Obamacare Doesn't Need the Luck of the Irish!

Irish doctors on Strike - Protest Long Hours & Austerity

So you want Obamacare, but without any hiccups initially in the applications software program?--that's not even going to happen.

So you want Obamacare, but the insurance software program up and running rather quickly?--that's not even going to happen.

So you want Obamacare, but what do you get?--Read what Ireland got after seven years with National Healthcare services coverage doled out to the masses.

On October 8, 2013 Irish doctors went on strike at all of the country's public hospitals. They protested the tight budgeting, their first strike in twenty-five years. Does this portend a bleaker forcast for the Irish economy as the influence of the European Uniion weaknesses pervades into its member nations? 

The Irish Medical Organization represents 3,000 public-sector doctors which has escalated their dispute over work hours that endanger patients.

Work hours requirements were routinely stretched to as many as 36 hours straight, working 100 a week - the government does not dispute they violate the law too.

The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated downward from 1.3% to an anemic growth of 0.2% this year, 2013.

The doctor strikes are a reflection of an ever-growing unrest as the new Ireland 2014 Budget will contain more spending cuts and greater tax increases for the seventh year in a row. Does all this sound like the future of Obamacare? --you bet!

We will need more than the 'Luck of the Irish', we need a big change in the 2014 and 2016 elections to rid our Senate and House of supporters of Obamacare. We must move away from the Obama European Union Socialist Healthcare model.

Obama's Ding Dong Dumb Down Schools

"Many employers can attest, as college instructors will too if they're being frank, that  many college graduates can barely construct a coherent paragraph and many have precious little knowledge of the world—the natural world, the social world, the historical world, or the cultural world. That is a tragedy for the graduates, but also for society: Civic life suffers when people have severely limited knowledge of the world to bring to political or moral discussions", states Jonathan Jacobs, Director of the Institute for Criminal Justice Ethics and Chairman at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY.

"To see the effect of these trends, simply ask a few 15-year-olds, 19-year-olds or 22-year-olds some basic, non-tricky questions from non-esoteric knowledge categories (history, biology, current events, literature, geography, mathematics, grammar). See what the responses are. Ask these young people to describe the basic institutions of American government, or how a case makes its way to the Supreme Court or what "habeas corpus" means. The point isn't to embarrass them, but to wake up the rest of us to how little students have been expected to know even about the political and legal order in which they live."

To flesh out to define some problems in the education system, I can speak to this issue from my own personal experience. After starting up three corporations in the Los Angeles, CA area with million of dollars in sales and hiring upwards to one hundred employees, many of them college graduates, I concur with Jonathan Jacobs that a majority had severely limited knowledge of the world and in no small way due to college courses taught by inept, myopic, liberal biased instructors.

I recall, in particular, one painful search for a General Sales Manager. My ideal candidate's specifications were a minimum 4 year college degree, field sales experience, sales training skills, verbal and writing skills and basic business mathematics required. I advertised in the well-read Sunday Los Angeles Times, at the time, San Fernando Valley News, and local newspapers. I also worked with two well-known employment agencies too. I was willing to put the money up to search, locate and identify the right candidate offering a generous pay package and company benefits too. After a weekend newspaper blitz, I would receive over one hundred resumes mailed in per week. You would be amazed on what was sent in as professional letters and resumes. Sad. This search labored on for over four weeks as I culled the names down to a few likely prospects to interview.

As the pick narrowed down to a few final candidates, two MBA's were in that mix too. I laughingly look back as they came in for their call-back interviews. The MBA, by the way, is not a professional designation like a PhD or an MD; when an MBA is after your name, it just looks like  trying too hard to impress people. Their boastful egos certainly preceded their own high opinions of their immense potential value offered with their "M-B-A's".

In the final negotiations both candidates were thoroughly satisfied with my total compensation package; but, both felt that their three letters titles "entitled" them  for the right to ask for a cut of the company profits too as if they were owners. They exhibited total ignorance in that which they had no right to ask for something that did not belong to them. They had up to their point of college graduation no real world, business management-ownership experience - simply put, they never had skin in the game either or experienced real world consequences of investing one's own money with reward-risk outcomes. It all just becomes one more computer simulation model in business school without any real negative consequences with the collegiate advantage to just walk away when the semester is done.

McDonald's burgers, fries & cold drinks.Similiarly, some view fictional hour-long TV dramas as representing a real set of difficulties, offering pat solutions and solving all problems between the opening titles and the closing credits--so it's no surprise to see a 'McDonald's Generation' who demands 'instant gratification' with fast-service, quality food and timely delivery and expects, of course, life to yield the same immediate results too.

What life lesson were they missing? How about the basic primal fear for survival is no game?--to patiently strive further beyond the point of others in order to succeed while knowing the high probability of failure still exists--"It ain't over until the fat lady sings.", as Yogi Berra so elegantly put it.

Coincidently I hired another MBA graduate who measured high in testing, had the sales experience and interviewed well. He eventually revealed miserable leadership skills to motivate the outside sales force and an inability to plan sales efforts or effectively achieve goals. One solid criticism was he proved out to be an ill-equipped thinker to independently originate ideas from his gut level or draw down from past experiences to navigate uncharted areas. Our wide breadth product line was sold to a diverse customer base such as: aerospace, electronics, pharmaceuticals, health care, biomedical, automotive, food processing, warehousing and transportation as well as government and municipalities. There was virtually no limitations on who, what or where which left everything to his imagination, the missing quality of that Sales Manager. Bottom-line, the sales did not grow and as my first sales manager Wes Clemens always said still applies: "Sales talks, bullshit walks."

So, for today's students, "the primary concern shouldn't be how American students rank in international science and math scores (though that is certainly relevant). It is whether the United States can be a prosperous, pluralistic democracy if higher education fails to require students to think, inquire and explain."

Kim Brooks, a graduate of the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa queried, "I wonder at times, is it even worth it? Do students really need to learn to write?" In Her timely Salon article entitled, "Death to High School English", she certainly addressed the principles to think, inquire and explain. As Kim Brooks mused about that subject she said, "I bounced the question off another friend, Amelia Shapiro, a longtime writing tutor and composition professor who now directs support services at a university in Hawaii."

“I hate that fucking question,” Amelia replies. “I hear it all the time and I hate it. No one asks this question about calculus, but who uses calculus besides math majors? If the question’s going to be asked about writing it should be asked about every subject. Even students who aren’t going to stay in college need to know how to write. We’ve all gotten emails or cover letters where we’ve judged people based on the writing. It’s not an essay but it’s still communication and people fail at it all the time in profound and meaningful ways.”

When Kim asked Amelia why she thinks there’s such resistance to prioritizing and teaching writing, given its numerous applications, given its overlap with critical thinking skills, analytical skills, basic communication skills, she hesitates for a moment, then answers in three words: “It’s not fun.”

[Kim agreed saying] True, but then, teaching (and for that matter, learning) isn’t always fun. Changing my kid’s dirty diapers isn’t fun. Dragging my fat ass onto a treadmill isn’t fun. Helping my grandmother “fix” her computer isn’t fun. Sometimes we do things not because they’re fun but because they’re important."

Jonathan Jacobs says, "The U.S. faces serious challenges; education should be serious and challenging. The cost to America of failing to reverse the trend toward trivializing education will be more than just economic. It will be reflected in social friction, coarsened politics, failed and foolish policies, and a steady decline in the concern to do anything to reverse the rot."

Simple as A,B,C - Like 1,2,3 - Obama Gets Grade of F

Program Student Minds

Obama's Federal Education Program is based upon Arne Duncan pushing the Common Core State Standards, CCSS, Academic standards - understand it - its your future.

"Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education can’t understand why Americans are demanding freedom from nationalized testing, nationalized standards and nationalized data collection. The Common Core State Standards. Academic standards are under attack as a federal takeover of the schools - parents want local controls back again.

In a speech on September 17, 2013 to the American Society of News Editors, Duncan admits: “… the federal government has nothing to do with curriculum. In fact, we’re prohibited by law from creating or mandating curricula. So do the reporting. Ask the Common Core critics: Please identify a single lesson plan that the federal government created…Challenge them to produce evidence—because they won’t find it. It simply doesn’t exist”.

Duncan says there is no evidence of a federal takeover using Common Core. Well, almost; there is no trace of an Department of Education fingerprint on the writing of the national standards, tests and curriculum. This it correct. But there are massive, unmistakable Department of Education fingerprints all over the promotion, marketing, funding and imposition of the standards on states. These fingerprints are everywhere.

Federally created lesson plans don’t exist because Duncan’s department has worked so hard to get around the rules (i.e., Constitution) and to make others do the wrongs that the Department then promotes and funds. The Department’s associates (i.e. Linda Darling-Hammond, Stanford University educator, who believes in forced national redistribution of wealth; Bill Gates, left-wing Microsoft Founder; David Coleman, lead "architect" of Common Core, liberal antagonist to narrative writing and is no fan of classic literature) work with Achieve, Inc., with SBAC, with PARCC, with CCSSO, with NGA and others, to collectively produce the federally-approved education “reform” agenda known as the Common Core Initiative. We know this."

Guess what? There is no evidence that Common Core will do anything it has claimed it can do does not exist– there’s no empirical data, no pilot test, no study to verify claims that the standards will improve diddledy."

The well-reknown and regarded American Association of School Administration, AASA, in their Journal of Scholarship & Practice Research states their purpose for an "Evidence-based Practice That Advance the Profession of Education Administration."  This Winter 2011 Journal contains their highly critical and detailed analysis of what Arne Duncan, the Obama "Education Czar", has developed to indoctrinate the entire American student population from elementary school through college with 'progressive, socialist, liberal studies'. 

This relatively daunting, dry looking report is actually a well written, brief overview about our 'exceptional country' and how well-placed deceptive ideas have been woven into our political landscape.  The mind grab for the people's intellect to think as they are taught is the end game today.  The education misinformation leads to misconceptions which are the hazards of attending classes in schools.  Powerful, left-wing, radical progressives like Billionaire Bill Gates, who heads up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are entrenched in the battle to replace the American school systems.

PLEASE READ - EDUCATE YOURSELF AGAINST EDUCATION

Read Time: 8 Minutes

Winter 2011

AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice

COMMENTARY

Christopher H. Tienken, Editor

AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)

An Example of Data-less Decision Making

The major arguments made by proponents in favor of the CCSS collapse under a review of the empirical literature: (a) America‘s children are lagging behind international peers in terms of academic achievement and (b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students out ranking their global peers on international tests of academic - Winter 2011 AASA Journal of  Scholarship and Practice achievement because of the mythical relationship between ranks on those tests and a country‘s economic competitiveness..

The persuasive, and to this point effective argument made by proponents combines the classic combination of fear and falsehoods. The Roman Poet Seneca wrote, “We are more often frightened than hurt and we suffer more from imagination than reality.” and in this case Seneca was correct.

Unfortunately for proponents of this empirically vapid argument it is well established that a rank on an international test of academic skills and knowledge does not have the power to predict future economic competitiveness and is otherwise meaningless for a host of reasons.

·   However, fortunately for proponents it seems as if some policy makers, education leaders and those who prepare them, and the major education associations and organizations that penned their support for the CCSS did not read the evidence refuting the argument or they did not understand it.

The contention that a test result can influence the future economic prowess of a country like the United States (U.S.) or any of the G20 nations represents an unbelievable suspension of logic and evidence. (NOTE:  This is one of Obama's most often used "Scare Tactics" to push Americans into supporting federal government education.) 

According to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, China‘s undervaluation of its currency cost the U.S. almost 1 million jobs and over 200 billion dollars in lost economic growth and 1.5% of its  gross domestic product last year (The Washington Times, 2010). Economic strength of the G20 countries relies more on policy, than education achievement. Tax, trade, health, labor, finance, monetary, housing, and natural resource policies, to name a few, drive our economy, not how students rank on the Trends in International Math and Science Study  (TIMSS) or the Programme for International student Assessment (PISA). 

To believe otherwise is like believing in the tooth-fairy. The U.S. already has one of the highest percentages of people with high school diplomas and college degrees compared to any other country and we had the greatest number of 15 year-old students in the world score at the highest levels on the 2006 PISA science test.

We produce more researchers and scientists and qualified engineers than our economy can employ, have even more in the pipeline, and we are one of the most economically competitive nations on the globe.

The major arguments made by proponents in favor of the CCSS collapse under a review of the empirical literature: (a) America‘s children are―lagging behind international peers in terms of academic achievement , and (b) the economic vibrancy and future of the United States relies upon American students out ranking their global peers on international tests of academic.

The proponents of the CCSS claim that the standards address critical skills necessary to compete in the 21st century. If so, why do they repackage 19th century ideas and skills? We only need to look at the mid 1800‘s and the Lancasterian Method used in London and some of America‘s cities and the Quincy, Massachusetts schools to see how the idea of standardization will play out. It did not work then and it will not work now.

The language arts and mathematics curriculum sequences embedded in the CCSS standards are nothing more than rehashed versions of the recommendations from the Committee of Ten in 1893 and the Committee of 15 in 1895; hardly 21st Century innovations. The standards do little to promote global literacy through cultural collaboration and cooperation. They do not stress socially-conscious problem solving or strategizing. In fact, a conscious is not even necessary because there is not any authentic critical thinking in the standards. They are inert, sterile, socially static, and in stark contrast to what the United States Council on Competitiveness called for:

The proponents of the CCSS have a problem: They have no data that demonstrates the validity of the standards as a vehicle to build 21st century skills nor as a means to achieve the things the business leaders say will be needed to operate in a diverse global environment. The CCSS are stuck in a time warp. A curricular time machine if you will, set to 1858.

Putin Syria Plan Gives Obama His To Do List

We Must not get into the Syrian War! - Why?

Obama is screaming it's all about those chemical weapons in Syria. This is a great concern, but not the true center of focus into the root issue. Importantly, there's more about what's not said and it has to do with who is shipping Chemical weapons along with their ulterior motives to do such monstrous behavior.

Two Obvious Issues:

• Obama fails to mention this is a purely sectarian civil war between political factions within a country for an internal fight for ruling power. Although some politicians would have us believe otherwise, Bashir al-Assad has not demonstrated or shown real aspirations of war for Lebanon or Israel and wishes to regain his stability of his governance over his own country.

• These al-Queda backed 'Free Syrian Army' rebels are slaughtering Christians as infidels, Islam non-believers, who will not submit to Allah and convert. Their churches, homes and villages are ransacked and burned to the ground. So it's not only chemical weapons, but human carnage decimated from religious persecution and the devastation to the general population by ongoing warfare.

Meanwhile, the Russians are not concerned about chemical weapons issues. Remember that Putin reveres Joseph Stalin, a totalitarian mass murderer as heinous as Adolph Hitler, and murdered Afghanis with chemical weapons during the Russian occupation that they left in defeat with humiliation and taking over Soviet Georgia in the same brutal manner. So it comes without any shock that Russia, after all, manufactures and provides chemical components for developing chemical weapons along with guns and munitions shipping to Syria.

Since Russia's northern ports are frozen year-round and the Black Sea offers little as convenient locations to expeditiously navigate ships to open seas, Syria's Mediterranean warm water naval ports for submarines and ships is strategically important.  The Russians have a base already established for a strategically geographical presence to counter future Chinese aggression against the southern Russian borders. It doesn't look like the Russians are going anywhere in the foreseeable future or may never leave at all.

The Obama administration had a new political game-changer:

The Bashir al-Assad regime is guaranteed a new beginning under the 'Putin-Obama Disarmament Agreement'.

The chemical weapons go away to an "international body" to be destroyed and the U.S. agrees to not have any missile attack.

 On hold indefinitely, the President with the Liberal Republicans and the Democrats who were OK providing assistance to the Syrian 'rebels'.


 Left out in the cold without any American assistance, the 'Farouq Brigade', the same 'Free Syria Army rebels' who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda and Commander Abu Sakar who cut the heart and liver out of their enemies and eat it, 

 Contact your Congressmen today!

U.S. intervention must NOT happen!

Are these the "Free Syrian Army" rebels we help attack Bashar al-Assad?

Time: 03.43

WARNING: This video contains DISTURBING images - 06/17/13 Glenn Beck TV Show

Syrian War Costs - Obama Bills U.S. Taxpayers

Syrian rebels loading explosives into bombs. Americans did not start, enter or fight in the Syrian Civil War, but if Obama has his way, U.S. Taxpayers will now pay billions of dollars to end it anyway. ...Say whaaat?

"With a U.S. attack on Syria on hold, Western-backed rebels said they feared they had lost their best chance of promptly ousting President Bashar al-Assad and sidelining Islamist extremists.

Rebels in Syria, already frustrated with delays in promised U.S. military aid, said on Wednesday that they gave up on the prospect of decisive foreign help after President Barack Obama asked Congress to delay a vote on striking Syria."(1) 

Obama and Putin are floating a disarmament agreement proposal to capture, store and destroy Syrian chemical weapons and stockpiles "under international controls"--a simple answer for a complicated, risky problem. It will require guarded, secured, safe sites and time, years, literally decades spending billions of dollars to safely and effectively destroy serious chemicals. Want to bet who is going to be funding this program? ...The American people of the United States? After all, the United States has had plenty of experience of its own and knows what it will really take--read below what Americans have already learned.    

"The U.S. has been systematically destroying its chemical weapons since the 1970s, but the job of eliminating nerve gas and other agents will take another decade because of the hazards of the disposal process, U.S. officials and weapons experts said. "Safety is over-engineered into these things and that takes time," said Greg Mahall of the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Activity, which has oversight over U.S. stores of chemical weapons and for the majority of the destruction of chemical weapons."(2) 

Under the "Russian Capitulation - Obama War Powers Surrender Plan" we do not attack Syria in exchange to seize Syrian chemical weaponery.

Why hasn't Obama also mentioned yet that the U.S. Taxpayers actually pick up the entire clean-up tab for years? Maybe it's showing even more weaknesses Mr. Community Organizer?

Does any world leadership take Barry Soetoro's word really seriously anymore?

Hello? ...Anybody listening out there?