Friday, June 3, 2011

A Hero Gets His Due

A reward for fighting the good fight. (HT AFP)



Score another victory against the terrorists. From AFP London:

"Corporal Dipprasad Pun, 31, said he thought he was going to die and so had nothing to lose in taking on the attackers who overran his checkpoint.

He was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (CGC), which is given in recognition of acts of conspicuous gallantry during active operations against the enemy.

Pun fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine to repel the Taliban assault on his checkpoint near Babaji in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, last September.

Surrounded, the enemy opened fired from all sides and for 15 minutes Pun remained under continuous attack, including from rocket-propelled grenades and AK47 guns.

At one point, unable to shoot, he used his machine gun tripod to knock down a militant who was climbing the walls of the compound.

Two insurgents were still attacking by the time he ran out of ammunition, but he set off a Claymore mine to repel them.

Pun was given his medal in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London on Wednesday.

The CGC is second only to the Victoria Cross -- the highest honour for bravery in the face of the enemy.

"There wasn't any choice but to fight. The Taliban were all around the checkpoint. I was alone," he said.

"I had so many of them around me that I thought I was definitely going to die so I thought I'd kill as many of them as I could before they killed me.

"After that I thought nobody can kill us now -- when we met the enemy I wasn't scared."

A man who's truly the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. God bless the soldiers fighting for our freedom everyday.

Background Reading:

AFP: Queen decorates Nepali for Afghanistan heroics

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Public Sector Lunacy: Paid Fridays Off - For 17 Years??

Misconduct has once again reared its ugly head. (HT Wikipedia)



Another example of public sector misbehavior on the public dole has come to light. From WBEN:

"The former director of the state prison system’s food operations – who cheated state taxpayers out of a half million dollars using falsified travel and attendance documents – pleaded guilty to second degree grand larceny in Oneida County Court. Howard Dean, director of the Department of Corrections’ Food Production Center (DOCS) was paid huge sums for falsified travel reimbursement claims and fraudulently filed attendance records. He also failed to indicate he took every Friday off for 17 years. The discovery was made by New York State auditors and investigators, together with the State Inspector General’s office.

“There is never a good time to rip off the taxpayers,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. “But taking every Friday off for 17 years – and getting paid for it – is particularly galling, especially at a time when so many New Yorkers are out of work. Mr. Dean didn’t show up for work, but he’ll have to show up for jail, and there are no Fridays off in prison. His sentence should send a message to any public official with sticky fingers: watch out – we will find you.”

As part of a plea deal, Dean is expected to be sentenced to 6 months in jail and five years probation. The probationary period begins at the time of sentencing and runs concurrent to the jail time. Dean has also agreed to pay $50,000 restitution at arraignment and an additional $50,000 restitution during the 5-year probationary period."

The sentence is a slap on the wrist. However, I'm all for making these people reimburse the taxpayers for the coin they pilfered. Hopefully all state governments have a task force in place to find and root out the bad apples.

Background Reading:

WBEN: State Worker Who Took Fridays Off For 17 Years Has Day In Court

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

American Corporate Tax Rates To Become Highest In The World

Something else that's going in the wrong direction. (HT Tax Prof Blog)



This won't help the recovery. From the Tax Prof Blog:

"There is increasing recognition in Washington that the U.S. corporate tax rate is out of step with the lower tax rates of most industrialized and emerging nations. Indeed, 2011 marks the 20th year in which the U.S. statutory tax rate has been above the simple average of non-U.S. countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

It is now well known that with a combined federal and state corporate tax rate of 39.2%, the U.S. has the second-highest overall rate among OECD nations. Only Japan, with a combined rate of 39.5%, levies a higher rate.

On April 1, both Japan and the United Kingdom are scheduled to lower their rates as well. Japan is planning to reduce its national rate by 4.5 percentage points, which will bring its overall rate to below 35%. The U.K. rate will fall from 28% to 27% as a first step of a multi-year plan to lower the British rate to 24% by 2014.

After the scheduled rate cuts in Japan and Great Britain take effect, the simple average of non-U.S. OECD nations will drop to about 25% percent and the weighted average will hit 29%. This will leave the U.S. rate a full 10 percentage points higher than the weighted average of our major economic competitors."

Unless our tax rates get lowered, Look for more jobs to go overseas as companies will look to invest elsewhere with regards to service centers, manufacturing plants, etc. It is becoming more evident that tax and spend is not a practical solution to the nation's economic woes. Tax cuts help everyone, not just "the rich".

Background Reading:

Tax Prof Blog: Tax Foundation: On April 1, U.S. Is #1 (World's Highest Corporate Tax Rate)

How Far Will The Left Go To Get Their Way??

My answer would be there are no limits. (HT Eyeblast.TV)



This is self explanitory. From Eyeblast.TV:

From: XXXX
Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM
To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen
Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.

This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!”

The Democrat party is not only the party of cut and run (with Democrats from Indiana and Wisconsin fleeing to Illinois), but it's also the party of union thuggery. The Wisconsin matter clearly proves that the Democrats have sold out to big labor, and are in bed with the unions.

It's really simple: If you want to keep unions in check and prevent them from raiding treasuries and bankrupting municipalities, states, and our nation, you cannot vote Democrat.

Background Reading:

Eyeblast.TV: Threatening Letter Sent to WI Republican Senators: “You Will Be Killed and Your Families Will Also Be Killed”Fox Nation: Wisconsin Republicans Get Death Threats

Political Caption Of the Day

Like I always say, know your enemy. This is what the left really thinks of Republicans and the Tea Party. So much for tolerance & civility. (HT Eyeblast.tv)

Friday, March 4, 2011

The Degeneration of Education

Do they educate or indoctrinate?? (HT Ysletateachers.org & Wikipedia)





At this point I'm leaning towards indoctrination. Right Wing News explains why:

"The United Nations was busy recently, deciding what every country in the world needs to be teaching their wards. Not wanting to be left out of any meeting that involves the programming of children’s minds, the National Education Association had a seat at the table.

They brought their sexualization of children packet and made the case for teaching, well, everything....... to middle school kids:

“Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education,” Diane Schneider told the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia. Schneider, representing the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teachers union in the US, advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on liberal hetero and homosexual expression. She claimed that the idea of sex education remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence-based, or if students are still able to opt-out.

Two things to note here. One, the NEA thinks sex education in America needs to be “more ‘inclusive,’” because kids just aren’t being indoctrinated enough, and two, choice is for abortion. These kids need to be forced to sit in this class.

Seriously though, this is stuff the NEA thinks students in grades 6-9 need to be forced to attend. Apparently, learning about oral sex will help them be less homophobic, or something:

“Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and family create.”

Read it again.

Yeah, you are reading that right. The NEA went to the UN and said this curriculum was needed, and every student needed to be forced to attend, in order to reprogram them out of the teachings they had learned from their religion and their family.

The parents of the child are of no consequence. The collective is supreme.

And you might not believe this, but the UN agreed:

A Belgian panelist at the same event explained how necessary it was to have government support when educating about anti-discrimination issues. He claimed that the “positive, pro-LGBT policies in Belgian schools are a direct consequence of liberal and open-minded legislation in Belgium,” and went on to stress the importance of states in providing relevant materials for students and schoolteachers. He also held up Belgium’s “gender in the blender” programs, which are discussion-based programs for Belgian teachers who want to discuss gender and transgender issues in their courses, as a model for other nations who wished to encourage their teachers to address these topics.

You know what this reminds me of? ”Brave New World,” by Aldus Huxley. In Brave New World, religion and family were destroyed. Sound familiar? One of the more bizarre things in Brave New World is the child sex. Oh, you may find it abhorrent, but in the book, it’s promoted.

Yes, I imagine to the Director, and the hierarchy of the NEA and UN, they were terrible. Good thing actions were taken so that children could be removed from the "binary box that religion and family create.”

They really care about the children don't they??

That's not all by a long shot. Here's a glimpse of what they can look forward to further down the line. From the Daily Northwestern:

"Northwestern students and administrators are defending an explicit after-class demonstration involving a woman being publicly penetrated by a sex toy on stage in the popular Human Sexuality course last week.

The optional presentation last Monday, attended by about 120 students, featured a naked non-student woman being repeatedly sexually stimulated to the point of orgasm by the sex toy, referred to as a "****saw." The device is essentially a motorized phallus.

The 600-person course, taught by psychology Prof. John Michael Bailey, is one of the largest at NU. The after-class events, which range from a question-and-answer session with swingers to a panel of convicted sex offenders, are a popular feature of the class. (I can't imagine why!!) But they're optional and none of the material is included on exams.

Last Wednesday, Bailey devoted six minutes of his lecture to addressing mounting controversy regarding the incident and articulating his educational intent. He told the class he feared the demonstration would impact the after-class events, which are sponsored by the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and he explained the educational purpose of the events.

"I think that these after-class events are quite valuable. Why? One reason is that I think it helps us understand sexual diversity," he said, according to an audio file obtained by The Daily.

"Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watching naked people on stage doing pleasurable things will never hurt you," he said to loud applause at the end of his speech."

So it's "sexual diversity" now? Same smutty service with a different name. I'm not sure this is what some parents had in mind regarding higher learning for their kids.

The bottom line is summed up best by Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs:

"Looks like a class action suit would have to be filed immediately on behalf of all parents for child abuse, sexual molestation, trauma and sexual abuse against the Federal government, the teachers union, the city and any other sick pervert who had a hand in this. The decaying left, a pox on America's soul.

The NEA, the teachers unions, the public school curriculum, all irretrievably broken. They must be destroyed and relegated to the dustbin of history. Still snoozing, Americans?

HOMESCHOOL.

If this is where we are, we are finished. If this is what is taught at universities, then they should be vanquished. Nothing is sacred. Nothing is holy."

Background Reading:

Atlas Shrugs: NEA To UN: “Oral Sex, Masturbation, And Orgasms Need To Be Taught In Education
Right Wing News: NEA To UN: “Oral Sex, Masturbation, And Orgasms Need To Be Taught In Education
C-FAM: "Schools need to teach about orgasms" says NEA to UN
Daily Northwestern: Class sex toy demonstration causes controversy

A Side Effect Of Leftists Protests Exposed

The voters didn't want this tab for sure. (HT Wikipedia)



The taxpayers have another reason to have contempt for the public sector unions and their Democrat supporters. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

"State officials said Thursday that damage to the marble inside and out the State Capitol would cost an estimated $7.5 million.

Cari Anne Renlund, chief legal counsel for the state Department of Administration, said in Dane County court that estimates of damage to marble includes $6 million to repair damaged marble inside the Capitol, $1 million for damage outside and $500,000 for costs to supervise the damage.

Much of the damage apparently has come from tape used to put up signs and placards at the Capitol.

It was not immediately clear how the estimates were made, though the state is apparently relying on opinions by historical architects, one of whom works for the U.S. Park Service.

One concern is the residue from tape that the state says is causing damage to stone and other surfaces inside the Capitol."

Leftists did the same thing last year at the mall in Washington, DC remember? A prime example of how they trash, damage, and destroy everything they touch.

This was a common scene at the Capitol. (HT Rush Limbaugh)



Here's an eywitness account from Wisconsin State Senator Glenn Grothman:

GROTHMAN: We're trying to keep some people out of the building because right now the building is becoming a pigsty. The building smells. We used to have nice little groups of fourth grade children walking through the building. There was something called the Senate Scholarship Program in which high school kids could track us around. All that's being shut down by a bunch of slobs taking up the building! We can no longer continue to have all these slobs in the building. College students who are having a fun party, that's largely who's in the building overnight -- and if you get up early and talk to who's in the building at seven a.m., you will find it is largely college students and hangers-on having a party in the state capitol.

So the union protest is turning into the march of the slobs. More from State Senator Grothman:

GROTHMAN: The people who are staying overnight are largely making a mess of our capitol. That's what you're addressing. Why are we keeping people out of the building? Because we do not want to have so many people there overnight defacing our beautiful capitol. If you would interview all the people who are creating a ruckus, the vast majority who are here today are not police officers or nurses. They're either college students or hangers on -- or unemployed people just looking for somewhere to hang on.

Bottom line: These "protesters" have done damage to the capitol as well as their own cause. The reason is this: they don't respect themselves, other people's property, and they certainly don't respect other people's money. The voters/taxpayers are fighting back against this narcissism, and they have a governor that's on their side.

Background Reading:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: State says damage to marble at Capitol could hit $7.5 million
Rush Limbaugh: Union Slobs Soil WI Capitol; Teen Caller Sees Major Hypocrisy