Beware the Ides of May -- (Sunday, May 12, 2002)  It was
        on the Seven Days rerun of Friday's OPB show, starring
        Miss Stephanie, Mr. Lunch, Mr. Herring, Mr. Reinhard
        and a little guy with a goatee who looked a lot like either a
        young Sigmund Freud or somebody who works for the
        Salem Statesperson Journal. (Steve "Che Guevera" Law.) 
        He didn't say a hell of a lot.  The clot of libdems floated
        high above reality, as usual.  Reinhard, whose first name
        is David, is a gently conservative soul.  His position at both
        the Oregonian and on this program is analagous to that of
        a declawed Thomas Sowell at U.C. Berkeley.  He stuck his
        head up and announced that he disagreed with
        something that was said.  

        Mr. Herring, whose first name is Hasso, writes out of the
        once stinky Albany.  He stimulated Reinhard's sotto voce 
        reaction when he said that nobody has an answer to
        school funding.  The debate about that has been going on
        forever, Herring said, and nobody has come up with a
        solution.  Reinhard's objection was of a generic nature,
        and indicates that he hasn't run across one, either.  

        Would somebody mail Hasso and David a note with the
        answer?  All you need is one word.  Vouchers. 

        No doubt, the flaming lefties of that panel (a term which
        refers to pieces of wood with so little depth they can't
        stand up without governmental assistance) would say,
        "Shreik!  Eeek!  Disaster! It's too risky!  Anything
        decentralized is risky!  You don't know what they're
        teaching in decentralized schools!  Without government
        control what have you got?  You've got the old colonial and
        frontier schools.  They taught children civics and history!  
        They made children learn Latin!  Worst of all, they told
        children to learn to stand on their own two feet and accept
        responsibility for their own actions!  People those schools
        turn out can name the three branches of government
        instead of just the three stooges!  Eeek! Shreik!" 

        My response can best be framed in a dignified, measured
        and academic manner.  Government schools suck.  With
        few exceptions (assuming there are some), they produce
        young people who know more about PC social propaganda
        than the history of America, simple mathematics or how to
        write a basic English sentence.  It is not difficult to find a
        modern highschool graduate who doesn't know the
        difference between a democracy and a republic.  If you
        ever find one who knows who Alexander Hamilton was,
        give him an executive job.  He's a prize. 

        I am not suprised that Reinhard forgot to mention
        vouchers to Albany's mullah of the mosque at Al Geewhiz.
        Even if the thought had arisen, what's the point?  Herring
        glistens with the armor of the "progressive." (The
        euphemistic descendants of Marx.)  Once on that
        program, he said that there is no proof that government is
        inefficient!  Our suggestion is that he put up a list of
        government departments on the wall, close his eyes and
        throw a dart.  It is not possible to miss hitting the name of
        one that is inefficient. 

        If you are a conservative, you really should watch Seven
        Days on a regular basis.  Within minutes of turning on
        your first one, you will at last fully realize that the term
        airhead can be used to describe more than dumb blonde
        women.  (LL)  

        Lehrer and friends, on the 15th, said the most
        extraordinary thing.  Oklahoma has a government funded
        program to teach welfare women how to pick husbands
        that aren't nasty drunks, and married couples how to talk
        to each other.  The objective is to reduce the divorce rate. 

        After decades of taxing people to the point that if they are
        married both parents have to work to keep the family
        afloat (and so rarely see each other, let alone their own
        children), after decades of welfare regulations that pay
        more if a woman is a single mother than a married one,
        after decades of destroying traditional conjugal rights, 
        allowing the father no choice in whether or not his
        children are aborted and jailing husbands on charges of
        spousal abuse whether there is any proof of such abuse or
        not -- the government now wishes to support marriage? 

        I think not. 

        If it actually did want to do that, it could succeed at it
        within a single year by ceasing to bleed the American
        family of its money.  Failure to communicate in a
        politically correct way is not the chief cause of marital
        problems.  Financial distress is the chief cause of that. 

        You want the divorce rate to drop?  Cut taxes in half. 
          

        Terror and Tehran 

        Early May -- (05/02)  9:00 P.M. The inimitible
        spinmeisters of PBS, in their Frontline program on Iran,
        shone forth with a vicious light, tonight.  The problem with
        Iran is religious conservatives.  Fifteen minutes into the
        program.  I have counted four such usages.  So far, I have
        not heard the use of the word "Islam," or even "Moslem." 

        The term "cleric" has been spoken a dozen times so far. 
        But, the kind of cleric has not been identified.  Perhaps
        PBS is unaware what kinds of "clerics" Iran has. 

        The enemy, my friends, your enemy, is "conservative
        religious clerics." (also "hardline clerics") 

        The murder in Lebanon of three Iranian diplomats set it
        off, the man says.  Because the Lebanese army was
        Christian (no Arab army in this program was called
        "Moslem"), they had done the deed with the permission of
        the United States. (No doubt at the time under the
        influence of hardline religious clerics.  An aside: Lebanon
        is now "protected" by the forces of Syria, an Islamic
        military dictatorship.  Once, it had a huge population of
        Christians.  Not a hell of a lot of them left, now.) 

        "Hardline religious government." The narrator said it
        again.  The term "cleric," again.   9:34P.M.  It finally
        happened!  They said "Islamic Revolution!"  

        The New York Times reporter said that Bush, Sr. was the
        best with respect to Iran.  He attemped rapproachment. 
        She is a moron.  She is a silly female American
        "journalist" who thinks Arab men will respond to talk.  All
        silly American females think in much the same manner. 
        Talk is the solution to all disputes.  She is listed by this
        program as an expert on the subject.  The author of a
        famous book on Iran, in truth she isn't qualified to
        comment on anything beyond its location. 

        "Secular Democracy." That is the term I just heard.  That
        is the goal of all reasonable people.  (Democrats who
        separate church and state are good.  Republicans who
        want to allow God into public places are bad.  Shall we
        have the name of the Christian dictatorship on Earth, my
        friends?  There isn't one?  But, PBS equates all religions,
        just as your multicuralist teachers equate all cultures.)  

        The New York Times infobabe just said that our current
        president's statements about terrorists being evil offended
        Iran.  Putting Iran in the "Axis of Evil," said the infobabe,
        is a foolish statement.  Obviously, she should be
        president, not the ignorant Bush. 

        Joseph Biden, Democrat, says the phrase has soured
        chances of rapproachment with Iran.  Axis of evil speech 
        The narrator said it again.  Iranian demonstrations are
        usually choreographed, the narrator said, but this year
        they seem sincere  Widespread shock and discontent over
        the "Axis of evil" speech.  Bush caused this situation and
        is responsible for it, says the Iranian "cleric" on camera. 

        The democratic reform movement in Iran is overshadowed
        by the conservative religious leaders. The Bush policies
        are keeping them from suceeding in their effort for
        freedom.  Iranian teenagers go into the mountains and act
        like teenagers everywhere, full of fun and imagination.  
        Bush's careless statements are going to ruin their lives. 

        PBS has more on their website, some of it about Iran's
        "alleged" pursuit of nuclear weapons. 

        The next Frontline will give us the truth about the
        followers of Islam around the world.  I can hardly wait.  I
        need to be properly educated.  If PBS doesn't do it, who
        will? 

        (Hardline Christian conservative laughter from the
        audience.) "Do these people get paid to do this?" asks one
        hardline Christian conservative.  "Yes," says the hardline
        Christian conservative next to him. "You pay them, through
        your taxes both directly and via tax subsidies for their
        donors."  "Must I?" asks the first hardline Christian
        conservative.  "Yes," answers the second hardline
        Christian conservative. "If you don't, the Internal Revenue
        Service will take your property and put you in jail." 

        There is no doubt that "hardline conservative religious
        clerics" represent a danger to Iran.  That's because the
        term "conservative" in Iran means people who oppose
        freedom.  Conservatives in America stand for exactly the
        opposite viewpoint.  In America the hardliners you have to
        watch out for are the liberal secular clerics.  People like
        the creators of this stupid, biased, hour long piece of
        television tripe.  

        Postscript: I watched the second program on Islam. 
        Moslem women in Malaysia who objected to family law
        courts in that land being based on "traditional" Islamic law
        said that the Koran doesn't contain any of the tenets the
        courts use to hand down rulings.  They referred to these
        tenets as being the creation of male-dominated traditional
        (what PBS calls "conservative") clerics of the 19th century. 

        One of the people the program featured was a young
        Moslem woman who grew up in Saudi Arabia, then moved
        with her mother and father to America.  She believes
        Moslems are in denial about the damage that has been
        done by members of her faith, and believes they should
        stop considering themselves victims, face reality and clean
        up their act. 

        Good for her. 

        A few days later -- PBS Masterpiece theatre aired a
        program about a latter day British hospital.  Titled
        "Innocents," it had to do with an investigation into a high
        mortality rate with respect to operations on children.  The
        show made me think about other kinds of dead babies. 

        Like PBS children's programming, this show reeked with
        irony, coming as it did from a network which supports the
        slaughter of unborn children.  But, of course, as long as
        any part of a child remains inside a mother, it is not
        "innocent" at that time because it's not "viable" at that
        time.   Well, sort of. 

        This sort of thing is typical for the politically correct.  Their
        existential philosophy allows the rules of ethics and
        morality to shift as needed.  For example, in-utero surgery
        is well established these days.  Some unviable tissue
        masses are viable, it seems. 

        The judge and jury of that is the mother.  The executioner
        is the surgeon.  The dead thing is a child if the mother
        wanted to save it, and will receive a burial service.  The
        dead thing is a tissue mass if the mother wanted to get rid
        of it, and will either be used in medical experimentation
        or put in a bag and thence into a dumpster. 

        Innocence, according to the Left, is like everything else in
        their miasmic philosophical manual.  It's relative.  One
        doesn't need to introduce the subject of religion into the
        abortion discussion.  Eliminate God from the argument
        completely if you wish. 

        The fact is that no rational legal system would agree with
        the idea that a doctor could be punished for sloppy
        medical procedures that resulted in the death of an
        unviable tissue mass. 

        Oh, and one other small item.  Had that drama been
        about America, the guilty party would have been, oh,  the
        HMO system, doctors who drive big cars and live in fancy
        houses, or just capitalism.  Private, for profit, medicine,
        you see, is evil. 

        But, since that drama was about an English medical
        tragedy, even though the cause of all those deaths was a
        bad doctor who was protected by the system, they didn't
        mention, let alone blame, the system.  This is because
        PBS, like OPB, and all Oregon leftists, worships the
        British medical system. 

        It's socialized medicine, you see.  

        (LL) 

        © 2002 Oregon Magazine

© 2002 Oregon Magazine