Educated in spite of the system...

...that's me.  I'm one of those whackos who thinks that the publik skool system should be dismantled with all due haste.  Looks like I'm not alone.

As usual, no blog post is complete without the commentary.  If the chart Mr. Allen posts isn't enough to raise your eyebrows, this comment from Mr. Art Welling ought to blow the top of your head off:

"All these teachers who bitch and moan that we’re wanting to cut the waste from the school system are willfully blind to their bosses’ stealing their lunches right under their collective noses"

I call bovine excrement on that line.

*I* am a teacher, and I know EXACTLY where the waste is in our system. I can walk into the Building I work at, walk straight into half a dozen offices, and point right at all the criminal waste it will take to make you sick to your stomach.

I can point at a Big $$$ director who spends as much time at his desk watching 'hobby' videos on the internet as he spends trying to trash instructors, and both together make a full work day for him.

I can point out a principals custom hand made desk that cost more than my car... and COULD have been had at 1/20th the cost from our own schools cabinetry program.

I can point out administration who swore they were taking a pay freeze, since they demanded we take one.... and then awarded themselves multi thousand dollar 'bonus' packages.... again each worth more than my car.

I can point out instructors who are selling scrap metal to buy shop supplies.... while the admin is billing the school for $500 meals.

I can point to a brand new state mandated 'administrator' who's job no instructor in three building can see the purpose of, but is so heavily work laden he requires a very pretty young assistant to... well.... assist him I suppose. So far, all he does is wander around the building.

Yes... we know EXACTLY where the waste is, and nobody who matters will listen to us. We are the teachers.... we are the bad guys of this weeks agenda, so nobody cares to listen to us.

We are the people who work 60-70 hour weeks while getting paid for 40, and take over the job of raising the kids everyone else has abandoned.... but we are the 'bad guys'.

We are the teachers, who spend ten extra hours a week writing paperwork that no one will ever read, just so some outrageously paid administrator can claim their job has purpose.

Yes... we damn well know where the waste is. We have to wade through it every single $%#@&%$ day just to do our jobs. We have to feel our noses shoved in it every morning, when we arrive at school an hour early to sweep the useless make work away before we can do our real job. We have to endure the stink of waste... watching administrators buy *themselves* new toys as we buy class supplies from our own pockets.

We are the people who do the actual work... and who nobody will listen to.

We are the people who have read Atlas Shrugged, understand it, and will be the last ones out the door as the lights go out.

Homeschooling.  Private schooling.  Anything is preferable to what we have now.  Even no schooling at all--at least then we won't have our pockets picked in order to pay for a custom desk or hottie 'assistant' for some parasite who does absolutely nothing for anyone.

God be with you and your students, Mr. Welling.

I like these guys.

I'd never heard of USAammo.com before seeing this, but it's well worth four minutes of your time.  Forward it to your liberal friends and watch their heads explode!  ;)

Think God can't use you?

Noah was a drunk.
Abraham was ancient.
Isaac was a daydreamer.
Jacob was a liar.
Leah was ugly.
Joseph was abused.
Moses stuttered.
Gideon was afraid.
Samson had long hair and was a womanizer.
Rahab was a prostitute.
Jeremiah and Tomithy were very young.
David had affairs and was a murderer.
Elijah was suicidal.
Isiah preached naked.
Jonah ran from God.
Naomi was a widow.
Job went bankrupt.
Peter denied Christ.
Martha worried too much.
Mary Magdelene was well…you know.
The Samaritan woman was divorced.
Paul was TOO religious...
and Lazarus was DEAD!

Besides; you aren’t the message, you are just the messenger…

Thanks to WhiteFalcon1 from the comments at iOTW, here.

I don't think I want a smartphone any more.

I'm somewhat of a Luddite when it comes to phones.  I'm still rockin' the G'zOne Boulder, a cell phone with a built-in compass, a battery that lasts over a week, and is dust, shock, and water-resistant enough that even I can't jack it up.  I always derided the whole smartphone concept until my wife got one--and then, dammit, I had to admit that the Internet-in-your-pocket thing was actually pretty useful.  Darn all this newfangled poppycock, anyway...I remember when we had to walk 10 miles through the snow and pay seven thousand dollars a minute to make a phone call, and we were grateful!  And get off my lawn.

So I was considering the G'zOne Commando, since the Boulder's worked so well for me.  Then Brian had to dig up this article that made me think twice...

A piece of keystroke-sniffing software called Carrier IQ has been embedded so deeply in millions of Nokia, Android, and RIM devices that it’s tough to spot and nearly impossible to remove, as 25-year old Connecticut systems administrator Trevor Eckhart revealed in a video Tuesday.

That’s not just creepy, says Paul Ohm, a former Justice Department prosecutor and law professor at the University of Colorado Law School. He thinks it’s also likely grounds for a class action lawsuit based on a federal wiretapping law.

“If CarrierIQ has gotten the handset manufactures to install secret software that records keystrokes intended for text messaging and the Internet and are sending some of that information back somewhere, this is very likely a federal wiretap.” he says. “And that gives the people wiretapped the right to sue and provides for significant monetary damages.”

Um, yeah...I think my Boulder will do just fine, thanks.

Another nail in the coffin...

...of Anthropogenic Global Warming/Climate Change/We're All Gonna Die.

Via Cold Fury, a calling-out of the chief Luddites that must be read to be believed.

You and I have been interacting, albeit at a distance, since I first asked you for your data some five years ago. I asked for your data in part because I was astounded by your answer to Warwick Hughes when he asked for the same data. You replied to Warwick at that time, “Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

I couldn’t fathom that a leading climate scientist could actually believe that. Finding something wrong with other scientists’ data and ideas is an integral part of how science progresses. This requires transparency and access to the data. I also couldn’t believe that other climate scientists would let you get away with saying that, without some other scientist pointing out the anti-scientific nature of your denial.

Foolish me … d’ya think I might have been more than a bit naive back then about climate “science” realpolitik?

Anyone who cowers in terror of his pet hypothesis being disproven, has no right to call themselves a scientist.  "The science is settled," my skinny white ass.

ROFL

I have no idea whether this is a hipster parody, or a parody of hipsters...but it's damn funny either way.



(HT This Ain't Hell)

It's like that.

Via iOTW, we are treated to a clear and concise explanation of the evil of Islam, and why it must not be tolerated if Western civilization is to survive.


Bravo, Rep. Womick!

A bit more to be thankful for...

If you're reading this, chances are you're doing OK.  Maybe your house will never be featured on Cribs, and maybe you're not in the position of deciding whether to take the Bentley or the Lamborghini to the exclusive restaurant tonight.

But at least you're not living in a freaking ghost town.

"WC facilities function only when it’s warm in the street. In winter they are covered with icicles. Wastes go to the local river."

"There is a fire hydrant in the basement. Citizens of the ghost town use it to get water which is impossible to drink. They buy water in bottles for nutritive purposes."

"Raining outside is accompanied by raining inside."

Count your blessings.

Regarding my recent slackage

I'm just a bit overwhelmed, is all.  Not so much with work(although I am putting in a bunch of extra hours), but the accelerating destruction of America.  Seems like everywhere we turn lately, the Thug Regime is in our faces with yet another blatant "F.U." to the rule of law.  And, of course, none dare call it treason.

It's just damn depressing.

But I'm not giving up.  This Thanksgiving should remind everyone how lucky they are to live in this country, and how rare our freedoms are in the context of history.  I had about ran out of hope that America would wake up, but it's begun.  Though the odds may seem insurmountable, they aren't any more impossible than powered flight, men walking on the moon or computers in our pockets.  This country has always shown its best when our backs are to the wall.  We've done the impossible over and over again.  If any country on Earth can pull itself back from the brink of collapse, it's the United States of America.

May the Good Lord bless and keep us all, and give us the strength we'll need in the days to come.

Ann Barnhardt goes viral again...

...and this is making her Qur'an burning look like nothing.  Never mind her mention on the Rush Limbaugh show...when you make the comics pages, you know you're the issue of the day!!

Here's the original post(2 into 1):

BCM Has Ceased Operations

Posted by Ann Barnhardt - November 17, AD 2011 10:27 AM MST

Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management, It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.
 
The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not.  And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.
 
The futures markets are very highly-leveraged and thus require an exceptionally firm base upon which to function. That base was the sacrosanct segregation of customer funds from clearing firm capital, with additional emergency financial backing provided by the exchanges themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, that base existed, and had worked flawlessly. Firms came and went, with some imploding in spectacular fashion. Whenever a firm failure happened, the customer funds were intact and the exchanges would step in to backstop everything and keep customers 100% liquid – even as their clearing firm collapsed and was quickly replaced by another firm within the system.
 
Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.
 
I have learned over the last week that MF Global is almost certainly the mere tip of the iceberg. There is massive industry-wide exposure to European sovereign junk debt. While other firms may not be as heavily leveraged as Corzine had MFG leveraged, and it is now thought that MFG’s leverage may have been in excess of 100:1, they are still suicidally leveraged and will likely stand massive, unmeetable collateral calls in the coming days and weeks as Europe inevitably collapses. I now suspect that the reason the Chicago Mercantile Exchange did not immediately step in to backstop the MFG implosion was because they knew and know that if they backstopped MFG, they would then be expected to backstop all of the other firms in the system when the failures began to cascade – and there simply isn’t that much money in the entire system. In short, the problem is a SYSTEMIC problem, not merely isolated to one firm. 

Perhaps the most ominous dynamic that I have yet heard of in regards to this mess is that of the risk of potential CLAWBACK actions. For those who do not know, “clawback” is the process by which a bankruptcy trustee is legally permitted to re-seize assets that left a bankrupt entity in the time period immediately preceding the entity’s collapse. So, using the MF Global customers as an example, any funds that were withdrawn from MFG accounts in the run-up to the collapse, either because of suspicions the customer may have had about MFG from, say, watching the company’s bond yields rise sharply, or from purely organic day-to-day withdrawls, the bankruptcy trustee COULD initiate action to “clawback” those funds. As a hedge broker, this makes my blood run cold. Generally, as the markets move in favor of a hedge position and equity builds in a client’s account, that excess equity is sent back to the customer who then uses that equity to offset cash market transactions OR to pay down a revolving line of credit. Even the possibility that a customer could be penalized and additionally raped AGAIN via a clawback action after already having their customer funds stolen is simply villainous. While there has been no open indication of clawback actions being initiated by the MF Global trustee, I have been told that it is a possibility.
 
And so, to the very unpleasant crux of the matter. The futures and options markets are no longer viable. It is my recommendation that ALL customers withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity. The system is no longer functioning with integrity and is suicidally risk-laden. The rule of law is non-existent, instead replaced with godless, criminal political cronyism.
 
Remember, derivatives contracts are NOT NECESSARY in the commodities markets. The cash commodity itself is the underlying reality and is not dependent on the futures or options markets. Many people seem to have gotten that backwards over the past decades. From Abel the animal husbandman up until the year 1964, there were no cattle futures contracts at all, and no options contracts until 1984, and yet the cash cattle markets got along just fine.
 
Finally, I will not, under any circumstance, consider reforming and re-opening Barnhardt Capital Management, or any other iteration of a brokerage business, until Barack Obama has been removed from office AND the government of the United States has been sufficiently reformed and repopulated so as to engender my total and complete confidence in the government, its adherence to and enforcement of the rule of law, and in its competent and just regulatory oversight of any commodities markets that may reform. So long as the government remains criminal, it would serve no purpose whatsoever to attempt to rebuild the futures industry or my firm, because in a lawless environment, the same thievery and fraud would simply happen again, and the criminals would go unpunished, sheltered by the criminal oligarchy.
 
To my clients, who literally TO THE MAN agreed with my assessment of the situation, and were relieved to be exiting the markets, and many whom I now suspect stayed in the markets as long as they did only out of personal loyalty to me, I can only say thank you for the honor and pleasure of serving you over these last years, with some of my clients having been with me for over twelve years. I will continue to blog at Barnhardt.biz, which will be subtly re-skinned soon, and will continue my cattle marketing consultation business. I will still be here in the office, answering my phones, with the same phone numbers. Alas, my retirement came a few years earlier than I had anticipated, but there was no possible way to continue given the inevitability of the collapse of the global financial markets, the overthrow of our government, and the resulting collapse in the rule of law.
 
As for me, I can only echo the words of David:
“This is the Lord’s doing; and it is wonderful in our eyes.”
 
With Best Regards-
Ann Barnhardt

This, friends and neighbors, is integrity.  Make a note of it, since there may well be a test later...!!