AM Fruitcake

History for January 30

History for January 30 - On-This-Day.com
Anton Chekhov 1860, Franklin D. Roosevelt (U.S.) 1882, Gene Hackman 1931


Boris Spassky 1937, Dick Cheney 1941 - U.S. Vice President for George W. Bush, Phil Collins 1951 - Singer, drummer (Genesis)


1798 - The first brawl in the U.S. House of Representatives took place. Congressmen Matthew Lyon and Roger Griswold fought on the House floor.


1933 - Adolf Hitler was named the German Chancellor.

Andrew McCarthy Says There’s Still No Proof Of Any American Collusion With Russia | The Daily Caller

Andrew McCarthy Says There’s Still No Proof Of Any American Collusion With Russia | The Daily Caller:

Former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said special counsel Robert Mueller has still failed to prove collusion between President Donald Trump and Russia, on “Fox & Friends” Monday.
“There’s no reason to think that Russia in its operations looked for any cooperation from anyone on the American side, not just President Trump,” McCarthy said.

The way we were-----The Blues Magoos - (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet (1966-67)

Boob-tube-----LIVE TV GONE WRONG NEWS BLOOPERS OF ALL TIME

What Will It Take To Make You Understand And Accept That They Hate You?

What Will It Take To Make You Understand And Accept That They Hate You?
"You need to die because of your smile.
That’s the position of our enemies, and we know it because they told us – openly, proudly, in the garbage public forum that is Twitter and elsewhere. 
Oh, they backtracked a little when the extent of their killing fantasies got exposed, scampering like their insect analogy, the roach, when someone flips on the kitchen light.
But that kid in DC with the Frigidaireborne reefer ranger banging that drum in his baffled mug?
They wanted that kid to die for having a Wrong Smile.
Cue the excuse chorus: “That’s nonsense! We just wanted to pummel that kid and then destroy him, his family and and all his classmates! Don’t look behind the curtain at the woodchipper comments and bomb threats, you cisnormative monsters!”
Think of what they would do with real power…
Accept that that kid was you, and me.
If they’ll ice a kid for not having the right grin, they’ll waste you or me in a heartbeat.
Murder is, after all, how leftists roll. 
The USSR, Red China, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba – that cadaver-strewn litany teaches what’s lurking at the bottom of the slope we’re sliding down. 
The Dems are spooning with socialism, and the goal of socialism is written in blood on the pages of history.
The unapproved must be liquidated, and they are making no secret that you are unapproved..."
Read on!

Ria Megnin - One of my friends told me about a powerful lesson in her daughter's high school class this winter.

(19) Ria Megnin - One of my friends told me about a powerful lesson in...--Ria Megnin

"One of my friends told me about a powerful lesson in her daughter's high school class this winter. 

They're learning about the Salem Witch Trials, and their teacher told them they were going to play a game.

"I'm going to come around and whisper to each of you whether you're a witch or a normal person. 
Your goal is to build the largest group possible that does NOT have a witch in it. 
At the end, any group found to include a witch gets a failing grade."

The teens dove into grilling each other. 
One fairly large group formed, but most of the students broke into small, exclusive groups, turning away anyone they thought gave off even a hint of guilt.

"Okay," the teacher said. "You've got your groups. Time to find out which ones fail. All witches, please raise your hands."

No one raised a hand.

The kids were confused and told him he'd messed up the game.

"Did I? Was anyone in Salem an actual witch? Or did everyone just believe what they'd been told?"

And that is how you teach kids how easy it is to divide a community.
Keep being welcoming, beautiful people. Shunning, scapegoating and dividing destroy far more than they protect. We're all in this together."

Ocasio-Cortez just latest in 100 years of warnings earth 'doomed' - WND

Ocasio-Cortez just latest in 100 years of warnings earth 'doomed' - WND:

“It is becoming obvious that the only authentic climate ‘tipping point’ we can rely is this one: Flashback 2007: New Zealand Scientist on Global Warming: ‘It’s All Going to be a Joke in 5 Years.'” Morano wrote.
“The Boston Globe noted on April 16, 2014: ‘The world now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.'”
Such warnings also were issued in 1982, 1989 and 2000.
“In 2007, U.N. IPCC chief Pachauri declared 2012 as the climate deadline to act or it would be ‘too late,'” Morano reported. “Not to be outdone by the U.N., Former Irish President Mary Robinson weighed in this week, issuing a more generous 20 year tipping point. ‘Former president says we have 20 years to save the world from climate change effects. …Robinson calls for climate agreement by 2015.’ Robinson noted that global leaders have ‘at most two decades to save the world.'”

The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality) | Intellectual Takeout

The Tragic Decline of Music Literacy (and Quality) | Intellectual Takeout
"...In an interview, Billy Joel was asked what has made him a standout. 
He responded his ability to read and compose music made him unique in the music industry, which as he explained, was troubling for the industry when being musically literate makes you stand out.
An astonishing amount of today’s popular music is written by two people: Lukasz Gottwald of the United States and Max Martin from Sweden, who are both responsible for dozens of songs in the top 100 charts. 
You can credit Max and Dr. Luke for most the hits of these stars:
Katy Perry, Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, Taylor Swift, Jessie J., KE$HA, Miley Cyrus, Avril Lavigne, Maroon 5, Taio Cruz, Ellie Goulding, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, Ariana Grande, Justin Timberlake, Nick Minaj, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi, Usher, Adam Lambert, Justin Bieber, Domino, Pink, Pitbull, One Direction, Flo Rida, Paris Hilton, The Veronicas, R. Kelly, Zebrahead
With only two people writing much of what we hear, is it any wonder music sounds the same, using the same hooks, riffs and electric drum effects?..."
Read on.

EMP Report | Nuclear Weapons | Online Safety & Privacy

EMP Report | Nuclear Weapons | Online Safety & Privacy:
"...The critical national infrastructure in the United States faces a present and continuing existential threat from combined-arms warfare, including cyber and manmade electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, as well as from natural EMP from a solar superstorm. 
During the Cold War, the U.S. was primarily concerned about an EMP attack generated by a high-altitude nuclear weapon as a tactic by which the Soviet Union could suppress the U.S. national command authority and the ability to respond to a nuclear attack—and thus negate the deterrence value of assured nuclear retaliation.
Within the last decade, newly-armed adversaries, including North Korea, have been developing the ability and threatening to carry out an EMP attack against the United States.
Such an attack would give countries that have only a small number of nuclear weapons the ability to cause widespread, long-lasting damage to critical national infrastructures, to the United States itself as a viable country, and to the survival of a majority of its population..."

Read all!

Lunch video-----Nathan Phillips: Career Liar

Noon-toon

Under Trump, U.S. Economic Freedom Rises Significantly | The Heritage Foundation

Under Trump, U.S. Economic Freedom Rises Significantly | The Heritage Foundation:

The job market is hot, unemployment is down to record lows, and small business optimism is soaring.
But this newfound dynamism didn’t come from nowhere. It required a package of market and consumer-friendly reforms passed by Congress and adopted by the Trump administration. These reforms have boosted economic freedom.

(7) Janet Shagam - a comment on connecting the dots on the NY Abortion...

(7) Janet Shagam - a comment on connecting the dots on the NY Abortion...

a comment on connecting the dots on the NY Abortion Bill:
"...well if anybody permitted by the State can perform a no questions asked abortion up to 24 weeks,

• and that same "nail salon tech with a state abortion certificate" can perform an abortion on a nine month baby if in THAT person's opinion the mother will be better off...
• and then since the abortionist no longer has a duty to provide medical attention to a live baby who survives the abortion and it can be left to die...
• and if we learned one thing from the news about Planned Parenthood about how much money can be made by selling tissues and cells from aborted fetuses...
• can you imaging the industry that NY can now have selling working fully functioning organs from full term babies which can be carved up and sold for parts."

Thomas Sowell--Lessons From the Past

Lessons From the Past
"Seventy-one years ago this month -- in January 1948 -- a black, 17-year-old high school dropout left home.
The last grade he had completed was the 9th grade.
He had no skills, little experience, and not a lot of maturity. 
Yet he was able to find jobs to support himself, to a far greater extent than someone similar can find jobs today.
I know because I was that black 17-year-old.
And, decades later, I did research on economic conditions back then.
Back in 1948, the unemployment rate for 17-year-old black males was just under 10 percent, and no higher than the unemployment rate among white male 17-year-olds.
How could that be, when we have for decades gotten used to seeing unemployment rates for teenage males that have been some multiple of what it was then -- and with black teenage unemployment often twice as high, or higher, than white teenage unemployment?
Many people automatically assume that racism explains the large difference in unemployment rates between black and white teenagers today.
Was there no racism in 1948?
No sane person who was alive in 1948 could believe that.
Racism was worse -- and of course there was no Civil Rights Act of 1964 then.
...As a black teenager, I was lucky enough to be looking for jobs when the minimum wage law was rendered ineffective by inflation. 
I was also lucky enough to have gone through New York schools at a time when they still had high educational standards.
Decades later, when examining the math textbook used by some young relatives of mine, who were living where I grew up in Harlem, I discovered that the math they were being taught in the 11th grade was less than what I had been taught in the 9th grade..."
Read on!

#1 This day 1962-----Joey Dee & The Starliters - Peppermint Twist.

Written in 1992---Devastating indictment of education!--Inside American Education: Thomas Sowell

Inside American Education: Thomas Sowell: 9780029303306: Amazon.com: Books

CHAPTER 2--Impaired Faculties

"INTELLECTUAL LEVELS

…Consistently, for decades, those college students who have majored in education have been among the least qualified of all college students, and the professors who taught them have been among the least respected by their colleagues elsewhere in the college or university.

The word “contempt” appears repeatedly in discussions of the way most academic students and professors view their counterparts in the field of education.6

At Columbia Teachers College, 120th Street is said to be “the widest street in the world” because it separates that institution from the rest of Columbia University.

Nor is Columbia at all unique in this respect.

“In many universities,” according to a study by Martin Mayer, “there is little it any contact between the members of the department of education and the members of other departments in the school.”7

When the president of Harvard University retired in 1933, he told the institution’s overseers that Harvard’s Graduate School of Education was a “kitten that ought to be drowned.”8

More recently, a knowledgeable academic declared, “the educationists have set the lowest possible standards and require the least amount of hard work.”9

Education schools and education departments have been called “the intellectual slums” of the university.

Despite some attempts to depict such attitudes as mere snobbery, hard data on education student qualifications have consistently shown their mental test scores to be at or near the bottom among all categories of students.

This was as true of studies done in the 1920s and 1930s as of studies in the 1980s.10

Whether measured by Scholastic Aptitude Tests, ACT tests, vocabulary tests, reading comprehension tests, or Graduate Record Examinations, students majoring in education have consistently scored below the national average.11

When the U.S. Army had college students tested in 1951 for draft deferments during the Korean War, more than half the students passed in the humanities, social sciences, biological sciences, physical sciences and mathematics, but only 27 percent of those majoring in education passed.12

In 1980-81, students majoring in education scored lower on both verbal and quantitative SATs than students majoring in art, music, theatre, the behavioral sciences, physical sciences, or biological sciences, business or commerce, engineering, mathematics, the humanities, or health occupations.

Undergraduate business and commercial majors have long been regarded as being of low quality, but they still edged out education majors on both parts of the SAT.

Engineering students tend to be lopsidedly better mathematically than verbally, but nevertheless their verbal scores exceeded those of education majors, just as art and theatre majors had higher mathematics scores than education majors.

Not only have education students’ test scores been low, they have also been declining over time.

As of academic year 1972-73, the average verbal SAT score for high school students choosing education as their intended college major was 418—and by academic year 1979-80, this had declined to 389.13

At the graduate level, it is very much the same story, with students in numerous other fields outscoring education students on the Graduate Record Examination—by from 91 points composite to 259 points, depending on the field.14

The pool of graduate students in education applies not only teachers, counselors, and administrators, but also professors of education and other “leaders” and spokesmen for the education establishment.

In short, educators are drawing disproportionately from the dregs of the college-educated population.

As William H. Whyte said back in the 1950s, “the facts are too critical for euphemism.”15

Professors of education rank as low among college and university faculty members as education students do among other students.

After listing a number of professors “of great personal and intellectual distinction” teaching in the field of education, Martin Mayer nevertheless concluded:

On the average, however, it is true to say that the academic professors, with many exceptions in the applied sciences and some in the social sciences, are educated men, and the professors of education are not.16

Given low-quality students and low-quality professors, it can hardly be surprising to discover, as Mayer did, that “most education courses are not intellectually respectable, because their teachers and the textbooks are not intellectually respectable.”17

In short, some of the least qualified students, taught by the least qualified professors in the lowest quality courses supply most American public school teachers.

There are severe limits to how intellectual their teaching could be, even if they wanted it to be.

Their susceptibility to fads, and especially to non-intellectual and anti-intellectual fads, is understandable—but very damaging to American education.

What is less understandable is why parents and the public allow themselves to be intimidated by such educators’ pretensions of “expertise.”

The futility of attempting to upgrade the teaching profession by paying higher salaries is obvious, so long as legal barriers keep out all those who refuse to take education courses.

These courses are negative barriers, in the sense that they keep out the competent.

It is Darwinism stood on its head, with the unfittest being most likely to survive as public school teachers.

The weeding out process begins early and continues long, eliminating more and more of the best qualified people.

·         Among high school seniors, only 7 percent of those with SAT scores in the top 20 percent, and 13 percent of those in the next quintile, expressed a desire to go into teaching, while nearly half of those in the bottom 40 percent chose teaching.

·         Moreover, with the passage of time, completion of a college education, and actual work in a teaching career, attrition is far higher in the top ability groups—85 percent of those in the top 20 percent leave teaching after relatively brief careers—while low-ability people tend to remain teachers.18

This too is a long-standing pattern.

A 1959 study of World War II veterans who had entered the teaching profession concluded that “those who are academically more capable and talented tended to drop out of teaching and those who remained as classroom teachers in the elementary and secondary schools were the less intellectually able members of the original group.”19

The results in this male sample were very similar to the results in a female sample in 1964 which found that the “attrition rate from teaching as an occupation was highest among the high ability group.”20

Other studies have had very similar results.21

Sometimes the more able people simply leave for greener pastures, but the greater seniority of the least able can also force schools to lay off the newer and better teachers whenever jobs are reduced.

The dry statistics of these studies translate into a painful human reality captured by a parent’s letter:

Over the years, as a parent, I have repeatedly felt frustrated, angry and helpless when each spring teachers—who were the ones the students hoped anxiously to get, who had students visiting their classrooms after school, who had lively looking classrooms—would receive their lay-off notices. Meanwhile, left behind to teach our children, would be the mediocre teachers who appeared to have precious little creative inspiration for teaching and very little interest in children.22

With teachers as with their students, merely throwing more money at the educational establishment means having more expensive incompetents.

Ordinarily, more money attracts better people, but the protective barriers of the teaching profession keep out better-qualified people, who are the least likely to have wasted their time in college on education courses, and the least likely to undergo a long ordeal of such Mickey Mouse courses later on.

Nor is it realistic to expect reforms by existing education schools or to expect teachers’ unions to remedy the situation.

As a well-known Brookings Institution study put it, “existing institutions cannot solve the problem, because they are the problem.”23

Teachers’ unions do not represent teachers in the abstract.

They represent such teachers as actually exist in today’s public schools.

These teachers have every reason to fear the competition of other college graduates for jobs, to fear any weakening of iron-clad tenure rules, and to fear any form of competition between schools that would allow parents to choose where to send their children to school.

Competition means winners and losers—based on performance, rather than seniority or credentials.

Professors of education are even more vulnerable, because they are supplying a product widely held in disrepute, even by many of those who enroll in their courses, and a product whose demand is due almost solely to laws and policies which compel individuals to enroll, in order to gain tenure and receive pay raises.

As for the value of education courses and degrees in the actual teaching of school children, there is no persuasive evidence that such studies have any pay-off whatever in the classroom.

Postgraduate degree holders became much more common among teachers during the period of declining student test scores.

Back in the early 1960s, when student SAT scores peaked, fewer than one-fourth of all public school teachers had postgraduate degrees and almost 15 percent lacked even a Bachelor’s degree.

But by 1981, when the test score decline hit bottom, just over half of all teachers had Master’s degrees and less than one percent lacked a Bachelor’s.24

Despite the questionable value of education courses and degrees as a means of improving teaching, and their role as barriers keeping out competition, defenders of the education schools have referred to proposals to reduce or eliminate such requirements as “dilutions” of teacher quality.25

Conversely, to require additional years of education courses is equated with a move “to improve standards for teachers.”26

Such Orwellian Newspeak turns reality upside down, defying all evidence.

It should not be surprising that education degrees produce no demonstrable benefit to teaching.

The shallow and stultifying courses behind such degrees are one obvious reason.

However, even when the education school curriculum is “beefed up” with more intellectually challenging courses at some elite institutions, those challenging courses are likely to be in subjects imported from other disciplines—statistics or economics, for example—rather than courses on how to teach children.

Moreover, such substantive courses are more likely to be useful for research purposes than for actual classroom teaching.

When Stanford University’s school of education added an honors program, it was specifically stated that this was not a program designed for people who intended to become classroom teachers.27

The whole history of schools and departments of education has been one of desperate, but largely futile, attempts to gain the respect of other academics—usually by becoming theoretical and research-oriented, rather than by improving the classroom skills of teachers.28

But both theoretical and practical work in education are inherently limited by the low intellectual level of the students and professors attracted to this field.

Where education degrees are not mandated by law as a requirement for teaching in private schools, those schools themselves often operate without any such requirement of their own.

The net result is that they can draw upon a much wider pool of better-educated people for their teachers.

The fact that these private schools often pay salaries not as high as those paid to public school teachers further reveals the true role of education degrees as protective tariffs, which allow teachers’ unions to charge higher pay for their members, who are insulated from competition.

Schools and departments of education thus serve the narrow financial interests of public school teachers and professors of education—and disserve the educational interests of more than 40 million American school children."

Read the book!

That's the way it is.

Astounding legislation protects cows but not babies - WND

Astounding legislation protects cows but not babies - WND:

Listen to the reasons for Wimberly’s proposed law. He says. “Cattle can’t defend themselves on issues like this. … It’s animal rights. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the moral thing to do and you’re protecting something that really can’t protect itself.”

The 10 Most Destructive Americans of My 8 Decades

The 10 Most Destructive Americans of My 8 Decades
"America has undergone enormous change during the nearly eight decades of my life. 
Today, America is a bitterly divided, poorly educated and morally fragile society with so-called mainstream politicians pushing cynical identity politics, socialism and open borders. 
The president of the United States is threatened with impeachment because the other side doesn’t like him. 
The once reasonably unbiased American media has evolved into a hysterical left wing mob. 
How could the stable and reasonably cohesive America of the 1950s have reached this point in just one lifetime? 
Who are the main culprits? 
Here’s my list of the 10 most destructive Americans of the last 80 years.

10) Mark Felt – Deputy director of the FBI, aka “Deep Throat” during the Watergate scandal. This was the first public instance of a senior FBI officially directly interfering in America’s political affairs. Forerunner of James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page and Andrew McCabe..."
Read on!!

AM Fruitcake

History for January 29

History for January 29 - On-This-Day.com
Thomas Paine 1737, William McKinley (U.S.) 1843, W.C. Fields 1880


Allen B. DuMont 1901, Tom Selleck 1945 - Actor (Television: "Magnum P.I."), Oprah Winfrey 1954


1850 - Henry Clay introduced in the Senate a compromise bill on slavery that included the admission of California into the Union as a free state.


1886 - The first successful petrol-driven motorcar, built by Karl Benz, was patented.