Wednesday, November 22, 2017

How to Become a Millionaire with $20?




How to Become a Millionaire with $20?
Col Mike Walker, USMC ret

All,

How to Become a Millionaire with $20?

The answer is easy: Go to Venezuela where $1 = 84,000 "fuerte" bolivars.

Thus $20 = 1,680,000 fuerte bolivars.

By the way...

(1) "Fuerte" means "strong," if you can believe that.

(2) Shortly after socialist Hugo Chavez took power in 2003, the exchange rate was about $1 = 1.6 fuerte bolivars.

SOCIALISM SUCKS!

Friday, November 17, 2017

The Folly of Youth




The Folly of Youth
Mike Walker, Col USMC-ret

All,

Just reflecting on the excesses of youth as it applies to me. Consider these three facts:

(1) James Taylor wrote a classic but disparaging hit in 1972 titled "Old Man." He was 24 then and 67 now. How the worm turns.

(2) Even better, Peter Townsend of The Who wrote "My Generation" where he famously shouted: "I hope I die before I grow old." It was released in 1965 when Townsend was barely 20. 

He is now 72. Is the new verse: "I hope to live to be very very old"?

(3) Those sentiments were reflected in the famous line, "Do not trust anyone over 30" uttered by Jack Weinberg in 1964 who was ... 

wait for it...

a key leader of the FREE SPEECH MOVEMENT at UC Berkeley. He is now 77.

So who do we trust now?

Go figure!

Mike

Sunday, November 12, 2017

THE PROPHET OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

An appendum is added by Mike Walker at the end....

THE PROPHET OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

John Hindracker, Powerline
In the late 1960s, Yale Law School adopted a quota system for African-American applicants. Putting aside its normal criteria for admission, Yale decided that future law school classes would be 10% black, regardless of qualifications. Other law schools and academic institutions did the same thing at around the same time.
On June 9, 1969, California appellate judge Macklin Fleming, a Yale Law graduate, wrote a letter to Dean Louis Pollak questioning the wisdom of the new quota system. Reading the letter nearly 50 years later, one can only marvel at how prescient Judge Fleming was. I recommend the whole thing. Here are some excerpts:
From your remarks and those of Dean Poor, I understand that 43 black students have been admitted to next fall’s class, of whom 5 qualified under the regular standards and 38 did not. … You also said that the future policy of the Law School will be to admit 10 per cent of each entering class without regard to qualification under regular standards.
***
With the adoption of its new admission policy the Law School has taken a long step toward the practice of apartheid and the maintenance of two law schools under one roof. Already there has been established in the Law School building a Black Law Students Union lounge with furniture and law books provided by the school. And I learned from Dean Poor that the 12 black students in the present first year class who were admitted under relaxed standards have not done well academically. Dean Poor attributed this deficiency to the pre-occupation of these students with racial activities. I think it equally logical to attribute their preoccupation with racial activities to their lack of qualification to compete on even terms in the study of law.
***
The immediate damage to the standards of Yale Law School needs no elaboration. But beyond this, it seems to me the admission policy adopted by the Law School faculty will serve to perpetuate the very ideas and prejudices it is designed to combat. If in a given class the great majority of the black students are at the bottom of the class, this factor is bound to instill, unconsciously at least, some sense of intellectual superiority among the white students and some sense of intellectual inferiority among the black students.
Judge Fleming foresaw with remarkable clarity how affirmative action would give rise to the political activism we see today:
No one can be expected to accept an inferior status willingly. The black students, unable to compete on even terms in the study of law, inevitably will seek other means to achieve recognition and self-expression. This is likely to take two forms. First, agitation to change the environment from one in which they are unable to compete to one in which they can. Demands will be made for elimination of competition, reduction in standards of performance, adoption of courses of study which do not require intensive legal analysis, and recognition for academic credit of sociological activities which have only an indirect relationship to legal training. 
Second, it seems probable that this group will seek personal satisfaction and public recognition by aggressive conduct, which, although ostensibly directed at external injustices and problems, will in fact be primarily motivated by the psychological needs of the members of the group to overcome feelings of inferiority caused by lack of success in their studies. Since the common denominator of the group of students with lower qualifications is one of race this aggressive expression will undoubtedly take the form of racial demands–the employment of faculty on the basis of race, a marking system based on race, the establishment of a black curriculum and a black law journal, an increase in black financial aid, and a rule against expulsion of black students who fail to satisfy minimum academic standards.
Judge Fleming went on to articulate and rebut the various rationales for race discrimination in admissions. This paragraph is a relic of a better time:
The American creed, one that Yale has proudly espoused, holds that an American should be judged as an individual and not as a member of a group. To me it seems axiomatic that a system which ignores this creed and introduces the factor of race in the selection of students for a professional school is inherently malignant, no matter how high-minded the purpose nor how benign the motives of those making the selection.
Fleming also pointed out that discrimination in favor of one group necessarily means discrimination against others:
A quota policy particularly discriminates against minority groups which have achieved disproportionate representation in a particular field. Such a policy discriminated severely against Jewish applicants for admission to medical schools in the 1930’s. That policy was undoubtedly justified by its supporters as one designed to preserve a proportion of gentile students in medical schools equivalent to their proportion in the general population. Currently, the orientals in California, roughly 1 per cent of the population, comprise in some instances 30 per cent of the enrollment in certain engineering and technical schools. Were a quota system to be introduced in those schools in order to favor black and Mexican-American applicants, the first losers would be applicants from the presently disproportionately represented oriental group.
Which is, of course, a phenomenon that we see everywhere today.
Judge Fleming died in 2010, which means that he lived long enough to see his predictions vindicated. But to be right is not necessarily to be heeded. Just ask Cassandra.
Dean Pollak replied cordially to Judge Fleming’s letter. You can read his response, which defends race discrimination in law school admissions, at the link. Pollak’s letter strikes me as less than candid. I was struck by this passage:
[T]he considerations which have led the faculty to enlarge its readiness to accept academically under-prepared applicants of high promise are not confined to blacks or other disadvantaged racial minorities; these same considerations, the committee has observed, argue for greater solicitude with respect to, e.g., white applicants from Appalachia or the rural south. The point is one which will, I am confident, not be lost sight of….
This prediction, unlike Judge Fleming’s, did not prove to be prescient.

Bruce,

During graduate studies at Harvard there was a major report that showed that affirmative action by universities were having problems.

(1) underprepared minority students were failing at higher rates, i.e. there was not a significant increase in either number of students graduating.

(2) the net effect was an increase in the number of Black students who graduated from top universities but no a net increase in the total number graduates.

What was needed was to increase the number of qualified Black students graduating from high school.

The conclusion was that that college/university-level affirmative action was NOT the solution.The solution was to improve the K-12 education for Black students.

Mike

Friday, November 03, 2017

The Evil that is Antifa



The Evil that is Antifa
Mike Walker, Col USMC (ret)

Four points to consider:

1. Antifa is a radical and violent Marxist-Leninist group. 

The name comes from the period between the two world wars when the two most evil political ideologies in human history vied to enslave and murder millions of innocents.

In Germany, where the name originates, it was a deadly battle between nationalist socialism/fascism and communism. The fate of the German nation had devolved into a vile struggle between Hitler’s nationalist socialist (nazi) storm troopers and the communist party’s anti-fascist action [Antifaschistische Aktion or Antifa].

2. We remember the horrors of nationalist socialism -- that is good, but the evils of Marxism-Leninism have been ignored -- that is wrong. 

Let us set the record straight:

Hitler’s fascists killed millions. Stalin’s communists killed millions. They share the guilt for starting the Second World War that led to the destruction of vast swaths of the Europe and the deaths of millions more. Determining which radical socialist dictator gets what share of that bloodbath is a hopelessly dismal study into unimaginable atrocity.

Suffice it to say that Marxism-Leninism and nationalist socialism/fascism have insatiable blood appetites.

Perhaps as a greater shock to the senses, Mao’s Marxist-Leninist state killed more innocents than both Hitler and Stalin combined.

And finally, let us add that when the communists took power in East Germany after the nazis, the fascist gestapo headquarters in Berlin – with its execution rooms and torture chambers – was taken over by the communist secret police.

Similarly, at the SS concentration camp at Buchenwald (renamed “special camp no. 2"), the communists replaced the nazis and thousand more died at that death center.

3. That is the legacy of Antifa: Unflinching support for Marxist-Leninist driven slaughter of almost countless innocent men, women and children of nearly every race, religion and ethnicity on the planet.

4. Supporting or turning a blind eye to the evil that is Antifa is beyond being disgusting or immoral or unethical. It is, at its root, an act of depravity and cruelty and an obscenity to humanity.