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Debunking the Paradigm Shifters

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Judges attack schools
Andy sends this Economist story:

The courts are making a mess of America's schools

ONE reason that America's public schools do badly in international rankings, despite getting more money, is that nobody is really accountable for them. The schools are certainly not run by Washington: the federal government pays only 8% of their costs. Most of their money comes from state and local government, but often responsibility for them lies with school boards. And within the schools themselves, head teachers usually have little power either to sack bad teachers or to expel rowdy pupils.

Until recently, the main villains of the piece had seemed to be the teachers' unions, who have opposed any sort of reform or accountability. Now they face competition from an unexpectedly pernicious force: the courts. Fifty years ago, it was the judges who forced the schools to desegregate through Brown v Board of Education (1954). Now the courts have moved from broad principles to micromanagement, telling schools how much money to spend and where—right down to the correct computer or textbook.

Twenty-four states are currently stuck in various court cases to do with financing school systems, and another 21 have only recently settled various suits. Most will start again soon. Only five states have avoided litigation entirely.

posted by Roger Schlafly at 19:33:33

 

Andy writes that the outrages worsen further in the Dr. Sell case. Here is the St. Louis paper story AP story.

Tom Sell has been imprisoned for 8 years without a trial, and still cannot get a trial. From what I have been able to learn, I believe that he is innocent of all charges, but he may be guilty of some insurance overbilling. He has been tortured in a federal mental prison. He already went to the US Supreme Court to avoid being forced to take experimental psychiatric drugs. Judge Donald J. Stohr appears to be acting about of personal malice towards Sell. He says that Sell must be imprisoned indefinitely without trial because he has a "delusional disorder of the persecutory type". It's not a delusion -- he really is being persecuted. posted by Roger Schlafly at 07:46:14

 
Leftists dominate govt institutions
My friends Mike and Susan came to town visiting their son in college. They treated me as a curiosity, as the college kid said that he had never met someone who supported or voted for G.W. Bush. Their parents gave the silliest reasons for supporting Kerry. They asked what the connection was between Iraq and al-Qaeda. I said just the indirect ties states by Bush and the 9-11 Commission. The response: "So why didn't we first invade the countries with direct connections." We did; that country is called Afghanistan.

Then Mike claims that Kerry is smarter than Bush. I pointed out that Bush's test scores were higher than Kerry's. So he claimed that he saw a map on the internet that showed that Blue states have higher average IQ scores than Red states. The map turned out to be a hoax, as the Economist magazine admits.

Now Mike writes:

[See this article] From today's NYT's education section. This isn't a study "by state," but it's enlightening nevertheless. Democrats outnumber Republicans in academia 7 to 1!

Yes, isn't it outrageous how colleges are only hiring left-wing biased profs to indoctrinate the next generation!

Of course it is no surprise that govt employees will vote for tax and spend liberals. Even private universities like Stanford get most of their money from the govt.

Note that the disparity is the greatest in the soft subjects like the humanities, not the hard subjects like science.

You'll also find that the welfare class votes Democratic. posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:32:03

 
Liberals are undemocratic
John sends this Wash Post article by David von DrehleDavid von Drehle:

For many Democrats, the worst thing about the election result is the prospect of President Bush's appointing a new generation of conservative justices to the Supreme Court. But in the long run, a rightward shift in America's courts could be one of the best things to happen to liberalism in years.

Half a century after the triumph of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark desegregation case, reliance on constitutional lawsuits to achieve policy goals has become a wasting addiction among American progressives. The recent battle over gay marriage, in courts and at the ballot box, demonstrates that liberals today are more adept at persuading like-minded judges than they are at persuading undecided voters. Over the past 40 years, while progressives were winning dozens of controversial court cases on issues ranging from abortion to school prayer, the Democratic Party failed nine times out of 10 to win a majority of the votes for president.

Over time, though, voters matter -- just as they mattered on Nov. 2, when liberalism took another beating -- and gay marriage was rejected in 11 out of 11 state elections.

Whatever you feel about the rights that have been gained through the courts, it is easy to see that dependence on judges has damaged the progressive movement and its causes. Liberals "became lazy at some point," says Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who has worked for groups as diverse as the Christian Coalition and the Democratic Leadership Council. "By relying on the judiciary, their political muscles have atrophied."

posted by Roger Schlafly at 17:23:27

 
The culture war
When the elder G. Bush lost the 1992 election, a lot of pundits said that it was all because Pat Buchanan referred to the culture war at the Republican Convention.

Now Buchanan, author of Where the Right Went Wrong, now says:

"I feel like we've finally got our country back," a lady told my wife the morning after John Kerry conceded.

George W. Bush was re-elected president as his father was not because he converted the election of 2004 into a triumphant and epic battle of the culture war, as his father refused to do in 1992.

posted by Roger Schlafly at 22:37:23

 
A Brit who supports Bush
Phyllis sends this Paul Johnson article that lists many good reasons for voting for Bush, and ends:

I cannot recall any election when the enemies of America all over the world have been so unanimous in hoping for the victory of one candidate. That is the overwhelming reason that John Kerry must be defeated, heavily and comprehensively.

posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:24:27

 
Chief Justice Clarence Thomas
Drudge reports:

BUSH CONSIDERS CLARENCE THOMAS FOR CHIEF JUSTICE

President Bush has launched an internal review of the pros and cons of nominating Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas as the chief justice if ailing William Rehnquist retires, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

I doubt that Bush has the guts, but Thomas is the obvious choice. Of those currently on the Supreme Court, he is the only one under 65, and (as far as I know) the only one with significant managerial experience. More importantly, he has accumulated a distinguished record of constitutionalism on the court that is unmatched by any justice in decades. His written opinions have a clarity and coherence that has gained the respect of legal scholars. Leftists often attack him, but rarely attack his reasoning.

But it is because he is so good that his political enemies hate him so much. There would be a huge campaign against him. It would be ugly. posted by Roger Schlafly at 07:58:21

 
The morons at slate.com
Slate.com has posted unlenting anti-Bush propaganda for months, and on election day it was bragging about a Kerry victory based on exit polls. Slate columnist Jane Smiley says:

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. ... The error that progressives have consistently committed over the years is to underestimate the vitality of ignorance in America.

The reason the Democrats have lost five of the last seven presidential elections is simple: A generation ago, the big capitalists, who have no morals, as we know, decided to make use of the religious right in their class war against the middle class and against the regulations that were protecting those whom they considered to be their rightful prey—workers and consumers.

NY Times columnist Paul Krugman says:

resident Bush isn't a conservative. He's a radical - the leader of a coalition that deeply dislikes America as it is.

The Democrats ran a campaign of the hate-filled and illogical attacks on Pres. Bush. The major public opinion-shapers -- news media, entertainers, teachers, etc -- gave us a year of anti-Bush propaganda. It was a campaign that primarily appealed to America-haters and morons. These supposed intellectuals on the Left seem to be totally clueless about why they lost the election.

Try this quiz to identify whether quotes came from John Kerry, Michael Moore, or Osama Bin Laden.

John writes:

It's not true that late returns increased Bush's victory to 52-47 with a margin of 4.7 million votes. Powerlineblog corrected that inaccurate information. It's still 51-48 with a margin of 3.5 million votes. See Yahoo, CNN, or USA Today.

Bush's margin in battleground states:
FL 381,000
OH 136,000
NV 22,000
IA 13,500
NM 8,600
NH (9,000)
WI (12,000)
OR (68,000)
MN (99,000)
PA (128,000)
MI (166,000)

In no state was any 3rd party candidate decisive this year.

Bush won a majority of counties even in most of the states Kerry carried. The only states Kerry won a majority of counties were in New England.

posted by Roger Schlafly at 10:06:56

 
John Edwards made his fortune by fraud
Sen. John Edwards made millions of dollars as a slimebag lawyer persuading gullible courts that obstetricians should pay huge judgments based on a theory that failing to do a caesarian delivery caused hypoxia, which in turn caused cerebral palsy. Now that the election is over, the NY Times reveals:

A new study undermines the long-held belief among obstetricians that oxygen deprivation, or hypoxia, is the main cause of cerebral palsy in premature infants.

The study, published in the October issue of The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, found that the brain injury that leads to cerebral palsy was much more commonly associated with infection than with hypoxia.

Thankfully, we were just saved from what probably would have been the most anti-science administration in many years. posted by Roger Schlafly at 09:47:25

 
Defying NY Times, USA votes Republican
The NY Times, desperate to put some anti-Republican spin on the election, has this headline today:

Defying Bush Administration, Voters in California Approve $3 Billion for Stem Cell Research

Actually, the Bush Administration took no stand on the issue, and has made no attempt to ban state or private spending on stem cell research. It was a Bush initiative that started federal spending on embrionic stem cell research. posted by Roger Schlafly at 07:36:41

 
Bush won by about 100,000 votes
I predicted that the presidential election would not be as close as those in 1960, 1968, 1976, or 2000. Checking that against the latest figures, Kerry would have needed 18 more electoral votes to win. He could have gotten that by getting 137k more votes in Ohio, or by getting 127k more votes in Arkansas, Iowa, and New Mexico, or by getting 144k more votes in Colorado, Iowa, and New Mexico.

A mere 46k more votes in Nevada, Iowa, and New Mexico would have given Kerry 269 electoral votes and a tie with Bush, but Bush would have won the tie-breaker in Congress, so I don't count that possibility. It would have taken 112k votes to win those states as well as Alaska.

Therefore, I calculate Bush's margin of victory as 112k votes. That is slightly more than Nixon's margin in 1968. The 1960, 1976, and 2000 elections were closer. By this analysis, the 2004 election is only the 5th closest election in my lifetime. (These numbers may change as more ballots are counted or recounted.)

It is curious how little the electoral map has changed since 2000. Pres. Bush was exactly the president that everyone expected, except for the Iraq War. The news media tried to convince everyone that the Iraq War was the big issue of the campaign, but I wonder whether it really changed anyone's votes. I've heard people say that they were voting against Bush because of the Iraq War and then admit that they would not have cared if Kerry had done the same thing. So I think that would have voted against Bush anyway, and were just using the Iraq War as an excuse. posted by Roger Schlafly at 21:24:28

 
Paul Weyrich misquote
Phyllis is quoted here as going into a diatribe against the neocons, but she denies it. posted by Roger Schlafly at 23:47:43