Homage To The 60’s

March 5th, 2010 No comments

link  More Than 1,000 March in Berkeley to Protest Budget Cuts. Category: News Updates from The Berkeley Daily Planet – Thursday March 04, 2010.

You have to read the entire piece to get a feel for just how disconnected these people are from reality:

“…Students, faculty, staff and workers protested the budget cuts, fee hikes and furloughs in public education, chanting slogans, waving signs and playing loud music as they walked down Telegraph Avenue…”

Amusingly, the protest tradition is so advanced in Berkeley that they even have a ceremonial dance:

“…A few Latino students got up to do a symbolic dance not far away from the Subway shop that had its windows smashed a week ago…”
 
You know your protest has rich history and tradition if it has its own dance.  From another student who was arrested for no reason by the police while inciting a riot:
 
“Thursday night I went to this dance party and I was unjustly arrested on Telegraph and Dwight,” said Goodrich, a senior in American Studies. “I was struck by a baton which caused my nose to bleed. I was struck all over my body when I was only exercising my right to free speech. My experience was intensely painful and angry. But I am not the first they have attempted to silence and I will not be the last. Every bone in my body is a sign of their attempts to silence us. But we are not afraid … Man, today we are not going to be silenced. We are fighting for the future.”
 
Somebody’s watching too many films from the 60’s.  This guy obviously has career potential with the Al Sharpton gang or at the very least as an acting coach teaching the Hyperbole method.  Ostensibly, this is a protest against government cutbacks in funding to universities, which can be a sympathetic cause.  Sympathetic  until you look at the headlines dominating the papers about a little issue the State of California has been wrestling with recently.  A little thing called bankruptcy.  It’s not only ironic but galling that university aged students and teachers have not been reading about the severe financial crisis gripping their state.  It’s as if they are on a sinking cruise ship with water pouring in on all sides and they’re worried about a shortage of shrimp at the buffet table.
Extrapolate this mentality to when they become real people and make political decisions and you have an explanation for the plight of America today.  Big issue problems that affect everyone are ignored in favor of the pressing wants of the individual or small, vocal groups.  Though students notionally pass through an education of enlightenment, they still manage to come out the other side with adolescent entitlement thinking firmly entrenched.  
 
No solutions are proposed as to how to address budget issues, apart from dancing ceremonially.  Students who think rioting and destroying property will correlate with funding should get big ‘F’s on their grades upon resumption of school.    Either that, or in the future,  students then will  break the glass on their businesses  when the big karma boomerang comes around. 
 
Not surprisingly, another angle is introduced into the protests.  All of sudden, racism is at play.
 
“…Latin American Studies sophomore Edgar Quiroz-Medrano held an “End Racism at UC” poster next to Medina. “The UC system is made up of an overwhelming majority of white administrators which leaves only a few administrators of color,” he said. “This needs to change…”
 
Now there’s a guy Sharpton can use right now, never mind graduation.
 
Categories: Culture, Politics Tags: , , , , ,

Look Out, He Has a Finger

March 3rd, 2010 No comments

link  Give Us a Right to Be Free of Those Who Bear Arms: Ann Woolner – Bloomberg.com.

I have an idea, why don’t we just tell criminals that they can’t use guns?  Prominently displayed on signs as you enter a town or city will be the warning that no guns are allowed, so criminals will have to resort to other weapons of intimidation or some very strong language to get what they want.   Any drug deals that may be done will have at least one person armed on both sides with either a slingshot and or a thesaurus.   Of course, some concessions will have to be made by the populace as well.  For instance during a bank robbery, the mere pointing of thumb and forefinger in a mock gun pose should be enough to spur the teller to hand over all the loot.  This is only fair in return for observance of the local ordinances.  I’ll be the first to agree that drive by finger pointings are much more civilized.   Better yet, why don’t we just ban criminal behaviour in certain areas?

While I will concede that packing heat to church is a bit much,  even in Texas, to universally ban firearms is also an extreme position in the U.S.  Especially since it is enshrined in the constitution.   To be sure, I’m not convinced that carrying six shooters displayed on the hip is the way to go for everyone.  Actually, it is rather unnerving to think that the guy next to you in the Mcdonald’s can lose it just because he was short a few fries and starts waving the Smith and Wesson.  As we know, there are enough nutbars running loose that this scenario is not unlikely.  Just read some of the writers on the Huffington Post. 

Presumably, most citizens don’t really feel the need to own a firearm, feeling safe in their society and secure under the protection of their local police.  But what of people who live in areas that are more iffy.  The plight of the 76 year old gentleman who lives in the south side of Chicago brought this issue up again in the news recently.  His neighborhood is so rampant with violence and home break-ins that he wants the right to have a firearm to protect himself and his property.  Why is that an issue to someone who lives in a leafy suburb across the country?  The author states:

“…Chicago’s looking better to me all the time…” 

She’s obviously never been to the south side of Chicago where red lights are routinely run to avoid having to stop the car.  A place where there were more murders in 2009 than there were casualties in Iraq for the same year.  Since  the police are obviously unable to offer round the clock protection for this or any other citizen, it is unfair to leave this gentleman or anyone for that matter at the mercy of miscreants who would invade their home. 

I don’t know who is responsible for the old saying, “if people are happy to be sheep, there are many who are willing  to be wolves”, but that certainly applies on this issue.  In the U.K., for years the bobbies there were acclaimed for being armed only with whistles to get their jobs done.  This wishful thinking is no longer the case and like all police forces, they are now suitably armed.  To think that unarmed citizens will not be victimized by armed criminals is equally naive.

Categories: Culture, Politics Tags: ,