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One other thing about the movie Oppenheimer

One other thought about the movie Oppenheimer: Unlike the current political narrative-driven world of politicized science, where complete lies are said to be scientific truth, or at least they are said to have the strength to displace truth, the movie Oppenheimer accurately depicts real scientific competition.

Remember when science was real? Remember when science was analysis, competitive, discussed, debated, respected, valued, and rewarded? Been a while, I know, I know, but it is true that at one time the real scientific method of discovery and progress involved serious disagreement among scientists. But ever since anti-scientific woke PC narratives took over everything being publicly discussed, including real science, science just has not been real, despite the woke bumper stickers proclaiming “Science Is Real.”

That’s the intriguing thing about “science” these days. Actual real proven science about X and Y chromosomes determining a human’s biological sex is not only forbidden in the classroom, but actually saying it as a science teacher will get you immediately fired from your job. And that phony climate change alarmist thing? If you step up as a scientist with real science that demonstrates what a nonsensical hoax and political hatchet job human-caused “climate change” is, you’ll get fired from your job.

Oppenheimer depicts the real scientific method as humans knew it for about a thousand years, up until the brazen lie that “99% of scientists agree that global warming/ climate change is real.” In the movie, we see scientists aggressively debating the then-new nuclear fission science, which was based on the pioneering scientific and mathematical work of Albert Einstein and which resulted in the atom bomb blowing up American military enemies. The movie has scenes of scientists caustically disagreeing with one another, mocking each other, debating one another, until someone provides sufficient proof of their position. And the scientists’ use of tobacco and alcohol to soothe their frazzled nerves is also real history. This is all uncomfortable but very real scientific process.

This historic competitive situation shown in the movie was especially stark between the “old” Einsteinian relativity scientists and the “new” quantum physics scientists. Both theories of how physics works – relativity and quantum – are mutually exclusive of one another, and yet they coexist simultaneously. Both theories have been conclusively proven, despite canceling each other out, and yet scientists continue today to try to figure out how this apparent contradiction can happen.

In a world of lying political propaganda narratives, including modern gender ideology and “climate change,” such scientific debate and dispute and progress are impossible. This is because scientists who disagree with the established political narrative will have their funding taken away, lose their jobs, have their credentials revoked, and will lose their careers, their homes, their families… everything they worked so hard to create and build over years and decades.

All because these real scientists disagree with political activists who want to control us, control our behavior, our choices, our thinking, our conscience, our food, our daily existence.

To me, the political activists here have no credibility. They are just a bunch of mean, sadistic little fascists, trying to brutally shut up real scientists who inconveniently disprove their pet unscientific political narratives.

When someone in the Oppenheimer movie states “That can’t be true,” you just know someone in the next scene is about to show the disbeliever that in fact, it is true. We see Science! From the long established scientific method! So the movie Oppenheimer is useful for at least showing audiences what real scientific debate and progress used to involve, and what it must involve, if we are to have real science about anything.

Oppenheimer reminds us that there is no such thing as “scientific consensus,” which is a made-up faketoid by the climate change alarmism activists to push their political hoax.

For this rare gem of reality from a business sector that constantly deals in deceit and falseness, I award the educational Hollywood movie Oppenheimer a refreshing A+.

Greta the baby pied piper parrot

Climate change is just the highest profile policy issue where its proponents have failed to persuade people with scientific facts. Instead of trying harder to explain the actual facts, and thereby win over convinced converts, climate change proponents always resort to bullying, shaming, and mocking people who remain uncertain, unpersuaded, unsure of what has been told to them, and then especially skeptical of all the resulting hype and abuse. Think of a teacher who, having failed to effectively explain a subject to a classroom then resorts to emotional blackmail and criticism of the audience. The truth is that the failure to connect with and educate the audience lies with the teacher, or in the case of climate change, its proponents.

Enter the latest unpersuasive advocate of human-caused climate change, the Swedish child Greta Thunberg. Yes, an unremarkable 16-year-old high school drop-out is now the newest face in this highly politicized subject involving multidisciplinary sciences and an entire planet. Yes, Thunberg is a child without any education degrees or really any formal education at all, lecturing and hectoring adults about what they absolutely must do right now with their hard-earned money and freedoms, and just listen to her, dammit.

I have no idea where Thunberg came from, in the sense of how or why she became an activist media darling activist. Nothing about her is particularly outstanding; not charisma, not intelligence, not education or mastery of science. Suddenly she was The Voice Of Reason, or at least The Voice Of Pesky Mosquitoes That Won’t Go Away. This little kid is just a little kid, that’s all she is, so “Oh c’mon!” is what I am thinking.

How can she be taken seriously, how can the quality of our national policy debate have sunk this low? And then I remembered that the face of the big government civilian disarmament effort is an attention hog named Hogg, himself also an unimpressive annoying little foot-stomping brat. And like so many other 16-year-olds across the planet, Greta is a foot-stamping, pouting, demanding little brat who wants what she wants and she wants it right now. It doesn’t mean she knows anything, or that she is correct about climate change, or that my 16-year-old son actually should be handed the keys to my pickup truck and given five hundred bucks for the weekend, either. This is just the way that sixteen-year-olds behave, and real adults ignore them at least and often righteously put them in their place.

Sixteen-year-olds have this habit of wanting all the adult stuff without having actually worked hard and earned it. It is what makes sixteen year olds both exasperating and yet so adorable. They are so clearly in an in-between place, between child and young adult, between having their own thoughts and learning new things. In America, most sixteen-year-olds like Greta are high school sophomores.

Do you remember what the word “sophomore” means? Yes, that’s right, it means “wise fool.” That is, a sophomore is a person who exhibits the traits exactly in between wisdom and foolishness. True to being a sophomore in meaning if not in actual school, Thunberg has the language skills of a young adult, but the reasoning abilities of a child.

The more we think about this unphenomenal child phenomenon policy thing, the more evident it is what a game it is. Thunberg is just the young white equivalent of what Obama represented. If she can’t persuade us with actual facts, she will pout and cry and try to bully us with childish tantrums. And if our adult inclinations kick in, and we contest Thunberg’s bullcrap, why then we are just a bunch of big meanies who made little kids cry. It was the same argument used to buffer Obama from being held accountable for his endless lies — anyone opposing him was racist, mean etc. For shame that anyone would even dare to question these good people! (sarcasm)

And so today was Thunberg’s big day. She led a bunch of American government schools in a student “strike” over her inability to actually persuade thinking people that human caused climate change is real. While students at government (“public”) schools are too young to go on strike, the sound of the word ‘strike’ is so grown up sounding and exciting, and anyhow, it is kind of sexy Marxist chic. Thunberg thinks the strike is better than actually getting an education, and in her own words, climate change policy and socialism are inseparable.

Ah-hah!

And so a bunch of Democrat union controlled government school administrators and political activists posing as teachers actually encouraged their students to miss a day of taxpayer funded education and go do something else, maybe get more leftist indoctrination, maybe protest, against whom or for what none could really say. But a day away from school is what so many kids crave anyhow, and so away some of them went. Maybe some of them want to be just like Thunberg: A high school dropout and professionally aggrieved whiny brat on an endless mission to harangue her elders. Great; it sounds like another Chinese cultural revolution, except now in America by yet more foreigners who want more of our free taxpayer stuff given to them.

Thunberg does not know the science about climate change, but she does know how to parrot liberal talking points. And so maybe we can finally categorize her as a baby pied piper parrot, a malignant force leading small children astray, away from hearth and home and all that is good. I think this description is more scientifically accurate than anything Thunberg says about supposed human caused climate change.

Climate change turned this little human into a parrot

 

 

 

Scary and mean little kid!

“And Duetschland vill haff a glorious thousand year reich!” This angry child is frightening. Is she the next Adolf Hitler in training?

Santa Fe School Shooting: Liberal Democrats Sacrifice More Kids on Altar of Gun Control

Another school shooting today, in Santa Fe, Texas.

Yes, a good guy with a gun stopped the shooter, and he could have been stopped sooner.

But stopping that shooter (and the next one) would require taking the kinds of concrete, proactive steps necessary to actually protect the students from harm. It is as easy as having police stationed in the school, or armed guards (including armed volunteers), or arming the staff and teachers who want to be armed.

And these options are all too pragmatic, too simple, too real for liberal Democrats, who reject them all. They would rather use this latest blood in the streets to promote their nation-wide civilian disarmament schemes, because what they really want is political domination over every American citizen.

In fact, sacrificing a few school students on the false altar of gun control is one of those unfortunate but necessary “breaking a few eggs to make an omelette” things that liberal Democrats desire, to achieve their political goal.

The more blood, the more emotion, the more fear, the more crisis, the more they can take advantage of people’s emotions and ram through laws that will do nothing to solve the problem, but which will advance liberal Democrat goals of civilian disarmament.

When the ten-year Clinton gun ban sunsetted in 2004, liberal Democrats admitted openly that it had done nothing to lower crime. But they wanted it reinstituted, nonetheless. The high cost of disarming law-abiding Americans won’t do anything to make schools safer, either.  So why demand this?

Liberal Democrats want absolute control over you and me, folks, and that is all. They do not want solutions. An armed citizenry is the ultimate block against the Democrat Party’s goal of full control of America; this is the “problem” they are really trying to solve.

If you doubt this, look at this phony, illegal “Russia collusion” thing: It is just “resistance” against the Trump administration by any means necessary – legal, illegal, unethical, immoral. Liberal Democrats reject results of elections they lose. They reject laws they don’t like or don’t write. They enable an unsustainable illegal immigration invasion and illegal sanctuary cities to recruit illegal aliens who they want to convert into loyal voters and artificial political dominion. They use the democratic process to achieve non-democratic results.

After the Parkland shooting, liberal Democrats had meetings, marches, protests. Lots of demands. Lots of brutal demonization of the NRA, of law-abiding gun owners, of gun manufacturers, even of the US Constitution.  In all of that activity, they would not address how their liberal Obama-era PROMISE program had caught and released the violent criminal Nikolas Cruz half a dozen times, so that he could finally follow through on his public promises to commit mass murder in his own school.

I am sorry for the parents of the children hurt and killed in Santa Fe, Texas. I am sorry for their parents, and for their teachers and school administrators, and friends. I feel very badly for them, and if they are angry about this, they need only direct their focus on the liberal Democrats and their henchmen (teachers unions) who have blocked all natural, logical, and effective means to preventing these shootings from happening.

Liberal Democrats love political power and gun control more than they love school students. Remember that the next time you vote.

Heartbreak: Florida school is a “gun free zone”

My heart is broken about the school shooting in Florida.

As my heart goes in one direction, my mind goes in another. Here we go again, another shocking crime, another result of liberalism’s assault on American culture, a result of another stupid liberal policy rooted in feelings and not in careful adult-level planning.

Despite having been reported to police and FBI agents for months, this angry young man directed his violent thoughts against fellow students in Florida, using a gun to vent his feelings.

The school he targeted is yet another “gun free zone,” where not even the teachers are armed, but the bad guy is.  Criminals break the law by definition, and criminals taking advantage of “gun free zones” know they have a free hand to do what they want.

Political correctness teaches that guns are “bad,” and that feelings should dominate everything, even trumping fact and logic. Here we have another classic example of how liberalism is just plain evil and bad for America.

Liberals, this shooting is on your heads, the childrens’ blood is on your hands, because liberal activist groups and teachers unions keep blocking good policies that will prevent these kinds of events from happening.

If you want to avoid this kind of school violence in the future, allow law enforcement agencies to do what they need to do with violent youths (liberal policies treat law enforcement as the bad guy and shield bad kids from being held accountable), so they can head off these problems at the pass. And let teachers and other professionals carry firearms in their places of work, so would-be bad guys know up front that there is a strong disincentive to attempt violence at schools, where they will be met head-on with fatal violence.

Anything else is a continuation of the same old failed liberal policies.

Then again, liberals have known how bad their policies are for a long time. Perhaps these children are being sacrificed in order to advance the tired old liberal gun control agenda?

 

Property Tax Accountability

Yesterday a majority of Pennsylvania voters passed a referendum, the first step in amending the Pennsylvania constitution to allow for a much fairer property tax situation.

The current Pennsylvania property tax arrangement is backwards, dating either from the 9th Century or the 1720s, either way fundamentally unfair to home owners.

Perhaps in the 9th Century or the 1720s owning a home or property was a big deal and unusual, indicating great wealth. Taxing the source of that great wealth may have made sense a thousand years ago or three hundred years ago, but today’s America bears no similarity to those bygone worlds.

In fact, one of the great things about America is that our form of capitalism distributes the greatest amount of wealth to the greatest number of people, based on one’s willingness to work hard. This is the heart of American meritocracy, and home ownership in a meritocracy is widespread, not unique. Owning your own home is an American standard, a basic goal of all Americans.

And so punitively taxing the very emblem of meritocracy is an artifact of the feudal society America rejected in 1776.

But Pennsylvania home taxes are now so high that people are essentially renting their homes from the government.

No matter if you buy your home with cash, build it yourself on property that has been in your family, or buy it with a mortgage that you eventually pay off, you still must pay incredibly burdensome property taxes that bear no relationship to the actual costs your home might (or might not) impose on the surrounding community.

Property taxes are now a form of rent. And if you run out of money to pay the government rent, the government can come and steal your home from you and sell it cheap to someone else.

The unpleasant truth is, your home is now a cash cow for others.

Teacher’s unions and their pet career politicians are the primary beneficiaries of the current property tax arrangement, rooted as it is in the government threat to steal your home if you don’t pay their crazy rent. Current property taxes are conveniently off the books, coerced from unwilling serfs, and paid to unaccountable government employees who by all standards are primarily failing.

Most government-run schools are disasters, failing to deliver on the most basic educational results, and yet the tax-paying public is constantly told that we must pay ever yet more money “for the kids.” And here in PA, the teachers automatically must pay the unions, and the unions then dump our own tax money into buying yet more career politicians to work against our interests.

Something has to give.

This is more about making government tax collection accountable to the people who pay the taxes, than it is about total tax reduction. Right now there is zero accountability for property tax expenditures or increases. Greedy unions control almost the entire process.

Unaccountable government schools continue to underperform and yet demand more and more money. The government schools oppose all forms of competition because they are committed more to holding onto their own power than they are to the success of the children they are supposed to educate. The way property taxes support this shameful situation serves everyone involved except the children and the taxpayers.

Something has to change.

The Pennsylvania of the 21st Century cannot continue to live under an ancient feudal arrangement. It is not fair, it is not sustainable, it is not good government.

We all deserve better.

You get what you pay for, and is this what you want

That old adage “You get what you pay for” is universally popular.

While this adage usually applies to private transactions for durable (or not so durable) goods, it applies to American and British cultures, too.

In both nations, taxpayer expenditures on public “education” have hit incredible highs, both in sheer volume and per capita.

While we once thought of education as being basic arithmetic, history, home economics, science, etc., over the past fifty years the process of forming young minds has increasingly deviated to include all kinds of social re-engineering.

This is now open, widespread indoctrination against the established culture, values, mores, boundaries, expectations etc by politically powerful teachers unions.

Day after day we see headlines, news reports, and cell phone footage from the front row of some low grade class, where either a teacher engages in gross personalization of education, or where even the official school body creates policies that openly trample civil and constitutional rights.

Recent examples include lots of hateful ranting against republicans, tea party activists, social conservatives, and political moderate Donald Trump, to the point where year books are being selectively edited and Photoshopped to remove references contrary to liberal\progressive beliefs. Like a young senior’s “Trump” tee-shirt being blacked out in his graduation photo, or Trump quotes being edited out from some senior’s year book text.

Then we get to colleges and we see a whole other level of pure hate being taught. A grades are given for answering in politically correct terms, and Cs or even failing grades are given to students who merely answer with actual facts.

Disparaging Republicans and conservatives is like a competitive sport on college campuses, to the point where college administrations now openly (and illegally) discriminate against student groups that are politically incorrect.

While this tyrannical behavior itself is frightening, because the Nazis could not have demonized their intended victims any better, the consequences of educational radicalization are starting to bear violent fruit for everyone to see.

College professor Eric Clanton wears a mask and, using steel bike locks, he sneakily attacks and badly injures peaceful protestors with whom he disagrees. He is caught on video several times, and despite the mask, he is identified by police. Clanton openly teaches “revolution” on college campus.

The other day, Mister Hodgkinson was merely a socialist and Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer. He too has lots of anti- Republican hate, begun on his college campus many years ago, and so he takes a rifle and a handgun and shoots a bunch of Republicans playing baseball.

So the question is, as we are now reaping the results of decades of hate being taught and rewarded in educational institutions from the very beginning grades to the very end of graduate schools, is this what taxpayers want? Is this what you have in mind when you pay your school tax bill, or your child’s college tuition?

If you think that this carefully cultivated hate is not what you what out of our educational system, that it is not what you are paying for, then what are you going to do about it?

 

 

A Father’s Pride

I admit that I am feeling mighty proud this morning. It cannot be helped.

A big milestone in Central Pennsylvania life was achieved last night when my son passed his Hunter & Trapper Safety Education course and received his orange certificate.  He’s now permitted to purchase a hunting license and begin hunting and trapping as his own self-directed person.  Yes, he is young and he must be accompanied by other, older hunters for some years to come, which makes sense.  Nevertheless, he studied hard, attended the classes after school, and passed the exam with a 100% on his first try.

Along with my boy were 70 other students at the Milton Grove Sportsmen’s Club, which is standing room only.  Thank you to the club for providing the venue and thank you to the educators who donate their time to help recruit the next generation of hunters, trappers, and safe gun owners.  Lowell and Tracy Graybill did an especially fine job, which should not be a big surprise given that Lowell is presently president of the PA Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs and the two of them have been a major power couple on conservation and sporting issues for decades.

Honestly, there were a couple of awkward moments in the two nights of training, some opportunities for improvement.  There’s got to be more hands-on and more demonstration of how the different firearms work.  I recall when I was a ten-year-old kid taking the same exam, we all got called up to the front of the room so we could handle the different actions and see for ourselves how they operated.  In a room as big as Milton Grove Sportsmen’s Club’s main meeting room, it must be impossible to see the guns much less imagine how the unfamiliar actions work from the middle and back of the room.

Another awkward time was at the very beginning, when a very nice local Deputy WCO made the opening remarks.  He had a pleasant demeanor and seemed easy to talk with, so he elicited a lot of audience questions and back and forth on the PGC regulations book handed out with all licenses.  He referred to WCOs as “game wardens,” an appellation every WCO I know has tried hard to shed.  He also seemed unfamiliar with basic regulations, like shooting above roadways and public trails.  To his credit, his lack of familiarity seemed to stem from the fact that he appears to pursue charges for serious wildlife crimes and not penny ante, picayune mistakes.

The winner of awkward moments, however, was when one of the educators, Tim, stated that semi-automatic shotguns can only be used for small game and waterfowl hunting, and not for deer hunting.  When it was pointed out by an audience member that semi-auto shotguns can be used for deer in the Special Regulations area around Philadelphia, Tim demurred, openly irritated.  When the audience member tried to hand Tim the regulations book, opened to the page stating that semi-auto shotguns are allowed for deer in that one area, Tim snapped “I don’t care, and I don’t hunt in the Special Regulations area.”

That was in front of the whole class, early on the first night.  It undermined Tim’s credibility and made him look foolish.  He never went back to correct his mistake that night or the second.  It raised the question about qualifications for teaching these courses, not just knowledge, but personality.  Nearly all of the audience members and students were from the southeastern region and quite a few probably do hunt in the Special Regulations area around Philly.  They are entitled to an expectation that they will be provided only accurate information, and that their teachers will have the strength of character to admit when they have mis-spoken or made a mistake.

And no student or audience member should be treated disrespectfully or belittled by a teacher.  It damages the entire purpose of the course.

All that said, it was a wonderful experience for me and my son.  We sat together both nights, and watching him soak up the knowledge was pleasing.  Only forty years have lapsed since I was in his seat….and to me, his rite of passage was much sweeter than my own.

It was also pleasing to see more girls than boys in the student body, as well as many single women and married mothers.  Women are the largest and fastest growing demographic in hunting and firearms ownership.  Now, what would really be exciting would be to see a class like this in downtown Philadelphia, filled with young African American kids and their fellow citizens.  Who will take up that gauntlet, men?

The excitement never ends

So a quiet little Friday morning in sleepy Central Pennsylvania erupts as parent Josh Barry attempts to defend his opposition to being called a “Neo Nazi” in public by a teacher. Said teacher objected to Barry’s inquiries after Barry’s little girl came home with all kinds of left wing propaganda masquerading as education.

Now “teacher” Cydnee Cohen has turned loose the teacher’s union thugs to smear Barry more and make him into the perpetrator and not the victim.

If there is one more example of why teacher’s unions must be illegal, this is it.