“Chains” of Mental Illness, or the “Enslavement” of Gun Control?

17 December 2012

In “You keep saying semi-automatic…,” Ken Wheaton speaks to the mental-health aspect of contemporary American massacres, rather than to the aspect of weapons control.

Writes Mr. Wheaton:

“Me? I find myself not interested in arguing about guns. My mind’s kind of full=up with the sort of person, the sort of brain capable of committing such an act.”

Mr. Wheaton raises what seems to be a point more-important than what sort of guns mass murderers use, and how they get them.
____________________

A compelling issue in Mr. Wheaton’s “gun control” or “mental health” question is the following:

The side of our political divide that is most-averse to controlling weapons is also the side most-averse to implementing a substantive safety net for issues of mental health.
____________________

It also happens to be the side that takes least seriously the ramifications of the “touchy-feely” aspects of contemporary life:

That side’s loudest-expressed attitude toward such issues as “what sort of person” finds reverberation in the attitude that, as long as we have enough guns, we can handle the “sort of brain” that keeps coming into America’s schools and businesses and homes, and opening fire.
____________________

These sorts of persons and brains open up fire, not for criminal gains, but for freedom from whatever chains enslave them.

Meanwhile, those on the “gun control” side see less of a distinction in the different forms of “chains,” whether of mental illness, of bad parenting, or of gun-control laws.
____________________

The point about weapons-ignorance/gun-control versus mental health is sound.

But another good starting point seems to be the way that the different issues seem to align in sets along the opposing sides of our national, political divide.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

__________
This essay was originally posted as a comment at:
THE WORD O’ WHEATON

Unexamined Capitalism Will Not Serve Us Well

13 December 2012

In response to a comment on a Bloomberg View article, “Romney’s Bain Yielded Private Gains, Socialized Losses,” Online Gym writes:

“Gozo I sort of agree Capitalism remains the most-effective economic model....And yes our capitalist model is flawed. But it takes decades to get it correct....It’s almost like we need to slow down and review our growth and correct what needs to be corrected....”

____________________

This is exactly right: being that capitalism is a human “invention,” of course it has flaws. Perfection is always the pinnacle to which we aspire, not one on which it is given to us to stand.

Given that we exist in a universe cycle of perpetual motion, of perpetual ebb and flow—of perpetual energy and entropy (as described in Newton’s laws)—the Perfect is near-certain to exceed our grasp.

This cycle provides the only canvas available for our great works. Which means that, often, “we need to slow down and review our growth and correct what needs to be corrected.”
____________________

The way I see it, the Conservative mind-set is particularly averse to taking the wrong steps, in fear of making new mistakes. The hazards of “unintended consequences” seems to come quickly to the Conservative mind and lips.

That’s a good thing: the impulsive Progressives need someone to help slow them up. To keep them from rushing willy-nilly over the cliff.

But, then society as a whole needs the progressive risk-takers, such the Wright brothers, who take that cliff-leap and lead us eventually to flying around the world, seven miles up, at a thousand miles an hour.
____________________

The “slow down and review” process began in earnest with the election of Ronald Reagan as President.

Under his guidance, sure, our debt grew to frightening heights. But things also got brought back down to Earth.

America took a breath, a pause, following the heady epoch from the Great Depression to the declines of the Vietnam War and the Great Society.

But it’s now thirty-two years on. This Conservative pull-back has hampered us with ideology that, the more its elements fail, the more its adherents want to double down.
___________________

We need to take a clearer look at capitalism, and how it really works.

First of all, we ought to go read the book, to see how Adam Smith characterizes collaboration as the key element, rather than this thing about “competition” and “greed,” which are essentially side-effects.
___________________

I think it’s a crime that we don’t teach such essential things in our schools. I believe we waste a tremendous learning and growth opportunity in our educational system, by not recognizing the demographic changes of the last century.

American kids no longer grow up in single-earner homes, where they learn our culture’s habits and values there. Instead, our kids learn from television and the Internet and the streets. It’s no longer enough to teach them history and math/science.

We need to teach them how to manage their economic lives. And how to manage our political society as a whole.
___________________

My personal, big question is, “How do we get there from here, when the Right is so-blindingly focused on winning the tug-of-war between sides, that we have impasse at every turn?”

Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue. And so I keep coming around to places like this, getting up on my soapbox, and hoping that I can finally manage to spy something, from perched on the soapbox’s modest height.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

____________________
Read the originating discussion at:

Romney’s Bain Yielded Private Gains, Socialized Losses

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0022

16 November 2012

__________

“I voted for socialism, and all I got was Obama.”

—posted by Jack Arnott on Slate(comment to William Saletan, “The Real Romney,” 11/15/2012)

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

The Republican Party of Projection Needs a New Bulb for its Projector:

12 November 2012

Republican Ideology, as currently configured, has stood up to be tested over the past thirty-two years.

It has failed miserably.

____________________

The Apparent Cause of Republican failure is projection.

Most of what the Right perceives in the Left is actually its own reflection.

___________________

Best Case in Point: the Romney campaign disbelieved Obama-leaning poll numbers because the Republicans thought that the Democrats were skewing the numbers.

Instead, it was the Romney campaign doing the skewing. And thus were their errors worsened, and their trend toward loss made stronger.

____________________

Likewise, This Conservative Ideology—that the Democrats are the party of entitlement. Those of us on the outside of the whole thing see how much it is the Right that wallows in its sense of entitlement.

Such as wondering how they could have possibly lost the election, when their policies and practices led America into the mess, and then they scared much of the American electorate away.

____________________

Karl Rove Accuses the Democrats of winning the election by scaring voters off of the Republican Party. We on the outside see this as ridiculous, of course: the Republican policies and principles are their own  policies and principles. Though some elements are often projected on others, yet do they often state these other ideological elements themselves.

And who more than Karl Rove has thrived, politically, on the promulgation of fear?

The whole ideology of the Republican Party is based on fear—gun-bearing thuggery; misogyny; aliens; welfare abuse; voter fraud; wealth-ravaging inflation; me-first healthcare access; other languages, other faiths, and other cultures—here in “the home of the brave.”

____________________

To “Blame the Messenger”—who helps communicate the anti-immigrant, anti-choice, anti-voting, anti-poor Right Wing planks—exemplifies the Republican culture of entitlement.

And of projection.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

Capitalist Quote of the Day

from THE WEALTH OF NATIONS, with formatting by Gozo:

Merchants and Manufacturers Complain of High Wages

Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much

of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price,

and thereby lessening the sale of their goods,

at home and abroad.

They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits.
They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains.

They complain only of those of other people.

—Adam Smith, “Of the Profits of Stock,”The Wealth of Nations (Book 1, Ch. 9, Par. 24)

Regards,

(($; -)
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

American “Entitlement” or “Self-Made” in America:

We Americans—Right, Left, or Center—harbor a sense of entitlement: we feel entitled to a share of the sum total of what “we, the people” have built together over the past 216 years. But the Right’s sense of entitlement is unusual:

The Right would have us believe that what makes America great is something that just lies here. As if our condition of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” were something that we just find here, lying on the ground, free for us to pick up and use, to enrich ourselves independent of anything that anyone else contributes around us.

Of course, this is foolishness: the idea that any of us manage to create our great wealth entirely by the sweat of our own brow is absurd.

America’s greatness derives from what we have cobbled together here, and from how we maintain it. Our greatness also derives from the extent that we continue making  access to the resources of America available to all, so that any among us may realize the American Dream.

The following reaction to the Republican candidates’ speeches at last week’s political convention was posted to a “Comments” page of  The Washington Post. Absent our ability to contact the author for permission, it is posted in its entirety.
____________________

Another Warmly Human Person and Self-Made Businessman:

by Bill Weston (8/31/2012 5:22 PM CDT)

My mother and father loved me too. Unfortunately, they couldn’t raise me with the absence of insecurity Romney enjoyed because I was a Depression baby.

At first my father, a “catcher” on a steel rolling mill, kept us going by often working 16 hours straight, but he was injured when a runaway strip of hot steel cooked a stripe on his back (there was no Republican-despised OSHA in the early Thirties).

Then the mill was shut down, and he worked at odd jobs; my mother took in laundry. A furniture merchant brought the sheriff to repossess our furniture, as if we were conservative gun-lovers, but all that happened was that my mother cried.

We didn’t lose our house because Roosevelt’s WPA gave my father steady work at $48 a month. Then World War II opened the steel mill with jobs.

But catching up with debt is slow, and conservative-despised Social Security couldn’t pay for me as it did for Paul Ryan until he was 18 years old.

So when I was twelve, I began working every other evening 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. at a drug store as a dish washer, furnace stoker, prescription drug deliverer, soda jerk, sweeper and mopper. I shed no Boehner tears about that, and until I retired at 63, I was never unemployed.

At sixteen, I had to leave high school to work at a bank, where I rose from check sorter to bookkeeper to the city’s youngest teller. After three years, I quit to make $60 a month more as a laborer in the steel mill. I hated every workday, so I was not sorry the Korean War drew me into the Air Force for four years. I learned a lot, especially on Guam’s bomber base, where I served as a Staff Sergeant and Special Assistant to a Group Commander. 

Then I entered the University of Illinois with $110 a month from the GI Bill, $36 a month for Air Force Reserve service and pay for working 20 hours a week.

In 2 ½ years, I was graduated as the top student in my class. With my journalism degree I got a position as a copywriter for large accounts at a large agency. After five years, I was writing both print ads and high-budget television commercials, which I also produced.

After 18 years, I had won 500 international awards and held the unusual position of Sr. VP, Account Director & Creative Director for several large accounts. Even so, I continued writing and producing television commercials, corporate films and multi-media presentations.

To do more of that I started my own communications company, which I headed as President and Chief Creative Officer. Then I was lured to one of America’s top five ad agencies by the position of VP/Associate Creative Director for Marlboro cigarettes. And until my retirement, I held that position for several other large accounts such as McDonald’s. 

What I didn’t do was consider my rise from the working class, the way Romney and Ryan do as they strive to deceive the middle class, a top qualification to be president or vice president. 

Should they? Should you?

____________________ 

 The above essay is taken in full from the “comments” pages of Conservative Washington Post columnist, Kathleen Parker’s essay, “Romney and Ryan, Running Against Themselves,” following last week’s Republican convention in Florida.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0014

01 MAY 2012

__________

WHO SAID IT? “No sacrifice at the expense of someone else is too-great a cost for a Conservative American in service of his ideology.”

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0013

22 APRIL 2012

__________

Democrats keep reaching for the rake of government. Republicans keep pushing it away. Meanwhile, who’ll tend garden & clean up the mess?

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0012

3 APRIL 2012

 __________

If Lack of Regulation Is So Essential to American Liberty, Why Don’t We See it Yet in Professional Sports?
__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0011

9 APRIL 2012

__________

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Freedom isn’t free! (But someone else should pay for my healthcare.)”

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0010

8 APRIL 2012

__________

The President’s disingenuous, Rose Garden healthcare comments may sacrifice too much credibility, even in the service of a greater good.
__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0009

7 APRIL 2012

 __________

Mitt Romney was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Democrats often recognize their own silver-spoon blessings. Republicans: usually not.
__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0008

31 MARCH 2012

 __________

CPI rise from 10/1993 to now: 56.25%.  Gasoline price rise: 310.36%.  Federal gasoline tax rise: 0.00%.  Value of good roads?

Priceless.

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0007

 30 MARCH 2012

__________

If you wanted to know what’s going wrong with ObamaCare, where could you look?

http://www.healthcare.gov/mycare

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0006

29 MARCH 2012

__________

What is so “radically different” about Medicaid needs in California and Oklahoma that it requires fifty separate bureaucracies to do the work of one in D.C.?

__________

Regards,
(($; -)} 
Gozo!
 

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0005

28 MARCH 2012

__________

Being Conservative means missing the old ways so bad that you’re willing to let others die for them.

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

What’s Sauce for the Goose Is Sauce for the Gander:

27 MARCH 2012 

American Taxpayers Already Pay to cover emergency-room medical treatment for people who lack health insurance.
____________________

How Could it Be Unconstitutional for Congress to tax such people to provide insurance for themselves?
____________________

“Individual Responsibility” dictates the sense of this:

What’s Tax for the Goose Should Be Tax for the Gander.

____________________

Or Else Those Opposed to Obamacare should be ready to let fellow Americans die in the streets.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0004

27 MARCH 2012

__________

We’re already taxed to pay E.R. care for the uninsured. Shouldn’t Congress and Obamacare tax the uninsured for shifting their costs to us?

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0003

25 MARCH 2012

__________

If Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich could balance America’s budget back in the 1990s, why can’t Speaker John Boehner do it today?

__________

Regards,

(($; -)}}

Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0002

24 MARCH 2012

__________

If you always vote for the candidate who promises you fifty-cent gas, you’ll always get the government you deserve.

__________

Regards,
(($; -)}}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

If the Other Side Is Always Dead Wrong about Debt—

—Then No One Can Ever Be Right for the Economy:

23 MARCH 2012

Everyone, Even Most Democrats, believes that we need to get government investment in line with tax revenues over time, or America will be economically ruined. The two sides, Republican and Democrat, just have two different theories behind how best to accomplish this.

The theory behind Democratic thinking is that cutting government spending in times of economic crisis invites disaster. Instead, a focus on government investing at such times revitalizes the economy, for future growth to get things ultimately in balance.

The Republican theory seems to be that cutting spending always helps, no matter the particulars of the day. This one-size-fits-all approach to economics may be correct. But we haven’t seen it much borne out in history.

We Need to Find Some Way to work on these differences with reasonable discourse. The shouting, railing and denouncing of each other gets us nowhere.

____________________

Democrats and Republicans Alike, and everybody in between, know that we need to get government spending under control. The Democrats favor a moderate approach, finding ways to increase revenue and then to modify government programs over time, as conditions improve. Meanwhile, the contrary opinion—about “job creators”—looks somewhat foolish while so many such “creators” are pouring millions of dollars into failing presidential-nominee campaigns.

(Could it be all this political spending finally be that’s finally gotten the economy growing again? How ironic if it takes political “hot air” to inflate the economy more than any particular candidate’s words or actions do—if and when she or he is elected.)

(In which case, perhaps thanks may be due the Supreme Court Justices, for the unintended consequences of their “Citizens United” decision.)

____________________

History Shows that spending cuts during hard times slow the progress of recovery.

Even today, while local governments are cutting police, firefighter, and teacher jobs almost as fast as the Obama-led government can stimulate jobs in the private sector, we see the counter-productive effects of trying to save water during a fire, by turning off the fire hoses.

____________________

Say What You Like about opposing opinions based on different theories, both are likely to hold elements of truth.

But if you can only make your argument by shouting down the corollary facts on the opposite side—as so many Americans seem to do—then you’ll likely make a lot of noise, but get very little good work done.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

IF GOZO TWEETED: Tweet #0001

23 MARCH 2012

__________

Q: If Rick Santorum says Americans should stick with President Barack Obama, why should we believe him?

A: Because contemporary Republicans are always “Right.”
__________

Regards,
(($; -)}}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

Where Is “Honest Abe” Lincoln When America Needs Him Again?

21 MARCH 2012

President Obama Thought he could change the political climate in Washington by finding ways to incorporate Conservative and Republican ideas into his policies. Sadly, right now in America, both parties find little choice but to oppose anything the other party puts forward. Thus, for example, did Nancy Pelosi blame President George W. Bush for high oil prices, and now the Republicans blame President Obama. (Both were equally wrong.)

If Individual Americans, in large numbers, put pressure on their legislators to compromise, I wonder whether their legislators might compromise, and America might move forward.

Judging by the Divide of Opinions we see in “comments” forums for every bit of news or opinion posted on the Internet, We, the People, seem about evenly divided. So there’s probably not much hope that much help will come from there...
____________________

“A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.”

Or So Some Republican President Once Said.

Will the Progressives lead us forward, out of this stalemate? Will the Conservatives leave us mired in it?

Will China and the European Union and the rest of the world stand idly by, waiting to see if and when and how we work it out?

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

@GozoTweets

__________
The original version of this post appears at:

WHERE IS HONEST ABE (AGAIN) WHEN AMERICA NEEDS HIM?

When Churches Go into Public Business—

—They Must Follow the Laws of the Land, Same as Everybody Else:

18 MARCH 2012

The Furor over the Matter of the Affordable Care Act requiring all businesses (even church-run businesses)  to treat all American citizens equally is a civil-rights issue. 

The anti-contraception argument is the same as was once used to deny African-Americans public services (restaurants, hotels, buses, etc.) in the Jim Crow South. Back in the day, the argument against the 1964 Civil Rights Act went this way: 

Government should not be permitted to compel any business to provide the public with services that go against its owner’s conscience.


The same argument has been used by numerous political luminaries such as Barry Goldwater and Ron Paul. Even today, Senator Rand Paul seems not to have made ideological peace with the issue.

That argument did not hold up in 1964. It doesn’t hold up today.

Public businesses (even when church-run) must provide non-discriminatory services equally to all Americans. This has nothing to do with our sacrosanct, First Amendment principle of separation of church and state.

____________________

The Separation of Church and State is inviolate when it comes to how any religious institution conducts its religious activities.

But when anyone conducts a business for the general public—whether it is a Woolworth’s lunch counter or a church-run hospital—then that business cannot discriminate against any American citizen, regardless of that citizen’s race or gender or religion. And American employees are entitled to have insurance coverage that fits their needs, and allow them to follow the dictates of their consciences. Not the religious dictates of someone else.

____________________

This Matter Concerns: Discrimination.

It has nothing to do with the separation of church and state.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

Energy Independence Is a Myth:

14 MARCH 2012

Because Oil Is a Commodity, its price reflects the world markets. Thus, high gas prices have little to do with how much oil we drill, drill, drill here at home.

If American companies drill more oil here at home, does anyone really believe that they will sell their product here at home for a lower price?
____________________

The Greatest Limitation on our American “capitalist” system is that hardly any of us really know how capitalism really works. Adam Smith wrote the book: you probably haven’t read it.

“Free markets” means that we all seek the lowest costs (e.g., Chinese labor) and we all sell to the highest bidder.

The only energy that cannot be exported to the highest bidder is the kind of alternative energy that the Greens dream of.
____________________

“Green” Energy is nowhere close to viable, as far as current technologies and costs are concerned.

But once established—whether as solar or wind power or some other form—its product won’t be exportable to the highest bidder abroad.
____________________

When it Comes to New Technologies—such as the Intercontinental Railroad or the Internet or the NASA space program—government provides the powerful seeds that give private industry the opportunity to grow America forward.
____________________

To Lower Our Energy Costs, we need energy forms that can’t be exported. Anything else—such as “energy independence”—is a myth.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

CONGRESS TO GIVE PRESIDENT POWER OVER SOLAR ECLIPSES:

“MOON WILL DISAPPEAR OVER NEXT TWO WEEKS” WARN CRITICS:

12 MARCH 2012

Right Now, with gasoline prices rising once again, the high gas prices are President Barack Obama’s fault. Back in the summer of 2008, the high gas prices were President George W. Bush’s fault.

So Long as the Majority of the American people continue to blame the wrong people for the wrong things, we will continue to have the “wrong” quality of government, which we, the people, choose.

In Ye Olden Days, our presidents would have been blamed for the solar eclipse. Has anyone else noticed that the moon, which was full just four days ago, seems to be shrinking? What will we do if the moon shrinks away entirely? Can this, too, be President Obama’s fault?

The Good Thing about Democracy is that we get the government we deserve.

The Bad Thing about Democracy is that we get the government we deserve.

Regards,
(($;- )}
Gozo!

Why Are Republicans Losing Out to Their “Straw Man” President?

11 MARCH 2012

If Barack Obama Really Is the “Straw Man” President that the Republicans pretend him to be, how can it be so hard for them to come up with a viable candidate to win the election in November?

It Looks like the Actual Facts of the Obama presidency so far are making a hard case for the Republican argument
that we need more hands-off government like we’ve had over the past thirty years:

01: Private-sector Jobs rising faster than Republican can cut jobs in the public sector

02: Unemployment numbers going down, despite Republican best efforts to make unemployed Americans wait until after the next election, before taking steps to turn the economy around

03: Millions More Americans Insured for Healthcare, and tens of millions more insured without exclusions or lifetime limits or preexisting conditions, while the Republican candidates avoid healthcare like a live wire 

04: The Auto Industry Turned Around, with GM is once again the world’s leading auto manufacturer

05: Increasing Domestic Petroleum production, even as America resumes the march toward cleaner air, greater fuel-economy, and alternative-energy manufacturing readying to take on China and Spain and the rest of the world

06: Homosexual Americans Serving Openly in the armed forces, without incident

If it Truly Took the Conservative Hand of Ronald Reagan to dig America out of the left-hand ditch
that the Democrats had gotten us into, it now looks up to Progressive hand of Barack Obama to get us back out of the right-hand ditch that the Republicans got us into during the 2000s.

If Things Are So Dim as the Republicans say they are, how come America’s future under the Republican “straw-man” President Barack Obama suddenly looks so bright?

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

Too-Much Teaching Is the Problem with Not-Enough Learning:

02 MARCH 2012

The Challenge with Education in America today is the focus on teaching. If we really want our American kids to learn, America needs to focus on learning.
____________________

Given That the U.S. is such an anti-intellectual country (in which the President of the United States was called a snob, earlier this week, for wanting every kid to be able to go to college), it’s hardly surprising that our educational results are going down the tubes.

If you meet many teachers in American public schools, you will meet quite a few people with college-infused theories about how to teach young minds. What you won’t find is very many people for whom learning—the actual, lifetime practice of learning new and challenging things—is much of a priority at all.

That is, if you’re looking for intellectuals and highly inquisitive people, America’s elementary and secondary schools are not a very good place to find them.
____________________

This Non-intellectual or Anti-intellectual American attitude dominates our schools. Looking around in any school, all that you see is the evidence of teaching—with the results of rote-learned teaching exercises mounted in a few glass-fronted cabinets in the front halls. What you won’t see is much evidence of real learning.

It’s this misguide focus that leads our educational system astray.
______________

With the Increase in inter-ethnic marriages, those cultures that promote and stress the importance of knowledge are starting to lose out to the generic, anti-intellectual American mix—that focuses on sports stars, rock stars, movie stars, and six-year-olds dressed up like beauty queens. While equal opportunity for all, in the great American melting pot, is essential to the American experiment, one current result of this grand experiment is an ardently pursued reversion to the mean.

“Reversion to the mean” of intellectual accomplishment is not the kind of educational achievement that will lead America to Mars and beyond. Or to energy independence with alternative, yet-to-be-invented technologies. Nor will it lead us to cures for cancer, nor cure the common cold.

“As seen on TV™”? Sure. But your better mousetraps? Not so much...
____________________

Henry Ford was proudly belligerent about his school-based ignorance. What he knew how to do was to think. “How to think” is the primary objective of a good education.

Not “How to teach.” But “How to learn.”
____________________

Americans Who Have Home-Schooled Their Kids (whether for academic or for faith-based reasons) know how much the desire for learning is built into practically every child. Many of our most-successful, highest-achieving, home-schooled students are those raised under the concept of “un-schooling,” which nurtures the child’s innate desire to learn, learn, learn.

You never hear home-schooled families talking about “teach, teach, teach.”

Many home-schooled kids never encounter a formal “test” until they head toward college. But once these kids walk in the doors of the college admission offices and start taking the tests, their test scores shine.

If kids left to their own learning devices learn better than those who lumber through America’s schools, then it’s clearly not a question of testing.

The problem is the focus on teaching—such as “teaching to the test”—that interferes with the natural processes of learning.
____________________

The Obvious Problem with American Schools Today—and with our anti-intellectual society in general—is that there’s not enough learning.

But these limits on learning are merely the symptom:

It’s the Focus Too-Much on Teaching
That Keeps Shutting America’s Young Minds Down.

Regards,
(($; -)}
Gozo!

Despite Their Bad Regard for President Obama—

01 MARCH 2012

THE REPUBLICANS CAN’T FIND AN ACCEPTABLE—AND WINNING—PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE:

Gov. Mitt Romney is thus far the closest thing that the Republican Party has to an electable candidate in relation to President Obama. But a presidential election isn’t a game of “horseshoes.”

Sen. Rick Santorum has more consistency to his conservative values, but the extreme nature of his social-policy views would make him an easy target for “mad dog” representation in Democratic ads during the upcoming campaign.

Rep. Ron Paul has many unique views that resonate greatly with people on both sides of the aisle, but his singular greatest limitation is that his direct style of advocating for his views does not work well with a form of government that requires compromise, not dictatorship or obstruction, to get anything done.

Speaker Newt Gingrich hardly merits mention. His wide variety of ideas contradicts his recent efforts to reestablish himself as an authentic Conservative.

____________________

We Americans Always Vote for our presidents as if we are choosing a dictator. We care most about his views, which leads us to believe that he will steer our country in our preferred direction.

But this is not the case: no elected official can impose his will in this way. Either he must compromise, or he fails his constituents with a gridlock stalemate in which everybody avoids the tough choices of what they don’t want, but nobody gets what they need.

(The debt-ceiling debacle demonstrated this perfectly: the Tea Party Republicans held their ground against paying America’s bills without future reductions, the future reductions were arranged in what turns out to be an imminently surmountable fashion, and all we got for their trouble was a lowering of our credit rating—We didn’t even get a lousy T-shirt!)

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Even as We Have Watched President Barack Obama implement numerous mainstream, conservative, Republican ideas—

His liberal, progressive, Democratic base has detested his betrayal of their “Hope and Change” values—

While the loyal, Republican opposition garnered great success with their consistent, repetitive, Frank Luntz-crafted messages of “lower taxes” and “too much regulation” and “no more Keynesian/Kenyan socialism”—

Until the economy started turning around.

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But a steadily rising economy pretty much threatens to change everything....

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This Puts the Republicans in a challenging spot right now: in order to win the Presidency in November, either the economy must go back to Hell in a handbasket—

Or the Republicans must come up with a candidate who is:

(A) Conservative-enough to pass muster with the base, and

(B) Reasonable-enough to pass must with the majority of relatively moderate Americans actually willing to vote for him, and

(C) Leader-like and charismatic-enough to bring enough of the people out to vote.

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Now That it Seems to be “Halftime in America,” maybe the former mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California would be interested in taking on the job.

You read it first here. 

Now announcing the soon-to-be, up-and-coming front-runner for the 2012 Republican Presidential Nomination:

The Man with No Name.

Regards,

(($; -)}

Gozo!