A Repost from Memorial Day 2017

David Salutes a fallen soldier

It was a completely soaked Rolling Thunder day. We got drenched twice at Arlington National Cemetery but we did not stop. We decorated 2 rows of graves with red and pink fragrant roses.
Dave saluted every time as he placed a rose and thanked the person marked on the gravestone for his/her service. I did the same but I did not salute since I am not military. We were not allowed to place flowers on the graves marked with a star of David.

It was raining so hard, the deluge was washing away my tears. I was so moved by the thousands of rows of white marble headstones of the selfless Americans who served our country in so many God forsaken places and died so that we may live so well and free.

It was beautiful and I am so glad I went even though I was in so much searing leg and knee pain, My misery seemed like such a small sacrifice for these heroes who served their entire lives; so many died for our freedom in far away wars, liberating people who never thanked them nor appreciated their sacrifice. I was there to thank them for giving me freedom from oppressive communism and the opportunity to become the best that God intended us to be.

There was a feeling of camaraderie all around us, entire families, children, grandchildren, grandparents, or lone individuals were carrying around buckets of roses and placing them lovingly one foot in front of each grave marker, thanking that person outloud for their service and sacrifice.
People were in a happy mood waiting at the metro station even though everyone was soaked and shivering.

Memory Eternal for those selfless men and women, our true heroes, who gave their lives for our freedom and comfort.

May 28, 2017

Cellphone Misadventure - They Track You Anyway

Wikipedia photo

I go to the “slug” line, a little busier than usual. I fumble for my iPhone and drop it carelessly in my pocket as a white non-descript SUV pulls up. The driver indicates that I sit behind her, a move against safety protocol. It is a very crowded back bench with a child’s seat and assorted junk stacked high, obviously a rushed attempt at cleaning this morning.  I listen to my usual podcast with my head-set on.

“Slugging” is an organic ride-share around the D.C. suburbs to commute back and forth to the Pentagon and the neighboring office buildings via high-occupancy vehicle lanes without a toll.

As we arrive, she pulls up to the barrier, instead of pulling up to the normal “slug” drop off area, an indicator that she is going to D.C. not inside the Pentagon. As I hurry to get out, the chord gets wrapped around the seatbelt and my podcast stops. I move over to the barrier and put my stuff down to get organized, I grab the chord and the iPhone is gone. In a panic I check my pockets. I turn around to see how far the SUV has gone, can I stop it, but it’s gone.

I call my iPhone several times from my work phone hoping the driver would hear it and answer. I google “lost iPhone” and check the process to locate my phone. I sign into iCloud, access the “lost phone app” and, to my dismay, it says, you must have GPS enabled.  For privacy I normally leave it off.  

After finding the link to the “lost phone mode,” I follow prompts to leave a message on my iPhone and to lock the iPhone screen with a password. I leave an alternate phone number for the finder to call us.

Through my cell phone carrier I attempt to suspend my account via a “lost phone” automated telephone system. However I fail because I do not have a telephone passcode for my carrier.  I next log onto my account on the carrier’s website and suspend my iPhone account to protect my iPhone data. 

Initially I panicked because I do not have a recommended password to prevent unauthorized access to my iPhone. I am particularly upset that I had lost irreplaceable pictures and videos of my mom who had passed away this year and of our grandchildren. I am concerned about potential access to banking.

I decide to unsuspend the iPhone later in the day. As part of the “lost phone mode,” you can press a button that activates a sound on your device so that it can be heard. The sound is very annoying and loud.  I check several times during the day to see if the phone was located by the “lost mode” and I also press the detection sound but no luck.

As the day wears on, I contemplate how I would replace it. It is very hard to concentrate, knowing that so much of my life data is out there for anybody to grab. By nightfall, as I check my email, I am notified by Apple that my phone had been found and it is on the move from D.C. to Alexandria, to Annandale.

If the person was a “slugger,” it would not make sense that she lived in Annandale and picked others in Dumfries, ten miles south. I go to sleep discouraged but hopeful.

I wake up the next morning early, after a night of fitful sleep. I imagine finding my bank account wiped out. I check my laptop and the newest message from Apple says that the phone had been in Dumfries most of the night.

I check the Google satellite image map and find the address located in a cul-de-sac of townhouses. I decide to go to the address, try to locate the vehicle, and to find the person who had my phone.

The Google map townhouse number given by the GPS locator does not exist on that street so I get out and look inside a white SUV for a baby seat - nothing. I go up and down the cul-de-sac.

The Google map insists that this is where my phone is. I see kids’ toys scattered in a yard and I presume that it must be it. I ring the doorbell; a bearded man comes out, I tell him my story, and apologize for waking him and his dog up. He assures me that his wife does not ride-share.  

I next walk around parked cars in the cul-de-sac, pressing the button on the “lost mode app,” hoping that I would hear the annoying radar ping sound inside the parked cars. No success.

I arrive in my office after “slugging” again in a convertible Mercedes. I log into iCloud and see my phone traveling on I-395 speeding towards the Pentagon. I quickly grab my work-cell and head for the slug line drop, continuously tracking my pinging phone. It is getting closer and I watch cars as they come and go.

A white SUV approaches, I recognize the Jamaican flag which floods back into memory, and I approach the driver; she rolls down the window and says, “Are you looking for this?” handing me my iPhone. I am overjoyed.

The moral of my misadventure:

-          With or without GPS turned on, they can still track you

-          Password-protect your phone to guard your data

-          Buy phone-loss insurance

-          Keep your iPhone in a deep pocket or in a purse

-          Be careful when you ride-share and never give up

-          Back up precious photos with iCloud or a removable drive.

 

The Twilight Zone Plus One Makes Reality

“The universe is made of protons, neutrons, electrons, and morons.”  -  Anonymous  

While the left is busy demonizing President Trump for his remarks about the MS-13 gangs who enter our country illegally through the porous southern border, Congressional members, working against the safety interests of the American people and cheered by the leftist media and half of the voting population, are doing their best to stall, defund, and vilify any effort by our president to build a border wall and to deport the illegal criminal elements who are already in this country and have committed atrocious crimes.

As Diane Feinstein said in a 1994 video interview, 40 percent of babies on Medicaid in California were babies born of illegal immigrants, and 17 percent of the prison population was comprised of illegal immigrants who committed felonies, costing the taxpayers $300 million a year. She called for the enforcement of our borders then but things have changed today.  The Democrat Party needs these illegal voters in order to stay in power. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Diane+Feinstein+1994+video+about+illegal+aliens&view=detail&mid=44B59C5383EB8D59311C44B59C5383EB8D59311C&FORM=VIRE

The Democrat Party has locked up the votes of minorities, illegals, Millennials, the welfare underclass, women, low information voters, and rich liberals who live a good life no matter who is in control of the country, the media, academia, and pretty much anybody who attended public and private schools for the past 50 years and has been brainwashed by socialist teachers and administrators into becoming the snowflake generation they are today. Divide and conquer and race-baiting has worked well for the Democrat Party.

A study found that Democrat professors outnumber Republican professors at 40 major universities by a ratio of 11.5 to 1. No wonder students, after having spent a fortune to be indoctrinated into progressivism, finish college as hard-core socialists. Hating capitalism, even though it provided them with opportunities and freedoms they would have never found in Castro’s Cuba or in North Korea’s prison state, they are adamant that socialism will bring them happiness and equality with a six-figure salary and five-star amenities. https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology

The fact that academia is highly controlled by liberals (75% at Yale) has aided in shaping generations to be blind and unquestioning little communist sheeple. https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9769

Teachers unions like the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) forced children in public education to take part in their professionally-organized protests.

Same teachers, administrators, and textbook writers, funded by billionaires like Bill Gates, Al Gore, George Soros and his many Open Society non-profit foundations shaped the thoughts and “feelings” of young and impressionable minds, young Americans who began to see themselves as global citizens even though they did not necessarily understand the issues clearly.

Our children worship at the altar of socialism, communism, and Islam, without really understanding why communism fell everywhere it was tried and why 100 million people living under communism were killed for wanting liberty and freedom of speech.

The same academics are forcing Common Core education on smart students so as not to hurt the “feelings” of other children and spare them embarrassment, dumbing down education for all. It is a touchy-feely snowflake generation that needs special spaces, corners, and rooms to hide from the reality of life otherwise they are “triggered” by visceral hate to destroy everything historical they disagree with.

Administrators have also decided that anyone can make the cheerleading squad because one child failed and the parents complained. Competition is bad and so is meritocracy, we are told by the left. Let’s make everybody “equal.” The proverbial trophy for walking across the stage without tripping has come to pass. http://abc13.com/education/new-rule-everyone-makes-cheer-squad-or-no-one-does/3438723/

Public education is now confusing children as to which bathrooms they should use, and what sex they are.  Sometimes dangerous hormones are given in public schools without parental consent in order to help a student transition to whatever sex they think they are or are told they are. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/teachers-must-keep-childs-transgenderism-a-secret-from-parents-ontario-scho

LGBT militant groups are in the classroom, mostly without parental consent, teaching children not sex education under health, but actually methods of having sex and sexual perversions, even to children as young as kindergarten.  Administrators are forcing students to listen to assemblies about sexual choices and the parents have no clue nor have they been given the choice to opt out their child.

Public education teaches students how to pass a test that determines how much funding the school receives per pupil from the federal government.  There is little math, science, reading, and English being taught because of the discipline problems and the time outs for protests for various causes d’jour, but there is plenty of Spanish taught and remedial math and remedial reading in college.

As our children and their parents go into debt to get that four-year worthless college degree in majors that cannot possibly find them employment, i.e. women’s studies, gender studies, social justice, environmental justice, racial justice, and even white guilt, technical jobs go unclaimed while Johnny and Jenny work as baristas, grocery store clerks, and waiters while living in mom and dad’s basement for free because they can’t afford to move out.

Will we ever be able to dismantle such deplorable public schools in which militant teachers indoctrinate students into their collectivist global politics? No matter how bad they are, how do you fire them when they immediately bring out the race and religious discrimination card?

We should optimistically keep in mind the words of the late Dr. Nino Camardese, an immigrant from Mussolini’s Italy, who used to say, “Truth plus one equals a majority.” Lately though, it’s been more like “The Twilight Zone plus one makes reality.”

Competition and Meritocracy Still the Key for Success

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2016

Competition for survival and success are inscribed in our DNA. We are born to compete. Humans who put forth more effort are more likely to succeed. Others are satisfied with less, act accordingly, become followers, and complain bitterly about the eventual outcome and their station in life.

Even animals in the wild compete for survival; some develop special skills that allow them to rule over an area or a pride, and other animals of the same species recognize and yield to their superiority.

But in the human world government, with input from the vaunted halls of academia, has passed laws, imposing societal ascendency based on skin color, ethnicity, and a certain socio-economic background, not necessarily on meritocracy.

“Meritocracy is a political philosophy holding that power should be vested in individuals almost exclusively based on ability and talent. Advancement in such a system is based on performance measured through examination and/or demonstrated achievement in the field where it is implemented.” (Wikipedia’s definition)

Merriam-Webster defines meritocracy as “a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement” and “leadership selected on the basis of intellectual criteria.” But liberals demand vociferously that “diversity” and non-Caucasians must be chosen over scholarly meritocracy in all fields of endeavor.

First used in 1958, meritocracy refers linguistically to the power of merit.  “An anti-meritocratic system would reward the undeserving.” Being undeserving could also be argued about nepotism and about those with seniority who may or may not be more meritorious than others.

A bogus “white privilege” created by academia is blamed for all societal ills and for the inability of certain groups to be in charge exclusively and for some individuals to succeed. In their twisted economic view, the choices that an individual makes in life, the academic and technical preparation for the real world, experience in a certain field, investment in human capital, should not count at all. The only things that must matter are race and gender.

When someone is admitted to college based on family tradition, the amount of money a family donates to an endowment, relatives and close friends, that is not merit, it is nepotism. When someone is admitted based on their race, ethnicity, or their socio-economic background that is affirmative action and quotas. It is certainly not meritocracy.

I personally prefer to be helped by someone who acquired degrees and skills based on their merit. I want to be treated by a doctor who passed exams without correction to his/her scores based on race, who learned his/her trade by being at the top of his/her class, based on merit. I want a real engineer to build our roads and bridges, not a community organizer. I want to fly on a plane built and serviced by someone who studied real math, not Common Core math.

Just because you cannot pass a science, math, or high school chemistry class but excel in community organizing or theater does not mean that everyone else should follow your communist “lead.”

You can’t build a society on Marxist utopian ideology, it has been tried around the world and the 100 million innocents who died as tortured and starved subjects of this tyrannical ideology are turning in their graves right now seeing the Millennials who are yearning for Bernie Sanders’ socialism and Mao’s communism.

You cannot survive with community organizing and gender confusion studies. If you don’t want to starve, others must be responsible adults to produce the food you consume, the lattes you drink, the precision electronic gadgets you use, and the cars you disdain hypocritically. Someone responsible must know how to build your houses to last, your yachts, your planes, your boats, your private jets, your computers, and all the things the duplicitous rich consume while telling us to downsize our lives to shipping containers in order to save the planet.

Some succeed in life based on genetic looks, genetic athleticism, inheritance, ethnicity, or the color of their skin, but others have to work hard to make progress on their own merit and ability.

Ours is not a “white culture of meritocracy,” as a course at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs seeks to change. It is a culture of hard work and success and it so happens that the majority of the population so far in this country has been white. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/10/university-of-colorado-colorado-springs-course-see/

As advertised in the proposed course at UC, indicators of “white culture” are “individualism, consumerism, meritocracy as an ideal, superficiality, competition, ambition, productivity, [and] extreme exploitation of labor/resources for profit.”

In this course, in which collectivism and racism are center stage, groups must learn to work together in order to “interrupt white privilege and racism in their immediate environments.” The organizers have created another fascistic venue to express insane and irrational hate against the western civilization that pays everybody’s bills, and against white people.

The socialism that took roots in Germany in the 1930s brainwashed the youth to implement their desires to restrict free speech, gun ownership, and other freedoms that interfered with their ideas of a dictatorship of the oppressed. 

Presently, schools and universities in this country have entrenched political correctness (PC) into our culture, forcing the masses to speak and behave a certain way lest they be marginalized, converting Americans into “idealized citizens,” a mirror of Germany’s “brown shirts.” If challenged on these issues, the PC crowd labels the challengers “fascists” when in reality the PC enforcers are the fascists.

In a column written on February 27, 1982, titled Susan Sontag Provokes Debate on Communism, Sontag is quoted as saying in a February 6 speech at Town Hall, “I would contend that what they illustrate is a truth that we should have understood a very long time ago: that communism is fascism – successful fascism, if you will.”

The same tactic was used during the Russian revolution, during the collapse of Venezuela, and during Pol Pot’s government in Cambodia – the ignorant were incited, the successful were blamed for their failures, and the establishment was driven out and replaced with a dictatorship of the lowest of the low who happened to be communist community organizers in good standing.

Competitors were murdered and a few lucky ones were driven out with their lives.  As a famous talk show host said on his radio program, doctors were made dishwashers, and dishwashers became surgeons. Societies devolved into chaos for many decades and mountains of skulls were built from the people whose opinions diverged from those of the young communist organizers.

How do we change the outlandish psycho-babble created and pushed by liberal college professors around the country, dangerous ideas and rhetoric that promote and incite violence?

The college course accreditation process would be a start. Credentials of insane and tenured college professors must come under scrutiny. Alumni endowments should cease until such time that colleges become again places of free exchange of ideas instead of the radical breeding grounds and nut farms they have become. As one reader said, "liberals are two clicks away from teaching alchemy, astrology, charms, and potions.”

Personally I am proud of who I am, of my merit, and of what I have achieved through very hard work. Although there were many variables that I had to address along the way, such as the absence of luck, no college tradition in my family, blue collar background, gender discrimination, economic destitution at times, I am proud to be white.

I cannot change and do not wish to change the melanin content of my skin any more than a black person can change their skin color. Our parents and God have created us this way.  But the color of our skin should not define who we are or who we can become. This country has so many opportunities to succeed, all we have to do is apply ourselves and work hard to be the best we can be. I and many others like me are proof of that opportunity.

People must remember that we are not genetically altruistic and humans thrive on competition not collectivism. Society progresses when individuals with unique talents and efforts are promoted based on merit, not on entitlements, quotas, and inferior skills.

If we want society to devolve to the lowest common denominator, then by all means we must continue the destruction of the freedom of speech through political correctness (PC) invented and dictated by tenured professors with a self-loathing complex and now imposed by society-at-large as the norm.

Highly adept at deception and disinformation, communist agitators use specific language and divisive means to promote their utopian agenda. The novice and the naïve are easily swayed by socialist rhetoric and empty promises. It is perplexing to see how droves of young white people hang onto every word uttered by their socialist guru, Bernie Sanders, a white man from the whitest state in the Union who got himself elected to Congress and mesmerizes them with the promised Western European socialism as the only hope for minorities in this country.

On the Teacher Appreciation Week

My musings on this Teacher Appreciation Week:

Photo credit: Vasile Tomi

To my high school English teacher who said that I would never amount to anything because my parents were blue collar, I’m glad you were so wrong.

To my grammar and Romanian language and literature teacher, thank you for being so tough, I really learned a lot from you.

To my history teacher, Mrs. Avram, who challenged my thinking by playing the devil’s advocate, thank you. She was eventually allowed to immigrate to Israel under a strange deal Ceausescu made with Israel to allow Jews to repatriate in exchange for monetary payment in hard currency.

To our world literature teacher who brought his violin to class and played classical pieces that he thought matched the mood and the era of a novel we were reading and discussing, thank you. You taught me the love of music and the appreciation for fine writing.

To the math teacher who terrorized us with complex calculus that she could not solve herself, you taught me to be a better teacher than you were, to admit that I did not know something and that I should study it further instead of giving students a bogus answer.

To the gym teacher who tried to keep us physically fit and healthy even though we had so little food.

To the disciplinarian principal who did not mind doling our physical punishment as well as detention for the worst among us.

To the home room and physics teachers who tried very hard to indoctrinate us into the communist party, you failed miserably with me.

To the petite chemistry teacher who tried to teach us a lot of theory without the benefit of a lab and experiments - I learned the table of elements and enjoyed organic chemistry more.

To the home economics teacher who wore immaculately pressed clothes every day, thank you for teaching me how to sow, how to make clothes and a pattern, how to knit, cross stitch, and embroider. Unfortunately I failed at cooking because it bored me terribly. Who wants to be all day in the kitchen? Certainly not me. I like to cook simple food that does not require toiling in the kitchen for hours.

If You Want Excellent Medical Care, You Won't Find It in Socialism

From my brilliant friend in Texas, Dr. Aurel Emilian Mircea:

 

Hello readers of all denominations!

 

I did not mean to brag or to bore you with my Texas-pride, but while writing and publishing “Medical Epicenter,” a new collection of short stories, I had to openly admire the largest medical city in the world. Texas Medical Center in Houston, with which I have been associated for more than twenty-five years, is by far the biggest and best on the globe.

It contains 54 medicine-related institutions, with 21 hospitals and 8 specialty facilities, 8 medical academic and research foundations, 4 medical schools, 7 nursing schools, 3 public health organizations, 2 pharmacy colleges and one dental school. It has the world’s best and biggest Children Hospital and the most advanced Cancer Institute, MD Anderson. Furthermore, the “Medical Epicenter,” as I called it in my recently published book, is the 8^th largest business district in America and has 50 million square feet of commercial buildings with 20,000 doctors and 100,000 auxiliary nursing and medical staff. It performs more than 13,000 heart surgeries, delivers 25,000 babies and attends to 8 million patients a year.

In this giant healthcare environment, I have a small story to tell you, especially to those readers with a medical background. 10 years ago, when I had my first extensive cardiac tests done with the DeBakey Cardiology Group at the Methodist Hospital in Houston, I’ve met a skilled cardiac technician named Pedro. In our conversations about the medical world, he had mentioned a few encounters with the visiting international patients and American celebrities. One of them was about the famous Nobel Peace Prize winner, Lech Walesa. The ex-Prime Minister of Poland had arrived a few months earlier for a scheduled heart transplant. Back in Warsaw, a cardiology team at the best hospital had recommended that the ailing national hero should have the procedure done, as soon as possible.

Where else should such a procedure be done to perfection, than in Houston, Texas at the Methodist Hospital in the world’s “Medical Epicenter?”

Subsequently, the same surgeon who operated on me a few years later was assigned to take over Lech Walesa’s case, after all the tests were done according to the in-house protocol. A few days later, while the pre-transplant procedures were in progress, Pedro came across a good set of tests results. Suddenly the prognosis for Lech Walesa made a huge turn for the better. While the DeBakey Cardiology Group experts were scratching their heads about the previous cardiac recommendations for a heart transplant, they have soon concluded that a simple Boston Scientific Pacemaker should do it.

A short while later, the famous liberator of Poland and one of the crucial persons in bringing down the Iron Curtain, was a happy owner of an implanted cardiac pacemaker. Apparently to this day, according to the “Medical Epicenter’s” grapevine, he is doing very well with his own, old and patriotic, Polish heart.

“What a miraculous outcome!” Pedro told me, a few weeks later, when I returned for my follow-up tests. “Doc, you should’ve seen the famous Polish politician doing a Polka dance in my office, after I did his last cardio scan, which showed his heart to be as good as new!”

 

Morale of the Story

 

No matter how well intended are the socialized medicine principles, the fiscal limitations and central government control over the delivery of healthcare makes it as infertile as a castrated horse. To this day, more than 50 years from the implementation of the socialized medicine, in the UK they are still waiting for 9 months for a hip replacement and more than one year for a coronary bypass.

Remember Comrade Boris Yeltsin in the early 90s? He was the first freely-elected President of the post-Soviet Russia and a heavy, daily Vodka consumer. His alcohol-weakened heart was also fixed by the Debakey Group from Houston, since no one in the whole of Europe, eastward of Madrid could perform a reliable open, coronary bypass surgery. The Texas Medical Center specially-selected team flew in to Moscow, with a private jet filled with advanced equipment, heart medicines, surgical supplies, specialized nurses and Dr. Michael DeBakey and Dr. George Noon, two of the world’s best cardiac surgeons.

Talking to me at my mother-in-law’s bedside a few years later, Dr. Noon and I we were exchanging personal experiences about the healthcare system behind the old Iron Curtain. We were both correlating the simple facts that the communist-style healthcare still could not provide such simple basics, as disposable surgical gloves. During my days as one of the many “Barefoot Doctors” in the communist Romanian rural world and later as an ENT specialist in Warsaw, Poland, the gloves were always recycled and sterilized on a daily basis! Disposable gloves were not invented as yet, never mind CT scans or advanced surgical procedures…

Let freedom ring in the capitalist healthcare!

 

***

 

Aurel Emilian Mircea, M.D. was born in Romania and graduated from the Medical School in Bucharest, at the peak of the communist regime. During his college days he became a professional musician, which later helped him make his way to the Free World. After a sojourn through Poland and South Africa he settled permanently in Texas, USA. In his retirement he had published a few books about healthcare and the very competitive world of showbiz.

 

My Take on the Teacher of the Year Award

Photo credit: IJR Red

As a former teacher, I was annoyed but not at all surprised by the choice for this year’s Teacher of the Year Award. The recipient with a political agenda showed the nation what an “exceptional teacher” looks like. With her boorish and rude behavior during the ceremony at the White House, she bashed and disrespected our President in front of the entire nation and in front of school children who look up to teachers like her to be objective. Yet many indoctrinate their students into their twisted political world eight hours a day, not into the American-exceptionalism that they should.

President Trump, exhibiting class and respect, mentioned the “incredible devotion that has earned her the adoration, total adoration, of her students and colleagues, the school district, community, and the entire state.” https://www.facebook.com/ijrredpresents/videos/179722432727814/

The petty little ideologue was not just wearing an insufferable smirk the whole time, she was rude and ungrateful and refused to shake the president’s hand or clap when appropriate.  Honored for her “adoration” in the classroom, she could not muster the slightest propriety for the moment and the place.  

Her rudeness and lack of decorum are a disgrace to the profession. There are so many deserving teachers out there who work in the education trenches every day without being recognized for their work because their politics are of a different kind than the Democrat-sanctioned socialist plantation of Marxist adoration.

Selecting a Teacher of the Year begins at the local level and each school district has their own criteria that tend to match the national guidelines. You will be very surprised to know that parents and students have nothing to do with the selection process even though they say the nominee is adored and respected by the community which they serve. The high ranking administrators form a selection committee composed of administrators, teachers, educational service personnel, student support personnel, and past Teacher of the Year winners and nominees.

Some common denominators are membership in the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), with their financial support for the Democrat Party, and other university-sponsored organizations who are mills for future teachers.

Teaching awards are nothing but a Democrat popularity contest of who is the most progressive, outrageous, and anti-American progressive ideologues in good standing with the top administrators and other decision-makers who can send that person to the top of the heap.

“According to the criteria for the National Teacher of the Year Program, a Teacher of the Year should inspire all students to learn. Teachers who aspire to this award do not stick to the textbook or traditional methods of teaching.”

The nominees usually push the latest fad in education, currently the Common Core curriculum. The top nominees believe in global education, global citizenship, no borders, the anthropogenic global warming, the rights of the illegal aliens and refugees that trump those of American citizens, alternative lifestyles, Islam over Christianity, and deviant sexual behaviors promoted as the norm and introduced by force into the classroom as early as kindergarten in some states.

Mandy Manning, this year’s awardee, is an English teacher in Spokane, Washington, and teaches refugees and immigrant children from countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Myanmar, Mexico, and Tanzania. It is no surprise that a political person like her would be chosen as spokesperson for an entire profession. https://www.yahoo.com/news/mandy-manning-teacher-handed-trump-080024349.html

No mention is made whether these immigrant children are legal or illegal as it does not matter to liberals if we follow the law as long as we have more future Democrat Party voters in our midst.

Is it any wonder that such “educators” are turning our children into communist agitators and snowflakes, with no allegiance to our country, our history, our sovereignty, our flag, our pledge of allegiance, God, and to a sound education?

This teacher of the year affronted our President the entire time.  If she is the teacher of the year, the best and brightest that our country can produce, what must the rest of the teachers be like?

Based on the buttons she was wearing during the ceremony, a rainbow apple, Transgender Rights, Women’s March, and the letters she gave the President from her immigrant students, this person obviously puts the interests of immigrant children, refugee children, and a women’s movement that embarrasses at least half of this country’s female population ahead of America’s students’ interests.

Whatever happened to teaching reading, writing, American history, American exceptionalism, science, and American civics objectively, without the teacher’s political agenda being front and center eight hours a day?

 

The Soviets' Inner Wall

A Memorial to victims who died at the Berlin Wall
Photo credit: Wikipedia

…'from Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended over Europe'    – speech made by Winston Churchill in 1946 in Fulton, Missouri

At the end of World War II, the victorious Allies divided Germany from 1945 to 1949 into four sections, each administered by a different allied country, in order to prevent the spread of Nazism (National Socialism).

The Americans, the French, and the British did not take as seriously as the Soviets did the virtual division line between their controlled territories and those controlled by the Soviet Union. People from the western and eastern parts came and went as they pleased, crossing this imaginary border and angering the Soviets in the process who were very partial to their communist ideology and boundaries.

On May 26, 1952 the newly-formed Soviet East Germany (Deutsche Demokratische Republik, DDR) began building an actual inner border concrete wall, 9 ft. tall and topped with barbed wire, which they dubbed “the anti-imperialist wall.”

In reality it was not a wall built to keep imperialist invaders from West Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BRD) out of East Germany (DDR) but to keep their own East German people inside a one giant Stalinist prison.

To protect their zone and their ideology, the Soviets built one of the deadliest border walls in history. If their citizen dared to even try escaping to the West, they were summarily shot and killed. The wall was so long, over 866 miles from the Baltic Sea to the center of Germany, that it put the Berlin Wall to shame. The concrete wall topped with barbed wire snaked around the countryside with no trees a certain distance from it so that escapees would have no ground cover in any direction.

There was a vehicle barrier in front of this concrete wall and a six foot wide plowed strip of dirt to record foot prints. Watch towers and manned posts made sure that guards caught those attempting to flee. If caught after the fact, the citizens were heavily fined and imprisoned for three years.

Trees were cut down and underbrush was cleared so that there was always a clear line of sight and a clear line of fire. With electronic sensors strategically placed, this “death strip” was running through towns, manicured stretches of land, farms, coal mines, and even through the middle of a house. Many communities were split in half, very similar to the Berlin Wall which split streets in half.

According to historians, out of 17 million East Germans, one million people a year were trying to flee to the west. The border with its buffer zones, no man’s lands, and more guard towers than one could imagine, became so elaborate and strict that the population’s flight or attempts to flee were reduced by 75 percent.

An impregnable barrier of iron, concrete, barbed wire, electric sensors, watch towers, plowed strips, and mine fields was thus built between the German Democratic Republic in the East and the Federal Republic of Germany in the West. When historians refer to the communist Iron Curtain of Eastern Europe, they are referring to this border wall between the two divided Germanys. The first reference to the Iron Curtain, fearing the spread of communism, was made by Winston Churchill in his 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri.

By the 1980s thirty guards were protecting each three-and-a-half mile stretch of the entire border wall. Sixty thousand anti-personnel mines to deter border crossings further reduced the escape rate to less than one percent.

Hundreds of people trying to escape to West Germany from East Germany were shot, stepped over land mine wires, or were killed by dogs. Some of the guards themselves tried to escape to the west.

For over thirty years the Soviets built an elaborate system to imprison East German citizens in their own communist prison country. On November 9, 1989, a series of revolutions caused the demise of this border, the “Iron Curtain” between the East and the West.

The more visible and more photographed wall by the press, The Berlin Wall, a symbol of oppression and shame, of dividing a city between the communist ideology of the Soviets and the capitalist one of the West, was dismantled with much fanfare and celebration, chunk by chunk, by people who escalated the graffiti-painted side of the West. Checkpoint Charlie, the actual crossing point in Berlin, became part of the dustbin of history.

The main stream media revisits the Berlin Wall when it’s convenient to support the progressive globalist narrative of ‘no borders.’ They equate a wall today which protects the sovereignty of any nation as an oppression of the migratory masses from third world countries who are entitled to invade well-developed nations with generous welfare systems, a social security which is missing in their basket-case nations from which they hail. Asylum-seekers and economic refugees have certainly already overwhelmed several European countries.  

The inner East German border wall was also dismantled with less press coverage, creating almost two million tons of debris. A small section of this wall is preserved today in Hötensleben as a memorial to the death zone created between the free state in the West and the communist prison state in the East.