

I have in front of me the textbook used in our local school’s AP Environmental Science class. Published by Brooks/Cole Cengage Learning, G. Tyler Miller’s and Scott E.Spoolman’s 14th edition of Environmental Science purports to be a comprehensive textbook, teaching children everything they need to know about the natural world that surrounds us.

In the introduction to teachers (p. xiii), we learn that the book is all about “sustainability — the integrating theme of this book.” This theme leads to the boast that, in the new edition,

Climate change is emphasized with new coverage on the warming of the world’s lakes, climate change tipping points, and innovative [and, no doubt, prohibitively expensive] efforts to reduce methane and soot emissions.

Much more at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Mark Steyn with an interesting piece, The Clock Ticks On, submitted by Joshuapundit.

Now, Mark Steyn is always worth reading, but this particular piece is unique in how Steyn examines the accelerating dhimmitude of the West in his very special way. Do read it.

Here are this week’s full results. Only Don Surber was unable to vote this week, but was not subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty for not voting:

Council Winners:

Non-Council Winners:

See you next week!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and every Tuesday morning, when we reveal the week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week!

And remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that, y’know.

10/23/15

Our Weasel Of The Week!! – 10/23/15

The Watcher’s Council

Yes, it’s time to present this week’s statuette of shame, The Golden Weasel!!

Every Tuesday, the Council nominates some of the slimiest, most despicable characters in public life for some deed of evil, cowardice or corruption they’ve performed. Then we vote to single out one particular Weasel for special mention, to whom we award the statuette of shame, our special 100% plastic Golden Weasel. This week’s nominees were all particularly slimy and despicable, but the votes are in and we have our winner… the envelope please…

Captain America

Disney’s New Anti-American Far Left ‘Captain America’

JoshuaPundit: If you remember the comic book heroes of your youth, you will be astounded by what’s become of them lately.

Like America’s movies, they used to be a part of America’s culture that nurtured heroic values and provided role models for America’s youth.

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Nowadays, Superman has renounced his American citizenship in favor of working for the UN because “I’m tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy.”

And Captain America? His enemies aren’t America’s any more either. Nowadays, Disney (who owns Marvel Comics)has him fighting – wait for it – evil Republicans and ‘right wingers’ who oppose amnesty for illegal aliens:

Like a lot of corporations who promote Leftist ideas, Disney loves illegal alien workers and abusing H1B visas on tech workers to keep wages on the plantation low and keep the servants from getting any ideas above their place.

They’ve even got the ‘right wingers’ in this comic wearing the hoods so beloved of Democrats in the not so Good Old Days. And of course, Captain Marvel’s race has changed, for obvious reasons.

I once heard Rush Limbaugh say some time ago that ‘Liberalism is like an acid that distorts and ruins everything it touches.” At the time I thought that was over the top, but I now concede he was largely correct..except, of course, I never use the word ‘liberalism’ to describe these prog fascists.

From the day they enter school, turn on a TV, or yes, read a comic book, America’s kids are subject to this kind of mind rape. That’s why a willful perversion like this is important.


“From small things, big things someday come.” – Nick Lowe

There’s not much else to say about something like this. Weasels like Disney who pervert American values and do their bit to sabotage its culture are going to get their just reward one day when one of two things happens. Either the country will simply revolt against this sort of thing and react harshly, or the time comes when it faces a major crisis, but has been so undermined by weasels like this that it is simply unable to muster the courage and sacrifice necessary to defend itself.

Enjoy your well-deserved Golden Weasel. You’ll never understand until it’s too late, but it’s going to mean a lot more than some of the other awards you’ll get in the end.

Well, there it is.

Check back next Tuesday to see who next week’s nominees for Weasel of the Week are!

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the Watcher’s Forum and remember, every Wednesday, the Council has its weekly contest with the members nominating two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The votes are cast by the Council and the results are posted on Friday morning.

It’s a weekly magazine of some of the best stuff written in the blogosphere and you won’t want to miss it… or any of the other fantabulous Watcher’s Council content.

And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that, y’know?

10/23/15

The Obama Machine Takes Over Canada

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

In typically biased fashion, Time magazine has greeted the defeat of Canada’s conservatives with the headline, “Why Justin Trudeau’s Election Is Good News for the Fight Against Climate Change.” But the story has a valid point which bears on the question of why Obama campaign operatives were deployed to subvert the conservative government of Stephen Harper. Obama expects new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to help promote a climate change treaty to overthrow global capitalism that is expected to come out of a United Nations conference in Paris in December.

Canada has become a satellite of Obama, writes Judi McLeod of Canada Free Press.

But another inevitable outcome of the liberal victory may be more Islamic terrorism in North America. The new Canadian prime minister has extended open arms to Muslims in Canada and more immigration from the Middle East while declaring the need to withdraw from the fight against Islamic terrorism.

A pro-abortion Catholic, Trudeau wants to legalize marijuana and establish more injection sites for heroin users around the country.

If you hadn’t heard about Obama’s campaign to destroy Canada’s conservative government, you missed our story from last week, “Obama Plans Takedown of Another U.S. Ally.”

The destruction of Harper wasn’t as bloody as the Obama/Hillary Clinton effort to overthrow Moammar Gadhafi in Libya, which resulted in the Benghazi murders of four Americans. Nevertheless, the overthrow of the Harper government had the fingerprints of Obama all over it.

Judi McLeod of Canada Free Press, one of my key sources in last week’s article, summed it up in a story with the headline, “Obama Campaign Team Hands Canada Over to the Lib-Left.” She notes, “When word first leaked out that key Obama campaign workers had joined the Trudeau election campaign, the mainstream media continued to look the other way.”

But there’s no reason for conservatives in the U.S. media or Congress to look the other way.

Commenting on misleading polls that underestimated the liberal tide, McLeod said, “What happened was similar to the 2012 Barack Obama victory over Republican Mitt Romney, with a poll-portrayed nail-biter election that turned into an 11th hour landslide for Obama.”

This is a warning for conservatives in the U.S. who think the pendulum is swinging back to them in 2016. Four years ago many of the top commentators at Fox News and Salem Radio thought Romney was a sure winner. Their faulty predictions have not blunted their drive to be “experts” again this time around. Many of them have already missed the significance of the Donald Trump phenomenon and its staying power.

On the left, the progressive machine is on a roll, from Britain, where the Labor Party elected a Marxist as its head, to the United States, where Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is enticing what many considered smart young people with promises of free taxpayer-financed college educations.

Canada is the latest evidence that conservatives who think history is on their side are in for a rude awakening.

Writing at the conservative Canadian website TheRebel.media, Hamish Marshallnotes that the get-out-the-vote effort by the Liberal Party and the labor unions supporting Trudeau was impressive. Marshall wrote, “What defeated the Conservatives more than the loss of votes, or the collapse of the NDP [New Democratic Party, the third major party in the race] to the Liberals was the huge number of new voters. Turnout will be in the range of 69%, with 3 million more votes cast than in 2011. The vast majority of those new voters supported the Liberals.”

The situation is bleak in Canada, probably worse than many conservatives would care to admit. The battles over abortion-on-demand and homosexual rights are basically over in Canada, while they continue in the U.S. On social issues, Harper was credited by Canadian conservatives with slowing down the movement for euthanasia. He fought a national day care scheme with tax credits for parents. But that’s been about it.

Giving up on the Conservative Party, some Canadians created the Christian Heritage Party (CHP) to compete and wage a real political battle for traditional values. It is a minor political party that didn’t do very well in the October 19 elections.

The reason, according to Peter Vogel of the Christian Heritage Party, is that Canada has already been fundamentally transformed. “We had a ‘conservative’ government that was not socially conservative because Canada is not socially conservative, and now we have a truly liberal government because our society is liberal,” he said. It is a sad fact. Like much of Europe, Canada has abandoned its Judeo-Christian roots.

Vogel is right: the Harper conservatives were afraid to be bold. They operated as if cultural transformation was a fact of life they could not really change. The Conservative Party had a platform that was vague and based on staying the course, mostly economically.

In tough language, Vogel went on to say, “We elected a government that will make matters worse for the unborn, and other vulnerable citizens, if that is possible. They will open our borders to erase Canada’s Christian heritage. (How many churches did Mr. Trudeau visit compared to the number of mosques he visited?) It is a government that is committed to impoverishing Canadians by increasing taxes (such as the ‘Carbon Tax’ and continuing to run a deficit). It is a government that will not fight terrorism in the regions from which it comes, but will allow terrorists to come to Canada. Then we will have to fight them as they radicalize our youth, blow-up our buildings, and kill our citizens.”

The comment about Trudeau visiting more mosques than churches is significant. This political fact has dramatic implications.

The CHP says that over 50 terrorist organizations are currently active in Canada and that the Canadian refugee and immigration system “is inadequate to secure the nation from the threats posed by terrorism.”

Of course, the United States is also threatened by this problem, which is bound to get worse under Trudeau. Perhaps Scott Walker’s reported off-hand comment about possibly erecting a wall between the U.S. and Canada now makes sense. (Walker did not specifically advocate a wall along our northern border but acknowledged that law enforcement authorities had discussed a possible terrorist threat from Canada).

A viral video posted on but not produced by TheRebel.media was a stark warning about Trudeau’s involvement in Muslim causes. Indeed, it showed a picture of Trudeau reciting the Muslim convert’s “shahada” prayer during a visit to a mosque.

Ezra Levant of TheRebel.media wrote at the Toronto Sun that Trudeau wore a full Arab-style Muslim dress called a jalabiya to the mosque in B.C. called the Surrey Jamia Masjid. Levant explained, “But it’s not Trudeau’s dress that was the most unusual. It’s what he did. He went to the mosque to participate in a religious ritual, called the Maghrib salah. It’s a daily prayer service with a particular meaning. Part of the prayer is called the shahada, which in Arabic means to testify. As in, to testify to the Truth that Allah is the one true God, and Mohammed is his one true Prophet. To say the shahada, in the presence of two or more Muslim males, is the sole requirement in Islamic law to convert to Islam.”

He added, “I don’t believe Trudeau is Muslim. I don’t believe he is anything other than what his handlers and costume designers put in his hands before each public event. And in Trudeau’s case, his senior policy adviser just happens to be Omar Alghabra, the Saudi-born former president of the Canadian Arab Federation.”

Trudeau opposes the fight against the Islamic State. The Washington Post and other media are now reporting that Trudeau “would make good on a campaign promise to withdraw Canada’s jets from the U.S.-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.” This would seem to be a break with Obama’s policy, except for the fact that Obama’s heart was never in the fight to begin with. Hence, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has stepped in to the void deliberately created by the U.S. President.

U.S. Congressional leaders in the U.S. seem preoccupied with whom to elect as the new Speaker of the House, as well as Benghazi. Those are important matters. But it might make some sense, in terms of oversight of the Obama administration, to launch an inquiry into American political interference in the Canadian elections.

What does possible House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) think about that? Some conservatives want to know.

10/23/15

Patriots respond harshly to House Freedom Caucus’ support of Paul Ryan

By: Renee Nal
New Zeal

Paul Ryan with his buddy John Boehner via Yahoo News

Paul Ryan with his buddy John Boehner via Yahoo News

The House Freedom Caucus’ support for Paul Ryan’s “highly-conditional bid for House speaker” has left patriots perplexed, with the vast majority of comments on the announcement posted on Facebook decidedly negative.

“Don’t do it. Just don’t cave now…” said Brooke McGowan, Executive Director of Concerned Christians For America. “Why are you not hearing your supporters and constituents???” lamented conservative talk show host Doc Thompson. “PAUL RYAN is sellout Progressive!” he continued.

As reported at Breitbart, Ryan is a fan of amnesty for illegal immigrants and has even “smeared his own constituents who oppose large-scale immigration, and suggested that their aversion to the Ryan-Rubio ‘New America’ vision is fueled by ‘ignorance.'”

Another commenter summed up the author’s feelings:

You all might trust him, but I sure don’t. His votes are not representative of someone who has any intention of limiting government. Terribly, terribly disappointed. I hope you’ll share the names of the politicians who supported Ryan, and the Constitutional conservatives who didn’t.

Conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham took exception to Ryan’s conditions, tweeting:

It is unclear why the House Freedom Caucus exists if they ultimately bow to the establishment, such as in the case of the devastating opinion of the “supermajority” to “support Paul Ryan’s bid to become the next Speaker of the House,” as posted on Facebook.

Referring vaguely to the wannabe-Boehner replacement as a “policy entrepreneur,” the House Freedom Caucus gave no specifics about what it was that enamors them about Ryan, but noted that Ryan “…has promised to be an ideas-focused Speaker who will advance limited government principles and devolve power to the membership…”

Another commenter said in part: “If the Freedom Caucus caves, who is left for us?…”

Tell the House Freedom Caucus how you feel about it on Twitter and Facebook.

This article has been cross-posted at Broadside News.