Thursday, January 29, 2015

News catch-up, Part 2

Again, dear reader, I have a backlog of subject matter which arose during the past two weeks in which I was given very little chance to write. So, without further adieu, let's continue with the list:

M&S boys' only t-shirts:
Earlier this month, the British department store retailer Marks & Spencer stood accused by feminists and gender equality campaigners of sexism. Its dinosaur-themed children's t-shirts and pyjamas, which encourages an interest in the Natural History Museum, were labelled as "boys' only".
Critics have said this discourages girls from persuing science and sends the message that only boys can grow up to be researchers.
Let Clothes Be Clothes spokeswoman Francesca Cambridge said that if the museum wishes to inspire scientific curiosity in children, they are wrong to exclude girls by allowing M&S to classify the clothing in favor of only half of the population of children. "It's detrimental to the development of both boys and girls who are being told what they should be interested in," she said.
Although I roll my eyes at stories like these, because I believe we have bigger and more pressing issues to worry about, I agree that the contribution females can make to the world of science should not be discounted. Therefore, it is wrong to discourage girls, consciously or unconsciously. My sister-in-law has a brilliant mind and can understand robotics and higher mathematics in a way that I don't have a hope in hell of ever grasping. It is a great testimony to our society that women can contribute to our understanding of the world around us just as much as men can and have traditionally done.
So, M&S, scrap the "boys' only" labels and let's be done with this. And I hope that John Lewis, Tesco and other retailers that have a history of releasing girls' only clothing with sexually suggestive phrases on them are listening. Fulfill your obligations to a 21-st century customer base, and perhaps we can concentrate on other things.

End to Page 3:
One issue in which I completely have the feminists' backs is the controversy surrounding The Sun's Page 3. Since 1970, the publication has been featuring topless women on that page. After 45 years of what could arguably be thought of as the constant objectification and exploitation of women in a major tabloid newspaper, The Sun gave in to the demands of the No More Page Three campaign and stopped their daily titfest ... temporarily.
There is no equivalent to this in America, and I have always thought for good reason. There is something to be said for a puritanical policy regarding the press. Thusly, I have never been a fan of Page 3 because I don't understand it and I am not part of the "lad culture" that inspires and defends such things. When I wanted straight porn as a teenager, I had to start approaching the toughs in school in order to score it. Students also went to the reprobates for weed. This is the natural way of things. Porn and drugs are both illicit things. You want them? Be prepared to engage in a little shadiness to get them.
Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with fit female bodies. Not by a long shot. But Page 3's popularity is somewhat disturbing in the type of men it attracts. You know the ones—they employ various tones and shadings of "oogah!" to let you know what they're feeling. Porn should not be so readily available in a publication that costs less than £1 to purchase. If The Sun had stuck to its decision, perhaps it could have sent a message that objectification of women is unacceptable, a message that would have filtered down to the youngest generation of Sun readers.
But, predictably, The Sun did not stick by their promise. On January 22, barely a week after announcing the "last" Page 3, the tabloid brought the feature back. It is thought that the backlash against No More Page 3 was so strong, The Sun felt justified in reviving the feature.
Also, perhaps The Sun's editors felt inspired by the whole Charlie Hebdo episode and decided to fight what they saw as censorship. That makes sense. I suppose I have to admire The Sun's  tenacity.
However, it was wrong for the newspaper to declare a moratorium on its pornographic page that it was not fully committed to.  I was among those who'd hoped for a bit more of a cultured approach from The Sun. But their yam-bags may be too big to allow for that.

Co-op bank not funding fracking:
Along with Page 3, another uniquely British way of life is the quasi-socialism of mutuals and coöperatives. John Lewis runs as an employee-owned business model while the Co-operative Bank is the financial side of a consumer coöperative scheme. Make sense? Of course not— it's British.
Anyway, The Co-op Bank, which has recently undergone a transformation and change of management necessitated by its coke-snorting former chairman Paul Flowers, has decided as a way to rebuild trust to refuse lending to companies that are involved with fracking.
Huh? We need fuel. Fracking is a way to get at the stores of natural gas that have previously proven difficult to tap. Natural gas has a carbon footprint that is significantly smaller than that of oil or coal and can therefore—if it is the fuel of the future—help Britain to meet carbon-reduction mandates. It would help restore my faith in The Co-op Bank if they would fund fracking.
Instead, it prefers to believe the usual crowd of false doomsday prophets who proclaim "this is going to turn people into mutants!" If the cons to fracking are what they currently are, wouldn't investment in the industry help energy scientists to refine processes and come up with technology that would make fracking environmentally friendlier?
The Co-op has also blacklisted payday loan firms. That makes much more sense than opposition to fracking. Payday loan companies are semi-regulated loan sharks who pray on the desperate. Snubbing companies that deal with payday lenders is a fine policy.
But the bank can do better than reject any involvement with fracking. Perhaps if it vetted its chief executives a bit better, it would not have had to regain people's trust. After all, the cocaine market is far more environmentally damaging than the fracking industry.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

News catch-up, Part 1

Hello, dear reader. What can I say, I've had a very busy two weeks. A lot of subject matter has come up during that fortnight that I would have loved to discuss at the time. Nevertheless, while they're still fairly fresh, let's tackle them.

Deflategate:
This one is just idiotic.  It exposes how the media and low-information members of the electorate will leave no stone unturned when it comes to a scandal from the fantasy world of entertainment. But the same people will not question political or social issues.
Benghazi? Fast and Furious? Bob Bergdahl and the release of Guatanamo inmates? Illegal amnesty and illegal wars in Libya, Iraq and Syria? Obama's no-show in the largest mass demonstration in Paris's history when nearly every other world leader was present? What are you talkin' about, dude?
Football is a great game, as American as apple pie, and it is fun to watch. It is also fun to predict the outcome of a game. Analyzing football match-ups is a good way to sharpen the mind, because football is like chess in the complexity of moves and options open to both teams.
Football is also a diversion from life. You devote a little time before the game predicting what you think will happen and then you watch it. It's good and healthy to shut one's mind down for a sports event. But the problem is, for most Americans, the mind is always shut down and the only thing that filters through to the consciousness is football. And more football. And "Survivor". And after "Survivor," yet more football.
We could very easily have another terrorist attack on American soil and the one question most people would ask in its wake would be: "Why are you interrupting my game?"
What "Deflategate" also shows is the intense jealousy of those with success. It's an age-old envy, but is more prominent than ever in Obama's Disunited States of America. The Patriots have had consecutive winning records since 2001. They've appeared in six SuperBowls in thirteen years, and have already won three. New England is the New York Yankees of the NFL. Other football fans and, of course, the media can't help but wonder: When are these guys going to go away?
Futhermore, Patriots head coach Bill Belichick has never been popular with the media, because he doesn't screw around. He doesn't pat reporters on the back and say, "How you doing?" and "I read your column". He answers questions with as few words as he can get away with and leaves. So, naturally, he is hated. Belichick sees his job as coaching a football team, not brown-nosing members of the media, so he must pay the price for that.
And so must Tom Brady, one of the best quarterbacks the game has ever produced. Wildly successful. Rich, handsome and athletic. Married to a supermodel. And white. Brady must also pay the price of success, which is derision.
Most quarterbacks doctor the balls to suit their style, to meet their particular comfort zones. Aaron Rodgers of Green Bay has confirmed it. He likes over-inflated balls; Brady prefers under-inflated ones. Rodgers also said that it's common practice for NFL referees to take some air out of the footballs. So how exactly do we know if the Patriots under-inflated their own balls before their game against the Colts?
If New England tampered with the balls during the time period between their lock-up and the start of the game, then there's an issue worth persuing. In the meantime, could we just enjoy the build-up to SuperBowl XLIX without the constant talk of pounds-per-square-inch and SpyGate? Let it go, people.

The I-93 demonstrators:
During the early morning commute hours of January 15, protesters blocked I-93 northbound in Milton, south of Boston, and I-93 southbound at Mystic Avenue in Medford, north of Boston. They were, according to reports, members of the Boston contingent of the "Black Lives Matter" protest group.
The protesters in Milton had chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels and then formed a human chain across the highway. Some demonstrators wore adult diapers, indicating their plans to stay on the highway for a long time. No black people were among the twenty-nine people arrested and arraigned. The protestors were predominently white, with a handful of Asians.
Due to the blockage of the highway, an ambulance carrying an 83-year-old man had to be diverted from its intended route to Boston Medical Center to a similar facility in the southeastern Massachusetts city of Brockton.
Eyewitnesses claim that when police cleared the highway, the demonstrators received a torrent of abuse from commuters who had sat immobile in their vehicles for nearly two hours. Important appointments had to be cancelled and a whole lot of time was wasted. One local wrote on Facebook: "Get a job! And a life of your own. Messing up other people's lives, who have nothing to do with your 'point,' is doing absolutely nothing to make your point, people. Just making you look like morons."


She wants you to know that she sacrificed her usual four-course breakfast in order to inconvenience those who work for a living.

I believe in the right to protest. There would be no United States of America if not for protest. It is the right of a free people, who are truly free, to express their concerns through protest, even if the concerns involve works of fiction that are based on events that did not even occur anywhere near the community that a demonstration is due to take place in.
Here's the point that these modern-day protestors and their defenders constantly miss: You need a permit to demonstrate. You need to alert the town or city you're in why you're upset and ask for permission to protest. The city needs to set up traffic diversions and mobilize law enforcement to monitor the event. Why is there never any talk about the lack of permits that define nearly all left-wing protest events? The Tea Party always requires them.
My message to the Boston chapter of Black Lives Matter and all similar, sycophantic Leftie umbrella organizations? Keep it up. You managed to thoroughly piss off loads of residents in one of the most liberal states in the country. Don't change a thing. Let us continue to see you for the privileged, spoiled, entitled, brainless wastes of space you verily are.
If the current law is too much of an ass to deal with you properly, then you will be dealt with through a sea-change in voter turnout and disposition. Believe me, you won't get away with this garbage with a Joe Arpaio type in the Oval Office.

American Sniper:
Could there be anyone more accomplished in Hollywood than Clint Eastwood? His crime, though, is having produced a film that celebrates the life of a man with an incredible talent, who used such talent in defence of America.
American Sniper tells the tale of Texan Chris Kyle, a cowboy who joined the Navy SEALs and did four tours of Iraq. He was so accurate with his sniping ability that he was nicknamed "The Devil of Ramadi". He killed an insurgent with a shot 2,100 yards away. That's the length of 21 football fields. I probably couldn't hit anyone one football field's length away from me.
Kyle died, age 38, from a shooting range accident in 2013. His was a remarkable life. He deserves the recognition that Eastwood gave him in this film.
But Lefties like Michael Moore and Seth Rogan have said in response that snipers are cowards and the movie is the equivalent of Nazi propaganda. No good deed goes unpunished, and so Kyle must suffer posthumous indignities by being besmirched by progressives. For them, the outrage is that Selma did not win Oscar awards for Best Director, Best Actor or Best Picture. ISIS is rampaging across the Middle East, but the thing that scares liberals the most is that we've had the "whitest" Oscars since 1998.
Perhaps if Selma had not completely trashed the legacy of Lyndon Baines Johnson, it would have stood a better chance. LBJ may have been a total creep, but one accusation you cannot throw at the man is opposition to civil rights. If not for President Johnson, black directors and black actors would not have equal freedom of expression—nor the opportunity to complain when their work does not make a clean sweep of the Oscars.
The story of Chris Kyle has reminded Americans of what matters, what is important and what is at stake. That is why it has been a box office phenomenon. That is why there are lines of those wishing to watch it a mile long around movie theaters across the country.
The Left can lecture and browbeat us about what counts in their ivory-tower universes. But normal people living normal lives will always choose true bravery over fake profiles in courage anytime. The success of American Sniper has proven this.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

First feel-good story of 2015

I always say, credit where credit is due.
In that spirit, I wish to commend Jamal Rutledge, a teenager who was being booked on a charge of bulgary at the Ft. Lauderdale Police Department last September.
When Officer Franklin Foulks collapsed at his station, while entering Rutledge's information, Rutledge—who was in handcuffs—started shouting and banging on the security gate. Luckily, another officer heard the commotion and responded immediately.
Officer Foulks had been having a heart attack, but EMTs were able to save him.
The police department noted Rutledge's quick actions. They determined that if the young man had not kicked up a racket, Foulks likely would have died.  Rutledge, along with three other officers who responded, will be publicly honored at a Fort Lauderdale City Commission meeting later this month.
I don't know Jamal Rutledge's back history. He was arrested for criminal mischief and bulgary. That's all the story tells us about him. So it would, of course, be prudent to not lay too much praise upon him.
But in this day and age, and given the insane antipathy toward police that is part of American culture right now, this is a great story. Despite whatever further actions will be taken against Rutledge by the law, this young African-American and the city's police have a healthy amount of respect for each other.
That mutual respect between the police and the communities they serve is something I hope gets replicated very soon on a massive and nationwide basis.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

I don't know about you—but I am unequivocally Charlie Hebdo

Say what you will about France, dear reader. Its citizens still have patriotism and principles. In America, we have people gathering at the site in Brooklyn where two innocent cops were executed, shouting lines from the works of fiction whipped up by the Obama rumpswab media: "Hands up, don't shoot" and "I can't breathe!" Neither of which, by the way, was actually ever said.
In France, they are marching and protesting, chanting "Je suis Charlie" and "Not afraid". This is in response to the savage attack on staff of a notorious left-wing satirical publication called Charlie Hebdo. (Pronounced "sharlee-ebdoh".)


In America, right now, those who aren't demonstrating simply for the sake of demonstrating, endorsing the killing of cops and the evil white man, are shuffling about, talking about the latest episode of ... whatever, I don't even know what shows are popular in the U.S. anymore, nor do I care. Or they're chatting about sports. Who cares about Charlie Hebdo and a blatant attack on Western ideals of free speech and free expression? The Seahawks could win back-to-back Superbowls, damn it! The first time an NFL team has done so since ... since, well, I don't know, but it's important! How can we show up at our jobs on Monday not knowing about every footfall taken on the gridiron over the weekend?
"Dude, that, like, happened in, like, Paris.  Sucks to be them, I guess.  So what're your picks for this weekend?"
Of course, we've seen no marches in support of Parisians here in London either. People who protest and riot over the shooting of a drug dealer or because the Government is cutting the fat out of the bloated public sector can't concern themselves with real threats to their livelihoods, you see. Who cares about some Frenchies who got shot at the offices of a magazine they'd never heard of? It's so much more important to show solidarity with Americans by conducting a "die-in" at the Westfield mall in Stratford. Black lives matter. Not other lives.
Just to give you some background, in case you're one of the dumbbells who was too busy with fantasy football to notice the news: Charlie Hebdo is a very anti-religious publication, satirizing nearly all religions, especially Catholicism. They got in trouble, however, when they made fun of Islam, the prophet Mohammed in particular. Their previous office was firebombed in 2011 in revenge for less-than-flattering drawings of him, in particular, one showing him as the magazine's editor and promising lashings if its audience did not laugh. Actually, you could draw Mohammed in the most flattering way possible, and these fanatics will still kill you, so the point is moot.
Anyhow, not satisfied with the first attack on the publication, two Islamofascist gunmen broke into the "new" office on January 7 and slaughtered twelve people. They also seriously wounded eleven. How can we be clear that this was an Islamic attack? Because the two gunmen—stick with me here—shouted "Allahu akbar!" and "the Prophet is avenged" (also in Arabic). I don't know how much more proof would be required at this stage.
Before their escape they also shot a moderate Muslim police officer in the head. The officer had pleaded for his life. To no avail.
Naturally, even those outside France who are commenting on the Charlie Hebdo attack see this issue as a clear-cut case, not of Islamofanaticsm, but of Islamophobia. In a piece which is entirely representative of how the Left views such incidents, which they never refer to as terrorism since that could never be associated with "The Religion of Peace," published in The Huffington (Puffington) Post, Alexandra Chaloux writes that the French outpouring of outrage over the attack on free speech is close-minded and hypocritical.
In France, if you are a Muslim female teenager and you decide to express your identity by wearing a headscarf—not covering the face, just a headscarf—you will be kicked out of school. Permanently—until you agree not to wear it again. If a grown woman decides to wear the Niqab, French law renders her a prisoner of her own home, subject to arrest and hefty fines for simply walking down the street ... And we talk of free speech. The truth is, you are free to express your identity as long as it's our identity. As long as you aren't one of them. We don't want them. We don't care when they die. We don't like their religion or their culture, and when it tries to sit beside ours, fear-mongering newspapers burst into flames of indignation. When they commit crimes, we call them 'terrorist', because there are laws to protect criminals, but you can do anything you like to a terrorist. The recent CIA torture report made that crystal clear.
One, in France, there is complete separation between church and state. It's true that Muslim women can't wear the garb which demonstrates their acceptance of submission. Christians can't wear crosses around their necks, nor can Jews wear Stars-of-David or yarmulkes. This prohibition on religious symbolism applies to everyone.
Two, the actions of the CIA, even if you were to consider it true torture considering it's what Navy SEALS go through as part of their training, was requested by Congressional Democrats spooked by the anthrax attacks in 2001. They gave the green light for the authorities to do whatever was necessary to get those who had been captured to talk.
Three, it is ridiculous irony to want to defend on free-speech grounds those who would completely remove free speech. Most of the speech we would find offensive is protected because it normally does not threaten our right to express ourselves as we see fit. But by stipulating that sharia has a place at the round table of free thought is contrary to the ideals we hold dear, as it threatens the entire table. Allow that a spot in the marketplace of ideas and you will soon find yourself without one, and you will be killed for questioning its disappearance.
Now for the million-dollar question:  Would you trust a person like this to stand up and be counted on behalf of your freedoms and way of life?  I thought not. Chaloux is demonstrably willing to submit to those who would force sharia on her.  But I am not.
The fact of the matter is, Parisians—as well as people from all across France, even across the whole of Europe—saw it as their duty to protect their freedoms and way of life. Anti-Iraq War marches in Paris in 2003 saw barely a million. The march in response to the attack on Charlie Hebdo on Monday, January 12 totalled 3.7 million—over three times the anti-war numbers.
Leaders from all over the world, including Britain's David Cameron, were in attendance. Where was Mr. Hope and Change, our Messiah and Dear Leader, Barack Obama? Nowhere to be seen. There was not even a representative for him in attendance. The lack of any American participation or support for this march was starkly obvious.
At least the French, who initially thought the Americans were such wonderful people for electing this boob to the Oval Office, can finally see for themselves what a vainglorious but gutless wonder the man truly is.
We need more of this response to Islamic fundamentalism. The monolithic crowd in Paris was not grandstanding; they meant it. There was no #illridewithyou shite in the wake of the massacre.  They were lucid in their indignation.  It'll be up to France, apparently, to save the way of life we cherish. The only thing that remains is for the Gallic nation to arm its police, every one of them.
Don't look to America. Its fat, stupidly happy and willfully ignorant citizens concern themselves with sinister imaginations and breads-and-circuses. And they are led by a candyass political establishment that cares only about control and manipulation and beset by moral cowardice. And the rest of the world knows it.
Protesting to protect what actually matters? Ain't no-one got time fo' that!

Postscript: Up until the 15th of January, for two days after this piece was published, an image of the "offensive" cover of Charlie Hebdo that had caused all the controversy and revenge attacks could be seen on this page, in the midst of the entry.  I was not one bit afraid to post it.  I have removed it at the request of my wife, as she had misgivings about it.  I stress, this is the only reason why I censored my piece.  I was at pains to do so, but my wife's concerns must be met.   If you want to see the image for yourself, dear reader, just do a search for "Charlie Hebdo Mohammed" and you'll know it when you see it: He is pointing and saying that there will be "100 lashes if you do not die laughing".  Long live freedom of speech!  NOT AFRAID!

Monday, January 12, 2015

Comedian of the House ...

Quoth John Boehner, courtesy of Reuters:

"During my years here when I voted, I have the eighth most conservative voting record in the Congress. And it does pain me to be described as spineless or a squish."

Snickers.

"I'm the most anti-establishment speaker we've ever had."

Snorts.

"I'm going to do my best to show all of our members, Democrats and Republicans and those members who voted against me, that I'm up to the job that I was given."

A-HA HA HA HA HA HA! A-HA HA HA HA HA HA! HA HAAA HA HA HA!

The Orange Man, ladies and gentlemen. Give him a warm round of applause. (After all, it's the only time from now until America shortly ceases to be that he'll be deserving of one.)

Thursday, January 8, 2015

The Republicans can have Bonehead

You know, there's a lot to be said for integrity, folks. But the Republican Establishment has none of it.
Speaker of the House John Boehner, the Bonehead—the crybaby, the milquetoast, the orange man—survived a challenge in the House. Twenty-five Republican representatives voted in favor of removing Boehner from his position, but the vote fell short of the twenty-nine required to see him off.
Godspeed to those twenty-five.
Unfortunately, we have a Republican party being controlled not only by its country-club Establishment, but the banks, corporate America and the Chamber of Commerce, as well as the media. All want amnesty, and it doesn't matter that the President defied the Constitution to enact it. All want Obamacare, and it doesn't matter that, as Jonathan Gruber demonstrated, deceptions are what led to its passage. And all want a yes-man, one who won't rock the boat, one who will ensure that whatever Big Business and the elite wants, they will get.
What have we got instead of a serious challenge to Obama's abuse of executive privilege? Talk of tax reform and a free trade agreement with Guatemala. Big whoop. That's going to mean a lot in the midst of a foreign invasion. You'll sleep easier at night knowing Guatemalans are going to have better access to DVD boxsets of Breaking Bad, now won't you?
The whole stinking political class in Washington is the bad, and it's what we need to break. If there is any silver lining to the (latest) betrayal of Republicans, who will clearly not do what we voted them in to do, it's that there was a challenge. True conservatives, genuine spokespeople for their electorates, made their feelings known.
The Tea Party and other people who value the Constitution will not go away, just because Bonehead, the Squish (Mitch McConnell) and the Establishment wish it. FOX can prop up Jeb Bush all it likes. There is always Ted Cruz or Rand Paul waiting in the wings to launch an alternative campaign. Do we dare to dream that such a candidate can swim up the middle between the progressives and the pretenders and deliver us from ruin?
I know that I am done with the Republican Party. I don't know what GOP stands for now, but it most certainly cannot be "Grand Ole Party". It is no longer what it was under Reagan. In fact, I believe it is closer to what Gorbachev would have found familiar.
I was wrong to be as enthused as I was in my entry of November 6. I was duped. I admit it. I dared to trust and it bit me in the you-know-where. I have had it with the corporate class and the business conservatives running the Republican Party.
So screw them all.  The nightdragon, from this point, endorses either Ted Cruz or Rand Paul for a possible bid in 2016. I trust either of these men to stick to their principles. They have integrity.

Friday, January 2, 2015

The "new year" won't be new until we fight change

Happy New Number, ladies and gents. In celebration of this shiny new figure, I have a quote for you:
"We're against everything that's 'good and decent' in honky America. We will burn and loot and destroy. We are the incubation of your mother's nightmare."
A student leader, perhaps from Harvard, announcing the latest wave of "protests" coming soon to a city near you? A statement of irrationality that could only be born of the 2010s?
No, no. That was John Jacobs, leader of the Weathermen and Students for a "Democratic" Society, 46 years ago, shortly before the Weather Underground's "War Council" blew up a townhouse in Greenwich Village. This insiduous garbage has been around all my life—literally.
Eventually the country healed. By the late 1970s, nobody thought they'd ever hear this sort of speech again from any American. Most of the violent revolutionaries were either dead or in exile, on the run. By the late 1980s, the whole revolutionary '60s ethos and milieu was history, rear-view mirror stuff. People shuddered when you wore a hippie costume to a Hallowe'en party in 1985, because it was truly scary. They remembered the madness of the era, and had no desire to go back to it.
Unfortunately, the further we got from the '60s, the more the cognoscenti painted a picture of it for my generation: Green grass, flowers, acoustic guitars, holding of hands, blue sky, drifting clouds. A hearty rendition of "This Land is Your Land". A toke or two to ensure you didn't lose the vibe. Isn't that just lovely? Who couldn't want to live in such a decade?
While we were busy daydreaming over a manufactured image, the creeps slowly crept back into our lives, largely because the fervor never died. It survived in academia. The older the intelligentsia got, the more power they had. They owned the Clinton administration and, as Hillary Clinton attempted to make clear in 2008—as if to wash her hands free of such filthy associations herself—former Weatherman Bill Ayers and Barack Obama worked together on urban educational reform in Chicago.
Ayers wished for a "free schools movement" in which no report cards or test grades existed and teachers were addressed by their first names. Grades still exist, though they have been curved so radically that you must remember that today's "A" is yesteryear's "C". This is not your father's "A", dear reader. If you're my age, it's not even your "A".
Educational reform is a necessary first step to tearing down a healthy respect for authority, and the hard-Left academic elite knew it. Former Obama administration member Van Jones could tell young people to forget about respecting their elders and that they were all gods.  This served to illustrate what Government-run education amounts to.
One wonders why one of the students didn't stand up and say, "Well, if that's the case, stop lecturing us and get off the stage, old man!" Would Van Jones have approved? We'll never know since this audience of students had one critical link in their thought processes missing, one that was robbed from them by the powers that be.
We would be foolhardy to be surprised that, in 2015, there are young and even middle-aged people calling for the upheaval of law and order and the murder of cops. The suspension of reality, in which facts must be regarded as irrelevant whenever there is a good work of civil-rights fiction to be concocted, is possible because today's kids were never taught critical thinking and never allowed to ask questions. They are being controlled by the Bill Ayers' and Bernadine Dohrs' of the world.
This hard-Left bile has come around full circle because we never eradicated it. The country moved on for a bit, but we were being tailgated the whole time by a sickness which has caught up with and consumed our society even stronger than it did the first time.
You know things are bad when someone with an apparently somewhat grounded mind like Pharrell Williams is forced to apologize by a fan base who would accuse him of betrayal for daring to opine that Mike "Gentle Giant" Brown was "bullyish".
New year?  On the contrary.  It's been 1968 for far too long.
If 2015 is to be new in any meaningful way, the silent majority must refuse to be silent any further.  They must stand up to this domestic terrorism.  This must be the year our citizens stop being so concerned with America's Got Talent and Survivor and Eminem's latest collection of profane, self-absorbed rantings, laughably referred to as an "album", and start concerning themselves with the dawn of a society that will benefit no-one but the academic elite if brought to fruition.
Young "protestors" must be made to realize that they will not be part of whatever change they're demonstrating for. They are useful idiots to be thrown on the scrap heap when the war is over. They will realize the true nature of what it means to be white and middle-class, re: ignored. Nothing much will change, we just won't have a productive private sector or a Constitution. We will, however, have gulags.
Happy 2015.