The School Revolution - Book Review

"I have been working on a curriculum for high school student that is designed to help them understand the freedom philosophy, and will enable them to articulate it.  This involves the ability to read carefully, analyze arguments, write clearly, and defend their position verbally."

"What I doubted (about the Obama appeal in 2008) was the practicality of a philosophy of government that presented the state as an agency of healing."
 - - Ron Paul, pages 34 and 35 of The School Revolution

Ron Paul's The School Revolution, A New Answer for Our Broken Education System is a calm, methodical case for parents who want two things: freedom to oversee their children's education, and adherence to the freedom philosophy within that education.

Most people are confused about the libertarian philosophy.  It's very simple - the use of force is never justified, unless in self defense.  This includes education of children.  Parents should not be forced to send their children to schools with which they disagree.  Your local public school is staffed by people who were products of a system that says that government schools are the 'agency of healing' and the people in them are dispassionate unbiased quality educators.  Some of them are.  Most of them are not.

Dr. Paul spends little time ripping the current education system.  What he does spend a lot of time on is explaining, in clear terms, what his philosophy is, why he promotes homeschooling, and what the data shows with regard to student performance.  His program, at Ron Paul Curriculum, is strong on what used to be called 'classical education' (and it also used to be in the public school program).

1. A curriculum must be integrated and coherent,
2. There must be a common theme: the freedom philosophy.
3. The best methodology is self instruction.
4. Courses should reinforce each other.
5. Students must learn to write and to speak in public.

A top flight education is not expensive.  School districts spend thousand of dollars per year per child.  The national average is somewhere around $10K a year per student.  The system is churning out barely literate students unable to communicate and helpless on many fronts.  The upper level classes in his program cost $250 for the year.  Not only that, Dr. Paul focuses on the idea that people should be first and foremost - free.  Then his program goes into a low cost (grades K - 5 are free) system of rigor that uses the internet and primary sources that are available on the web.  American History is taught by people like Tom Woods.  Literature and entrepreneurship are taught by people like Gary North.

The content rich program offered by Ron Paul is superior to what the public schools are offering today.  It is offering it for much less.  I think he is one of the early adopters of what will be the next wave of education.  The internet has destroyed the Establishment Media.  Public School is next.  The gatekeepers of Public Education are still standing at the gates, but people are slipping under the wall faster and faster.  Ron Paul's book gives them the roadmap.

JFK killed - 50 Years Ago - Watch the MSM Continue to Push the Absurd 'Official Story'

It's really amazing to watch.

Despite the fact that the web is up and running and information is easily available, the Mainstream Media is pushing the idea that the "official story" perpetrated by the Warren Commission is not only legitimate, but not to be questioned.  JFK's killing is treated by the Establishment in one of two ways: 1) anyone who questions the official story is a 'conspiracy theorist' and a 'kook' or 2) ignore anything else other than the 'lone gunman' Warren Commission story.

There is even a story on how the magic bullet theory, now that we have modern scientific techniques, has been proven true.

There is a story that the sound recording, which has more than 3 shots fired recorded on the audio, was recorded at the wrong time.

The fact that no sniper has been able to replicate Oswald's act is ignored.

The fact that the secret service was pulled off of the limousine before the turn to Dealey Plaza is ignored.

The fact that a fingerprint of LBJ's top assassin was found in the 'sniper's nest' in the book depository is ignored.

The roster of the Warren Commission is never analyzed.

PBS Frontline, which should know better, has dedicated its site to "Who was Lee Harvey Oswald?", a not so deft way to ignore any other possibility and focus attention in the wrong place.

CNN feels that the only relevant question that any 'conspiracy theorist' (the horror!) might have is about Oswald's activity in Mexico.

NBC has a web of interviews to handle the conspiracy section of their page - my favorite is with Dan Rather, who lied about what he saw on the Zapruder film.  The film was in storage and kept from the public for 12 years by Time Life inc.  Rather said it showed Kennedy's head falling violently forward.  Now we know this to be brazenly untrue.  Rather's sentence for lying?  A job in the MSM for life.

As usual, one must go to the real investigative journalists in alternative media for any critical thought or questions with insight.  The absurd freak show that is the MSM is reaching a fever pitch.  I guess it's a good thing that they are clinging to the Official Story, as it not only tips their hand as corporate toadies, it hastens their demise.  Their reliance on fakery, half truths, ad hominem and incredulity has run its course.

Just Tell Me I Can't - Book Review

"Good learners risk doing things badly in order to learn how to do things well." -  - Harvey Dorfman

Jaime Moyer always seemed like someone to watch.  As a fan of Major League Baseball, I was intrigued by Moyer's career path.  I had seem him arrive with the Cubs, then disappear, then resurrect and transform himself in Seattle as a top flight pitcher for a decade.  I enjoyed watching Moyer, with guile and smarts, dissect major league hitters by pitching 'backwards', changing speeds and hitting spots.  It is a select audience that enjoys watching an old lefty changeup artist carve up steroid fueled gorillas, and that audience will immensely enjoy Just Tell Me I Can't.

My interest in Moyer was confirmed in the book Moneyball - the smartest sports book of this era.  Moyer is portrayed as an old ghoul in that book - a vampire who will scramble your brain by out thinking you and feasting on your desire to crush his slow offerings.  It turns out there was a method to the psychological madness, and his name was Harvey Dorfman.

The best part of the book was Moyer's introduction to Dorfman.  Moyer had been reduced to being offered a job as a pitching coach.  He was on his way out of the majors - seen as a failure and at the end of the line.  Dorfman was recommended to him and with Dorfman's mental re-working of Moyer's psyche and confidence, turned Moyer around.  Dorfman taught Moyer how to train the mind and ones approach as one would train a muscle.  Dorfman seems to have been a master at getting people to take responsibility for their actions and failures, and use those things as strengths.  The fact that a man who could not top 84mph, by changing his mental approach, was able to not only change his life and career around, but thrive in the major leagues is what makes this sports book different.

Just Tell Me I Can't is really a book about failure and risk.  How to deal with failure, learn from it, control the after affects and become motivated rather than defeated by it.  The lessons learned from failure and taking risks are liberally sprinkled throughout all of the success stories I've know, and Moyer's is no different.

The old adage is "hitting is timing, and good pitching destroys timing.".  Moyer was able to pitch until he was 49 years old in the majors, with stuff that frightened no one, because he was a master technician and his mental approach was fostered by an old asthmatic man from the Bronx who never played baseball.  I found this book motivational and useful - baseball is just the medium used, it is the message within the book that makes it worth it.

"To aspire to great achievement is to risk failure"
"Think and talk the solution - not the problem"
- - Harvey Dorfman

War Against the Weather - Keeping the 'Climate Change' Drumbeat Going

There is an article in today's NY Times about how Climate Change is seen as affecting the food supply.  The article is filled with quotes like these: "On the food supply, the new report finds that benefits from global warming may be seen in some areas, like northern lands that are now marginal for food production. But it adds that over all, global warming could reduce agricultural production by as much as 2 percent each decade for the rest of this century."

Well, which one is it?  Do we have 'climate change', or do we have 'global warming'?  Didn't climategate happen?  I seem to remember emails from the top people, the same organizations and people quoted in the article, as saying "we must hide the decline."  You can read the code that was used to rig the data.  If you don't understand the computer code, the high numbers of comments by the coder will tip you off.  This was data used to 'support' Global Warming.

The NY Times article naturally assumes that you sit in the first pew of the Progressive Church of Global Warming.  Not only do you get 'climate change' in the title, and then a switch to 'global warming' midway through, you get an increase in agricultural productivity in some northern lands, but overall there will be lessened agricultural production.  Why?  The plains of Canada and Russia will now be able to produce food - how do we get to a reduction in 'agricultural production'?

The most hilarious part of the article is the link to Al Gore's winning the Nobel Peace Prize - this is used as an appeal to authority tactic by the author.  Not only is Al Gore the owner of two huge homes, the latest one being a $9 million monstrosity on the fragile California coast, but he jets around the world preaching Global Warming, blasting CO2 into the air and pollution while waving a Nobel Peace Prize around.  The same "peace" prize that Henry Kissinger, Yasir Arafat and Barack Obama have won - all warcrimes killers.  This is the person the hapless author chose to use as an 'authority'.

Zerohedge and the commenting community did its requisite job on the Executive Order put out by the president to fight the weather.   You have to wonder who still blindly believes this stuff.  Didn't we hate W Bush for all of these executive orders?  Doesn't the massive amount of climate fraud by the IPCC and the Rent Seekers get through to the Climate Crowd?

Someday the NY Times will be the headliner at newspaperdeathwatch.com.  That day can't come soon enough.

Watch how the co-founder of Greenpeace, MIT scientists and other scientists associated with top schools and organizations destroy the "science is settled on global warming" crowd.  According to the Mainstream Corporate Media, these people don't exist.  See them for the first time:





"Look there, Sancho Panza, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giants, with whom I intend to do battle and kill each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race wiped from the face of the earth."

"What giants?" Asked Sancho Panza.

"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge arms, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."

"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants, but windmills."
- - - - Don Quixote