After Iran, We Go After The Dangerous French

the_french_poodle-from-www-nationstates-net.jpg

Note: I have updated this article and am re-posting it in the hope that people will listen this time!

Dear Patriots,

Now that the plans for the invasion of Iran have been finalized in our Republican Congress, with Hillary Clinton adding her amped-up rhetoric,  the State Department has hired me to come up with the next benefactor of U.S. Democracy. I have decided on the perfect location for our troops: France. This time, we will be ready to invade at the least provocation. And the French like to be provocative, so it won’t take long. We will call this war, “Operation French Fried Freedom.”

With a grant from the Center for Real Atomic Power (C.R.A.P.), a division of TexCoInc LLC, I have written promotional material and talking points for our return to the beaches of Normandy.  This time we will be liberating the French– from themselves! There are many reasons we should invade the brie eaters:

1.   The French are uncooperative. They weren’t willing to invade Iraq with the coalition of the willing in 2003. They don’t even have the same time as us; when it’s morning in America (8 AM in D.C.) it’s afternoon in Paris, France (2 PM). How dare they!

2.   We musts take over their nuclear power generating capacity.  They export $3 billion dollars worth of nuclear energy every year. While we never invade a country because of our energy needs, in this case, we would make an exception.

3.   France not only has WMDs such as nuclear weapons, they also have Weapons of Gay Creation, or WGCs. These gay bombs would turn the target population gay upon impact, and thus, ruin the will to fight of the enemy forces. The United States and Arab nations are especially vulnerable to such a gay attack while the French troops would be immune to its affects. We must stop this WGC creating nation before they launch their missiles at us.

4.   Food of Mass Corpulence or FMCs. The French have been trying to kill us with their fatty foods and cheeses for years. We must invade and force them to cook reduced fat meals.

5.   The French are arrogant and think they’re better than everyone. Ha! In the U.S. we know we are number one and better than the French at everything, except for that stinky soccer. Moreover, we are not arrogant about being better than everyone like the French are, we just know it. Our invasion will wipe those smug smiles off their faces.

6.   They are not as Christian as we are. France is full of atheists like Michel Onfray who want to destroy our way of life. If they don’t like God in France, we will have to kill them to show them how Christian we are.

7.   The French kowtow to Muslims who have Mosques in France and plan prayer meetings. The French just don’t arrest them enough or burn enough Qurans. Allowing Muslims free speech and religion is un-American.

8.   Their president, Nicolas Sarkozy, mocks our manhood and the sanctity of marriage by marrying a former supermodel and current singer, Carla Bruni.

9.   Their government run medical system threatens our way of life by successfully treating their citizens.

10. The French have more sex than other people.  And as we have learned from our Republican leaders, sex is bad and requires, I hate to say, contraception! Moreover, they offer contraception to women with their universal HEALTH CARE! If we invade them, they will stop bragging about sex and have more to worry about.

11. They have lost the last big wars they were in, so it will be no problem invading them. Really, take it from me, I know these things. Like other great Republicans such as Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, I have never been to war or in the military, and that best positions me, from a distance, to make decisions about sending other people’s children overseas to die.

12. We must make the world safe for Hollywood movies by invading France and eliminating their film industry. We will start by destroying all copies of French New Wave “classics” such as Jules et Jim and eliminate all traces of Godard’s Breathless. The Richard Gere version was better and more American anyway.

13. The French poodle is obviously a weaponized dog of terror.

We could easily reconvene the “coalition of the willing” we had in Iraq and for Iran and add new members. We can count on England once more. They are still fuming over the Norman (French) invasion of England in 1066 and could occupy the beaches of Normandy after the invasion as payback. Of course the United States would control the airport and the green zone around Paris.

Please join me in supporting the surge into France during Romney’s first term after we declare “mission accomplished” in Iran. With you, and help from C.R.A.P., we can get it done.

If you disagree, remember, the reasons for invading France are as truthful and logical as the reasons for invading Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran.

Yours,
Tex Shelters

The Problem is Limited Access, not Affirmative Action

itshisfault from-talk-onevietnam-org.jpg

Abigail Noel Fisher was too poor a student to be admitted into the University of Texas as one of the top 10% of all high school graduates who are automatically eligible for entrance into the state system. After the first 10% of high school graduates are admitted, students have to compete for the remaining seats. However, Ms. Fisher still didn’t make the cut. Instead of taking up the American tradition of going to community college, she took up the American tradition of suing those she feels aggrieved by, the University of Texas at Austin. The suit accuses the university of racial bias against Ms. Fisher, and if she wins, it could reduce higher education opportunities for minorities in the United States.

The University of Texas has a very limited race preferences, and it is only one of several factors for entrance which includes a review of two essays, high school transcripts, SAT scores, a resume including extracurricular and community activities, and so forth. Only in the area of community activities is the question of race considered. Yet this mediocre student wants to blame the system instead of looking at her own application that kept her out of UT.

President Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 on March 6, 1961 that called for “affirmative action” to ensure employment and educational opportunities for people of all races.  ”The intent of this executive order was to affirm the government’s commitment to equal opportunity for all qualified persons, and to take positive action to strengthen efforts to realize true equal opportunity for all.” Lyndon Johnson added Executive Order 11246 to help enforce “affirmative action” in employment and to add women to the order.

Proponents of  affirmative action say it is one remedy to address the imbalance in educational opportunities for minorities and the poor in our nation. Opponents feel affirmative action takes scholarships and educational opportunities away from more deserving students who happen to be white. Both the discrimination and “reverse” discrimination arguments for and against affirmative action policies miss the fundamental problem with higher education in our nation: limited resources, limited funding, and high costs.

State governments limit access to schooling because of lack of funds and their funding priorities. Most states cut their budgets for higher education in the last two years, “…all but nine states experienced one-year declines from their 2010-11 totals. The 41 states that cut their spending did so by widely varying proportions, from as little as 1 percent (in Indiana and North Carolina) to as much as 41 percent (New Hampshire), with a full third seeing double-digit drops.” According to the Center for the Study of Education Policy, “Overall, spending declined by some $6 billion, or nearly 8 percent, over the past year,…” 

Cost is more important than the issue of what race you are in when applying to the university. The cost for higher education has increased at  twice the rate of medical costs since 1978. Since 2000, tuition costs have doubled.  The cost of higher education makes it harder for poorer students to attend and thus reduces their chance to increase their incomes with an advanced degree.

And the poorest families have it the worst:
Among the poorest families — those with incomes in the lowest 20 percent — the net cost of a year at a public university was 55 percent of median income, up from 39 percent in 1999-2000. At community colleges, long seen as a safety net, that cost was 49 percent of the poorest families’ median income last year, up from 40 percent in 1999-2000. 

While tuition is going up, assistance to students entering universities is going down as is state spending for higher education. This year’s cuts to pell grants will also make it harder for students to attend university, affecting up to 100,000 students.

Sarah Volstad, Director of Legislative Affairs for Student Senate, stated, “It’s definitely not like it was…Ten years ago, the state grants were plentiful … tuition was much lower.”

The federal government’s priorities focus on security, war and tax cuts. Instead of addressing the ever increasing inequity in resource distribution in our nation between the top and lower quintiles, we fight over scraps.

If higher education was available and affordable to all who qualify, and there were more scholarships available, the fight over affirmative action would end for all but the most racist in our society, those who don’t want minorities or the poor to be educated no matter the availability.

No amount of affirmative action will fix the problem of access and costs and an economic system of inequity in our nation that limits access to higher education. If we want to end the debate over affirmative action, we need to make schools more affordable and accessible to all.

Peace,
Tex Shelters

If You’re Reading this, You’re Part of the 99%

We are the 99% from ohaflcio.blogspot.com

Many people online, in editorial pages, on television and in the streets are denying their membership in the 99%. Few if any of the people that fight against their membership to this not-so-elite group fully understand the concept of the “99%”.

Those who automatically reject anything they consider “liberal” will reject their membership in the 99% as a way to reject a group they falsely consider lazy, unclean Americans who want to blame corporations for all their troubles. However, Occupy Wall Street is not asking for you to agree with everything every member of their group believes. Admitting that you are part of the 99% does not require you reject your conservative, or other, principles.

What admitting you are part of the 99% requires is that you let go of your denial and acquire a modicum of class consciousness. First, you must let go of the myth that the richest 1% of Americans care about you and are job creators instead of job destroyers. Then you must develop an awareness that you are in the lower classes and the 1% determines, to a large extent, what happens in this nation.

Many people reject this idea because they think it means you have to be an anarchist, socialist, communist or some other ist to belong to the 99%. That’s a misreading of the metaphor. What’s more, they don’t even know it is a metaphor, a number that represents the inequality in our economic and political system but may not be literally accurate.

Even Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, showing how smart he is with numbers, took “99%” as a literal idea and corrected the notion several times in his post:

“Let’s be clear. This isn’t really the 99 percent. If you’re in the 85th percentile, for instance, your household is making more than $100,000, and you’re probably doing okay. If you’re in the 95th percentile, your household is making more than $150,000. But then, these protests really aren’t about Wall Street, either. There’s not a lot of evidence that these people want a class war, or even particularly punitive measures on the rich. The only thing that’s clear from their missives is that they want the economy to start working for them, too.”

Let’s be clear about Mr. Klein’s misreading of OWS: 99% is a metaphor that he takes too literally and thus misses the point that it’s about inequality, not exactitude. And it is about Wall Street. The protests are about Wall Street run amok, about how Wall Street gets a free pass when they break regulatory laws, about a Wall Street that is in large part responsible for our economic disaster we find ourselves in. But, it’s not only about Wall Street. The Occupy Movement is about banks, mega corporations like Monsanto that poison our food supply, BP and other large companies that pollute with impunity, the military industrial complex, and so forth. Just because it’s called “Occupy Wall Street” doesn’t mean Wall Street is their only concern, and it’s willfully ignorant to think that. Read their declaration and educate yourself about their issues.

Klein also echoes sentiments of Republicans and dismisses the movement as self-centered, only concerned about themselves, only wanting the “economy to start working” for them, thus he misses the point again. Sure, members of the occupy movement are concerned about their own welfare, and also their neighbors, their children, their family, their community, their teachers, their public servants, other workers, and all members of the 99% that might have had tough times because of the plutocracy we live under. Otherwise, why would so many employed, retired and financially secure people involve themselves in the movement?

Compassion for others is not a hard thing to understand. It’s too bad Klein’s analysis only skims the surface of what the Occupy Movement is about. If he can’t correctly interpret Occupy, he should stick to writing about the Republican primaries. There, he will see enough lies to write about, and he won’t have to write misinformation about the Occupy Movement.

You’re part of the 99% if:

• Most of your income comes with a W-2 attached.
• You have ever, or currently, received food stamps, unemployment, SSI, or other government assistance.
• You don’t have an offshore bank account.
• If you are not a financial manager or CEO of a major firm, you are part of the 99%.
• You are also a member of the 99% if your income is less than $400,000 a year.
• If you earn less than 25% of your income in rent and dividends, you are part of the 99%.
• If you are one paycheck from being homeless, you are part of the 99%.
• If you are not a manager, executive, or supervisor of a large firm, you are likely part of the 99%.
• You are part of the 1% if you can donate millions to a political campaign.
• You are part of the 1% if you can write laws for ALEC and thus Congress.
• And if you’re reading this, you are a member of the 99%.

Here’s a demographic breakdown of the 1%:
https://files.nyu.edu/bps261/public/numbers.html 

Fact: the top 1% in the US control 42% of the nation’s wealth.
http://www.mybudget360.com/top-1-percent-control-42-percent-of-financial-wealth-in-the-us-how-average-americans-are-lured-into-debt-servitude-by-promises-of-mega-wealth/

Rich Versus Poor demographics
http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/review/97/07/9707jw.pdf  

Peace,
Tex Shelters