3 February 2013 –

Odds ‘n Ends

1.      As many others prepare to watch the Super Bowl today, I ruminate on the idea that professional football fanfare is a Sunday worship service.  I couldn’t devise a religion that receives more loyalty and devotion from its adherents yet rewards them with less meaningful insight into life than does professional football fandom.  Screen violence, beer, and a bunch of guys transfixed on the replay.  The result?  Nothing that improves them at all.  In fact, even the stats the game produces do not hold the magic or hidden meaning of baseball stats.   I am glad the game lost whatever appeal it held for me years ago.   I suppose I will hear the score on the news tomorrow and promptly forget it. 

2.      According to a new report by the nonprofit Center for College Affordability and Productivity 37% of employed college graduates are in jobs that require no more than a high-school diploma, and 11 percent are in occupations requiring more than a high-school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree.  About five million college graduates are in jobs the Bureau of Labor Statistics says don’t even require a high school education.  The problem, the Center purports, is an oversupply of college-educated Americans compared to the number of jobs requiring a college education.  See the full article below.   Hmm.  I ask myself a couple of questions:

a.       Like all statistical displays, they don’t tell the whole story.  How upwardly mobile are the people in these jobs, after getting a college degree?  Is this group of over-qualified janitors, bartenders, and waitresses working in temporary jobs until a more permanent job requiring their college skills inevitably opens for them?  Or, do these same people stay in this group year after year, and for what reasons?  Finally, how many people are in these jobs because are retired from something else and don’t want to do more than be a janitor.   This would be people 45-65 or 70, who, for whatever reason, are no longer teachers, scientists, or Air Force colonels.  I wonder.  If the nearly half of college graduates in the job market who are working in these jobs stay in these jobs for an extended time for lack of a better job, then one could say that there truly is an oversupply of college-educated Americans compared to the number of jobs requiring a college degree. 

b.      If the only purpose for going to college is to be prepared for the job market, then is college a waste of money in the light of these statistics?  It probably is a waste of money. 

c.       The final question is a follow-on to my last question:  Is college a waste of money for those who arrive on campus to be educated in the finest liberal arts tradition?  Given the incredible amount of educational information available at a much cheaper cost on electronic media today, college probably is a waste of money.  This is especially true at institutions where most classes on the lower levels, the classes that form one’s initial ideas in a particular discipline, are rarely taught by professors.  These duties usually are  given to graduate students while the professors do research or bask in the idleness of tenure.  If you want to do is understand the world and how it operates, then college will actually get in your way.  If you want to learn to write, then, as my brother told me forty years ago, you have to write. Buy the AP Style Guide, books on how to write fiction, and a book or two on logical display of an argument.  Read them and write.    I suppose one could do that while holding down a job as a janitor—or in Central Africa as a Government Technical Monitor. 

d.      Again, is college worth the ever-increasing costs?  If you want to work for a bureaucracy, whether it is government or business or academia, then you have to show that you have enough discipline to jump through the applicable hoops in the applicable college.  I finished a Master’s in Public Administration—otherwise known as a Master’s in Bureaucratic Crap—not because wanted to know all about the rise of the bureaucratic state, but because I wouldn’t have been promoted without a master’s degree.  Now, I am a retired colonel with all sorts of information on how bureaucracies become amorphic, throbbing masses of inefficiency and no interested audience.  But, it was the best degree offered at the Yokota Air Base, Japan, Education Center while we were stationed there.  Everybody has a story, I guess.  Mine includes working as a taxi driver, bartender, and laborer after graduation and waiting to go on active duty. 

REFERENCED ARTICLE AS IT WAS FOUND ON NEWSMAX.COM

Nearly half of employed college graduates in the United States hold down jobs that don’t require a four-year college education — including 323,200 waiters and waitresses, 115,520 janitors and cleaners, and 83,028 bartenders.

A new report from the nonprofit Center for College Affordability and Productivity discloses that 37 percent of employed college graduates are in jobs requiring no more than a high-school diploma, and 11 percent are in occupations requiring more than a high-school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree.

About five million college graduates are in jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says don’t even require a high-school education.

The lead author of the report, Richard Vedder — an Ohio University economist and founder of the Center — says the trend is likely to continue over the next decade.

“It’s almost the new normal,” he declared.

The problem is an oversupply of college-educated Americans compared to the number of jobs requiring a college degree:

·  The number of Americans whose highest academic degree was a bachelor’s grew 25 percent to 41 million from 2002 to 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

·  The number with an associate degree rose 31 percent during that period.

·  Americans with a master’s degree rose 45 percent, and those with a doctorate degree rose 43 percent.

·  Labor Department data from 2010 show that there were 41.7 million college graduates in the workforce, while the number of jobs requiring a college degree was just 28.6 million.

·  In 1970, about 10 percent of Americans over age 25 had a college degree, while today the percentage has tripled to 30 percent.

According to Vedder, that helps explain why 15 percent of cab drivers had a bachelor’s degree in 2010 — compared to 1 percent in 1970 — as did 25 percent of retail sales clerks and 15 percent of firefighters.

Vedder, who is also an Adjunct Scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, added: “There are going to be an awful lot of disappointed [graduates] because a lot of them are going to end up as janitors.”

31 January 2013 –

On 6 February, the national board of the Boy Scouts of America meets to discuss the removal of the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation.  If the board votes to remove the restriction, homosexual men can be scoutmasters.  The board offers the sop to its many church sponsors that if it lifts the restriction, local sponsors can still decide for themselves on such issues for their troops. 

The sponsors of local BSA troops, the majority of which are churches, must think cleanly and clearly about how this decision may indeed pollute their local organization through association.  Would you, as an upright, church-goer want your twelve-year-old daughter in a girls’ softball league where the other teams’ uniforms bear the sponsor names of local strip joints, saloons, and x-rated movie parlors?  I don’t think so.  You might be able to protect her from such influences during closed practices and scrimmages; but, once your daughter runs on the field to play the other teams, you won’t be able to control what is imposed upon her.  And whose fault would that be?  Yours.  After all, you knew what the league was when you joined it.     

Churches claim, by traditional definition, to be organizations built on enduring principles—truths.  Churches claim that these truths come by commandment from God.  By living according to these principles, one builds in one’s character certain virtues that enable one to draw closer to God.  Among the virtues that Christians want to develop are the following:  trustworthiness, loyalty, charity, compassion, courtesy, kindness, obedience, happiness, thrift, bravery, cleanliness, and reverence.  If one’s church—the structure that enables one to draw closer to God, the structure that one supports with sacrifice of time and effort—preaches that homosexual acts cripples one’s ability to be close to God, and, by extension, defining oneself by one’s indulgence in such acts continues to distance one from God’s presence, then why would one want to continue to embrace a church when that church associates with a secular organization that now endorses the opposite?  And, indeed, why would one offer up as sacrifice one’s son to the false gods of such a secular organization? 

Christian churches, particularly the Latter-day Saint and Catholic churches, sponsor many of the  Boy Scouts of America’s tens of thousands of local troops.  They are found in nearly every community in America.  These two mentioned churches are more centralized in their policy and doctrine making than any other Christian churches in America.  Therefore, they should take the lead in the Christian community.  They should show others how to build better programs to teach their young men the truths necessary to develop the virtues that will enable these young men to be physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.  Otherwise, their sacrifice to Baal will have already been offered.  

29 January 2013 –

The rush to erode society didn’t wait even one day after Secretary Panetta’s announcement that DoD would open all combat positions to women.  When queried by the press, the Secretary implied strongly that drafting women would certainly be probable if the draft were reinstituted.  One step of social engineering leads to another leads to another.  The social fabric of a vibrant society is tearing as we watch it.   

Yesterday, the announcement of the bipartisan group of senators’ agreement to restructure our immigration policies and laws bears further examination.  A history of U.S. immigration policy would be interesting.  Long and interesting.  Too long for a blog.  Besides, most people use their read of history to justify what they feel and think based on their modern experiences.  Let’s compare a couple of current arguments on immigration reform using the value and emotion laden definition of the term that I presented yesterday.  Reform:  to put an end to evil by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action.  Which of these opposing arguments contains evil and should be reformed? 

a.       The widespread concept of “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants describes what over 150 cities in 34 states have done by writing laws and declaring policies that dictate that local law enforcement not cooperate with federal authorities to enforce existing immigration laws, mainly the overarching 1996 “Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigration Responsibility Act.”  Is sanctuary evil or does it righteously react to the evil of government’s prosecuting or processing illegal immigrants for deportation, no matter the extenuating conditions or circumstances that forced these people to come to the United States?  

b.      The Rule of Law describes the concept that the laws of a strong and peaceful nation be applied to all within the nation’s jurisdiction and that such laws be applied evenly and consistently.  Is a strict interpretation of the Rule of Law evil or does it guard against the eroding evil of societal structure caused by those who deliberately break the law and those who aid and abet those who break the law? 

c.       The concept of being a “Shining City on a Hill” means that the United States, the richest and most powerful nation on earth, should extend an invitation to all who want to live there to come and enjoy the rights and privileges of citizenry.  Is this concept evil or does it react righteously and generously to the effects of the horrors and travails imposed on so many people in so many places—including in the lands across our southern border. 

d.      The concept of Strategic Imperatives (I just made the name up; I hope it catches on) describes the necessity for law-makers and policy implementors to hold paramount the best interests of the United States when making strategic decisions on how the United States interacts with the rest of the world, no matter how tragic or horrible conditions may outside its borders.  To help is fine; but, only if it furthers clearly-stated U.S. strategic interests.  Is this concept evil or does it protect the United States from the ultimately destructive effects of massive movements of destitute people, international, economic upheavals, and eventual loss of power to less altruistic bad guys in a bad world?

e.       There is a modern, widely-stated concept that the United States’ strength lies in its diverse population, with its many groups of different peoples, each with its own views of life and society based on myriad ethnic, cultural, and language experiences.  What is more, interpretation of the “moral intent” of the Constitution and subsequent laws should reflect this inclusion process.  Is this concept evil or does it necessarily defend all the peoples in the United States against the historical and continuing subjugation of their rights to a racist and sexist, white, English-speaking, male elite?  

f.       The concept of assimilation into American society describes a process where the primacy of individual liberties, individual rights, and the literal interpretation of the Constitution that enshrines these rights and liberties in the formation of modern laws are essential to creating an American.  An American’s loyalty to a societal group may stay strong, but that is not what makes one an American.  Is this an evil concept or does it combat the evils of group rights, the stated mixed loyalties of hyphenated-Americans, and those corrupt, self-serving politicians who attempt to balkanize American in order to gain power? 

If you prioritize the evils and the response to evils that you agree with in the above comparisons, I am sure that you will more clearly understand your position on the complex issue of immigration law and policy reform.  I hope you will arrive at the position that Representative Sonny Bono (R-CA), so succinctly declared when asked what he thought of illegal immigration:  “What’s there to say;  it’s illegal.”  And the beat goes on.  

28 January 2013 - 

Odds and Ends:

1)      Poor Secretary Clinton.  She falls down, suffers a concussion, has to testify before the Senate and the House about a debacle that was on her watch, and suffers from double vision due to a damaged nerve in her head.  It has not been a good couple of months for the Secretary.  She now has glasses with prisms in them to correct the double vision.  Apparently, at least this is what I heard, Secretary Clinton had to get the corrective lens immediately in order to prevent further falls and more physical damage.  It seems that when she started to see double, she instinctively walked to the left, causing her to smash into everything.  She has now corrected that action; for how long clearly remains to be seen. 

2)      Soul legend Tina Turner, is giving up her American citizenship and requesting to become a citizen of Switzerland.  Ms. Turner, 73, has lived in Kuesnacht, a Zurich suburb, since 1995 with her longtime music manager, Erwin Bach.  It seems that MS. Turner, née Anna Mae Bullock, has come a long way from Brownsville, Tennessee.  I hope she will continue to be happy and secure in a country the size of a postage stamp and that looks like a postcard.   For her naturalization process to be complete, however, the canton of Zurich has to approve her request, and then the Swiss Confederation will review the case before a passport can be issued.  The two-step procedure is worth mentioning.  Switzerland is a modern democracy that resembles the United States in the 18^th and 19^th century.  The cantons, or states, hold much more power that the Swiss federal government does on such matters as citizenship, voting, etc.  Local government matters there.  It works.  It seems that one can be happy and prosperous and secure with limited central government and strong canton control of the law.  I am sure that Ms. Turner will continue to love the United States, but then again, what’s love got to do with it anyway? 

3)      Rich and famous celebrities changing abodes and citizenship is not important to most average people.  The rich and famous live real lives, but they are not seen as real by those whose only contact with them is through music, sports, films, or books.  But mass immigration of real peoples into the U.S. has always been a contentious issue. The recent announcement that a group of influential senators—is there any other kind of senator?—has reached an agreement on “the outlines” of a comprehensive overhaul of U.S. immigration laws and policies is good news.  This overhaul will address creating a way for citizenship for the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S., will implement stricter border enforcement measures, and will ensure stricter enforcement of visa compliance by aliens in the country legally.  There also will be procedures to ensure that young people brought into the country illegally as children will be given a faster path to citizenship.  A couple of things:

a.       Nothing about this announced plan is remarkable.  In fact, all of this easily could have been done last year, with the same group of senators leading the process.  The fact that such a comprehensive plan was announced only one week after the inauguration means that they must have been working on it for some time. So, why now for the announcement?  Because nothing contentious gets done in the year leading up to major elections.  Restructuring immigration law & policy\y—massive,  illegal immigration being one of the biggest threats to the sovereignty of the United States, simply was too contentious an issue for the senators to do anything bold and courageous until after the election.  Yawn.  Politics as usual.    

b.      Two definitions of the word reform conflict with each other as they apply to the issue of illegal immigration.  According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the first definition of reform is to make change in a social, political, or economic institution or practice in order to improve it.   This is a neutral definition.  Any side of the argument could use it to start a stump speech.  The second definition is to put an end to an evil by enforcing or introducing a better method or course of action.  The second definition, full of moral judgment, is where the conflict begins.  Some people say that we must put an end to the evil of policy makers mocking the rule of law and creating an increasingly balkanized country for the sake of a few votes.  Others say that it is evil when local government and racist groups resist giving immigrants—illegal is such a perjorative term—the rights, advantages, and privileges of citizenry, especially because of the harsh conditions most of them escaped in coming here.  How you choose the lesser of the two evils usually determines where you stand on the issue of illegal immigration. More tomorrow on immigration reform.   

25 January 2013 - 

I wonder what it will take before this Administration’s façade of integrity will finally collapse?  There still is a huge cover-up of what happened on 11 September 2012 in Benghazi, Libya.  The cover-up is not the administration trying to hide a bungled and amateurish security process.  I posit that the cover story of bungled security is to deflect attention from and thereby hide a deeper cover-up.   The Obama administration wants to hide covert, ambassadorial-level actions in Libya that, if made public, may bring down the administration and certainly would have lost the 2012 elections for the President. 

On 12 September 2012, I first heard about the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi and the death of Ambassador Stevens, and my career intelligence analyst instincts perked up.  I started to list questions that needed answering, as if the United States were some other country and I had to create an objective picture of events and intent.    Three things immediately came to mind when I saw the videos on television: 1) This was a heavily armed, organized attack on already determined targets for already determined purposes;  2) This was done on 11 September, the 11^th anniversary of 9/11, a day when much of the Moslem Arab world sang for joy in the streets, 3) My mind’s map of Libya showed Benghazi on the east coast of the Gulf of Sitra and the capital, Tripoli, hundreds of miles to the west on the Mediterranean coast.  I then asked myself the million-dollar question:  What was so important that U.S. Ambassador to Libya had to be in Benghazi, a known rebel and terrorist stewpot, on the anniversary of 9/11, far from the protection of the embassy in Tripoli?  As an analyst, I would scour all sources to find the answer to that question.  The answer would lead me to the answers to most all other questions about the attack and to why we failed to respond in a timely manner.  Without the answer to this question, any analysis or subsequent conclusion would be worthless. 

Why isn’t this question being seriously asked and then the answer being scrupulously examined for veracity?  Why are we accepting this flimsy cover story of bungled security practices in the Department of State?  As an intelligence analyst, if  Buglestan were to announce that an attack on its consulate in Marseille on the anniversary of francophone terrorists’ butchering of thousands of Buglestan citizens was a spontaneous response to an expatriate French activist’s advertisement on the internet criticizing French culture and religion, I would laugh out loud.  My experience would immediately warn me that Buglestan is hiding something important.  I would look for who was targeted and killed, where they were killed, and why. 

I repeat the question that has neither been asked nor answered in public.  What was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi on the anniversary of 9/11, far from Tripoli?    My analytic experience tells me that Ambassador Stevens was there doing something so wrong, explosive, clandestine, or embarrassing to the Obama administration that if the truth were finally revealed, President Obama would risk certain impeachment and, quite possibly, conviction.    Why else would an administration chock full of clever political operatives come up with and stick with such an embarrassing cover story as security bungling for its enemies to chew on if it didn’t want to cover up something even more damaging? 

What could Ambassador Stevens have been doing without a security detail in Benghazi?  Arms deals with governments or terrorists?  Covert oil deals?  Organizing a coup d’état?  Trying to help Libya counter French influence in Africa?  The list of possible scenarios is as long as a screenwriter’s script for his next adventure/spy movie.  I fear that the Ambassador’s presence in Benghazi was of such importance that the President directed or gave his personal approval for it and may have allowed the Ambassador to be killed when things went to hell.  If we let the administration continue to guide the criticism of the events, then we deserve to be fooled.   

I am taking Sunday off.

Look for more on Monday, 28 January.    

25 January 2013 –

The most precise definition of the term gun control is, as the old saw goes, to control your breathing and to squeeze, not pull, the trigger.   The rest of the debate is full of misdirection and obfuscation.  One example:  The verb to assault has been applied as an adjective to many weapons.  People from both sides of the debate use the term.  Elements on one side hawk weapons with that moniker in order to entice certain buyers.  Elements on the other side spit out the adjective to make some weapons seem even more dangerous in the minds of frightened voters.  What determines control is at the heart of the debate over Second Amendment rights. 

I want to focus on one method of persuasion in the weapons control debate. The strict-government-control advocates repeat it often to convince the less intellectually rigorous, but generally law-abiding and hard-working people who make up the bulk of the swing citizenry, that guns should be controlled by the elite decision-makers in the federal government.  In all discussions or debates, the elite or their talking heads eventually ask the easy question: “Do you really need an assault rifle?”  “Do you really need a magazine with 24 rounds in it to protect yourself or to go hunting?” is another version of the talking point.  These questions win adherents to the elites’ side of the argument, probably more than any other statement or fact. 

This type of question is a powerful method of persuasion.  It makes one feel guilty about buying something one really doesn’t need.  I think it exploits the old Protestant work ethic, penury toward pleasures culture that the Progressive Left is trying so hard to undermine in so many other ways.  How can one answer these questions without sounding like a selfish and self-centered, ideologue jerk?  One risks losing the argument even if one eloquently and flawlessly explains the irrelevance of “need” in the constitutional concept of rights.  This is because the target audience will be moved more by the question than by the answer.  The target is the guy who is not ostentatious, either because he is truly modest in his needs and wants or because he is envious of those who can afford to buy things they want when he can’t.  There are a lot of these people in every crowd.  Their immediate answer to such questions is that they don’t need weapons—and others, by extension, don’t need them either. 

“Do you really need such a weapon or clip (Gun purists would say magazine, but this question is never directed toward them)?” evokes a range of interpretations and feelings among many people in the United States.  Have you ever used or understood the meaning of such expressions as, “Now, you don’t need to do such a thing!” or “You don’t be needin’ to talk that way!”  or, the more direct “You don’t need that!  Get away from there!”  Our society’s use of the word need, as a verb or a noun, ranges from survival requirements all the way to rampant illicit desires.  Proponents of gun control gently pose the question and let each listener interpret it in the way he feels most comfortable.  It is a powerful method of persuasion by deflection.  Scary method to get people to support something that is not in their best constitutional interests, heh?   Oops!  I guess I shouldn’t need to talk that way!

24 January 2013 –

I was going to take the day off from writing on my blog.  I am tired.  It was hot and muggy today—not usual for the dry season here on the equator in the Congo—and I walked all around a military training facility assessing how much effort it is going to take to bring it up to snuff so that we can train soldiers here again.  I drank three quarts of water when I finished my two hours in the sun.  I really wanted to shower and fall into bed.  But, then I realized that I did have something to say about Secretary Panetta’s leaked announcement that many more combat roles, including serving in small, front-line combat units, will be open to women in the near future. 

1)      If the decision had been made based on careful study of how women in combat roles would increase the military’s capability to face challenges in the modern battlespace, I would be less saddened by it.  But, that is not the case.  Women serving in combat units is the result of a push in the last generation to knock down what the desiccated witches of the left considered a male bastion of chauvinism and opportunity.  I do not deny that there may be unique military advantages to having women serve in combat.  But, the risk to our society of unstudied and unintended consequences is obviously not of concern to those who have pushed the hardest for this to happen.  This decision is probably the wrong thing to do, and we are doing it definitely for the wrong reason.  Social engineering, it seems, reigns supreme.    

2)      The few modern, historical examples of women soldiers in combat do not support DoD’s decision.  The most prominent example is Israel.  From its inception in 1947 through the 1967 war, Israel had women in combat units in its Defense Forces (IDF).  After the ‘67 war, a study of the effects of women in combat on combat effectiveness showed that it detracted from combat effectiveness to a point where it was considered essential that the IDF pull them from combat arms roles.  The evidence showed that even the young men and women who were raised in the kibbutzim of the Zionists’ secular and sexually liberated society, not unlike feminists’ goal for our society, could not work together effectively enough in the stress of combat to ensure victory.  Israel made the decision to pull women out of direct combat roles because it was dangerous to continue its current practice.  Why did Israel make such a decision?  Because, Israel must use its military to survive in a very rough neighborhood.    Survival trumps social engineering.  Our decision makers haven’t had such a life-or-death situation in a shooting war since the Civil War.  They have, however, consistently bled our military over the decades in pursuit of poorly conceived foreign policy objectives, adding women’s names to the casualty roles in increasing numbers.  Leaders from both sides of the aisle have followed the Progressive crusade to remake the world according to their vision of what is right and “safe for democracy.”   If women in combat doesn’t work in a survival setting, why should it work when troops are fighting for far less obvious things?  It won’t, and the results will be dead soldiers. 

3)      Women in combat roles now will make it far easier to draft young women in the future. Our Progressive leaders will eventually decide that we must, for social engineering reasons, for reasons of “fairness” in an impending crisis, or to take advantage of a doubling of the eligible pool of draftees, conscript into the military young women in equal numbers as young men.  Our society says it values families and the unique, cohesive tasks that women have in maintaining them and in raising children.  But, women in conscripted combat roles will give us even less force to maintain that embattled position.  Another nail in the coffin of the traditional family.  The left is winning a battle in its war on our society with this decision.