A new dark age

When I was in school, we were all taught that the period of time between the collapse of the Roman empire and the beginning of the Italian Renaissance was called the Dark Age. The reason it was referred to as such, was there was a general collapse of society, resulting in a loss of knowledge, a decline in the arts, and great societal upheaval. Of course, there are now historians who are attempting to deny those ideas, and since I am no historian, nor was I there, I cannot say either way.

***EDITED TO ADD: I am a Science teacher, and we are required to give students a certain number of literacy assignments each year, so that the kids can practice their writing and reading skills. In this assignment, they had to discuss a science topic of their choice, describing the facts and science behind their subject, and providing evidence for their statements using valid, peer reviewed references. END EDIT *****

What I can say is that we are seeing the dawn of a “Dark Age” of our own. Perhaps we can call it “the Great Unlearning.” As a teacher, I can say that the children who are making it to High School  are functional idiots in many cases. Let me show you an excerpt of a paper that I received this week. This paper was written by a High School Senior, and I looked at his grades from the first three years of English class, and they are all B’s. This year in Senior English, his average is currently a 93%. Read on, and see the language skills that net you a 93%:

Next there is many emotions related to music, their can be high alerting if the tone of a song or pitch is high or low in a song. According to songs with positivity, this will put a high amount of good emotion on a person who was in a bad mood.  If someone listens to “Eye of  The Tiger” by Savior, they are going to be put into a better mood because there is a positive message involved with this song. Your brain is effected by your emotions when you listen to certain music such as mellow tunes, or heavy metal.

Now I know what you are thinking: You think that this cannot be typical, and I can understand where that comes from. Let’s look at another student’s work. This student is a Senior who, according to her father, is leaving next fall for college as a pre-med student. She has 2 A’s and a B for her previous three English classes, and is currently earning a 91% in her Senior English class:

Plants are very important for us to live. The oxygen that is made for millions of dollars, they give us for free. Plants have some requirements in order to sustain life, stay health, and green. Every living thing on earth has some requirements to live. For example, alligators need fish for survival, hens need insects for survival, fish need water for survival and tiger need meat for the survival. Every living thing in the world has different requirements for the survival and if one of their requirements is not met, they will have some kind of loss.

One more sample of what I have been dealing with. This student is a Sophomore, and he earned a 79% for his final grade in English last year. He currently has a 78% in English this year.

If you were to listen to music while working. Which music genre way to help you focus more. This project will come in handy for teachers that allow students to listen to music so they can prefer what the student will listen too.
First Off, It would help us in many ways such as stops us from talking and also let us focus and finish our work quicker. During class say you have headphones on and keeping your brain focus on schoolwork you would be focus and not be able to get distracted by friends and people sitting around you. Also while listening music it helps you get your work done Quicker so you’re not stranded during class and also it will keep you out of trouble from talking and interrupting the teacher.

I have copied and pasted the excerpts above EXACTLY as they were written by the student. These are their own words, just as they were written. I have a total of 120 students this year, and I let them pick the topic for this writing assignment. Only 63 of them even bothered to do the assignment, and of those 63, more than half of them read like the ones I posted above. 
I am not permitted to give failing marks to all of my students, so I have to endure drivel like this. It doesn’t surprise me that 22% of Americans don’t know the difference between Astrology and Astronomy,  or that 42% of Americans believe that 9/11 was either an inside job, or that the entire attack was faked. I also think that polls showing 9% of America thinks that the moon landings were faked are overly optimistic.
The school where I teach is an A-rated school, and the students who attend the school score much higher on standardized assessments than the average student. It makes me believe that this nation is entering what will one day be described as the American dark ages.

Trustworthy, or not?

I became a teacher after I retired from over 20 years as a firefighter and paramedic, where I spent part of my career working with the SWAT team. I spent years as an IDPA competitor, and I am a military veteran. I have carried a concealed weapon for more than 25 years. A permit that has allowed me to carry a weapon into McDonald’s, Disney, public parks, streets and sidewalks. Not once have I used that weapon in a threatening or illegal manner. I have not even had a traffic ticket in more than a decade.
I have spent more than 30 years wearing one uniform or another, defending the people who could not defend themselves, saving lives, and helping others. In that time, I have had dozens of background checks for security clearances, teaching, firefighting, and paramedic licenses, as well as for concealed weapons permits. Again and again over the past three decades, I have proven my character, my devotion, and my trustworthiness.
I would, if necessary, lay down my life in defense of the children that have been placed in my care. Even in Kindergarten. Possibly YOUR children, if you are reading this.
Except the politicians have declared that I am not permitted to do so, because they don’t trust me. So instead, I must sit in the dark, unarmed, unable to protect those children, hiding and waiting for help that may not come, wait with your children to die at the hands of a madman who didn’t obey your laws or your signs.

Police State

The following is a list of the law enforcement agencies with a presence in Washington, DC:

First, there are the Feds. There are over 6,000 Federal Law enforcement agents and police in DC, but no one outside of high level government officials is sure how many more than 6,000 there are, because that is classified:
The US Secret Service
US Park Police (1,800 officers in the park police alone)
FBI Special Investigations
US Marshals
Armed Forces Retirement Home Police
National Zoological Park Police
US Capitol Police
US Supreme Court Police
Smithsonian Police
US State Department Diplomatic Security Service
US Naval Criminal Investigative Service
US Army Criminal Investigative Service
US Air Force Office of Special Investigations
US Coast Guard Criminal Investigative Service
US Pentagon Police
US Department of Defense Police
US Mint Police
Bureau of Engraving and Printing Police
US Postal Police
Homeland Security Investigations
FBI Police (uniformed division)
Federal Protective Service
Government Printing Office Police
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
Federal Bureau of Prisons Police
Drug Enforcement Administration
US Department of Veterans Affairs Police
Amtrak Police
US Army Military Police Corps
US Federal Reserve Police

Second are the Municipal police agencies, with a total of more than 5,200 sworn officers:
District of Columbia Metropolitan Police
District of Columbia Protective Services Police
District of Columbia Department of Corrections
District of Columbia Public Library Police
District of Columbia Public Schools Police
District of Columbia Housing Authority Police

Then there are the college campus police, representing more than 1,000 more law enforcement officers:
American University Police Department
Catholic University Department of Public Safety
Gallaudet University Department of Public Safety
George Washington University Police Department
Georgetown University Police Department
Howard University Campus Police
University of the District of Columbia Police Department

In all, there are more than 12,000 law enforcement personnel in the DC area, meaning that there are more than 2,000 law enforcement officers for every 100,000 residents. This makes Washington DC the most heavily policed city in the world.

With that, DC saw its 105th murder of the year in July, meaning that the city is on pace to see a murder rate of more than 16 per 100,000 for 2015. This makes DC’s murder rate more than three times higher than the national average, and the highest in the nation.

You are required to help the police

or you will go to jail.

How is that? A man named Devonte Conerly who was suspected in a hit and run incident, and was allegedly tried to disarm the police officer who was attempting to arrest him. The police officer asked the crowd nearby to help him, and no in the crowd did anything to intervene. Officers responding to the original officer’s call for help eventually subdued and handcuffed Conerly.

What did they do next? They threatened the members of the crowd with arrest under section 13A of Alabama’s legal code, which reads:

(a) A person commits the crime of refusing to aid a peace officer if, upon command by a peace officer identified to him as such, he fails or refuses to aid such peace officer in:
(1) Effecting or securing a lawful arrest; or
(2) Preventing the commission by another person of any offense.
(b) A person is not liable under this section if the failure or refusal to aid the officer was reasonable under the circumstances. The burden of injecting this issue is on the defendant, but this does not shift the burden of proof.
(c) Refusing to aid a peace officer is a Class C misdemeanor.

So you MUST, by law, assist any officer who asks for assistance. Even so, the Supreme Court has decreed that the police do not have to help YOU if you are asking. 44 of the 50 states have a similar statute.

Police have “no special duty” to aid a citizen facing an immediate lethal threat, according to the City Attorney of New York, in a successful bid to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Lozito. Lozito was nearly killed while subduing a spree killer named Maxim Gelman during a 2011 subway attack.

As Lozito placed Gelman in a chokehold, the maniac stabbed Lonzito in the head. Bleeding and struggling to retain consciousness, Lozito pleaded for help from NYPD Officer Terrance Howell, who was hiding behind a locked partition and refusing to get involved. It wasn’t until AFTER Lozito managed to pin Gelman down and disarm him that Howell emerged from his secure location, officiously telling Lozito, “You can get up now.”

Howell did nothing to detain or subdue the murderer, but he was the one photographed triumphantly escorting Gelman away from the scene in handcuffs, and was called a “hero cop” in the media. He later admitted to a member of a grand jury that he hid from the suspect out of fear for his safety — and no moral or policy consideration is more important than the sacred principle of “officer safety.”

Here is the rub: the police officer is protected by quallified immunity if it turns out that the arrest or the force used to affect it is unlawful. You do not.

Guns versus prescription drugs

In the state of Florida for the year 2012, there were a significant number of cases where prescription painkilling drugs were the cause of a person’s death.

The drug that caused the most deaths was alprazolam, commonly known as Xanax, which was responsible for 323 deaths. Xanaax is prescribed for anxiety disorders and panic attacks. No one ever died of a panic attack, and anxiety is not in itself a fatal condition. The drug that is most often used to treat it kills 323 people a year in Florida alone. Benzodiazepines, which is the family of drugs that include Xanax, killed 2,622 people in Florida in 2012.

Oxxycodone, which is prescribed by doctors as a painkiller and is sold under the name Oxycontin, kills 392 people in Florida each year. Pain is not a fatal condition, and doesn’t kill anyone.

Prescription drugs account for 80.9 percent of all drug deaths when alcohol is excluded. The CDC reports that 46 (almost 17,000 per year) people die every day from prescription painkiller overdoses.  The rate of death for prescription painkillers is 11.1 per 100,000 for Florida in 2012.

Compare that to homicide: in 2012, there were 721 homicides in which a firearm was used as the murder weapon, for a firearm murder rate of  3.8 per 100,000. (In 2014, there were 687, a rate of 3.4 per 100,000)

I am not saying that we should make prescription drugs illegal. I am saying that we should look at the issues with firearms using a bit of perspective.

Lies is all they have

It’s a common meme being spread by anti gun advocates: Australia passed strict gun control laws, and firearm homicides plummeted. Is it true, or isn’t it?

According to the Australian Institute of criminology, the Australian crime rate since 1993 has looked thusly:
Year    Homicides
1993      296            
1994      288              
1995      321
1996      311  
1997      322
1998      284
1999      342  
2000      302
2001      306
2002      318
2003      302
2004      257
2005      270
2006      275
2007      247
2008      258
2009      261
2010      225
2011      236
2012      251

As you can see, the number of homicides in Australia has remained fairly stable. Of course, the anti gunners like to use “gun death” instead of all homicides, as if people who are killed by club wielding thugs are preferable to people being killed by gun wielding thugs. Let’s look at violent crimes by weapon:

As you can see, the teal colored line is “firearms.” That particular line shows that they DID indeed see a drop in “gun related” firearms deaths from 1996 to 1998. What the anti gunners fail to mention, however, is that drop was AFTER the year 1996, which saw a record number of firearm related homicides. The two year decline in gun related homicides brought the number of those homicides down to the same level as the  year 1995, the first year of the Australian gun laws were in effect. In other words, the gun law actually INCREASED the number of  gun related homicides for the two years after the law was passed. In fact, Australia saw firearm related homicides nearly DOUBLE  from 59 to 98 the year after the gun control laws were passed. Calling the fact that the number of homicides then dropped back down to 54 two years later a “plummet” in the number of homicides is misleading.
You should also note that the number of homicides committed with bare hands skyrocketed in the years following the gun law from 108 in 1995 to 151 in 2002, meaning that the now disarmed citizens are at the mercy of people who are strong enough to kill with their bare hands.
The overall number of homicides in Australia is nearly the same in 2012 as it was in 1994, the year before the gun laws went into effect.
In other words, the same number of murders are happening now as were happening in 1994, when there was no gun control in Australia.

Race war

For more than two years, I have warned that a race war appears to be coming. At least some blacks have decided to declare war on whites. Here is a video from one such person:

This is a domestic terrorist who has openly stated on the internet that he has declared war on all white people, and that his goal is to “kill crackers.” The race war has begin, at least for some, and since this video is out there, anyone who winds up having to use deadly force in self defense against this man should produce this video and his website as evidence.

Whether or not you or I want there to be a race war, it appears as though there are some who have decided to start without us. Why isn’t the Federal government investigating these groups as domestic terrorists? Why isn’t the Southern Poverty Law Center listing them as a hate group?

If voting actually changed anything, it would already be illegal

According to Bloomberg, the fix is in, and Hillary will win the nomination, regardless of how voters cast their ballots. There are a total of 4,491 delegates who will decide the nominee for the Democratic party’s presidential run. Of these, there are 713 superdelegates, who are unelected and accountable to only the leaders of the Democratic party.

So 16 percent of the party’s votes are cast by delegates who do not answer to the voters, even though this is the party that claims that each and every person should have a vote, even convicted felons and illegal immigrants. By securing those superdelegates, Hillary ensures that there is a built in margin that any challenger must overcome.

Now don’t think that I am in any way saying that the Republicans are any better. The Republican party doesn’t use superdelegates. Instead, they have a system where there are “hard” and “soft” delegates. Hard delegates are required to vote for the candidate on the first ballot cast at the convention. After the first ballot, they may vote for whomever they choose. Soft delegates may vote for any candidate they choose, even on the first ballot they cast. There are complicated and vague rules that make this about as clear as Obama’s foreign policy.

At the republican convention, there are a total of 2,380 delegates.

There are 126 delegates, about 6 percent of the total, who are complete free agents. These are party leaders and elected officials, three per state or territory, who will go to the convention unbound to any candidate.

Then there are 84 delegates, or 3.5% of the total, who will be selected at state conventions, or appointed by a committee of Republican officials in the state, with no direct or indirect relationship to the popular vote in these states. States like Pennsylvania, Illinois and Louisiana select some of their delegates trough this method, for instance, even though they also pick some through their primaries. These 84 delegates are officially unbound. However, influential Republicans within each state will have some say about just who they are and about which candidate they are most likely to prefer.

Another group of 188 (7.9% of total delegates) who are picked through a caucus process but are officially unbound to any candidate. In addition to being unbound, these delegates are usually also picked in a way that is separate from the popular vote that is held in each state.

…and the rules go on and on. In short, the voters of each state actually have very little say in who the Republican nominee is,  because 16.7% of the delegates are selected by the party leadership, just like the Democratic party does at their convention.

This is why we get the same candidates in election after election, because the leaders of each party want it that way. Our choice between the Democrat or the Republican really isn’t a choice at all, because the real choice has already been made in the boardrooms of the ones controlling the purse strings of the two political parties.

Since the rules are set up to deny any new parties to the arena, and the number of Congressional seats has been fixed at a maximum of 411 for over a century, even though the US population has more than tripled in that time span, meaning that we are less represented now that at any other point in history, your vote literally doesn’t count.

Which brings me back to the title of this post: “If voting actually changed anything, it would already be illegal”

Global warming alarmists

Back in 2000, the global warming people were predicting that by the year 2015, there would be no snow anywhere in the world, and that the ice caps would be gone.
According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.
Top 10 snowiest cities through March 21:

1. Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. — 158.7 inches 
2. Marquette, Mich. — 157 inches 
3. Bangor, Maine — 131.5 inches 
4. Caribou, Maine — 129.4 inches
5. Syracuse, N.Y. — 118.5 inches
6. Worcester, Mass. — 116.8 inches
7. Boston, Mass. — 110.3 inches 
8. Buffalo, N.Y. — 109.3 inches 
9. Erie, Pa. — 104 inches 
10. Gray, Maine — 103.7 inches


According to Steven Nerem of the University of Colorado, we are “locked into at least 3 feet of sea level rise, and probably more.”… This is startling news if you are one of the 150 million people on Earth who live near the ocean. Even if you don’t live close to the sea, you likely use goods that are manufactured in plants near the water, or vacation at the beach.