Yes, This is the 44th POTUS

And believe me, if you’re reading this from outside the US, I and all Americans wish I could give him to you, though that would be cruel on our part and you’d be foolish to accept the offer.

The boy is walking, talking – and talking, and talking, and talking ad nauseatum – proof that being handed access to fine educational opportunities will not necessarily make one smart or wise.

You’ve got to give him credit though; he’s the only boy on the planet than can say, “Err….Derp,” and have thousands die and economies topple.

Obama and his handlers have released 10 states from the No Child Left Behind requirements that have been in place for 10 years. Those states are: Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. At least 28 more states as well as Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico are expected to seek and receive similar dispensation by the end of February, 2012.

Why are these waivers being asked for and granted? Because these states’ “school systems” can’t meet the 2014 requiring that all students be proficient in reading and math even though they had 12 years to raise themselves to that basic standard.

Obama, faced with having to apply the sanctions that NCLB requires and having failed to coerce Congress to lower the standards, has simply decided to waive the law as if it didn’t exist in the first place.

After waiting far too long for Congress to reform No Child Left Behind, my administration is giving states the opportunity to set higher, more honest standards in exchange for more flexibility.

– Barack Obama

Obama, his reelection bid always held firmly in his mind, can blame President Bush and Congress all that he wants. Doing so doesn’t change the fact that, even with over a decade to work with, the public school system has failed to meet basic objective measurement of their capability to teach math and reading proficiency.

Admitting failure is the first step towards fixing the problem. Sadly, Obama’s second step of removing the standard and allowing those who have failed to redefine they’re own standards and metrics is not in any way shape or form a step forward.

Really, they should just have debates with only Mitt Romney in them. There’d still be all sides of every issue represented.

30 Seconds! What Do They Do With The Other 27?

Still, as the LSM’s and Obama’s presumptive GOP nominee Romney does make an interesting comparison against Obama.

Obama was raised as a Muslim and may share in all or part of their ideology and Romney has changed political positions so often he looks like a Whirling Dervish. Romney has held every position on every issue during his political tenure and Obama has done his best to hold none.

This is going to give a whole new and sad meaning to “All or Nothing.”

It’s easy to blame technology. After all, why should teachers actual teach what students can use modern technology to do for them instead?

But They Didn’t Teach Us That In Ethnomathematics!

I don’t think it’s fair to blame technology though since the average child in America could recite chapter and verse of the Liberals’ politically correct versions of history and sociology how America was wrong and how the country was based upon the evils of: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, religion, nationalism, and capitalism.

Oh yes! Religion (except for Islam post 9/11), nationalism, and capitalism are taught as “evils” in the modern (re)education camps the Liberals demand we call schools.

That same child could also likely parrot his “teachers’” chimera that teaching math and science and testing on those subjects is racist because it can’t take into account the differences in cultural backgrounds of non-White students. He or she could also offer strikingly similar rationalizations as why all the “teaching” was done to the lowest common denominators in his or her class.

No. Technology may be an enabler in this educational failure but it’s not the cause. The cause is the Liberals’ desire to indoctrinate children into their anti-American ideology.

Just A Short Subway Trip Uptown From OWS…

With millions of both Americans and Liberals out of work the narcissistic little boy decides to extend his Billion Dollar Campaign to NYC’s fashion district with a celebrity laden fashion show featuring high-end designer Obama merchandise.

I imagine Obama and his handlers are glad that Bloomberg finally cleared the OWS rabble out. He’d be a little hard pressed to shuck and jive his way out of that confrontation.

I’m Sorry. I Won’t Do It Again, I Promise

Yeah, that sounds hauntingly familiar. Abused women having hearing that sort of thing for generations. But time and time again, as soon as the abuser suffers another perceived setback or loss of power and control, the beatings start again.

Let’s just hope that the American people show more sense and self-preservation than the majority of those abused women and that they kick Obama to the curb in November.

Race Is Always A Trigger In Politics

This is an odd attitude for a man who lost his job for speaking honestly when that honesty didn’t align with his previous Liberal masters’ anti-American agenda.

It’s an even odder attitude for the man who authored Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America–and What We Can Do About It

In Enough he wrote that too many black Americans are in crisis – caught in a twisted hip-hop culture, dropping out of school, ending up in jail, having babies when they are not ready to be parents, and falling to the bottom in twenty-first-century global economic competition.

Yet, despite his previous run in with political correctness and his previous written work, Williams’ response to Americans’ indignation at how he misconducted the Fox News/Wall Street Journal GOP Primary debate in Myrtle Beach, SC was:

Race is always a trigger in politics, but now a third of the nation are people of color — and their numbers are growing. With those minorities solidly in the Democratic camp and behind the first black president, the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics.

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

– Juan Williams

This from a man who spent 233 pages in Enough bluntly and forthrightly – not a dog-whistle to be heard – lambasting and execrating Black Leaders and the entirety of the “Black Community” as being perversions and debasements of Black Culture and as having squandered every civil rights gain since the Civil War?

Then again, perhaps Williams’ attitude isn’t odd at all. Williams is one of those “people of color” and, if he’s also one of the majority of them who is “behind the first black president,” what  better way to undermine the entire opposition to his boy, Obama getting handed a second term as POTUS than to decry anything and everything they say as somehow being “code words” or “dog-whistles” for racist sentiments.

Or maybe Williams is just trying to get his old job at NPR back, who knows?

One the brighter side, approx. 1500 poor women per year will be able to be referred by Planned Parenthood to breast cancer screaming service providers.

For those Americans who understand that abortion is the murder of the most helpless and only guaranteed innocents in the world – and who are actually against it even if childbearing inconveniences some females, Komen’s rapid capitulation to the abortionists in painful and maddening. There are, however, other points to consider in this matter.

Do Not Act As They Do

Komen For The Cure’s mission is stated as the eradication of breast cancer, not the ending of on-demand abortions in America.  The two things are not related beyond the simple fact that both are “women’s issues.” It just doesn’t make sense for Komen not to reverse their decision in the wake of the Feminists’ shrill and strident objections because not doing so could jeopardize the success of their mission.

Anger should be directed at those Feminists who placed on-demand abortion above women’s health, not at Komen.  Remember always that it was exactly these Feminists who called for Komen’s destruction for not supporting abortion. Americans should not sink to their antisocial level and similarly put the fight against breast cancer in jeopardy.

Market Forces In Action

Utterly irrespective of whether we, as Americans, like Komen’s giving in to the abortionists, this was a direct case of free market forces in full operation. It was empirical proof that, in the absence of governmental intervention and meddling, people can directly impact and change the course of business. Certainly, we don’t have to like this specific occurrence but we must respect it for what it was.

Enough of Komen’s consumers were against the new funding policy to potentially negatively impact Komen’s revenues enough to make a difference. Komen responded as is required by the free market and, unless we’re willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater, we have to understand and accept that.

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Many of us donated to Komen For The Cure when they donated approximately 0.17% of their annual outlays to Planned Parenthood, which funded only 4% the breast cancer screenings Planned Parenthood provided, and I can’t see the point in turning away from them just because they tried to change that and failed due to market pressures.

Our domestic enemies might be comfortable behaving that way, but we should be better and more intelligent than that.

The Feminists or, at least those who publicly define the movement, will willingly throw any other plank of their platform on trash heap along with scalded and dismembered corpses of their murdered unborn children in order to further their ability to kill those unborn children at any time for any or no reason at all.

If you want a synopsis of the Feminists’ instantaneous hysteria and vitriol, it can be found here. Alternately, you can go to the cited WaPo article, Why Komen defunded Planned Parenthood, and grind your way through the earlier comments (Sort Oldest to Newest).

NOTE: Some of the later negative comments were more rational and thoughtful, touching on other aspects of how Komen For The Cure conducts business. None of my rage is focused on them.

Those earlier comments and the general knee-jerk reaction across all the Feminist websites definitely show that these sorts don’t care about women’s health, only their continued privilege to terminate their pregnancies at will.

Some very basic – and grim – statistics follow. Based upon them you tell me if these Feminists who were so quick to rant at- and call for the destruction of Komen For The Cure are at all interested in women’s health.

Pregnancy & Abortion

22% of American pregnancies end in induced abortions. Only 3% – 12% of those were reported by the women having them to have been due to concerns about their health and we have no statistics on the sources or severity of their concerns. Even this low percentage seems inflated since the US has only an approximate 0.024% maternal mortality rate.

Breast Cancer

12.5% of women in America will be diagnosed with one form or another of invasive breast cancer during their lives. Another 3% will be diagnosed with one form or another of in situ breast cancer. 17% of these women will die from the disease within 5 years.

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It seems to me that, if one really cares about women’s health, one doesn’t immediately call for the end of America’s largest and most successful breast cancer awareness organization just because they’ve shown insufficient ideological purity by moving away from the very politically and socially controversial Planned Parenthood.

To be fair though, I’m both very pro- breast cancer awareness and research and staunchly anti-abortion and am, thus far less likely than these Feminists to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But About Komen…

As I noted near the beginning of this post, while there’s no excuse for the early rants against Komen, some valid questions were raised later, both about Komen’s business model and continuing usefulness.

There’s a huge intellectual and ethical difference between instantly seeking the destruction of an organization over their not adhering to ideology only tangentially – at best – related to their mission and having that ideological divergence be the last straw on a pile of disappointments.

Changes in affiliation and funding aside, is Komen For The Cure a good charity? Some data follows:

Charity Watchdog Ratings

• Charity Navigator gives Komen it’s highest ranking, 4 stars, and gives them an overall numeric score of 66.20 (higher than Planned Parenthood’s 61.03 score)
• Charity Watch lists Komen in their Top-Rated Charities and gives them a B+ rating (same as given Planned Parenthood)
• Give Well doesn’t have a rating for Komen but one of reviewers expressed disappointment with Komen (and the American Cancer Society)  because they spent more on education, awareness and treatment provisioning programs than on medical research, but she implied that this was because public education and provision of existing treatments in the “Developed World” don’t translate well into global improvements, which seems to be Give Well’s focus.

Those seem like pretty strong ratings from the groups devoted to monitoring the behavior and efficiency of charities.

Komen’s Financials

• Total 2011 FY Revenues: $439,451,449.00
• Total 2011 FY Expenditures: $408,977,824.00
• Expenditures – Research: $75,301,537.00 (19%)
• Expenditures – Education: $181,092,283.00 (44%)
• Expenditures – Health Screening: $54,089,036.00 (13%)
• Expenditures – Treatment Services: $23,251,563.00 (6%)
• Expenditures – Operating Costs: $75,243,405.00 (18%)

Data is derived from Komen’s 2010 – 2011 Consolidated Financial Statements prepared by independent auditors (Ernst & Young)

Both Komen’s research and education expenditures are larger than their operating costs and their operating costs, at 18% of total expenditures, are far below the national average of 24%.

Komen also spent over $54 million on breast cancer screening services, of which only the $700 thousand they had previously given to Planned Parenthood has been reassigned.

It is, however, obvious that Komen’s focus is on education and awareness programs, not screening or treatment programs since their education expenditures are more than double the combined screening and treatment expenditures, and are more than research, screening, and treatment expenditures combined.

Some Achievements Komen Has Been Part Of

• Almost 75% of women over 40 years old now receive regular mammograms as compared to less than 30% in 1982.
• the five-year survival rate for breast cancer, when caught before it spreads beyond the breast (60% of diagnosed cases), is now 98%, compared to 74% in 1982
• US Federal government expenditures for breast cancer research, treatment, and prevention now exceed $900 million per year, compared to $30 million in 1982.
• At 2.5 million, breast cancer survivors are now the largest the largest group of cancer survivors in the US.

Those are some substantial achievements. True, Komen was only a part of them but I believe that it can’t be truthfully said that Komen and their pink ribbon weren’t the leaders in these efforts.

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Looking at the data it seems that Komen For The Cure is a lean, highly focused charity that has to-date done a great deal of good and who will do what is necessary to ensure that they can keep doing so. If that means shuffling some small amount of their grants away from a controversial entity that could bring political pressure down upon them by association, they’ll do it in order not to jeopardize their mission.

There is the question though of whether or not Komen’s mission is still worth pursuing in the manner that they’ve chosen to do so. Their focus is on awareness and is there a continued need for such efforts and monies to be spent on such awareness?

“Pink Ribbon Fatigue” is real. Some, such as medical sociologist Gayle A. Sulik, Ph.D even go so far as to claim that the “Pink Ribbon Culture” has reached the point where it has built a “breast cancer industry” which many pharmaceutical companies are profiteering from.

And they have a point. America is very much aware of breast cancer, so continued extensive efforts in that area might be – and could definitely be seen as – more self-serving or inertia-based than truly useful.  It’s also quite true that the sentimentalism of Komen’s “Pink Ribbon Culture” keeps breast cancer at the forefront of what I choose to describe as the “cancer maintenance industry” instead of refocusing medical science on the less profitable curing of the disease.

Personally, I’d like to see them shift some of their money away from education and awareness programs and into more research and/or treatment and screening programs. It’s not, however, enough of an issue to me that they’re not doing so would cause me to stop donating to them, just as whether or not they work with Planned Parenthood never affected my donations to them.

Sadly, the rabid, infanticidal harpies who’ve managed to become the public and political face of the Feminists have dramatically differing priorities.

It seems that politics has gotten too raw and real for some people.

This, of course, begs three related questions: who are these people crying for increased civility, what is it that they actually want, and why do they want it so much?

Who’s Crying For Civility

I see two disparate and unrelated general segments of America’s population crying out for an increase in civility in political speech and argument. They are respectively the apolitical drones and the Leftists, the Liberals and Progressives. Each makes similar outcries but for seemingly different reasons and with different real goals.

What Do They Really Want And Why?

The apolitical people just want things to go quietly. They’re uninvolved in politics, fervently wish to stay that way, and are both bothered and scared by the passion that is being shown by many others. Whether from cynicism or self-centeredness, they do not want to pull their heads out the oh-so-comfortable sand and become involved and the fire of current political discourse is preventing them from doing this.

The staid, stuffy, and easily ignored ways are what these drones want to return to because they don’t want to open their eyes and choose a side.

The Leftists, these Liberals and Progressives, are quite different.  They are awake, aware, involved in the political process, and they have a definite direction that they want to take America in. Their cries for civility are really two things: cynical attempts to silent their enemies and cries for validation and acceptance.

The willfully uninvolved will just have to stop their ears better and learn to keep their heads down.

For many of the Left, their cries are just dog-whistles for censoring the American people. They don’t really want civility, as their very cries for it often show, so much as they want to stop any dissent against their foundations of their agenda.

For others on the left it is a matter of crying out for acceptance and validation. They’re looking for some affirmation that, even though their enemies disagree with their core ethos, they are still respected and approved of.

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Sadly for those who’re crying out for increased civility, I don’t see much chance of- or value in its return any time in the near future. The divide in America is not too deep; it’s to fundamental. It doesn’t allow for the luxury of civility anymore. It’s not a political divide; it’s an ethical and moral divide.

We’re not going to be silenced. We’re not going to engage in carefully managed debates over minutiae of methodology when we want to change the goals and systems. And we’re very much not going to respect our enemies when we find the core beliefs that underpin their goals and actions to be utterly abominable and abhorrent.