Maggie's Farm

If you don’t think that a little ‘ol blogger like me can take on and win against a trillion-dollar industry’s corporate welfare scheme and its political allies, then read on. I won through careful research and persistence. Then I lost once the allies of the giants of the tourism industry came to power in 2008. But, this tale displays that individual bloggers can have major impacts on legislation, now more than ever as the alternative media has grown and the 2012 elections may turn the tide in Washington.

Unless you are a foreign tourist entering the US, paying $14 to enter, you probably haven’t heard of Brand USA. Today, the Washington Free Beacon describes “The Cronyism Board” of this public-private partnership to promote tourism to the US: “It is governed by an 11-member board. John Connor, director of the Office of White House Liaison at the United States Department of Commerce, appointed the board members….All of the board members Connor has appointed have donated to Democrats and Democratic organizations almost exclusively, if they have donated at all.”

Briefly, the impetus for Brand USA came from the giants of US corporations, immensely profitable already from tourism. Rather than use their own deep pockets to promote tourism, they sought additional taxpayer and tourist funding for their advertising.

In 2007, I caught on to the scheme, its false supporting statistics and theme in “Why Is Disney Bashing America?: Pork Investigation”.  I wrote several more posts plus op-eds at The Washington Examiner. This led to the Washington Post running a 6,746-word expose that shook this boondoggle from the Congressional agenda. The links and update are in this 2008 post,  “Blog Success:D-P Stirs Up WaPo Expose of Discover America”. However, once the Obama administration and its lopsided Democrat Congressional majorities came to power, Brand USA was back on track. I spoke out again, in this June 2009 Washington Examiner op-ed:

A former Freddie Mac public relations guru who helped generate the mortgage meltdown that sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin last year is behind this year's campaign by Walt Disney, Anheuser Busch, American Express, Orbitz and other corporate heavyweights to charge foreign travelers and U.S. taxpayers to subsidize advertising for their already immensely profitable industry.

Nonetheless, in 2010, the Travel Promotion Act was enacted. Expected revenues of $200-million.

What do we have to show for it? The April 25, 2012 Forbes, for example, critiqued Brand USA’s TV ad to be shown abroad: “Unfortunately, the new campaign misses the mark.” Others, like Frommers are also critical. Advertising Age asked its readers "Will This Campaign Designed to Attract Tourists to the U.S. Actually Work?": Eighteen of twenty commenters were critical of the ad. 

The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandates that all hospitals, including Jewish or Moslem, must serve pork instead of beef. Pork is lower in fat and calories, thus better for health, and less expensive than beef, thus better for healthcare spending. HHS opines that only synagogues and mosques may continue to ban pork from their menus.

Can you hear the uproar? Jews and Muslims are required to break their basic dietary laws, rooted in many centuries, to obey a federal mandate. Every civil libertarian and all faiths would protest.

Yet, except for the support of Orthodox Jews, who actually have less stringent prohibitions than Catholics, and the Southern Baptist Convention, most groups which otherwise defend  individual and group liberties are silent in backing Catholics in challenging the ObamaCare mandate to provide contraception and abortion by their non-church charities.

Jonathan Tobin lays it out:

One needn’t oppose the president’s re-election or endorse the Vatican’s stance on contraception in order to understand that a ruling against the church would grant the government nearly unlimited power to restrict religious freedom. In the weeks and months ahead as this issue continues to be debated, it is vital that more faith groups rally around the church and make it clear to the administration and the courts that when it comes to protecting First Amendment rights, the church does not stand alone.

You might speak with your pastor or rabbi and ask them not to be silent when Catholics' constitutional right is abridged. Silence is not moral.

(Note Added: There is no such HHS mandate to serve pork, at least yet. It is plausible because of the extent and nature of other ObamaCare intrusions into personal choice and beliefs.)

Ed Morrisey ably sums up the intimidation campaign by a convicted murderer, Brett Kimberlin, against several bloggers. As Michelle Malkin writes: “This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members.” Read it all.

A highly notable issue, aside from that the legacy media has failed to take up the matter, is that the funding for this campaign comes from some of the most-darling of liberal-left foundations (see this list, and some more background on Kimberlin's trail of BS), using the Tides Foundation as their beard. The Tides Foundation acts as a secret conduit to leftist causes for donors, that include George Soros and Teresa Hines-Kerry as well as numerous other liberal foundations but also benefits from grants from the US government. See here.

Morrisey and Malkin and many other bloggers call for a free speech blogburst, of which this post is part. There is more at stake than the first amendment right to factually expose a campaign of intimidation against bloggers who have exposed Brett Kimberlin and his backers. There is the need to further expose the network of leftist donors and by example require greater transparency and accountability to their whole range of activities.

Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club, as usual, sees more clearly, deeply:

We often think that politicians know when they are misleading the public and when they are not. But there’s one other possibility. They don’t know themselves what the truth is any more.  They are like a bunch of pirates who, after making the master mariner walk the plank realize they can’t read the “books of navvigashun” for the life of them. They are irretrievably lost and the only thing the pirate chieftains can do is pretend to pore over them.

The situation may be reaching the point where it has become counterproductive to listen to “the leaders” who have neither the knowledge nor skill to think or do anything definite.  Perhaps recovery — when it comes — will be the result of people just doing stuff. Creating new businesses, innovating or just adapting to changed circumstances without much reference to the Big Leaders who will continue to pretend to know everything when they know nothing. Maybe the end of Peak Government has already started. The “leaders” will pronounce more and more, and they will matter less and less.

Paul Mirengoff’s lawyerly skills rebut Karl Rove’s campaign skills on whether Rev. Wright should be raised as an issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. The difference is between inside-Beltway and what turns on (or off) the jurors, voters.

Karl Rove considers President Obama’s twenty-year attachment to his radical minister as old hat, largely because failed presidential contender John McCain declined to raise it in 2008, and because the Obama administration’s record is so bad in itself that it should be enough to defeat him in 2012.

Paul Mirengoff, however, says that “presidential elections aren’t just about issues; they are about the person in whom we are entrusting our highest office.” Mirengoff then goes into how campaigns actually occur:

The second argument for shying away from Wright is that raising the issue will backfire, as pro-Obama forces accuse Romney of personal attacks and racism. But Romney need not, and should not, make the attacks; nor should the major PACs that back him. If the issue is raised –- after testing it with focus groups — it should be raised by lesser groups, as was the case with ads attacking John Kerry over his military service….It’s not racist to be disturbed by the fact that Obama chose a rabidly anti-American, who happens to be Black, as his spirtual [sic] leader. And, of course, Obama’s associations with white radicals can be invoked as part of the same line of attack.

In 2004, defenders of Kerry insinuated that Karl Rove was involved in the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth campaign to show that Kerry’s narrative of Vietnam heroism was false. Their only “proof” was that some of the same people supported President Bush and the Swiftees or that anti-Kerry Swiftees lacked enough documented evidence in Navy records.

That would be a problem for a Wright-Obama campaign in 2012, except that Kerry’s critics were the witnesses to his overblown attempted image whereas Obama’s own words and actions are the witness to his radical past. Further, Obama’s radical past is directly in line with his radical presidential policies and actions.

Were it only Rev. Wright that might be downplayed as but one indiscretion, albeit a twenty-year one. But, throughout Obama’s life his self-proclaimed formative mentors were cut of the same radical cloth, and in his administration he has appointed others of this ilk.

During the 2004 campaign I was interviewed by a star New York Times reporter, pro-Kerry, about the Swiftee campaign. I was fairly quoted, and continued an email correspondence with the reporter. After Bush narrowly won, this was our last email exchange:

Note to Todd Purdum, New York Times: If not for the anti-Kerry Vietnam veterans, shifting many thousands of votes, the election may well have been lost by Bush.

Reply from Purdum: Hard to argue with your analysis.

Mirengoff wins the dispute.

Roger Kimball is one of too few conservative writers who can lend deep erudition to connect the central tenets of Western civilization with today’s immediate events and concerns. Kimball’s influence is not only through his own writings but his featuring of that of others at his The New Criterion and its blog Arma Virumque (I’ve been overhonored to appear at the blog) and his publishing house Encounter Books. 

Now, you have the chance to get in depth with Kimball’s learning and lessons in his new book The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia.  Order at this link.

Kimball entices you with a few short excerpts:

Why does relativism, which begins with a beckoning promise of liberation from “oppressive” moral constraints, so often end in the embrace of immoral constraints that are politically obnoxious? Part of the answer lies in the hypertrophy or perversion of relativism’s conceptual enablers— terms like “pluralism,” “diversity,” “tolerance,” “openness,” and the like. They all name classic liberal virtues, but it turns out that their beneficence depends on their place in a constellation of fixed values. Absent that hierarchy, they rapidly degenerate into epithets in the armory of political suasion. They retain the aura, the emotional charge, of positive values. But in reality they act as moral solvents, as what Gairdner calls “value-dispersing terms that serve as an official warning to accept all behaviours of others without judgment and, most important, to keep all moral opinions private.” In this sense, the rise of relativism encourages an ideology of non-judgmentalism only as a prelude to ever more strident discriminations.

And…

[T]he fruits of egalitarianism are ignorance, the habit of intellectual conformity, and the systematic subjection of cultural achievement to political criteria. In the university, this means classes devoted to pop novels, rock videos, and third-rate works chosen simply because their authors are members of the requisite sex, ethnic group, or social minority. It involves an attack on permanent things for the sake of the trendy and ephemeral. It means students who are graduated not having read Milton or Dante or Shakespeare—or, what is in some ways even worse, who have been taught to regard the works of such authors chiefly as hunting grounds for examples of patriarchy, homophobia, imperialism, or some other politically correct vice. It means faculty and students who regard education as an exercise in disillusionment and who look to the past only to corroborate their sense of superiority and self-satisfaction.

And…

You should have children who act like you.

Or

Someday, You’ll see.

Either usually expressed in exasperation.

I sound like my mother.

Usually expressed in shock, then realization that she was correct, but it took our children to get it through to us.

With the enlargement of federal powers and intrusions into individual’s lives, the 9th Amendment to the US Constitution, part of our Bill Of Rights, may well gain more judicial attention.  The 9th Amendment should be elevated to central prominence, as it was intended, in applying judgment of all federal legislation, regulations and actions. Our revolution is based in restriction of central powers and must again be reignited to, no exaggeration, save our liberties. Here's the spare words of the 9th Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The 9th Amendment is the least cited or relied upon in Supreme Court cases. The lack of agreement among constitutional scholars as to the specific meaning of the 9th Amendment is largely the reason. This lack of agreement also exceeds the general lack of agreement – usually along liberal and conservative lines – as to many other sections of the Constitution. Focus on transgressions of the first eight Amendments, more specific as to particular rights, and cases specifically concerned with how broad should be an enumerated (listed) power, was usually enough until now.

But constitutional scholars do agree on a basic point: the 9th Amendment was intended to be a guiding construct to interpretation of the rest of the Constitution, although specifics may be either lacking or in contention. After all, the 9th Amendment was considered necessary to be part of our Bill Of Rights without which the Constitution would not have been ratified.

Today, there are new factors requiring more attention to the 9th Amendment: the cumulative and continuing expansion of federal legislation into territories formerly outside its enumerated reserve, the almost unchecked latitude claimed by federal regulatory rules, and technologies’ facilitation of increased central controls and uniformity. The runaway employment of the federal purse and tax to compel obedience is, simply, out of control at the same time that it is evident that the economic security of the nation is imperiled by it.

If the Federalist Papers are ignored or given inadequate attention in today's colleges, the Anti-Federalist Papers are consigned to the memory hole as a challenge to prevailing liberal thought.

Peter Berkowitz has created some stir with his Wall Street Journal column, "Why Colleges Don't Teach The Federalist Papers." Many blogs have printed this excerpt:

It would be difficult to overstate the significance of The Federalist for understanding the principles of American government and the challenges that liberal democracies confront early in the second decade of the 21st century. Yet despite the lip service they pay to liberal education, our leading universities can't be bothered to require students to study The Federalist—or, worse, they oppose such requirements on moral, political or pedagogical grounds. Small wonder it took so long for progressives to realize that arguments about the constitutionality of ObamaCare are indeed serious.

For the full answer, if Berkowitz offers one, you'd have to be a paid subscriber to the Wall Street Journal. A lawyer before becoming a columnist, Jennifer Rubin offers explanations, "The first has to do with the transformation of law schools from intellectual institutions to professional trade schools. Especially with the astronomically high tuition at most law schools, the emphasis, by necessity, is on preparing students for the practice of the law....Second, law schools have given way to the notion that the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is." She concludes:

The reason in large part is the defect in legal and collegiate education, and the mindset behind the indifference to seminal documents that reveal the ingenious and enduring structure of our Constitution.

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius pens an optimistic description of "Our Plentiful Future."  According to analysts he cites, the US could reduce its energy imports to 22% by 2020 due to our natural-gas boom, and reduce our dependence on the unstable Middle East even more due to Canadian supplies.  In turn, this will decrease the cost of manufacturing at home, a high percentage of companies which have outsourced to China bringing several million jobs home.

What Ignatius fails to mention is that with regulatory interference and increased taxes, the Obama administration is doing everything it can get away with to puncture these possibilities. Leaving out that important blockage, Ignatius is engaging in the happy talk that comes from an Obama supporter.

Right behind the economy, the issue that will sway swayable voters in November is the repeated displays of arrogance by President Obama and his administration, inept arrogance at that. Indeed, that arrogance has been so heavy- and ham-handed that it has and will continue to undermine almost every other appeal the Obama campaign may make to marginal voters. Those on the dole or looking forward to being on it may shrug, but those with a shred of self-respect will be repulsed.

Obama's arrogance has reached the point of making him a laughing-stock. Obama’s inflated self-image will continue to overreact, making him appear more unworthy of confidence. Yeah, that’s the ticket! The best worst efforts of many in the major media to cover it up will be pierced, demonstrating their own lack of credibility. Others clinging to a shred of journalism will have to report the Obama campaign’s lack of credibility. There’s my forecast. And, I’m sticking to it.

P.S.: For those wondering about how Romney will capitalize on this, his campaign and those of us in the alternative media have shown how to expose the fool behind the curtain. All Romney himself has to do regarding Obama's buffoonery is remain the gentleman that he is, and toss out an occasional barb at the overinflated balloonery from the Obama camp.

Photo taken in wealthy, liberal Marin, CA by our friend at Bookworm Room:

A group of students at the University of California, San Diego, claim exclusive rights to wear clown costumes, and accuse anyone else wearing one to be clownaphobic. Ridiculous, right?

Then, keep reading.

After the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine at UCSD lost the vote in the student government for divestment from Israel, they have turned to baseless and in this case utterly absurd attacks upon anti-divestment members of the campus.

First they made up charges against a music professor that he’d intimidated a student, which the official UCSD Office of Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination investigated, clearing the professor.

Now, beclowning themselves, SJP member Noor El-Annan and cohorts accuse a campus-wide elected member of the student government, Ashton Cohen, who voted against divestment, of being Islamaphobic, denigrating Moslems, and being culturally insensitive. The pretext: the student Senator wore an Arabic costume at a costume party.

The student is a Persian Jew, with Moslem family members. He bought the outfit in Dubai, and wore it there for comfort when it was very hot. On that same trip, as a guest of the Indian government along with other US student government leaders, he’d also bought Indian garb, but it was at his family’s house in L.A. If he’d worn that Indian garb, would he be Indianaphobic? Ridiculous.

At the costume party a photo was taken of him, along with three female friends, two of whom are Moslem. One of the females posted the photo with a humorous subtitle, “three wives?” That’s what the pro-Palestinian fanatics call an insult to Moslem polygamy practices. Would they have preferred photos of clitorectomies, which is also a common Moslem practice?

Here’s the photo:

On June 1, 2001, a Palestinian terrorist killed 21 young people, and wounded 132 others, in a discotheque in Tel Aviv. The terrorist was heralded by Hamas and Islamic Jihad as one of their own, and his family rewarded by the Palestinian Authority. Shortly after the attack, the graffiti appeared near the discotheque, “They won’t stop us from dancing.”

Thursday, April 26, is the 64th birthday of Israel, still dancing. Indeed, if there were a “Dancing With The Stars” competition for countries, Israel would win for its remarkable, seemingly miraculous successes in all fields of endeavor against all odds during its creation and 64 years, combined with the spirit that keeps striving for improvement and for peace with intractable enemies.

We celebrate life and togetherness through dance. 

There’s a new journalism prize, The Walter Duranty Prize for Journalistic Mendacity. PJ Media and The New Criterion will award the Prize annually “for what our readers consider the most egregious example of dishonest reporting for the fiscal year.” The initial judges include Peter Collier, Roger Kimball, Cliff May, Ron Radosh, Glenn Reynolds, Claudia Rosett, and Roger L. Simon. Roger Simon writes, “Since this is a new prize the committee also solicits your suggestions on how we should carry on our work and any other suggestions regarding the Walter Duranty Prize.”

There’s certainly enough expertise on the panel to reach such a choice. I suggest the following criteria:

1.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be reporting on a foreign country. Walter Duranty’s infamous whitewashing of the starvation and death of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-3 will be hard to exceed, but there are enough terrible instances of widespread state brutality today that journalists who espouse the state line or distort the facts should be the priority.

2.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be to a bureau chief for a major news agency, newspaper, or other prominent media, as Walter Duranty was the longtime bureau chief in Moscow for the New York Times. This ties the responsibility directly to the owners of the venue.

3.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should be the recipient of an award for journalism, as Walter Duranty was of the Pulitzer Prize for his. This ties the responsibility to the journalism profession.

4.    In parallel to the reportage by Walter Duranty, the prize for dishonest reporting should have a matching prize, called the Gareth Jones Prize, to show the contrast to honest reporting. Gareth Jones did report the starvation and deaths of Ukrainians. (For a comparison, “A Tale of Two Journalists:Walter Duranty, Gareth Jones, and the Pulitzer Prize.”)

One of the most active organizations of Jews and Christians in support of Israel is Stand With Us, who sent me this email to forward to friends. Below are facts about the misrepresentations in Sunday night's 60 Minutes program about "Christians in the Holy Land." CBS ignores the favorable conditions for Christians within Israel and ignores the persecution and oppression of Christians and other minorities throughout the Moslem countries of the Middle East. So far, CBS is also ignoring the tens of thousands of protests it has received. So, you may want to express your views to the management of CBS and 60 Minutes, to wake them to the error of their ways.

 
On Sunday, April 22, CBS` "60 Minutes" ran a shockingly biased episode, "Christians of the Holy Land" by Bob Simon. Even the always diplomatic Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren called the show a "hatchet job" on Israel.  You can watch the program here: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57417408/Christians-of-the-holy-land/?tag=strip.

(Photos tear at emotions. I purposely do not include any images in this post as emotions are far from enough to convey the individual stories or the brutalities.)

At sundown today begins the annual observance of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day. There are many museums, plaques, books that let today’s visitors get a glimpse of the horrors and the heroes of that time. As one passes through and on, what is often missed is the individual stories, the lost hopes and potentials, the personal exertions, the evils that were so common among men and women of many nationalities. The Nazis could not have killed so many without the work of those in conquered countries, some coerced, some bribed, some for their own salvation, many because of rife anti-Semitism. The Yad Veshem museum and memorials, including to Righteous Gentiles, outside Jerusalem, is a major repository of these individual stories. Visit the website.

The Holocaust needs to be remembered and restudied in every generation just because of its scale, and because of what it says about the thin veneer that separates now from then and now from recurrence. (It is not by coincidence that the week after Yom Hashoah is the celebration of Israel's Independence Day, Yom Ha'atzmaut.)

Below is a piece I wrote in 2006 that includes first-person accounts of what happened in a village near where much of my family perished.

In a voluntary poll, unscientific, by my hometown's Encinitas Patch, only 18% said "no" to whether "Is stay-at-home parenting as difficult as a job outside of the home?"

Encinitas political party registration is about evenly split among Republicans, Democrats and Independents. Obamaganda fails across party lines.

If Patch in your locality has a similar poll, please add the results in Comments.

Last Friday, the editor of a southern California publication asked me whether I wanted to do a piece about the “settlement”  between the US Justice Department and University of California San Diego regarding the handling of racial harassment on campus. I told him that I wasn’t privy to the inside details, so didn’t want to analyze the settlement.

What I do know is that it grew out of incidents on campus in 2010 that caused an uproar of indignation, mostly justifiable. A fraternity held a Compton Cookout that relied on disparaging racial stereotypes of Blacks. A noose was found in a library. (As it later was revealed, a minority student admitted to placing the noose, not considering the implications.)UCSD quickly set up an office on Harassment and Discrimination to hear and judge complaints regarding any campus minority. UCSD took constructive action to uphold laws, alleviate fears and confront facts.

Added: Inside Higher Ed reports: "A professor’s use of a class website at the University of California at Los Angeles to promote a boycott of Israel has led to a protest and a subsequent finding by the university that his actions were inappropriate...Academic freedom experts said that professors are not free to use class websites to promote political agendas. “If the link posted is strictly of a political nature, and is unrelated to the course content, then it is not protected by academic freedom,” said Greg Scholtz, AAUP’s director of academic freedom, tenure and governance."

At the University of California’s sister public college system, California State University, however, the opposite is taking place. The illegal use of college webservers to promulgate anti-Israel propaganda, to promote boycotts of Israel, create an harassing atmosphere on campuses toward Jewish students and others supportive of Israel, and senior administrators who have ignored these transgressions and themself broken the law, has not been addressed nor remedied by the Chancellor of the Cal State system, Charles Reed. The outrageous and illegal activities by some faculty and administration members continue.

I won’t belabor you with all the details here. Just read the latest letter: "Abuses of academic freedom at CSU need your attention", below, from leaders of AMCHA, an organization to protect Jewish students from illegal harassment, written to Chancellor Reed, Cal State college presidents, and the state officials elected to protect the rights of all Californians. The issues have previously been brought to their attention, including by me (Cal State’s Chutzpah, in City Journal). The issue is already moving to the courts. We await the US Justice Department to intervene, or to as so often in this administration exhibit a proclivity to only become involved on behalf of one minority.

Maggie's Farm most lovely flower, Marianne, sends us this photo taken April 1, 2012 near Ennis, Texas. The Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis) is the state flower of Texas. This part of the description is appropriate to Texas: "Bluebonnets cannot tolerate poorly drained, clay based soils." Roots cannot grow freely when constricted or drowned with limited ability to breath.

The real threat that the Ann Romney's of the world represent to the statist Left is yet another of the many insightful posts by a mom in Marin whose blog Bookworm Room is a must add to your daily web surfing. She and I have become friends over the years sharing our parenting experiences, she and I -- a work at home Dad -- considering how to best raise our young children for a positive life and constructive role in society. An excerpt from her post today:

For the last many years, I have been the single most important influence on my children.  Yes, they go to school (public school, yet); and yes, they both have thriving social lives; and yes, I’ve been unable to insulate them from a Leftist pop culture that is hostile to traditional norms and to conservatives generally, but I’m still the most important person.  Of all the influences in their lives, I am the one who is most present, most consistent, and most trusted.  I’m sure they’ll pull away as they get older, and they may even rebel, but I’ll still be that little voice in their brain, imparting facts, values, and analyses.

I am the counterweight to the state.  Therefore, I am dangerous.  I am subversive simply by existing.  My love for my children is a dominant force that works its way into their psyches and that trumps the state-run schools and the state complicit media world.  Some mothers, of course, are entirely in sync with schools and media.  They happily reinforce the statist message.  But those of us who don’t are a powerful anti-statist force and we must be challenged.

The Left’s problem with Ann Romney transcends her husband’s wealth, her (and his) Republican identification, and her decision to work for her children, rather than for a paying employer.  The Left’s problem with Ann Romney is that she represents the triumph of the individual.  No wonder they hate her so much.

The campaign by leftist pressure groups for companies to cease their contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) may backfire on those feckless companies that have succumbed. So far, that includes Kraft Foods, Intuit, Wendy’s, Arby’s, McDonalds, Walgreens, Pepsi and Coca Cola.

ALEC has over 2000 members who are state legislators, out of the 7282 State legislators across the US, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. ALEC members cooperate on developing model legislation for their states that is pro-growth, pro-jobs, lower taxes. ALEC, also, exchanges model legislation among its members based on the work of a particular state. This has included legislation for Voter ID and for Stand Your Ground self-defense, two bete noires of the left.

ALEC has over 300 companies who contribute up to $25,000 each for the opportunity to engage in conversation with state legislators about issues that affect their business. The few who have turned tail may well find themselves with a weakened hand as state legislatures consider issues. Well, if they don’t support free enterprise, they will be less free.

ALEC issued a “statement today in response to the coordinated and well-funded intimidation campaign against corporate members of the organization…We are not and will not be defined by ideological special interests who would like to eliminate discourse that leads to economic vitality, jobs and fiscal stability for the states.”

The intimidation campaign is made up of the usual Soros and similar organizations on the activist left, as Michelle Malkin outlines. She recommends boycotting their products. Consumer boycotts of companies with such wide distribution seldom amount to much. What will really hit these companies is the legislation that affects them. Go left, Go to someone else, like the leftist groups you respond to that want to raise your taxes and reduce your freedoms to operate profitably, over 25% of state legislators may well say.

I grew up in my working class neighborhood with friends of different races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, and sexual orientations. Although there were stereotypes and jokes that, in retrospect, are embarrassing, we all talked openly and understood each other. That bred mutual respect and defense of each’s rights to fair treatment based on merit, whether socially, in school, jobs or sports. We carried that into our adult lives and actions.

Inside Higher Ed, respectfully liberal, published the results of a study of college students’ attitude toward the question, "How important to you personally is helping to promote racial understanding?" To the researchers’ surprise, it became less important as the students went from freshmen to seniors, and that finding held across races. The conclusion as to Backwards on Racial Understanding:

"These findings cast doubt on research and conventional wisdom that argues for the liberalizing effects of higher education on racial attitudes. Instead, it suggests that, for some students, negative experiences with diversity may dampen the relatively progressive racial views they hold when entering college," write the authors in their conclusion.

 

Look at the right side of the linked page for some job listings for “diversity” positions at colleges. Multiply. Such positions are the fastest growing category of jobs at campuses.

Preaching “multiculturalism” but not practicing it due to allowing and encouraging narrow campus “victimology” groups’ vituperance aimed at other groups and their shouting down or criminalizing contrary ideas may stifle but, at the same time creates resentment and dislike. The actual experience for many students is the noted reduction in commitment to promoting racial understanding.

The study does indicate that having friends of different races and ideas does increase mutual understanding and engagement in promoting racial understanding. That is often referred to as civil discussion. That is increasingly difficult to accomplish on campuses where division and extremist challenges are common and defended by “diversity” ideology that promotes division and protects extremism.

My old friend Bob Turner served in Vietnam in various capacities. He then went on to law school and teaches national security law at the University of Virginia, having also headed up that section for the American Bar Association. Want to be impressed? Read his bio at the link of his name above. Below, he writes about the last days of South Vietnam and what brought them about. This is slightly edited from another piece he recently wrote.

Congress did not totally cut off assistance to South Vietnam in 1975; but as a scholar who has been studying and writing about Vietnam for more than forty-five years (who was the last congressional staff member to leave Vietnam during the April 1975 final evacuation), I can assure you that the U.S. Congress was the most decisive factor in the Communist conquest of South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in 1975.

To keep things in context, it is important to note that in the post-war era, Hanoi has repeatedly admitted that its leaders made a decision on May 19, 1959, to open the Ho Chi Minh trail and send tens of thousands of soldiers and countless tons of equipment and supplies south to "liberate" South Vietnam by armed force. That was more than 5 years before the U.S. decided to send combat units to Vietnam, and our purpose was precisely the purpose for which we sent troops into South Korea in 1950 -- to uphold the non-aggression principles of the UN Charter and oppose the expansion of Communism by force.

Viet Cong defectors used to laugh and express shock at how successful their campaign to portray the "National Liberation Front" to the west as something other than a classic Leninist "front" organization had been. (Hanoi actually published an English-language translation of the proceedings of the Third Party Congress in 1960, including the resolution it approved calling for "our people" in south Vietnam to set up a front under Party leadership three months before the NLF was allegedly formed by non-Communist resistance leaders in Ben Tre.) American "scholars" who fell for this ruse should be ashamed of themselves.

We went downtown to the Fremont Street Experience. I won't show you the tacky details. Nor will I show you the insides of most of the hotels. Overdone. The street reproduction efforts at the New York, New York, Paris, Venetian are worth a brief stroll. The crowds were too large in front of the Mirage for its Volcano show and in front of Treasure Island for its Pirate show (worth seeing) for me to get any decent photos.

Caeser's Palace has grown and grown since its opening as the first over the top class hotel on the new Strip, as the classic hotels one-by-one were torn down for bigger ones. Here's two shots of inside Caesers. The Atlantis show sunk.

I thought the Bellagio the most tastefully decorated hotel in Las Vegas. -- An imp called Gavin liked it, too.

Before going on to the better sides of the Strip, across Las Vegas Blvd. from the Monte Carlo is a 4-story M&M store, filled with kitch, at high price tags. These cylindars are full of different varieties of M&Ms @ $10/lb. Free samples? Yes, just two M&Ms per person!

There were so many grossly obese persons walking the Strip, the boys started calling them M&M people.

I first went to Las Vegas in 1954. Somewhere in my garage are the black-and-white photos I took with my Kodak Brownie. We stayed at the TravelLodge on the Strip, where the Imperial Palace now stands. The Strip ended a short way south from there. Most hotels had a Western theme. Downtown, there was only the Golden Nugget and Fitzgeralds, now the Fremont Experience of lights and tacky. After 5PM, men wore suits or sport jackets, women wore cocktail dresses. Dinner and a show, with top headliners, was $10. All-you-can-eat Prime Rib was $1.99. Gorgeous women in skimpy outfits served free drinks to gamblers. Pit bosses gave free decks of used cards to kids. When my poor family in Detroit migrated to LA in the 1930s, my trusting great-uncle Sam was suckered out of a week's wages, a few dollars, for a tiny parcel of desert land. In the mid-'60s, he got twenty-thousand dollars for it, equal then to two-years of middle-class salary, where the Luxor now stands. For twenty-years I stayed at the Desert Inn, until it was the last of traditional, classy Las Vegas, and haven't returned for 17-years.

Now? Don't ask. OK, I'll tell you anyway. The hotels are humongous and glitzy and expensive. Almost everyone is in jeans and shorts and T-shirts. Has-been shows cost a small fortune. Buffets are $15-$30. There are half as many cocktail waitresses and, really, most are 40-70 years old. One moved so slow, we looked around for her walker. (The pretty young things are off-Strip, like at the Rio.) Used decks of cards have to be bought for $5 or more. Corporate Las Vegas squeezes every penny of costs and dollars out of tourists. Fortunately, always being with my pesky, wandering boys, and my eagle-eyed wife, probably saved several thousand dollars, as I never escaped to the tables. 

Early morning and late afternoon is the best time to see and appreciate the desert, as the angles of the sun make colors clearer and shadows more dramatic. This morning we went just west of Las Vegas to Red Rock Canyon. The greater Las Vegas basin once was under an inland ocean, so you can see the strata of sediments on the exposed sides of the hills. Unfortunately, I have an old camera, making the distinctions less clear than from the new fangled digitals, but look closely anyway.

Along the road, we met a friendly burro. I told the boys that is what burritos are made from, and they believed me, for a while anyway.

While Bird Dog searches for eggs on his lawn today, here’s a few he may miss:

New NYT bureau chief in Israel lays another egg

While I was away last week searching for golden eggs in Las Vegas, my piece about the California Association of Scholars report on the left-leaning eggheads laid by the University of California was widely linked.

Muslim Brotherhood brings eggs to D.C. while rights in Egypt fall with a splat -- Egg-rolling self-enrichment good source of wealth for Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood leader; Obama backs the rotten egg – Sharia soufflé on Egypt’s menu -- Sharia wrong-side up eggs also on UCLA menu -- Inbreeding bad eggs

California plays hide the tax egg

Mosques mushroom, like eggs in Italian barnyards

Exploding eggs in Iran

Campus pro-Palestinians only believe in throwing eggs

Green jobs lays an egg

Tom Friedman’s clueless scrambled eggs

Palestinian Authority egg is not hatched says International Criminal Court

Gay flag in Afghanistan: More egg on face than Koran flambé?

Even politically liberal Jews dislike Obama’s Israel egg recipes

Vietnamese authoritarian eggs lag behind free-range Asian eggs

Let them throw eggs, says Obama to military – Obama says same to Israel’s missile defense, throw eggs

Eisenhower was a good egg

Rotten egg Germany coulda won WWII!

Tibetans fry selves for freedom

Another credit agency says US economy is cracked

Egg bearers and the election

Chavez can suck eggs

President Obama seeks eggs...on the golf course, of course

About an hour's scenic drive north of Hoover Dam along Lake Mead is the Valley of Fire. In the early morning or late afternoon, the sun really brings out the rock's colorations. There's fascinating rock formations formed by thousands, millions, of years of winds. Like this one: looks like a face.

Or this one, an arch. Weaker sandstone is eroded away, and eventually so will the crest of the arch be and fall.

The family and I spent the past week in Las Vegas. Most visitors don't get far from the Strip, but if they did they'd see some knockout scenery.

Before leaving, Gavin blew away the track at his Cub Scout Pinewood Derby.

On the drive to Las Vegas, we stopped in a great '50s diner, Penny's in Barstow, then went over to the Railroad Museum showing some of the trains from Barstow's rail hub history.

On the way back to the highway, we stopped for this memorial to the New York Fire Department heroes who perished in 9-11.

Tonight is the first night of Passover, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943 also began on Passover.

"Central to the Pesach seder is the recounting of the ten plagues.  As moderns educated in natural science, the story strikes us as childish, as primitive, as mythological.  Yet we may be missing the point of these extraordinary events if we understand it as an ancient superstition.  Instead the miracle is a symbol of the spontaneity in history, a faith in the changeability of oppressive regimes.  What appears as a historical necessity, a small people subject to a great empire, is revealed as an illusion.  God's miraculous intervention in Egypt presents history as an open-textured drama.  There is an unpredictable Power present in the universe, the God of surprise.

 

"Belief in miracle is the basis of the "hope model" of Judaism.  Exodus becomes a call to revolutionary hope regardless of the conditions of history.  Out of this memory of redemption, they can defy the given conditions.  The act of protest against their environment can occur because the Jews possess a memory of the impossible that became possible.  The order that people observe in the cosmos and in history, is not irreversible.  Tomorrow will not necessarily be like today."

"In every generation one is obligated to see oneself as one who personally went out from Egypt.  Just as it says, 'You shall tell your child on that very day, It's because of this that God did for me when I went out from Egypt.' "  (Exodus 13:8)

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

The huge investment by students, parents and taxpayers made in colleges to provide a foundation of knowledge and critical thought has already or is in process of sinking into the hole of politicized instruction that is one-sided indoctrination. The California Association of Scholars details this in a just published 87-page report, A Crisis Of Competence:The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California.

The specifics describe the University of California but, also, uses broader principles and statistics that apply nationally. The report to the Regents of the University of California cites its own policies that are being ignored by passive or activist administrators, allowing or furthering a lack of academic standards, yes also of academic freedom, that is digging a deeper hole under our society and prosperity.

In recent years, study after study has found that a college education no longer does what it should do and once did. Whether these studies look directly at the capabilities of graduates, or instead at what employers find their capabilities to be, the result is the same: far too many college graduates have not learned to write effectively, they can not read and comprehend any reasonably complex book, they have not learned to reason, and their basic knowledge of the history and institutions of the society in which they live is lamentably poor….

Is it possible that the University of California is an exception to these national trends? Unfortunately, we can be certain that it is not. First, these national studies all include California, and none of them note any fundamental differences across states. Second, local studies of these issues always confirm the findings of the national studies….

Students are being asked to pay considerably more and get considerably less. We are now seeing much increased concern with student debt and rising tuition costs. As this concern about cost joins with the growing concern about quality, the University must soon face a major crisis of public confidence….

The findings of these studies match all too well the specific complaints that are now commonly heard about the manifestations of a politicized higher education: that requirements for coursework in American history and institutions have been dropped, that writing courses often stress writing far less than tendentious political topics; that prescribed books are frequently no more than journalistic presentations of a simple political message instead of the more complex writings appropriate to an academic context; and that faculty teach what to think rather than how to think: that is, they demand correct attitudes and beliefs of students more than they require independent reading and thought.

This report is concerned with the corruption of the University of California by activist politics, a condition which, as we shall show, sharply lowers the quality of academic teaching, analysis, and research, and results in exactly the troubling deficiencies that are being found in the studies to which we have referred. We shall show that this is an inevitable consequence of any substantial influence of radical politics in academia, because its characteristic interests and modes of thought are the very antithesis of those that should prevail in academic life.

I can certainly understand when anyone spends more time or energy on defending his or her own ethnic group or race or affinity group from unfairness. I do, regarding Jews and Israel, and Marines.

But, at the same time, if one does so even when evidence points another way, ignores the rights or rightful claims of others, even adversaries, it – at least – indicates a narrowness of perspective and inadequate interest in justice for all, which reduces credibility. It clearly spills over into racism when attacks or defense use racial or ethnic stereotypes, jumps to conclusions based on race or ethnicity, especially in the absence of facts or connection. When one tolerates such, even defends such, even encourages such, then one is choosing to affiliate with racists and is properly grouped with them. I think that is where President Obama falls. By dint of his repeated one-sided and unsupported words and gestures, and his inadequate attention to the facts or rights of others, President Obama is a racist. By dint of his high public position and influence, those repeated words and gestures make him a hatemonger, as well.

Earl Scruggs died yesterday. Coming from NYC, I was raised on folk music but was ignorant of country music, its variations, and links to folk music until I was in the service. I soon found a new group of friends, as so many millions of others did, when I listened and learned. Earl Scruggs was at the top of my list, and as you can see in this video of he and some of his friends, Earl Scruggs was at the top of everyone who mattered's list. No one can match Scrugg's 3-finger pickin'. RIP, Earl, your music and influence continues.

Many of us have read dozens, hundreds, of books about Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, World War II, the Holocaust. Until now, however, a careful work of sound scholarship has not appeared that pulls it all together as does Bloodlands. I could write thousands of words reviewing the book, but nothing could do justice to reading it yourself. Indeed, if you or someone you know reads nothing else on this era, this is the one book that must be read. Bloodlands, by Yale historian Timothy Snyder, details the – by Snyder’s admission an undercount – 14 million individuals murdered in purposeful killing policies by Stalin and Hitler in the central zone of Eastern Europe, Poland, Belorussia, Ukraine, non-Jews and Jews, between 1930-1945. That doesn't include, and dwarfs, the millions of soldiers who died in combat or the civilians in the path of battles.

In his concluding chapter, “Humanity”, Snyder tells us, “Each record of death suggests, but cannot supply, a unique life. We must be able not only to reckon the number of deaths but to reckon with each victim as an individual.”

Snyder points out: “To dismiss the Nazis or the Soviets as beyond human concern or historical understanding is to fall into their moral trap.” Stalin and Hitler had conscious policies to extract material gain from the people who they thought stood in their way. It was boths’ commonality that had each act so barbarously: “Both the Soviet and Nazi political economies relied upon collectives that controlled social groups and extracted their resources.” Many perpetrators of the horrors, also, had material objectives or just were trying to survive themselves. Snyder says that the millions of deaths tells us as much about the living. “It is not at all obvious that reducing history to morality plays makes anyone moral.” Snyder’s recounting of the murders focuses upon the – to them – practical objectives of Hitler and Stalin: “In colonization, ideology interacts with economics; in administration, it interacts with opportunism and fear.”

The personal vignettes that fill the book, along with the details of the scale of murders, have set every reader back on their heels. No one, no country, is spared the telling of their heroes or devils. Go to Google to see how the learned react to the book. Go to your own soul to see how you react.

This music video, shot in cooperation with the Marine Corps at Camp Pendleton, takes a few liberties, as pointed out here, but although about "girl power" is also about the power within all of us to rise above "equality" to being special, better, winners. Marines know that. Katy Perry learns that, "It's an affirmation of strength" she said.

Congressman Paul Ryan, Chair of the House Budget Committee, presented his Republican budget.

This graph from the plan sums it up nicely:

The Washington Post reports:

“Each of these people running for president have all given their various ideas and reforms that perfectly jive with and are consistent with what we’re proposing,” Ryan said.

Reaction from the White House was immediate and sharp.

The guarantee-issue provision of ObamaCare is expected to result in many enrolling in individual plans who are ill, or waiting to enroll until ill. The Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will require group health plans to subsidize individual health plans with about $27-billion between 2014-2016. That is expected to keep individual premiums about 10-15% lower but raise group premiums by 1%.

The estimate is supposedly based upon the experience of New York's guarantee-issue requirement since 1993, where premiums have actually skyrocketed compared to the rest of the US. According to Kaiser Health Facts, in 2010 the average individual premium in New York was $357 versus the US average of $215, while the employer-provided family coverage premium is 6% higher in New York. It'll take much more than $27-billion taken from employers to subsidize the added individuals covered by insurance under ObamaCare.

Today’s lead editorial in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Saving lives is the moral high ground”, validates the post I wrote February 24, "Pig Politics Vs Marine Lives".  San Diego area congressman Bob Filner, one of the most liberal in Congress, along with PETA, seek to halt the training of Corpsmen using anesthetized pigs, claiming falsely that using simulators is better. The editorial may be traced not only to my piece but also to the correspondence I had with the reporter who admitted his articles in the newspaper were poorly researched. Kudos to the reporter for taking responsibility. The newspaper’s editor is an excellent, moderate and professional journalist. The editorial is evidence that there are such and they are to be prized and congratulated for upholding journalistic standards.

The newspaper editorial follows:

Saving lives is the moral high ground

by U-T San Diego Editorial Staff

There has long been a soft spot in the Editorial Board heart for animals great and small. We love the seals at Children’s Pool in La Jolla. We supported Proposition 2 in 2008 to ban the inhumane cages and crates used by many California farms to house hens, veal calves and pregnant pigs. We support efforts to protect California gray whales and to save the giant California condor from extinction.

But our soft spot hardens a bit when it comes to the controversy over the use of live pigs in the training of American military corpsmen to help save the lives of the men and women who tragically find their bodies shredded by roadside bombs or other armaments of war on far-off battlefields.

Rep. Bob Filner, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and a candidate for mayor of San Diego, has introduced misguided legislation to phase out the use of live animals in combat simulations by 2016 at training grounds such as the privately operated facility at Covert Canyon near Alpine in East County. Supported by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Filner argues that there are alternatives that simulate human body injuries just as well and that the use of live pigs is unwarranted.

But military officials argue that there is no substitute as realistic as live animals in helping corpsmen learn how to keep severely wounded soldiers alive in the stressful conditions of the battlefield. And they emphasize that the pigs are anesthetized throughout the training and monitored by veterinarians.

We hope a 2009 Defense Department report proves true that in years to come there will be high-quality and cost-effective alternatives to the use of live animals for this training. But, today, the lives of U.S. military personnel in combat are being saved in unprecedented numbers thanks to medical training at places like Covert Canyon. And that gives it the moral and ethical high ground.

In a Friday night news dump, the Obama administration’s proposed solution to paying for free contraception provided to health plan members got ratcheted up to a new level of feeble three-card monte, only not transparent to utter fools, which the Obama administration relies upon. 

The Obama administration already mandated that religious employers with insured plans can opt out, but their insurers will have to pay for the contraception. The transparent ruse there is that such costs will actually be passed back to employers in higher premiums, aside from violating their religious doctrine.

The Washington Post reports, Friday night the Obama administration mandated that colleges with self-insured plans, covering about 200,000 students, those in which the college directly self-funds claims via an administrator it pays to process them, will have the tab picked up by the administrator. Several schemes are proposed to accomplish this. Ultimately the cost reverbs back to the sponsor of the self-funded plan. (800,000 more students are covered in insured plans, already mandated by ObamaCare -- or should I call it FlukeCare -- to include contraceptives.)

Over a third of covered workers, over 50-million, receive their medical coverage through their employers’ self-funded plan. Employers have lately been flocking to self-insured plans, to avoid aspects of the ObamaCare onslaught. The Obama administration just brought the siege tower to breach the plans sheltering tens of millions, with more ObamaCare salvos to follow through to devastate another sector of free enterprise health care and freedoms.

My friend Gerald Robbins is an expert on Turkey, and Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. After reading my post yesterday, Uncertainty Is An Excuse For Obama Inaction In The Middle East, Robbins wrote to me about my comment that “it is Turkey, closest and able, that should bear the weight for now if there is to be armed intervention” in Syria.

I should have added that is unlikely, in addition to my recommendation that at most for now “the US and other Western countries, if they really care about the deaths from Assad’s forces, can supply some arms [I should have italicized for emphasis “some”] to the rebels, to be more effective, to defend against Assad’s onslaughts, and to keep Assad preoccupied while Iran is dealt with” as the priority.

Below, Robbins elaborates on why there is no Turkey likely for Syria:

Catholic and other institutions are forced by the Obama administration to provide for killing the unborn, contrary to their religious doctrine, but the Obama administration just granted the Northern Arapaho tribe permission to kill bald eagles for their religious freedom, even though US law prohibits the killing of bald eagles in almost all cases.

The agency’s decision comes after the Northern Arapaho Tribe filed a federal lawsuit last year contending the refusal to issue such permits violates tribal members’ religious freedom. Although thousands of American Indians apply for eagle feathers and carcasses from a federal repository, permits allowing the killing of bald eagles are exceedingly rare, according to both tribal and legal experts on the matter.

Far rarer than allowing the killing of unborn humans.

Promoted from the Comments: "If their permit is refused, then they should apply to construct a wind farm. Then wait." (The author is Earl. Anyone remember the TV show "My Name Is Earl." I didn't know he is a reader!)