Month: September 2017

Despite what many of you think, this acronym should stand for “Democrats Against the Constitution Again.”

Of course, D.A.C.A. stands for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. It was put in place by Barack Obama in June 2012 while he was president. At that time his action was against the Constitution in that he pronounced D.A.C.A. by executive decree, and the president (no matter who he is) does not have this authority under the Constitution. The Congress, and only the Congress, has the constitutional authority to make laws.

So not only did B.O. start this whole mess, but on the same day as President Trump cancelled B.O.’s  D.A.C.A. decree, this former president, a supposed “constitutional lawyer,” had the audacity to criticize our current president for following the Constitution by canceling his 2012 unconstitutional decree!

To put things in even more perspective, B.O. came forth with his D.A.C.A. decree in order to fire up his base before the 2012 election, even though he had said in the past the he, as president did not have the authority to make laws. I do not remember the main-stream media (MSM) commenting on this oxymoron. Furthermore, recall that after the 2008 election the Democrats had control of the U.S. the Senate, and the House of Representatives, and yet did not address the immigration issue at that time. They could have, but they did not pass any immigration laws in 2009 or 2010 . . . Why?

To no one’s surprise, I do not hear our former president or any other Democrats admitting that they should have solved this issue in a constitutional fashion when they had the chance.

Next let’s address what President Trump did on Tuesday September 5. He basically kept a campaign promise when he canceled another of Obama’s unconstitutional decrees. He rightfully said that only the Congress can make laws, and was quite generous in giving Congress six months to put on their big-boy/girl pants and do their job. Not only did he keep another campaign promise, but he put the onus where it belongs . . . on Congress.

Brilliant!

Although a rational person might think that it would be difficult to come down on someone for keeping his word, the Democrats, the Dreamers themselves, and the MSM are treating the president as if he was the one who was shirking his responsibility. The Democrats are not blaming themselves for years of doing nothing. The Dreamers are not blaming their parents who broke the law by bringing these young children unlawfully into this country. Of course, the MSM are not commenting on their lack of truthfulness when opining on this issue.

What will Congress come up with over the next six months? I guess it depends on how many can actually make the transition from diapers to big-boy/girl pants!

 

 

 

On Labor Day our local liberal newspaper opined on the state of the middle class in today’s world. In general the editorial board was pessimistic about the future, and said that the decline in the numbers of people who consider themselves middle class is largely due to “how sluggish and unoriginal our political class has been in responding to the decline of well paying jobs.” In other words, those that supposedly know best (politicians and the Teacher’s Unions) are not doing a very good job when it comes to actually educating students for the jobs of the future. Now here we are not talking, in general, about the quality or the inequality of the education system in the U.S., but rather about the lack of foresight in educating our youth for the jobs of tomorrow.

The op-ed correctly pointed out that the present educational system with summers off was designed for an agricultural economy when children helped with summer harvests, and that mandatory beginning computer programming should now be taught in middle school. Right on!
Recognize that here we have a very liberal newspaper that is strongly suggesting that some rather major changes need to be made in our country’s educational system. To this I would add a few peripheral questions:
Why are foreign languages now still required by middle schools and high schools, whereas learning the language of computer programming is not only not required, but only rarely offered?
Why is American Sign Language now accepted as fulfilling a college requirement for a language, whereas learning the language of computer programming is not?
Very interesting to me, however, was that never once did this op-ed actually mention the teacher’s unions by name, and likewise, never once, were charter schools mentioned as a potential solution. Part of this lack of innovation and subsequent stagnation can be remedied by charter schools, as encouraged by President Trump and his Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos.

I am sure that most of you, er . . . some of you, er . . . maybe one or two of you
are familiar with Uncle Drew. For those of you who are not, let me “refresh” your memory. Uncle Drew is an old man with gray hair, a gray beard, and a limp who wanders onto a big time youth street basketball game, and for whatever reason is invited to play. The kids in the game as well as the fans on the side are snickering as Uncle Drew turns the ball over the first time he touches it, and then badly misses his first few shots. Everyone is yucking it up at the expense of the old man until the real Uncle Drew drops the charade, and makes all of the studs on the basketball court look like fools.
In these Pepsi commercials, and soon to be a movie, Uncle Drew is really Kyrie Irving, an all-star professional basketball player in the NBA. Kyrie Irving is made up to look like an old man, and nobody on the court recognizes him. In subsequent Uncle Drew episodes other professional basketball players (Kevin Love as Wes and Nate Robinson as “Lights”) are made up to initially appear old and infirm, only to embarrass the young studs when the right time comes. Nobody recognizes them even though they are marquee players, as they are in disguise and “undercover.”
At this point, many of my regular readers are asking, “Wassup”?!
Patience!

Recently the entire country has been reading about and looking at disgusting videos of Anti-fa thugs beating up on innocent protestors, who naively felt that the police would standup and protect their right to peacefully protest. It becomes obvious, for whatever reason, that this is not happening, and when all is said and done, only a few of these thugs are arrested. What happened to all the rest of these Anti-fa hooligans? They apparently are able to return later to infringe on the rights of others because they were not caught and jailed.
I propose that the “good guys” have multiple plants in the crowd the next time that Anti-fa is threatening to brutalize innocent protestors. These undercover disguised Kyrie Irvings, Kevin Loves, and Nate Robinsons, etc should be the toughest of the tough, dressed up as multiples of Uncle Drew, Wes, and “Lights”, so that when the violence breaks out, they can give these Anti-fa bums a taste of their own medicine . . . and then arrest them. After doing this covertly a few times, advise Anti-fa that there will potentially be undercover very bad “good guys” to neutralize them whenever they show up at a rally. When they realize that they could well end up with a broken nose or a concussion, and then get thrown into jail, perhaps they will think twice the next time that a potential Uncle Drew shows up to play hoops.

What is free speech? Does it depend on whether you are conservative or liberal? Even though “free speech” should be a simple concept, apparently to some it is not. A recent op-ed in the NY Times by K-Sue Park, lamented the fact that the ACLU had defended the right of the white supremacy group to organize its march in Charlottesville, Va. earlier in the month. The writer of the op-ed stated that the ACLU needs to “rethink free speech”, and stop standing up for people with offensive views.

Wow. That is really scary.

It means that free speech can only be truly free speech, if it does not offend. Does not offend who? As K-Sue Park is a fellow in critical race studies at UCLA law school (liberal university in liberal California) and her op-ed was printed in the NYT (an uber liberal newspaper), the implication is that free speech is only truly free speech if it does not offend the left. FYI, yes the ACLU (again far left) has “rethought” its position on free speech, and will no longer defend the right of certain groups to free speech.

 

In San Francisco on 8/26 a group called Patriot Prayer Group cancelled a rally and a speech because of safety concerns. Nancy Pelosi had called this group a white supremacist group even though it included black, Hispanic and transgender speakers. Again if you are liberal, you apparently have the right to limit free speech if the group speaking does not agree with you.

Interestingly a group of “anti-protestors” were at the site of the cancelled San Francisco speech and when one was asked why she was there, the twenty-seven year old Richmond high school teacher responded, “I really don’t have an opinion on what they are doing, but I thought that it was important to be out here against it”.

Double Wow! The really scary thing is that this snowflake is teaching in a high school – but then again, it’s a California high school! I am not exactly clear as to what the teacher said, but I do respect her right to say it!

So we are back again to the original question of “what is free speech?” Can speech be free speech if it offends someone? If the answer is “no”, how much does one need to be offended? Does it need to be very offensive to be curtailed?  Here the concept of “microaggression” comes into play. Here by “microaggression” people mean, “You might think that it is small, but it goes to the very core of my particular being, and so it is wrong and shouldn’t be allowed.” Who decides how offensive a “microaggression” is?

It appears to me that these questions have already been answered by the Supreme Court when they said that flag burning was okay as it was a demonstration of free speech, and also recently when the Supreme Court said that a name cannot be banned merely because it offends someone or some group (Supreme Court decision concerning the Asian group called the Slants).

In fairness, I think that the aforementioned high school teacher can be excused from not knowing about these Supreme Court decisions as she probably went to nearby U.C. Berkeley where the concept of free speech is an enigma.