ONECITIZENSPEAKING: THANKSGIVING 2013 BOO HOO! A BLACK STUDENT AT UCLA PLAYS THE RACE CARD WHEN PROF CORRECTS GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, AND CAPITALIZATION! Global Warming: Targeting a new energy source to disadvantage Americans and others?

One Citizen Speaking...

---

• ONECITIZENSPEAKING: THANKSGIVING 2013
• BOO HOO! A BLACK STUDENT AT UCLA PLAYS THE RACE CARD WHEN PROF CORRECTS GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, AND CAPITALIZATION!
• Global Warming: Targeting a new energy source to disadvantage Americans and others?

ONECITIZENSPEAKING: THANKSGIVING 2013 Posted: 26 Nov 2013 08:01 PM PST While it is intuitively obvious that many of us have much to be thankful for: our health, happiness, family and friends – this should be a time to consider the future.  Never in the history of the United States did a President and his cadre of progressive socialist democrats shred the United States Constitution and impose a mandate on all  Americans to purchase insurance from a private third-party or face fines, imprisonment, or other government sanctions such as the potential loss of Social Security or other earned government benefits. Never in the history of the United States has a President inflicted gratuitious pain on millions of Americans who will lose their insurance coverage in the coming months -- many being treated for serious ailments -- all to pursue a progressive socialist agenda. Face it people, the words progressive and liberal can now be equated with un-American socialism and communism. Never in the history of the United States has a President sought to imposed central planning and administration on the American people, to the extent of usurping Congressional law-making and States' rights. Even with our political, social, and financial world in jeopardy -- exascerbated by a malignacy in the Presidency and metastisizing throughout the bureaucracy -- we still have much to be thankful for. Our poor are millionaires compared to the poor of most third-world nations. Poor is a relative word when some of our most disadvantaged citizens own cellphones, televisions, vehicles, and are not wanting for food, water, shelter or clothing. Of course, there are the truly poor, especially those who are mentally ill or disabled by drug use. To not help the poorest and sickest among us when we pump billions into foreign kleptocracies is criminal. We live in a deeply-divided nation, made more so by the self-serving, corrupt politicians who are deliberately dividing Americans and setting them against one another. This too is criminal. Many of our fellow Americans may not be enjoying the comfort of a home, a hot meal or the pleasant companionship of family and friends. And in these days of a 16-trillion dollar national debt, that is a crime. No, I am not suggesting that we turn towards socialism and the failed prescription of “from each according to their ability, to each according to his needs,” but I am suggesting the manner in which public funds appear to be used to promote the self-interests of the political ruling class and their benefactors, the special interests. Why, I am bound to ask, are so many people suffering when the politicians are telling us that they are acting to improve the lives of American citizens? Where have all the billions spent on eliminating poverty, crime and decaying neighborhoods gone? And why do inner city cesspools of decaying neighborhoods, crime and corruption still exist with such “enlightened” political leadership? Truth be told, we are witnessing the most corrupt government in the history of the United States. On all levels – local, state and federal. Politicians whose votes are for sale, year-after-year, to those who provide campaign funds, voter support and personal enrichment for themselves, their relatives and “special friends.” We can plainly see thuggish union leaders who have used the strength of their non-complaining members to push citizens away from the bargaining table so self-serving deals can be struck between themselves and their paid representatives in government. Deals which cost citizens billions of dollars in higher costs, lost productivity and the reward of seniority over merit, complacency over innovation and most of all – the stifling of individualism to support the unexceptional collective. We allow our leaders to speak of education – to inform and uplift our children to new heights, preparing them for competition on a global scale; while the evidence shows that the bulk of the money targeted for education is used for adults – the administrators, unionized employees and the special interests – and never reachs the classroom. We see our children becoming mind-numbed robots; worshiping an empty celebrity culture and playing mind-warping games on the latest electronic devices. The promise of computer assisted teaching has become the plague of computer-assisted babysitting. Our children cannot do math without a calculator and cannot prepare a research paper without Google, Wikipedia and a cut-and-paste environment. We allow the nation to be led by a virtual unknown; a man who hides his credentials from the public and who needs a speech writer and teleprompter to speak to the American people about goals and what he really believes. We allow a political party to field eight or more candidates, most of them babbling platitudes while disguising personal failings that would not be accepted for a position on a school board much less high public office. What the hell happened to those who believed that this generation was the “best and the brightest?” What happened to individual responsibility where individuals actually paid for what they wanted in terms of real time, effort and money? So I ask you on this Thanksgiving holiday, where did we go wrong and are we going to allow a relatively small bunch of pandering politicians and their special interest friends to rule our lives? Are we going to demand a return on the investment in our own taxable labor to benefit ourselves, our family and our friends rather than those who contribute nothing to society, but take their piece of the action for non-performance? Are we going to stop pretending and realize that the “emperor has no clothes” and has become an imperious Marie Antoinette? Are we going to hold people accountable for their actions. Charity is one thing, but state-directed charity towards themselves is quite another. Especially when it is promoted behind a political agenda of “wealth redistribution” to gain the support of the masses. Please open your eyes, look about and realize that there are those who do not wish America and its citizens well – and that there is a great likelihood that these people have infiltrated our educational, law enforcement, government and institutional infrastructure. Think about next Thanksgiving and whether or not you will really be thankful for what the corrupt politicians and more easily manipulated voters among us have wrought. And never, never forget those who are serving our nation in foreign lands, perhaps not having a Thanksgiving as they stand vigilant watch over America's interests and provide safety and security to Americans everywhere.    GOD BLESS AMERICA ...  AND, GOD BLESS YOU AND YOUR FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND COMMUNITY. -- steve

BOO HOO! A BLACK STUDENT AT UCLA PLAYS THE RACE CARD WHEN PROF CORRECTS GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, AND CAPITALIZATION! Posted: 27 Nov 2013 11:14 PM PST When will Blacks learn that they are never going to be able to compete in a world of ideas or a world of actions when they view everything through the prism of race. Unfortunately, the progressive socialist democrats and their grievance industry have taught the past two generations to claim racism when they do not get a free pass on the rules and regulations that affect everybody else. Can you believe this “micro-aggression” bullshit? Prof corrects minority students’ capitalization, is accused of racism Racial tensions are inflamed at the University of California at Los Angeles following several incidents — most notably, one where a professor corrected the grammar, punctuation and capitalization in minority students’ assignments. The act of correcting a black student was “micro-aggression,” according to the members of the student group “Call 2 Action: Graduate Students of Color,” which launched a sit-in during a subsequent meeting of the class. If the truth be told, what right does a single person have to disrupt the education of an entire class over such a trivial and subjective matter? I have listened to any number of high-ranking blacks in the Obama Administration who apparently were appointed based on their skin color. Because their ideas pointed to intellectual bankruptcy and their presentation was anything but perfect. Using big words inappropriately or out of context does not make you appear important, it is the quality of your ideas and the reasoning behind them that makes you important and relevant. “A hostile campus climate has been the norm for Students of Color in this class throughout the quarter as our epistemological and methodological commitments have been repeatedly questioned by our classmates and our instructor,” wrote the group in a statement to the college. “[The] barrage of questions by white colleagues and the grammar ‘lessons’ by the professor have contributed to a hostile class climate.” Some 25 students participated in the sit-in, including five of the 10 members of the class. Relaxed standards, ideology over education – and you get ill-educated graduates who “feel” rather than reason … Val Rust, a professor of education and information, was the official target of the sit-in, though the aggrieved minority students had problems with UCLA’s handling of racial issues that went far beyond just one classroom, according to Inside Higher Ed. Rust is guest-lecturing in China this week, and did not respond to a request for comment. He sent a letter to his colleagues in the education department, however, in which he clarified that he meant no offense to minorities. “I have attempted to be rather thorough on the papers and am particularly concerned that they do a good job with their bibliographies and citations, and these students apparently don’t feel that is appropriate,” he said in a statement, according to The Daily Bruin. Some of the corrections were clarified by sit-in organizer Kenjus Watson. Rust told one student that she should not capitalize the word “indigenous” in her papers. This correction was ideologically-motivated, according to Watson. Rust admitted that he likely made matters worse by not aggressively and proactively taking the side of a minority student who was engaged in an argument with a white female student. The minority student told the woman that she had no right to feel oppressed, and Rust did not express agreement either way. Read more at: Prof corrects minority students' capitalization, is accused of racism | The Daily Caller Why does the Professor need to take any political, racial, or non-academic position unrelated to his educational obligations? Why should he apologize, when it is somewhat apparent from the tone and tenor of this story, that the student was seeking an opportunity to put forth a grievance – possibly to fit-in or impress her political activist friends. These students should all be given the grades that they deserved. And, the self-serving racially-motivated students who infringed upon the rights of other students should have been removed by the University Cops as unwelcome distractions to education. The student who complained should have their paper reviewed by another department head and the findings presented to the Chancellor for further action. Possibly sending the student to the Academic Senate to face disciplinary action if appropriate. Call me a racist, the word has absolutely no meaning any more … It used to be that a charge of racism and bigotry was a stain on your honor. Well, no more! Because the race hustlers and grievance industry has falsely labeled anyone who disagrees with their progressive socialist position as a racist, the word has no meaning. One need only to observe those who are angry when President Barack Obama and his cadre of progressive socialist democrats are called out for their abominable policy choices, both foreign and domestic. It can’t be the perfect policy of the enlightened one, so it must be racism and bigotry. Well folks, traitors come in all colors as do patriots. And, where our “affirmative action” President is concerned, his lack of experience and degree of incompetence has nothing to do with his color. In fact, he was given a pass because of his color and the historic occasion of being the first black president. And, his arrogance, corruption, and incompetence transcends even that of former President Jimmy Carter, the father of Iranian Islamo-fascism. Bottom line … We all have grammar, spelling, punctuation, and capitalization problems from time-to-time. The trick is to learn from your mistakes, not protest the one who is trying to help you to be a better writer and communicator. UCLA’s tolerance for race-baiting and political activism is well-known, perhaps second only to Bezerkeley (University of California, Berkeley) or the “Little Red Schoolhouse” to those in the political realm. If blacks want special privileges – especially when their performance is substandard – they are committing themselves to being a permanent underclass. I would love to know what this student’s major might be as this type of crap does not fly in any of the fact-based hard sciences. That is, unless you are a progressive socialist democrat – and then you can make up the science as necessary to push your political agenda. Is there any wonder there are so many aggrieved minorities wandering among us? They have been taught by the race-baiters, the grievance industry, and the progressive socialist democrats that their ancestors earned them the right to special privilege. Sorry, but I never owned slaves and my ancestors were an oppressed minority. But, I do not assume the world owes me a life of special privileges and perks. The only privilege I have is freedom – won in part by my Father as he faced down America’s enemies in the brutal fighting in the South Pacific. -- steve Related articles Obama: Affirmative Action PUNISHMENT for Whites? Or giving Blacks another pass on criminal behavior? Communism in the school system: all students are equal? UCLA Professor Being Called Racist For Correcting Black Students' Grammar In Written Assignments Prof corrects capitalization, is accused of racism Racism Alert: Growing Trend Of White-On-Black Grammar Correction Are You a College Minority That Got Corrected for Bad Punctuation? Yell "Racist!!!" Minority UCLA Graduate Students Complain Highlighting Spelling and Punctuation Errors Creates 'Unsafe Culture' Are White Professors Racist for Correcting Minority Students' Grammar? Oppression in Higher Education: Hilarious and Sad UCLA Protesters Call Good Grammar Racist

Global Warming: Targeting a new energy source to disadvantage Americans and others? Posted: 27 Nov 2013 10:52 AM PST They have demonized carbon dioxide using junk science. They have demonized coal as a gross pollutant. They have demonized nuclear energy. And, since the progressive socialist democrats and communists behind global warming want industrialized nations to scale back their industrial capabilities, economies, and standard of living – with the difference being paid as climate reparations to third-world nations as compensation for “climate damage,” they now move on (pun intended) to demonize methane hydrate crystals in another apocalyptic scenario. The 'Ticking Time Bomb' That Could Cause Such Rapid Global WarmingWe'd Be Unable to Prevent Extinction If, 250 million years ago, you were standing thousands of miles away from what is now Siberia in the first years of the Permian Mass Extension (sic), probably the most you would notice is an odd change in the weather and a reddish hue in the northern sky. What you wouldn’t know, and probably your children wouldn’t even realize –although their grandchildren probably would – is that a tipping point had already been passed, and an extinction – an unstoppable one – was already underway. Extinction?   What could get America’s leading experts on climate change to agree on something that the average American has probably never even heard of? Methane. Methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, and there aretrillions of tons of it embedded in a sort of ice slurry called methane hydrate or methane clathrate crystals in the Arctic and in the seas around continental shelves from North America to Antarctica.  If enough of this methane is released quickly enough, it won’t just produce “Global warming.” It could produce an extinction of species on a wide scale – an extinction that could even include the human race. If there is a “ticking time bomb” in our biosphere that could lead to a global warming so rapid and sudden that we would have no way of dealing with it, it’s methane. “Could” is not a scientific term … and the author does not express a range of probabilities because they would be so low as to be laughable. Do we really think man can curb the global warming that is based on the Sun’s energy output, the Earth’s position relative to the Sun, the Earth’s rotational and precessional dynamics, the Earth’s vulcanology and plate tectonics, the deep sea currents, and the greatest greenhouse gas of all, water vapor? Man has such a small footprint on global climate change over geologic spans as to be a signal lost amid the noise of climate’s natural variability. As for a “ticking time bomb,” I would be more concerned with a major Earthquake or volcanic eruption in the continental United States. Something that even our government can control or even prepare for. They botched Katrina, they botched Sandy Hook – so what do you think they can do about a major regional or planetary catastrophic event? Curse the heavens while waving their arms to and fro? Perhaps, maybe, possibly, and other weasel words indicating scientists don’t know what caused the mass extinction and there are many theories that are plausible … Somehow, most of the life on Earth perished in a brief moment of geologic time roughly 250 million years ago. Scientists call it the Permian-Triassic extinction or "the Great Dying" -- not to be confused with the better-known Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction that signaled the end of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Whatever happened during the Permian-Triassic period was much worse: No class of life was spared from the devastation. Trees, plants, lizards, proto-mammals, insects, fish, mollusks, and microbes -- all were nearly wiped out. Roughly 9 in 10 marine species and 7 in 10 land species vanished. Life on our planet almost came to an end. Scientists have suggested many possible causes for the Great Dying: severe volcanism, anearby supernova, environmental changes wrought by the formation of a super-continent, the devastating impact of a large asteroid -- or some combination of these. Proving which theory is correct has been difficult. The trail has grown cold over the last quarter billion years; much of the evidence has been destroyed. <Source: NASA> Did anybody note that all of the hypothetical sources for this catastrophic event are well beyond man’s capability to alter the future by controlling these events? Another consensus “opinion” by climate activists?  Our planet has experienced five major extinctions over the past billion or so years, times when more than half of all life has died in a geologically brief period of time, and the common denominator of each one has been a sudden pulse of global warming. Increasingly, it appears that a rapid release of methane played a primary role in each one. Back in 2002, the BBC documented  how, just in the previous decade, geologists had by-and-large come to the conclusion that a sudden release of methane led to the death of over 95% of everything on Earth during the Permian Mass Extinction.That methane is back, probably in even larger quantities, as life has been so active since the last mass extinction. I was unaware that the BBC was a peer-reviewed scientific journal of record. “By-and-large” is not science as is a “consensus opinion.” We laid out the scenario and its possible doomsday implications in a short video titled “Last Hours” a few months ago. Since the world has been recently sensitized about methane, we’re now discovering more and more of it leaking from oil wells,fracking operations, melting permafrost, and even stirred up by Arctic storms. I wonder if the filmmakers used the Al Gore methodology of distortion and using computer-generated-imaging stock footage from another movie to make their point. Enough with the scenarios based on little more than flawed models. They cannot be supported by observation, experimentation, or any other rational scientific methodology. They remain speculative hypotheses. Just this week, the EPAreported they may have been underestimating by half the amount of methane being produced by human activity.  Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation just released a report that methane releases from the Arctic have also been underestimated . The caption accompanying their graphic says it all too clearly: “Methane is leaking from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf into the atmosphere at an alarming rate.” First, the EPA is a demonstrably corrupt agency that has been infiltrated by hard-core socialists and communists. They are doing more damage to our planet and productivity with their unconstitutional rules and regulations than any other government body. Second, what is an alarming rate; and measured against nature’s normal variability, who is becoming alarmed? Back to carbon dioxide … While methane does eventually degrade into carbon dioxide, when large amounts are released over a short time period, their effect on global warming can be dramatic, since methane is such a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has passed 400 ppm, a number never before seen in human history, but we’ve also never seen methane releases on this order in human history. And, to a large extent, the naturally occurring methane releases are the result of that 400 ppm of carbon dioxide. Amazing, the majority of the climate model scenarios couldn’t even acknowledge the last 12-15 years of global cooling and generally use a carbon dioxide forcing of two-times the normal atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, whatever “normal” means in a chaotic variable system. While many of the methane releases are the result of fossil fuel extraction processes, the most dangerous ones – the ones that could lead to trillions of tons of methane escaping into the atmosphere and driving an extinction event – are from the melting of frozen methane clathrate crystals along the seabeds. And the process that drives that is global warming, principally driven by carbon dioxide. If we want to avoid an extinction that could approach or even rival some of the five past extinctions that have wiped out so much of life on earth, we must get control, quickly, of our man-made carbon dioxide and methane releases.<Source:The 'Ticking Time Bomb' That Could Cause Such Rapid Global Warming We'd Be Unable to Prevent Extinction> Socialism and Communism is all about creating and managing scarcity to support political power … Why is it these “activists” never think technology is the solution to providing more clean energy? Perhaps because that would spur industrialization and further prove that socialism is not a sustainable political philosophy unless you want to control your fellow man?  You know how NASA scientist James Hansen has characterized continuing to tap Alberta's tar sands as being game over for the climate, thanks to the massive amount of carbon that'd be released in burning them? Well, if that's the case, then therecent news from Japan that a team has successfully extracted gas from methane hydrates from the seafloor isn't good. In fact, if Japan is able to commercially exploit the reserves in six years, as is planned, then it's game over for the climate. According to the Washington Post, which cites US Geological Survey stats, all the gas hydrates around the world contain "between 10,000 trillion cubic feet to more than 100,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas." <Source> Hansen is the proximate cause of all the global cooling-global warming nonsense and has morphed from a researcher to a climate activist supported by Al Gore and other progressive socialist democrats. We can’t have anything that would mean more energy for industrialized nations because that defeats socialism and communism as people respond to abundance instead of suffering under the scarcity of socialism. Bottom line … Amazing how these progressive socialist democrats and climate activists acting on their behalf have solved the 250-million year mystery with such certainty as to warrant draconian public policies that enlarge the size and scope of government, raise taxes, fees, and prices, reduce everyone’s standard of living, curtail everyone’s standard of living, and provide for wealth redistribution, based on a speculative hypothesis that has about as much proof as the activist claim that carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming as opposed to nature’s inherent and chaotic variability. And, given the size and scope of the natural phenomena to be controlled or mitigated – can we trust a government that can’t even roll-out a healthcare plan designed and implemented by these same progressive socialist democrats and their communist friends? Time to throw the progressive socialist democrats out of office in 2014 and return to social, financial, and scientific sanity – where scientists are free to express their opinion without fear of being demonized or losing funding for their jobs and projects. If methane is such a problem, perhaps we should consider moving to MARS where there is apparently no methane according to NASA. -- steve