Ken LaRive's Facets and The Engineers

The Engineers at the Facets on The Liberty Beacon

Darkness grows, and storm wind blows,
Time’s cold blast, goes fiercely past,
The engineer on the rail-
His bright eyes glow, intelligence knows,
That violent storm, of mindless form,
Could crush us in the gale-

What hands have made, by will we’ve saved,
With steadfast dreams, the future gleams,
The building our reward-
To men he gave, a road to pave,
A bridge to build, an iron will,
Between the acts of war-

He stood between, the death machine,
Our future’s stead, was in his head,
Rebuilt upon the dust-
With directed toil, we drilled for oil,
Showed we could, together would,
Reclaim our holy trust-

Impetus to stand, on blackened land,
With reasons to sing, bells will ring,
As proclamation of our joys-
Air soon cleared, with nothing feared,
Children grew tall, by our loving call,
With flowers as their toys-

But engineers know, that morrows grow,
On life today, death has it’s way,
And soon our memory is lost-
For all our tasks, will surely pass,
Dark shadows climb, long past our time,
No matter what the cost-

Winds still blow, our freedom low,
A moment still, can take our will,
Imbued regrets least we forget-
Those peace-full days, and gentle ways,
Will blinds our sight, insidious delight,
When once our minds are set.

Engineers know, that cold winds blow,
Time erodes, and dreams explode,
The strongest of thoughts will bend-
Roofs will fall, on every hall,
Paid with sweat, and blood, and mud,
For the mortar to build again-

Flags will burn, and reason spurn,
Dreams will die, glories will lie,
Through cracked and bleeding ken-
But there’s a price, that rolls the dice,
For spring’s return, with what is learned,
Engineers will build again-

It’s in the plan, the ways of man,
Each time is spent, generations rent,
For what each has to learn-
But time will call, when each time falls,
A new day draws, universal laws,
For something new to burn.
_________________________________________

We are compelled  to pay for this Free Speech Zone - Please become our Partner and click the DONATE link below or contact the editor-in-chief [at] truthserumeditor@gmail.com

Rachel Dolezal’s complexion problem

She's either a giant Q-Tip or preparing to become a human cannonball from Michael Shannon at The Whole Shebang (mostly)

Meet Rachel Dolezal - African American Incognito

Elizabeth Warren meet Rachel Dolezal. Or better yet, Liawatha meet Fauxprah. Talk about your sisters from another mother! One pretends to be an Indian to exploit the racial spoils system on the East Coast. While the other undergoes what Zorro and The Blue Footballs called the “race change operation” to become black and abuse that quota system on the West Coast.

She's a What, Says Billie 'Buckwheat' Thomas

When Warren’s deception was discovered her nicknames became very colorful: Crockagawea, Fauxcahontas and Liawatha were some of the best. Dolezal and her blackface masquerade also have great potential. In just a few minutes I’ve come up
with Josephine Faker, Liah Angelou, Phony Morrison, Nodetta and Fauxprah. You can create your own, but hurry, Rachel’s notoriety won’t last as long as Elizabeth’s, unless she can find enough deluded Democrats to elect her to office, too.

Dolezal’s transformation started slowly. Her parents adopted four black orphans. This act of kindness had a bizarre impact on blonde, blue–eyed Rachel. Maybe it was the attention they received. Maybe it was the melatonin.

Eventually she applied for a scholarship to historically black Howard University in Washington, DC. Family members couldn’t help but notice she sounded more like Hattie McDaniel during her phone interviews than white–bread Rachel, but their surprise was nothing compared to the shock in the admissions office at Howard when Goldilocks walked in the door.

Her time there was not without incident. She attempted a failed lawsuit against university for racial and sex discrimination. I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she got tired of being called “Snowflake” and decided to do something about it.

Her mistake may have been combining Man Tan with Jheri Curl in a single session. She dozed off as Rachel and woke up as Fakey Minaj. After listening to Michelle I was under the impression life as a black woman was tough: subtle insults at state dinners, news media hanging on your every word and people at Target asking you to reach for items on the top shelf.

But here’s Rachel volunteering for duty. She had a brief marriage to a black man — it may have caused problems when he asked why a black woman had to spend so much time on the tanning bed — and then moved to Spokane to become the Al Sharpton of the organic clothing crowd.

And that proved to be the beginning of the end. Spokane is not all that far from her parent’s home in Montana and as Rachel’s profile increased it was only a matter of time before someone made the connection.

In retrospect Dolezal is almost a cliché. First she tries too hard. Rachel grew this huge, unruly mop of Rasta hair that I thought was supposed to be confined under a large knit cap. But no, she piles it on top of her head and as a result she looks like a cross between giant Q–Tip or a human cannonball testing a new shock absorption system.

She uses her chemically–induced race to become chair of the Seattle Police Ombudsman Commission where she searches for police brutality. Rachel claims her adopted black brother is actually her son. Ben Shapiro has unearthed an interview with The Easterner where she says the family lived in a teepee, dad hunted with a bow and arrow and they had to flee to South Africa where she was abused with a Boer whip.

Rachel claims to be a professor when she’s not; says she was date raped but didn’t file charges; explains her hair is blonde because she had cancer and whines that someone painted a swastika on the door of an office where she worked.

Essentially Dolezal is a leftist grievance recycling center masquerading as a human. The only thing she hasn’t claimed to justify her ethnic transformation is dad was the “black sheep” of the family.

Now it’s all come crashing down. She had to resign from the NAACP, the police stopped investigating her hate crime magnetism, the university didn’t renew her contract and the black man she claims is her father disowned her.

The only good news for our drama queen is the gullible and superficial media is flying her east to appear on network TV. And there are rumors of an endorsement deal with Fake Bake.

Before she resigned, authentic members of the NAACP were starting a petition to force Rachel to take a leave of absence during the controversy. Her resignation pre–empts that, but some alone time might come in handy. Rachel could try to get in touch with her roots. I hear Scandinavia is very nice this time of year.

_____________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now

Slow death of Common Core

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know the Warning Signs from Alan Caruba

Think about the major policy undertakings of the Obama administration over the past six and a half years. It began with a “stimulus” that wasted trillions in the quest of generating jobs, but did little to nothing in achieving that goal.

That was followed by ObamaCare which most agree has been a disaster for the nation’s healthcare sector and, finally, Common Core, a one-size-fits-all testing program intended, we were told, to improve learning standards in the nation’s schools. The only thing it has achieved is the opposition of parents, teachers unions, and entire states.

In the April edition of The Heartland Institute’s School Reform News, one could find headlines that included “Arizona House Votes to Repeal and Replace Common Core”, “Arizona House Votes to Repeal Common Core”, ”West Virginia House Passes Common Core Repeal Bill”, and “Ohio Bill Would Protect Students Opting Out of Common Core Tests.”

Facts-not-Fantasy

In March, some 19 states had introduced legislation to either halt or replace Common Core. Do you see a trend here?

One trend of significance was noted in a commentary by Jason L. Riley in the May 6 edition of The Wall Street Journal. “The Soccer Mom Revolt Against Common Core” cited a national poll released by Fairleigh Dickinson University earlier this year that put “approval for the new standards at 17%, against 40% who disapproved and other 42% who were undecided.

A breakdown by gender had Common Core support 22% for men and only 12% for women.”

Perhaps the greatest surprise among these numbers is that the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Educational Association, as Rob Bluey of the Heritage Foundation noted in February “is no longer a cheerleader for Common Core national education standards.”

In a letter to the union’s three million members, its president, Dennis Van Roekel, took Common Core to task for its failure to even provide information for implementing it in their classrooms. The American Federation of Teachers had raised similar concerns nearly a year earlier!

Writing on September 2014, Joy Pullman, a Heartland Institute research fellow whose expertise is education held forth on the “Top Ten Things Parents Hate About Common Core.” Among them was “The senseless, infuriating math.”

“If Common Core hadn’t deformed even the most elementary of our math abilities so that simple addition now takes dots, dashes, boxes, hashmarks, and foam cubes, plus an inordinate amount of time”, you are not going to get the right answer.

Parents in growing numbers have discovered, as Pullman notes, that “when they do go to their local school boards, often all they get are disgusted looks and a bored thumb-twiddling during their two-minute public comment allowance.”

Pullman says, “The bottom line is, parents have no choice whether their kids will learn Common Core, no matter what school they put them in.” That, obviously, is changing as state after state pulls out of the Common Core program.

In a new book by Samuel Blumenfeld and Alex Newman, “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children”, Blumenthal points to “Growing levels of illiteracy, plunging international rankings, the decline of critical-thinking skills, mushrooming decadence, mass shootings, and companies that can’t find the skilled workers they need—these have become some of the atrocious hallmarks of U.S. public schools.”

“Common Core schemers are engaged in what can only be described as consumer fraud with monumental implications for education and the future of America.” The bottom line is that “the scheme was never field-tested before being foisted on America.”

There is no part of student’s education that Common Core does not impede or corrupt. In the area of science, Blumenfeld says “Instead of teaching children about science—real science—the standards will offer students a steady stream of controversial propaganda presented as unchallenged fact.”

Regarding climate change “students will be required to learn that human activities are mostly to blame, even though this notion is disputed by countless scientists and a vast, growing body of actual scientific observational evidence.”

Closest to home are Common Core’s “National Sexuality Education Standards” aimed to begin the “sexualization of children in kindergarten” says Blumenfeld. “Is learning about ‘homosexual marriage’ before first grade in government schools really ‘age appropriate’ or necessary?” \

But it gets more radical “with graphic lessons promoting everything from masturbation and fornication to transgenderism and homosexuality.”

We shouldn’t be surprised at the backlash Common Core has received from both parents and teachers unions among others.

Like the “stimulus” and ObamaCare, Common Core demonstrates a thorough lack of understanding of the values of individuality that have underwritten our nation’s free market economy, helped create a respected healthcare system, and which parents have expected the educational system to pass on to new generations.

Instead Common Core teaches collectivism—socialism—and degrades various elements of education from math to English to science.

It cannot be removed from our nation’s schools soon enough.

_____________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now

Repeal that law school

From the files of Jeff Jacoby at The Boston Globe

When the University of Massachusetts agreed in 2010 to acquire the Southern New England School of Law, there were skeptics aplenty.

The decision to take over the small private institution and transform it into a state-run facility, rechristened the UMass School of Law, was disparaged by critics who said the merger was unnecessary, unrealistic, and unwise.

Two University of Massachusetts trustees, Richard Lawton and Kenneth MacAfee, warned at the time that the law school proposal "stinks of political motives," and claimed it would "prove to be an embarrassment to our UMass brand."

The Pioneer Institute analyzed the plan — which was premised on the assertion that a weak private law school could be made bigger, better, and more competitive without costing taxpayers a dime — and rated it "virtually impossible."

State Senator Stanley Rosenberg (now the Senate president) was openly dubious about assurances that Massachusetts could assume the operation of a law school without siphoning funds from existing campuses. The state's "higher-ed system continuously makes commitments for which there are inadequate resources," said Rosenberg. "We have to stop doing this."

Editorial pages across the political spectrum tossed cold water on the idea. "This is a baleful time to entertain the creation of a public law school," argued the Boston Globe, mistrusting the rosy assumptions on which UMass was relying. The Springfield Republican bluntly labeled it "one of the worst ideas to come down the pike in years."

Now, five years later, the University of Massachusetts School of Law has a record it can be judged by. And as recent reporting on the school's performance by the Globe's Laura Krantz makes clear, the skeptics were right all along.

Proponents of the merger offered pie in the sky. They claimed they could transmute a collapsing fourth-tier law school into an impressive state institution that would toughen its admissions standards while doubling its enrollment. Though it would charge lower tuition and fees than any law school in the area, it would make so much money that within three years it would be remitting more than $1 million annually to the state — and still be left with a surplus that would total $4.4 million by 2015.

Enrollment, which was supposed to surge to 559 students, has been shrinking: There are just 72 students in the incoming class, and total enrollment is only 213. Tuition at UMass Law is indeed among the lowest anywhere, about $24,000 for in-state students. The price tag is lowered even further, to $19,000, for applicants who score above the 50th percentile on their LSATs.

Not even magicians Penn and Teller could have turned a failing bottom-tier
private law school into a successful, competitive, inexpensive
profitable public one.

Perhaps the law school's business plan, to echo the old punchline, was to make up in volume what it loses on each student admitted. Its losses are certainly impressive. According to figures supplied by UMass, the law school ran a deficit of more than $3.8 million last year, and expects to lose another $3.9 million this year.

But what about that burgeoning multimillion-dollar surplus UMass Law was going to be socking away by now? What about the $1 million-plus it was going to be remitting to the state? What about the endlessly repeated pledge that taxpayers weren't going to lose a dime on the deal? What about the Brooklyn Bridge you bought? Sorry, chumps. You were duped.

"The original fiscal projection is clearly not sustainable and is being updated annually," outgoing UMass president Robert Caret admitted in a letter to the American Bar Association last year. Yet no amount of "updating" can fix what's wrong with UMass Law School. It was a bad idea from the outset, and it won't improve with age. Beacon Hill should have heeded the skeptics five years ago. It's not too late to do so now.

_____________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now

Is your cheese older than you?

From the files of Michael Shannon at The Whole Shebang (mostly)

The USDA contends 36 pounds of food per person is wasted each month because easily frightened consumers are tossing groceries based on pessimistic expiration dates.

That's probably a low estimate.

I periodically have to go hands–on with my wife when she experiences a busy–body seizure and attempts to toss food that is merely gaining momentum in my refrigerator.

Learn the proper way to help cheese and milk celebrate its birthday by reading Shannon's column at Newsmax.com.

______________________________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now

Death Throes of Common Core

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know the Warning Signs from Alan Caruba

Americans are learning the hard way that the federal government should not be permitted to impose one-size-fits-all standards to education.

It was never intended to play a role in education and the absence of any mention in the Constitution is proof enough that education was intended to be supervised by the states where the school districts, schools, and parents are closest to the process.

Common Core is going to play a large role in the 2016 elections and that is likely to impact former Governor Jeb Bush the most. At the heart of the unhappiness with Common Core has been its emphasis on testing.

A March 20th Wall Street Journal article, “Bush Faces Test of Exam Policy”, reported that “A Rasmussen Reports nationwide survey in February found that 52% of respondents thought there was too much emphasis on testing in schools and 69% believed there was too much ‘teaching to the test.’”

The transformation of the nation’s educational system began when the Department of Education was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1979 and began operating in 1980. It continued with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the name given to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

It requires all public schools receiving Title 1 federal funding to annually administer a state-wide standardized test to all students. NCLB was coauthored by Representatives John Boehner (R-OH), George Miller (D-CA) and Senators Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH).

President George W. Bush was a leading NCLB advocate and signed it into law on January 8, 2002. Each state was expected to develop its own standards because NCLB did not impose a national one.

This year when its reauthorization came up for consideration, it was pulled from the House floor in February. The Heritage Foundation deems it “outdated, ineffective, and prioritizes government standards over the needs of individual students.”

According to Neal McCluskey, Associate Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, “There is no compelling evidence that No Child Left Behind, and federal intervention overall, has produced much good, while it is very clear it has cost substantial money and is unconstitutional.”

In Missouri, circuit court Judge Daniel R. Green, ruled in February that the state’s payment of more than $4 million in membership fees as part of a standardized testing consortium was illegal. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium “is an unlawful interstate compact to which the U.S. Congress has never consented, whose existence and operation violate” Article 1 and 10 of the federal Constitution. It dealt a blow to Common Core.

It’s not just Missouri. In January the Mississippi Board of Education voted to withdraw from the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers consortium which is one of the two tests aligned to Common Core. A full repeal of Common Core standards is under discussion.

By June 2014, two months before its implementation date, 19 states had either withdrawn from the tests or had paused implementation of the standards. Four of the 19, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Louisiana had completely exited the national standards. Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia never adopted it.

Gov. Bush is beginning to put some distance between himself and Common Core. His spokeswoman, Kristi Campbell, said “There is such a thing as too much testing.” Reportedly “he says the federal government shouldn’t impose particular tests or curricula on states.” Meanwhile, in one state after another, Common Core is being rejected.

Facts-not-Fantasy

On the political front, the Heartland Institute’s monthly newsletter, School Reform News, reported in March that “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a front runner in the contest for the Republican nomination for president, made bold reforms of elementary, secondary, and college education a prominent part of his proposed 2015-17 budget.”

“The budget, presented on February 3, would remove the cap on the state’s school choice program, eliminate state funding for Smarter Balanced tests tied to Common Core State Standards, and cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin over two years in exchange for greater autonomy for the system.”

On Capitol Hill, four Republican senators including Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Roberts of Kansas have introduced a bill that would prevent the federal government from strong-arming states into adopting education standards such as Common Core and, presumably, NCLB.

The bill is called learning Opportunities Created at the Local Level Act. As reported in the Daily Caller.com, it “would limit the federal government’s ability to control state educational standards and curriculums through financial incentives, grants, mandates, and other forms of influence.”

There’s no way to know when Common Core will die or whether No Child Left Behind will suffer a similar fate but the trend nationwide is obvious. Parents, teachers, schools and districts want to determine the best curricula for the children in their systems.

They want the federal government out and that is a very good thing.

______________________________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now