Right Minded Online

World Net Daily continues to expose the public school agenda of the gay-rights movement, the latest shenanigans being a training video produced by a gay advocacy group.

A nationally distributed training video produced by a “gay” advocacy group – which claims it’s been shown on more than 100 public television stations – advises teachers to promote homosexuality as normal and healthy to children as young as kindergarten age, regardless of what values the child has been taught at home.

“We are asking kids to believe this [homosexuality] is right. Not as a matter of moral principle, but as a matter of, we’re educating them and this is part of what we consider to be a healthy education,” one unidentified teacher said during the videotaped meeting of educators preparing to teach – or as their critics charge, “brainwash” – their students.

That particular response was to a question from another teacher who wondered how to approach homosexual advocacy when a student comes from a background of biblical teaching, that is, that homosexuality is a sin.

“I don’t know what to do about this but, as a school are we saying that kids have to support this? I guess that’s what it sounds like to me that we’re saying. If a child comes from a background that says homosexuality is not correct, are we telling that child that they’re supposed to, this is what you are supposed to do?” asked the teacher.

I still can’t figure out why the far left expends so much of its energy on trying to normalize a deviant form of behavior that is practiced by around 2% of the population, nor why the notoriously “pro-choice” left is so bothered that children might actually be taught at home by their parents that homosexuality is a sin. This is why private Christian schools and home schools flourish in American, because parents in many public school districts cannot trust what’s going on inside their children’s classrooms. This is also why the left (especially teachers unions) abhor home schools, because children who are taught at home by their parents cannot be influenced by the godless ideologies that liberals promote in the classroom.

Jerome J. Schmitt at the American Thinker has a fascinating piece on the history of the scientific method going all the way back to Galileo. The essay builds up, of course, to global warming, which Schmitt deconstructs this way:

Instead of doing the hard work of establishing scientific fact, which requires intelligence, resourcefulness, creativity in experimental design, and proper professional skepticism of the expected outcome until the confirming measurements are realized, we see proponents of the revolutionary global warming theory resort to verbal “hand-waving” arguments in attention-grabbing efforts to convince the general public of the validity of their theories — and their righteous prescriptions to curtail industrial activities in the name of reducing “greenhouse gases”.

They invoke a “consensus” instead of empirical proof. Who designated the members of the consensus? How was consensus determined? Was it a secret ballot? Was the election stolen? The media and our politicians remain uncurious about these matters.

Consensus-building falls in the realm of politics not science. Not coincidentally, the favored prescriptions of climate change alarmists for remedying “global fever” directly imply the need for world taxes, world government and a planned global economy, all longstanding socialist dreams. The alarmists have resorted to obtaining a Supreme Court ruling declaring carbon dioxide, necessary for life, a “pollutant”, forgetting the inconvenient truth that judicial rulings from the Trial of Socrates through Galileo’s Inquisition through the so-called “Scopes Monkey Trial” have never favored science.

And the amazing thing is that global warming alarmists use their dire predictions as proof that global warming happening, or is going to happen. Weather predictions aren’t proof of anything. Weather observations serve as the proof. For example, I could predict ten inches of snow on Christmas Day, 2007. A global warming alarmist would use this as proof that it was going to snow ten inches on Christmas Day, 2007. But the forecast can only be proven or disproven once we actually observe what happens on Christmas Day, 2007.

And they say that Republicans have declared war on science. Actually, it would be the leftist global warming alarmists who have declared war on science by turning their crackpot theories into a religion. Republicans have instead declared war on politicizing science.

World Net Daily addresses the latest attempt by the California Legislature to further turn their public schools into indoctrination camps for (they hope) tomorrow’s liberals.

“Pushing this radical homosexual agenda in California schools will stifle the truth in favor of political correctness and will inevitably conflict with the religious and moral convictions of both students and parents,” said CRI Executive Director Karen England. “The full ramifications of this sweeping legislation could affect the entire nation as most textbook companies tailor their material to their number one purchaser: California.”

She noted that Los Angeles schools already have implemented most of the proposals now pending for districts across the state, and among the changes are:

“Mom” and “dad” and “husband” and “wife” would have to be edited from all texts.

Cheerleading and sports teams would have to be gender-neutral.

Prom kings and queens would be banned, or if featured, would have to be gender neutral so that the king could be female and the queen male.

Gender-neutral bathrooms could be required for those confused about their gender identity.

A male who believes he really is female would be allowed into the women’s restroom, and a woman believing herself a male would be allowed into a men’s room.

Even scientific information, such has statistics showing AIDS rates in the homosexual community, could be banned.

“It’s embarrassing that we’ve got kids who can’t pass their exit exams, but we add all sorts of complications [to school],” she told WND.

It’s amazing that liberals have no problem pushing their godless ideologies on schoolchildren, but let a Christian student make any kind of reference to Jesus Christ, and you suddenly get censorship, cries of “separation of church and state,” ACLU threats, and lawsuits.

(By the way, there’s one foolproof way to solve the gender confusion that liberals get all worked up about. Just look between your legs.)

Former Tennessee State Senator John Ford (D-Memphis) was was convicted of bribery yesterday by a jury of his peers. It is still inconceivable that the former senator, a corrupt politician even by the standards of Memphis politics, spent so long in the Tennessee General Assembly writing the laws the rest of us have to live by.

Wal-Mart announced in a press release last Thursday that its customers have saved $290 million on selected generic prescription drugs since September, 2006, when the company began selling generic prescriptions for $4 each.

A friend of mine has pointed out a webpage that shows physical evidence of the Israelites crossing of the Red Sea as described in Exodus. This is interesting stuff.

The Financial Times has done some digging into the carbon offset industry, and has found that it has huge credibility problems. We knew this from all the scooping Bill Hobbs did on Al Gore’s carbon offset company. But the FT did an even broader investigation.

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.

Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a “green gold rush”, which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go “carbon neutral”, offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.

In other words, the trendy carbon offset industry has a lot in common with global warming itself. They are both a hoax and a fraud.

The Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees reports that Social Security payments will start to exceed payroll taxes in 2017 and that “The projected point at which the [Social Security] Trust Funds will be exhausted comes in 2041.”

Furthermore, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao declared that “If you are 33 today, by the time you are eligible for full Social Security benefits, funding for those benefits will fall short.”

Well, I’m 37, and am not counting on seeing a dime of Sosh’Security money. I’m not being a pessimist. I’m just saving for retirement and making other financial decisions that don’t involve burdening my child and grandchildren while they are trying to raise families. They shouldn’t be obligated to fund my retirement, too.

At any rate, isn’t it ironic that the left gets worked up over bogus weather forecasts made decades in advance, and is prepared to waste trillions of dollars in public monies on silly programs as a result of those bogus forecasts, yet ignores a far sounder forecast of the financial decay of our entitlement system?

Indeed, Prime Minister Nancy Pelosi greeted the report this way: “The report reinforces one basic reality — in its current form, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until 2041 and even after that will be able to pay 75 percent of benefits.”

Mrs. Pelosi, who is the most powerful woman in America, makes a fundamental error by assuming the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund. I’m sure she knows this privately, but she assumes that the average American is ignorant to the fact that THERE IS NO SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND. The “trust fund” is simply a stack of IOU’s from other government agencies to the Social Security Administration. In other words, there isn’t some huge pile of loot sitting around Washington, D.C. called the “Social Security Trust Fund.” You see, for years the American taxpayer has paid his payroll taxes into the general fund. Year after year, the Congress appropriates those taxes just like all the other taxes we pay on general government expenditures. The money that we pay into the “trust fund” may end up going to fund someone’s retirement, it may end up going to fund the war, it may end up buying toilet paper for a federal courthouse somewhere. One place our surplus payroll taxes aren’t going is a bank account designated for future retirees. So, there is no Social Security trust fund, per se, because that money has already been spent by Congress. Heck, corporations get prosecuted for accounting tricks that are less deceptive that the myth of the “Social Security Trust Fund.”

So, the magical date here isn’t 2041. (We’ll all be underwater by then, anyway, according to global warming alarmists.) The magical date is 2017 — ten years from now — when the federal government starts shelling out more money to retirees than it takes in via the Social Security scam. That’s when those IOU’s start coming due. At that point, the Congress will have four options: cut benefits to retirees, cut spending in non-entitlement programs, raise taxes, or run up deficits like we’ve never seen before.

Do not believe it when some politician or bureaucrat starts talking about the Social Security trust fund. It’s a myth. It does not exist. That’s why, if given the opportunity of opting out of Social Security, even if it meant I had to forfeit all the payroll taxes I have ever paid, I’d do it today. I would even have to think about it. I’d take that 6.2% of my income (12.4% if I got to keep the portion my employer has to pay into Social Security) and invest it myself, and walk away from the entitlement system altogether. But the Democrat Party would never hear of that (and probably a healthy number of Republicans, too). One of the worst things that could ever happen to the Democrats is a nation whose retirees were drawing checks from their own private accounts and not the government. Democrats would not be able to use the elderly as political pawns, and it would facilitate their demise. This is why Democrats will fight to the last man to preserve the program that FDR started, and is why they oppose Social Security privatization, or any other solution that gives the American taxpayer more control over his money.

Harry Reid: Anti-motivational speaker

Bonus links:
More messages for Harry “Lost It” Reid from Iraq
Lieberman slaps Reid: “We should not surrender in the face of barbarism”

Back on April 12, Glen Dean wrote a post defining conservatism, and challenged other conservative bloggers, including me, to render their definitions. I’ve been meaning to do this ever since then, but am just now getting around to it. My definition is going to be much shorter than Glen’s. He wrote in essay format. I’m listing bullets.

1. There is a God.

2. Every individual possesses unlimited potential, and is of equal and inestimable value.

3. The individual must be empowered at the expense of government.

4. Charity only truly occurs when people help others voluntarily, and with their own money.

5. That government is best which governs least.

6. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and wrong is never right.

7. The most effective cures for poverty are capitalism, nuclear families, and education.

8. The United States of America is the greatest nation that exists, or has ever existed, and sometimes it is necessary to defend the U.S.A. by the use of force.

9. There is no one who can better determine an individual’s destiny in life than the individual — not the government.

10. Because no person has more vested in the outcome of raising a child, there is no better parent for a child than his own parents — not the government.

11. Our rights are bestowed by God — not by men.

In Michigan, a 15-year-old’s opposition to a pro-homosexual event at his school got him sent home for the day.

David Gardner didn’t agree with Oakridge High School’s observance of the Day of Silence, during which proponents of homosexuality place tape over their mouths or refuse to speak, even in class. As part of the event, participants pass out pro-gay literature to students.

David grabbed a piece of tape, wrote “I’m straight” on it and stuck it to his shirt as his personal protest.

“Something just clicked,” he told Family News in Focus. “I was like, you know, this is wrong, and somebody’s got to stand up, so I did.”

Some of David’s friends expressed their support by printing Bible verses on T-shirts and wearing them to school. Two were asked to go home on Friday because of the shirts.

Of course, the left lectures the rest of us on the virtues of tolerence, and opposes all forms of discrimination. Right.

By the way, the American Family Association has a terrific webpage called “The Day They Kicked God Out of the Schools.”