Next They'll Want Dry Water in Their Canteens

The Los Angeles Times had some coverage a small number of atheists who want atheist military "chaplains". The paper printed a couple of letters about this. This raises the question of what exactly such a chaplain would do?

Jack Kaczorowski of Los Angeles wrote:

Imagine the atheist chaplain ministering to his flock to make sure that in a moment of weakness they do not "backslide" into believing in God, and when the shrapnel starts flying, moving from foxhole to foxhole reassuring the men that there is nothing out there and that they are quite alone.

Yes, I can see it now, counseling a dying solidier, one could say, "Well, tough break, kid. This is it. You have nothing to look forward to. Literally. Thank you for sacrificing for the rest of us, even though we're nothing but molecules interacting per natural forces, existing without ultimate purpose."

Proposition 8 Backers Win a Round

They can defend the state constitutional amendment in federal court, or at least that the unanimous opinion of the California Supreme Court. Read about it over at The Opine Edtorials.

UPDATE: Much analysis.

A False Promise of a Cheap-But-Valuable University Education

California is deeply in debt and the state university systems are looking to get more from students. (Perhaps, counting on Obama to have more money printed and given to students.) Of course, it doesn’t help that illegal aliens not only get in-state rates, but are set to start getting taxpayer grants for higher education. Lou Ponsi and Fermin Leal report for the Orange County Register.

Cal State University Fullerton students – angered by the possibility of yet another tuition hike and by university trustees they say don't serve students' best interests – demonstrated Tuesday in the campus quad. Protests aren’t going to make any more money.

What is the point of these theatrics? Oh, that's right. Media attention. Why does the media cover it? To show us the results of false promises and spoiling children? It isn't news if students aren't happy about the possibility of paying more. It would be news if they supported raising tuition/fees.

Cal State University trustees will meet Wednesday in Long Beach to consider another fee hike, this time for 9 percent, for the system's 23 campuses. That would mean an additional $498 for undergraduate students, bringing the annual tuition to $5,970 starting next fall.

"Make no mistake ... this is an attack on education," said graduate student John Belleci, a member of the Student California Teachers Association, the group that helped organize the demonstration.

So raising revenue for the university system in attacking education? How does that follow? Perhasps Belleci needs a good class about logic.

Belleci led chants: "Students united, we can't be divided."

Sure you can. It is done all of the time, often by "ethnicity".

At one point, the group, which at times swelled to 100-plus, marched around the quad. Many held signs: "Stop raising our tuition," and "Stop the hikes."

More than 100?!? WOW!

Across the state, other CSU and University of California campus had similar protests. The largest was at UC Berkeley, where hundreds of students and anti-Wall Street activists converged on the campus for a day of protests and another attempt to establish an Occupy Cal camp after a failed effort last week led to dozens of arrests.

And the Los Angeles Times had coverage as well, from Maria L. La Ganga and Carla Rivera.

At Cal State Fullerton, student Karley White held a sign that read "We are living proof that the system is broken."

No argument from me on that one.

White, a women's studies major, said that budget cuts make it hard to get the classes she needs to graduate and that she fears another tuition hike will sink her further in debt.

Who cares? What kind of job are you going to get in that joke of a program anyway? Who needs to go to school for that? I’ve been involved in studying women most of my life.

The leaders of California announced long ago that just about anyone in California, including illegal aliens, who wants to get a university degree, should have relatively easy (in terms of availability and tuition/fees) access to a university education. Thus, a two-tiered state university system was built - University of California, and California State University, the landscape was flooded with community colleges, and the word went out that a quality "affordable" university education was being promised to the people of California (and Mexico, and...).

So now we've created a situation where a heckuva lot of people assume they have a "right" to this, without having to pay the full costs of it. Whenever there is mere talk of raising the amount that the students have to pay, there are protests.

Listening to some of the protesting students in news coverage, it is quite clear that a lot of them have already been thoroughly indoctrinated into Leftist victricrat mentality... I heard one say, for example, "This is a bunch of rich white men trying to kick minorities and the the poor out of the education system!" Never mind that everyone in California is a "minority". Many of these protesters believe they have a right to a university education without paying more for it.

I do have some sympathy for most of the students impacted by this. It was foolish of the state to make promises to them we couldn't keep. If these students were raised in California, then their parents (at least the ones who actually pay taxes, instead of having it all refunded) have been paying for the university system in their taxes. They planned on their education costing a certain amount of money, and now it is going to directly cost them significantly more.

This is the problem when governments promise things they can't deliver. California is facing billions of dollars in deficis - again. Either the students are going to pay more or taxpayers, many of whom do not use the state university system, are going to have to pay all of the cost increases.

Perhaps the UC system should institute a policy that freezes rates for continuous students. I'm not talking about the kind of student who stays in college forever (yes, I have seen that). But especially for students who make it through in four or five years, how can they possibly plan and budget when they have no idea if the increase is going to be five percent or thirty percent? Of course, this would force the university system to either get more tax money or charge incoming students more, and I would opt for charging incoming students more. That might mean that students have to put off going into the university system another year as they work to save up the money, but it simply isn't moral or in the spirit of our Constitution to force me to pay even more in taxes so that people I don't know can get a UC degree.

Ultimately, we should adopt a policy, starting with higher education, of “separation of state and school”. Let's change that law. Privatize the schools. Let private institutions, nonprofits, businesses or anyone else who is interested take them over, or shut them down and sell the property.

The academy has largely been taken over by the Left, and so Leftists want as many people as possible to spend as much time as possible in higher education. And they’ve unionized so many of the jobs on campus, so the Left wants more of those jobs so that the unions will have more dues money to spend on Leftist politicans and causes.

Previously:

"We Spend More on Prisons Than on Schools!"


We Need Separation of State and School


Instructors and Students Should Learn Reality

California Supreme Court to Issue Proposition 8 Opinion

Read all about it over at The Opine Editorials.

As always, please see my Handy Dandy Marriage Neutering Plea Repellant.

The Right to Crap in Open Spaces

No, this audio isn't a real Occupy LA guy, but he could be...

Derailed

I like trains and the idea of high-speed rail as much as the next guy who's not a train buff. I also hate traffic. I am, however, realistic.

The vaguely proposed California high-speed rail project is simply a way-too-expensive toy, a vehicle for doling out political rewards, for a state that is out of money. There's been much news lately about the wildly rising cost projections of this incompleted concept.

The Los Angeles Times printed a some letters responding to their editorial on the matter.

E.G. Rice of Marina del Rey wrote:

The only high-speed thing about the so-called bullet train is the rate at which its projected costs are rising. Earth to The Times: Air travel is faster, cheaper and more convenient than the proposed train, so why would anyone choose it over flying? The dining car?

You're proposing that a nearly bankrupt state spend huge amounts of money so we can watch half-empty passenger trains shuttle between Bakersfield and Chowchilla really fast. Apart from repealing "Obamacare," I cannot think of a higher priority for voters than killing this mother of all boondoggles.

Well said.

California taxpayers yet unborn can’t afford this project.

Pro-Abortion Newspaper Prints Bad Pro-Abortion Letters

The Los Angeles Times printed a couple of letters responding to the paper's piece on Mississippi's "antiabortion" bill. They didn't get letters better than this?

One need not read the Bible to understand that life begins at conception, and thus a "fertilized egg" is a human being in the zygote stage of development. The same human being, allowed to live, will go on to go through the embryonic, fetal, newborn, infant, toddler, child, adolescent, adult, etc. stages. Still, Sandy Smith of Los Angeles brought up this tired old line of reasoning.

I don't know what Bible the folks in Mississippi are reading, but it's not one I'm familiar with.

The New Testament has no references at all to a fetus, but the Old Testament is very specific. If a man kills another man, he must pay with his life; if he kills an animal, he must offer restitution. But, according to Exodus 21:22: "If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman's husband demands and the court allows." A fetus was considered potential property.

I could pick this all apart, but this has already been covered many places, including here and here. I'm always bemused by these Leftist types who read Leftist materials about the Bible and think people who take the Bible seriously have never considered these things.

S.G. Mann of Huntington Beach writes:

Perhaps the voters in Mississippi should Google Sherri Finkbine.

In 1962, Finkbine discovered that the drug she had been taking for her morning sickness was thalidomide, which causes severe fetal deformities. No hospital would perform the abortion she sought. The Arizona Supreme Court denied her petition.

Finkbine flew to Sweden to receive a therapeutic abortion. The fetus would have been born with no legs and only one arm.

Oh my gosh! NO LEGS AND ONLY ONE ARM! Well, I guess being murdered is preferable to a life without legs and with only one arm? Just ask the millions of living people who are in that exact situation, most of whom have been living lives of significance with many moments of happiness and joy. I'm sure if Mann approached them and offered to hack them into bits and vacuum them into a sink, they’d say, "Yes, please!"

The same faction that claims it wants government "off their backs" wants to intrude on other people's most sensitive decisions.

Those of us who believe in liberty, limited government, and the inherent rights of individual human beings recognize that innocent human beings who are not posing a threat to anyone else should have their lives protected, by government, from those who would murder them. Where is the inconsistency?

One Problem With Emotion-Based Governance

Logical contradictions.

See what I mean in my latest positing over at The Opine Editorials, about the ongoing Proposition 8 case.

What's Next Out of Hollywood?

Given that the Kardashian wedding/marriage/divorce is looking like a planned stunt for TV ratings and lucrative sponsorships, I wonder how much long longer before we see one of these "famous for having a sex tape and rich parents" types having a (fake?) pregnancy and (fake) miscarriage or very real abortion, all for TV and magazine spreads? I wouldn't put anything past these people. Are you on it E!? How about you, MTV?