No ... no rant here. It's just disappointing. The evidence is there in the form of letters, articles and memos. The people who engineered the evolution of our government school system in the early 1900s were clear ... the goal of "public education" was only to educate our children to the point that they would be good employees and government subjects. Nothing more. The evidence of the failure of our government schools is everywhere .. yet today, without a second thought, millions of people who call themselves "parents" will turn their children over to the government for nothing more than a mediocre education. They will be spit out at the end of the school year barely able to make change or read a simple lease agreement.

Here's a wonderful quote of H.L. Mencken that fits in real nicely:

"That erroneous assumption is to the effort that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.

To those of you who make the sacrifice to get your children away from the government and the teacher's unions .. my admiration and thanks. Your children will be the key to our country's future. The kids going to government schools will be working for your kids .. or for the government.

Democrats are shell-shocked. They truly cannot believe that this is happening to them. Just last February they were participating in a coronation that was to usher in a new age of Government Cool. Now people are starting to realize that there is nothing all that cool about the government taking over almost 20 percent of our economy. The polls are clear ... almost 7 out of 10 people are satisfied with the health care they're receiving right now. They've seen the mess that government has made out of Social Security. Recently they saw that the government couldn't even do the work that thousands of used-car salesmen handle every week with no problems. These people wonder why Obama is so hell-bent on getting this done NOW, and they suspect that's because the more they learn about the plan the less they're going to like it.

Actually ... last week was rather fun! I say that because it is so fun to watch these Democrats squirm when the people of this country give them the metaphorical one-finger salute. We can probably expect more of it this week ... although things promise to be more violent now that the union enforcers are showing up at these townhalls. I've brought to your attention many of these events over the last week of these healthcare townhalls turning sour. But none may be able to top this one from right here in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. It made national news after Rep. David Scott of Georgia's 13th district shouts at a constituent who dared to ask him if he was going to vote for the healthcare bill.

This one bothered me because I've known David Scott personally for over 25 years. David Scott is a Democrat congressman representing Georgia's 13th Congressional District. He served in the Georgia legislature for years before going to Washington. He and I have had disagreements on many issues, particularly gun control, but over the years he has been unfailingly polite and even-tempered.

Apparently that was then. Now things are different. I would guess that, considering his district, Scott is under tremendous pressure to toe the Obama party line. He knew his job at that townhall meeting was to defend Obama's policies. Perhaps his irritation came from having to defend the indefensible. Or ... Maybe he was mad that there were no union goons at the meeting to deal with this doctor. As we've discussed ... the unions are offering themselves up to be Democrat enforcers. This morning on Fox News Channel they showed some video of encounters at health care demonstrations. In one video a member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was heard calling an ObamaCare opponent a "punk" and a "Nazi." Another SEIU union goon ends up jamming a video camera into the face of some woman. In another video we see a SEIU goon deliver a knockout punch to a protestor. Remember, please .. the Democrats sent out the call for these union goons, and the unions are eager to please their masters. What was it Obama's deputy chief of staff said? Oh, I remember ... hit them back twice as hard.

Here's some definitions for you. If you show up at a townhall meeting and you support ObamaCare, you're a "citizen." If you oppose government-run health care, you're a "heckler." Or worse.

By the way ... my guess is that for the remainder of the month you're going to see more and more Democrat office-holders canceling their townhall meetings. They'll claim that the cancellations are for security reasons ... and the blame will be placed on those evil people who don't want government-run health care. In a sense they may be pleased with this turn of events. They'll be able to avoid the protestors by canceling their townhall meetings .. then they can continue with the bogus claim that Americans are solidly behind them.

Princess Nancy Pelosi and one of her Knights, Sir Steny Hoyer, have written an opinion piece for today's USA Today. Guess what? Thanks to Pelosi and Hoyer we now know that the protestors that are showing up at these townhall meetings are "un-American." Their angle is that these people are showing up at the meetings not to express their concerns, but to "drown out" opposing views. They're not concerned with crushing debt and horrifying budget deficits. They're not concerned with the inaccessibility or possible rationing of healthcare. They just don't like Barack Obama or his health care plan, so this makes them "un-American." I guess Democrats feel that to be an American you have to timidly accept any controls your government wishes to inflict on you. To protest government is, to Pelosi et al, is to be "un-American." This pretty much goes along with what I've been saying about Democrats for quite a while. These people think that America's greatness comes from government; certainly not from the dynamic of free people working together under the rule of law in an economy based on liberty. So ... to protest government is to protest America. This makes you "un-American." Oh yeah ... makes perfect sense to me.

I love some of the comments that appeared in USA Today after the Pelosi/Hoyer column:

• "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American" As any conservative who has ever tried to give a speech on an American university campus could attest.
• The obvious thing for Pelosi to do is to create a committee to investigate the protestors--call it the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
• Oh contrare Oh mighty Democratic leaders. It's un-American not to allow a proper debate. It's also irresponsible and a dereliction of your duties to attempt to ram through (and not read) these bills.
• This is precious. Dissent isn't the highest form of patriotism after all. It's unamerican!

This is what is bothers Democrats so ... the people are standing up to them. This shouldn't happen in their version of a democrat society.

We've put our economy, our security ... our very lives ... into the hands of a group of men and women who have shown no particular skill beyond their ability to please their constituents through the expenditure of money seized from the private sector. They produce nothing of value, nor do they demonstrate any particular skill other than pandering to voters. They loot from the productive to buy votes from the moocher class. If you had your entire financial future invested in stock in one business, how well would sleep at night knowing that Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters were running that business? Their very survivability depends on their ability to use force to achieve their goals.

These are the people we are going to allow to completely change the nature of health care in America. Amazingly, some Americans still think that these people are actually working hard to figure out a way to deliver better health care to the American people at a lower cost. They're wrong. These DC political hacks are simply trying to control, not improve health care. Control means power, and power is the currency of Washington. If we expect anything but a complete disaster, we deserve what's coming.

Michelle Malkin has written a book. "Culture of Corrupton: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies." The book is currently No. 1 on the NYT Bestseller's list. I downloaded it to my Kindle over the weekend and am really enjoying it.

Here we go ... another book written by a conservative topping the NYT Bestseller's list. Mark Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny" has been right there at the top for 12 weeks now. When liberals write books they struggle to get into the Top 10. Clearly readers are showing a preference for books written with some degree of attention to fact, a good dose of logic and a little less whining emotionalism.

Anyway ... I was looking at the reviews for Malkin's book on Amazon.com. I focused on the negative reviews - the ones that gave Malkin's book one star. I was looking for some focused and rational criticism. Here's what I found:

• Contributes to the roar of negativity and hate that is killing our political system.
• I have an aversion to sideshow carnivals. You know, PT Barnum's commentary about never going broke underestimating the intelligence of the American consumer. All you need is a freak show and a hook. In this regard, the book achieves its mission.
• This book plays right into that "hater" genre. Realizing that there are a lot of folks who are ideologically extreme, undereducated and who have grown unaccustomed to thinking for themselves [not to mention those who simply cannot accept a non-white in the White house], the author decided to throw raw meat to a pack of salivating hounds
• books like this are anti-intellectual carnival sideshow fodder designed to fleece an uncritical audience
• Just another symptom/source of the extreme polarization of American politics; look elsewhere for truth.
• I suppose that everyone handing out five star reviews are having to squeeze this reading in between going to "Birther" conspiracy meetings and making signs to carry when they go out to harass their congressmen during town hall meetings... how very trite... how scarily inappropriate in a time when the nation needs ALL citizens to work hard to try and save our country from the remains of Reagan/Bush1/Bush2 !
• March yourselves right into the ovens, you retards - the rest of us are trying to bring this country into the current century [with health care for all and jobs for any who can work]
• Just another cheap hit piece paid for by the same greedy & corrupt people (the Republicans & their rich bosses) who caused The Great Depression 2 that we are just really getting into now. Pass up this junk & back our president in trying to save what's left of our nation.
• This book is filled with so many distortions and outrages lies it's hard to believe that anyone sane would put this trash in print. Rupert Murdoch's pet Malkin must be making a lot of money writing this stupidity. If you enjoy right wing mindless propaganda this book's for you.
• The FAR right is crazy about Obama, and they will publish crap like this book because they know morons on the far right will buy it

Admittedly, I had to search through 148 reviews to find the negatives. Most are very positive. But do you notice how little substance there is to these critiques? You get the usual "hater" stuff in addition to some references to "greed" and "rich Republicans". You also get some bigoted references to Malkin's ethnicity. But NOWHERE do you see any specific and direct reference to any error in Malkin's material. You see charges of lying, but no references to lies. References to distortions, but no examples.

Perhaps this has occurred to you as it did to me. When it comes to talk radio conservatives rule. Liberals make infrequent and brief forays into talk radio success just as with bestselling books. When confronted with their repeated failures at the talk radio genre liberals start spouting the very same invective you see aimed at Malkin's book. "Greed, liars, distortions, rich Republicans, haters, retards..." All of it, and more. Maybe the left will try to set up some community review boards to monitor the efforts of publishing houses ... you know, make sure they publish liberal tomes along with the best-selling conservative and libertarian efforts. If they fail to promote liberal books they lose their publisher's license. What? There are no publisher's licenses? Damn. Something else Obama and his sycophants need to deal with.

Something entertaining actually happened on CSPAN. Yes, folks ... I know. But over the weekend a woman by the name of Leah called in to a show called "Washington's Journal." Leah wanted to comment on the media's coverage of these healthcare townhalls. Here's just a taste of what she had to say.

Hi, yeah, I just wanted to clarify a few things about these "manufactured, angered crowds." I've never been politically active in my life. I've never done anything like go to a protest ever. I started going to protests, these Tea Parties back on the Fourth of July, and the reason that you're seeing the numbers grow and swell and become bigger and bigger is not only because of the healthcare legislation, but like you said earlier, all these massive bills, thousands of pages long that are passed with almost no debate, no time for us to see what's in it, in direct contravention of what was promised about transparency and a near era and we're going to know what we're doing in advance. I see, I see politicians admit on TV that they can't read it, that they can't understand it because of its complexity. Lawyers who are writing these bills say they need lawyers to tell them what's in the bill.

Now, when I watch the news people stand here and tell me that I am a member of a hired mob, that I've been called up by the Republican Party, they only wish they could have done something like this. I've never been contacted by any organized group. This is an organic movement, and when people stand there, and lie to me about what I know is going on, how can I trust them when they tell me it's going to save money when the Congressional Budget Office says it isn't? That it's going to cover everybody when the Congressional Budget Office says it isn't? That it's going to let me keep my, my healthcare when common sense tells you that's not what's going to be the end result of this when the government ends up providing all the healthcare which the man who wrote the bill in the beginning says. Go watch it, Jacob Hacker who wrote this says that in time, and President Obama said it, we will all be swallowed up in this government plan.

When people lie to us, we don't trust them when they give us platitudes about what's in the bill.

If you read or listened closely to Leah's comments, you notice she mentions the name Jacob Hacker. So this immediately sparked my interest .. who is this Jacob Hacker character and why haven't we heard more about him? Turns out that Jacob Hacker is a political science professor at Berkeley, previously at Yale. According to his bio, "He is the author of a 2007 proposal for universal health care, 'Health Care for America,' that became a template for several presidential aspirants' plans, as well as of two recent briefs on how and why to encourage private health insurance to compete with a new public health plan for the nonelderly."

Hmmm sounds a bit familiar. Michael Barone wrote a column comparing Hacker's plans for healthcare reform into the plans we are now seeing take shape in Washington. Barone points to these particular quotes from Hacker:

"With a government-option plan, he says in 2007, 'You can at least make the claim that there's a competitive system between the public and the private sector,' but he predicts that the government option 'would eliminate the small group insurance.'"

"Speaking of the government option in 2008, he says, 'Someone told me this was a Trojan horse for single-payer. Well, it's not a Trojan horse, right? It's just right there. I'm telling you. We're going to get there, over time, slowly, but we'll move away from reliance on employer-based health insurance as we should, but we'll do it in a way that we're not going to frighten people into thinking they're going to lose their private insurance. We're going to give them a choice of public and private insurance when they're in the pool, and we're going to let them keep their private employer-based insurance if their employer continues to provide it.'"

Just as recently as July 28, 2009 Hacker wrote a column for the Washington Post trying to convince the Blue Dog Democrats to support the healthcare bill. Is this guy indicative of the same mentality that went into the shaping of this healthcare bill? If so, it is obvious that a single-payer system is inevitable.

Ok, I had seen the headlines proclaiming this to be the worst interview anyone has seen in a long time. So naturally, I had to check it out for myself. After watching this grueling eight minutes of Lawrence O'Donnell filling in for my buddy, Ed Schultz, I would have to agree.

Here's the set up. Lawrence O'Donnell was filling in for Ed on his TV show on MSNBC. O'Donnell's usual gig is as a political analyst for MSNBC. He was interviewing potential Senatorial candidate Peter Schiff. He is going to oppose Chris Dodd in the 2010 election. Now, from the little bit that Peter Schiff gets out of his mouth, you can gather that he is not a big fan of government. That's my kind of guy. But the fact that he could hardly get a word in edgewise is pathetic.

How long do you think this O'Donnell guy would last with a talk radio show?

Just watched a few episode of Cops over the weekend. Some conclusions are obvious. I'm sure cops already know these truths .. but if not, I'm only too glad to help.

• The term "trailer trash" didn't just appear out of thin air.
• Perp's pants never fit
• There are plenty of minorities in prime time television.
• Bad teeth apparently cause criminal behavior
• So, apparently, do neck tattoos.
• A cop in full uniform with street shoes, a Kevlar vest and 20 pounds of stuff on his belt will always outrun a shirtless perp in running shoes.
• Nobody ever has a clue as to how those drugs got into their pocket
• If you see a man driving with no shirt on, pull him over. He's a perp
• That goes double for shirtless with a mullet
• Perps never clean their homes or wash dishes
• Street hookers are just flat-out ugly

At the end of one episode a special treat. Part of the show was filmed in Atlanta and the credits said "Special Thanks to Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell." Ole Bill just got out of jail. He was worse than the crooks they showed in the program.

You do know that Obama has seized control over our 2010 Census, don't you? Chicago thug Rahm Emanuel will be running the show? Are you wondering why that was so important to Democrats? Read this, and you'll know.

President Obama is currently attending the "three amigos" summit with leaders from Mexico and Canada.

A good analysis of our current health care spending .. and why ObamaCare would make it worse? Robert Samuelson covers it for Newsweek.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor was officially sworn in over the weekend.

Looks like Princess Pelosi's big purchase of private jets is in a bit of trouble.

John Stossel explains how Barack Obama is full of impossible promises. Especially when it comes to this healthcare reform plan.

How seriously is the Obama administration considering a VAT tax?

Eric Holder is going to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate "whether people went beyond the [interrogation] techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration.

Tax cheat Timothy Geithner asked Congress to increase the debt limit, which currently stands at $12.1 trillion.

What was behind Creepy Nancy's charge that people were "bringing swastikas" to ObamaCare protests? This from James Taranto.

The Obama administration says that it is willing to hold direct talks with North Korea. Could this have been part of the deal after Bill Clinton's visit last week?

This Thursday is the deadline for companies that received bailout money to decide how much they are going to pay their top employees.

Obama took the opportunity during his weekend radio address to chastise "the defenders of the status quo and political point-scorers in Washington.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin says that he would be willing to forgo a government health insurance option in order put a final bill to a full Senate vote soon.

You might enjoy this memo from HCAN - Health Care for Americans Now - on how to handle right-wing attacks at townhall meetings!

I refuse to accept the fact that we may come to live in a United States where "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is the guiding principle of government.

This column from the Kansas City Star says that Barack Obama's presidency is "beginning to look like Jimmy Carter II."

Now that Sarah Palin is out of office, who are the Democrats going to pick on? Looks like they have already found their new favorite conservative.

The Pentagon is becoming increasingly agitated over the "priorities" in defense spending. Example: new executive jets for House members.

How are your lawmakers spending your tax dollars? How about snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef or visiting penguins in the South Pole ... all in the name of global warming research.

Ten more signs you need to go on a diet. Warning: not safe for...eyes.