Stop

Rush had a great monologue the other day in which he talked about the DiPippo article and used it as a jumping off point to talk about how the Angry Left and the Anti-American Democrat party are taking our freedom away inch by inch, year by year. He asked the question of how long it is going to take before the American people wake up and notice what is going on? When will the American people begin to understand how the state is encroaching on their lives a bit more every day? When will they realize that it is not just a small inconvenience here or there, and if it is not stopped it will mean the end of their freedom and the end of this country as it has been? How long until the American people understand that the Angry Left and the Democrats want to destroy this country and make it into something like the socialist European Union?

I don't know the answer to this one either and I don't think anyone does, but those of us on the right side of the fight have to do everything we can to make sure it does not happen. The Angry Left wants to keep Americans in the dark until it's too late. We need to be the ones to alert the American people to the facts, so that they will be able to see for themselves what is occurring. We need to illustrate the story in a clear and straightfoward way; to sound the alarm so that Americans will notice what is going on. Because when Americans have all of the facts, they tend to do the right thing. And they still value their freedom. But they need to know just how serious is the assault on that freedom and where it is coming from in order to be able to stop it.

Ronald Reagan is one of our heroes. Not a cult figure hero, a substantive hero. Where are the heroes today? Well, how many hundreds of thousands of them are in Iraq, and what the hell is said about them by the leftists and by the Democratic Party, by John Murtha, by Dick Durbin, by John Kerry? You name it! They are murderers! They are rapists! They are thugs! You think this stuff doesn't resonate all over the country? And look at the leftists on college campuses, high school campuses and wherever else you find idle time. They hate the US military! They have been taught and brainwashed to hate the US Military, which is protecting their silly right to say these stupid things. They have an official home: the Democrat Party. They have an official house organ: the New York Times, and the rest of the Drive-By Media. And these are the people who are trying to tell you to stop doing bonfires, to have your car only idle for three minutes at a time.

They're telling you to stop having kids because it's going to pollute the planet even more! They're blaming you for your attempt at a better standard of living and prosperity, for destroying the climate. These are negative, unhappy, miserable people trying to spread as much of all three of those qualities to as many people as possible. They do despise this country. They do purposely seek to cut it down to size. They do purposely and, by design, seek to take away -- little by little so you won't notice or care -- your freedom. They seek to place that which they have taken from you in Big Government where controls over even more of your freedom will be instituted because in all of this huge giant equation, the only place that is benevolent -- the only institution worthy of our respect, in fact our prayers, and getting down on our hands and knees, and saying, "Thank God!" -- is for government. Government wants to give us healthcare. Do you realize...?

We need a goal today like they had a goal in the '60s. We need a goal. Energy and independence, our own oil. Drill it! Drill it here and drill it now! Who's going to stand in the way? The very people who don't want our independence. The very people who want us to be dependent on other sources of oil. They say it's because they're afraid of pollution. How many oil wells are in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Gulf Coast? How many were damaged or ruined during Hurricane Katrina? How many oil spills were there? Hundreds were damaged or ruined and there were no oil spills! It's a phony argument to say that oil wells offshore will end up polluting and destroying the country and the environment and the planet. These are people who, while taking away your freedom and liberty -- at the same time, by definition because you and I are the ones who make the country work, our ambition, our industriousness and productivity. Take away our freedom to do that and guess what happens? The country's productivity shrinks. That, they want.

The Audacity of the Democrats

A slow motion putsch

Rocco DiPippo at The American Thinker brings us this remarkable essay in which he lays out the overall strategy by which The Angry Left and their Democrat media and political fellow travelers have sought to undermine America and thus to regain power for themselves. With the failure of the Democrats to recapture the White House in 2000 and the subsequent attack on 9-11 it looked like the left would be out of power for a very long time. In order to get that power back so that they could continue with their utopian plan to destroy American civilization they had to mount an unprecedented attack on the country's legitimacy. Only by undermining the confidence of the American people in their own country and their chosen leadership could they hope to get their clammy paws back on the levers of power. DiPippo shows us in this essay how they have been proceeding step by step to the point that some people might actually consider electing a lightweight one term Marxist Messiah Senator who thinks that the oceans will rise and fall at his command.

Soon after 911, as America shifted into a wartime footing, leftists in academia and in the Legal Left began testing the waters of dissent by deconstructing Bush and the Republicans and blaming American foreign policy for the 911 attacks. Several professors at major Universities openly proclaimed their wishes to see America defeated and disgraced. One of them, Professor Nicholas DeGenova of Columbia University, announced to those attending a ‘peace' conference at the school shortly after the 911 attacks that he "wished for a million Mogadishus," a reference to the loss of 18 US serviceman during a mission to capture a warlord in Somalia in 1993. DeGenova also said, "the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," and referred to patriotism as a form of white supremacism adding that "My rejection of U.S. nationalism is an appeal to liberate our own political imaginations such that we might usher in a radically different world in which we will not remain the prisoners of U.S. global domination." Since DeGenova is an American collecting an excellent salary at a prestigious American university, it is puzzling who he meant by "we."

When the Democratic Party joined the academic Left's undermining of the Administration's military response to 911, a lethargic Republican public relations machine and inarticulate President were no match for the polish and reach of the influential leftwing media assisting the Democrats. Within months of 911 the Party and its media assistants began manufacturing anti-Bush, antiwar propaganda with impunity. Prominent leftwing intellectuals spoke openly of America's culpability in the 911 disaster even as the Towers still smoldered and the Nation wept, sowing seeds of doubt and divisiveness amongst a population that had been traumatized and then unified by the terrorist attacks. The press began chipping, then hammering away at the Administration's war policies and its domestic policies regarding security. When the debate on whether or not to invade Iraq came, there was no doubt which side of the discussion the press -- and most of the Democrats -- would be on.

Predictably, the historically anti-US, European socialist Left closed ranks with the Democrats and the academic Left. It also fell in line with the neo-communist-organized antiwar movement in America that was taking shape. With the first wave of antiwar street protests, the Democratic Party's mission to reacquire power lurched into high gear. That mission would be accomplished at the risk of weakening America's security and at the expense of her standing in the world.

Shortly after the US invaded Iraq, Party leaders and their friends in the media started kidney-punching America, pounding away at the wartime president, deriding his administrators and his policies, harping on and grossly magnifying each setback in Iraq.

On the home front, every Bush policy designed to protect America from further attacks was framed and presented by Democratic Party leaders and leftwing 527 groups as direct assaults on the US Constitution and as being destructive to the Bill of Rights. The press followed the Party's antagonistic lead, flooding the news with disproportionate coverage of subjects like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, US so-called torture and rendition; so-called domestic spying; the so-called rights of terrorists in Guantanamo; the so-called evils of the Patriot Act; the so-called lies of George W. Bush; the so-called warmongering of Dick Cheney and the so-called greed and evil of defense-related corporations like Halliburton.

The Church of Resentment

If you're poor, it's your own fault

By now you have no doubt seen the video of Father Pfleger giving his demagogic diatribe at Trinity Church on Chicago's south side. Many people in the media, old and new, have written about it

For many people who have been supporters of Hillary Clinton the focus has been on Pleger's charge that Hillary is a racist. And indeed there can be no denying that this charge has been thrown up against her for some time now in ways both explicit, as in the Pfleger video, and in ways less obvious. And if you are a conservative there is something of a delicious irony in seeing the Democrat party sliced up by its own racial politics that for years have been used against Republicans. Democrat tactics for generations have been based on pitting different groups against each other in order to secure power.

In watching the video and listening to the reaction of the audience though, I can't help but notice the dominant emotions of envy and resentment that are the common theme at Trinity Church. Unfortunately many in the black community, and especially on the South Side of Chicago, have been steeped in a politics of resentment and envy that serves the needs of the Chicago political machine, but does nothing to bring the people there out of poverty. Consider the fact that Chicago has been run by Democrats for generations. Blacks have had the benefits of big government programs and welfare transfers for all of that time. During that time what has changed for the poor population of blacks living in those areas of the city? The answer is; not much. Because in order to bring yourself up and move out of poverty you must have a different attitude and mind-set than the one promoted by dependence on government and the Obama welfare state.

Success is the result of planning, execution and determination in the face of all events. And the chances that you will succeed in life are directly related to your actions over time. Finish school, work early and often. Don't engage in crime and don't have kids before you're married and your chances of climbing the ladder of success are considerable. But the ethics of the welfare state that Obama wants to bring us are those of the failed South Side of Chicago where success is the rare exception rather than the norm.

All About Me

At TownHall.com historian Victor Davis Hanson identifies the shallow self-absorption of the baby boomers that ushered in the Age of Stupidity which is eroding the foundations that keep our country standing. The baby boomers have never been able to grasp the fact that in life there are always trade-offs. Their malignant narcissism keeps them from accepting as a fact that you just can't have it all. If you want a secure retirement you must put off current spending and save your money. If you want energy you have to go and drill for oil and build nuclear power plants. If you want to have a place to live you have to pay for it. If you want progress and an improving standard of living you can't tax every business out of existence for the crime of making a profit.

But the baby boomers, true to their name, have remained the spoiled children that they have always been and refuse to grow up and become adults with an adult's more sober view of how the world actually works. The pathetic image of an American president going hat in hand to beg for oil from the Saudi baby rapists when we should be developing our own plentiful energy resources is but one example of the foolish self regard that the baby boomers are known for. And there are plenty of examples on both sides of the political spectrum that could be pointed out to demonstrate this unfortunate fact.

By now, of course, we have to come to the conclusion that this generation is not capable of learning anything that might show them the errors of their ways. Those of us who have not been infected by this cancerous infantile attitude will have to work very hard for the rest of our lives to make sure that the baby boomers don't destroy the country completely before they get old and die, which I think we all hope will be sooner rather than later.

Here is how our baby-boom generation solves problems:

— Recently, George Bush went to Saudi Arabia to ask the ruling House of Saud to pump more oil. That request had about as much chance of success as the Democratic-led congressional effort to “sue” the Saudis in American courts for their selfish “price-gouging.”

The current debate about energy in the United States has devolved into doing the same old thing — consume, don’t produce and complain — while somehow expecting different results. Congress talks endlessly about the bright future of wind, solar and new fuels, while it stops us from getting through the messy present by utilizing abundant coal, shale and tar sands; nuclear power; and oil still untapped in Alaska and off our coasts.

— For the past five years, we fretted over a “housing boom” that had priced an entire generation out of the market. In response, government and lending agencies got “creative” by relaxing standards to allow shaky “first-time” buyers into the red-hot market of high-priced homes. Home-improvement TV shows proliferated on how to “flip” houses and buy “no-down-payment” properties.

When the bubble inevitably burst, cries of outrage followed about how “they” (never “we”) caused a “depression” in housing. Our leaders shrieked about greedy lenders and incompetent regulators who foreclosed on us — never that the American people themselves caused much of the speculation problem, or that housing prices are finally becoming affordable again for new couples.

Barry the Kid Says "Don't Eat and Drive So Much"

When we're poor and starving the world will like us again.

Child Messiah Barry the Kid gave a rather interesting speech in Oregon last weekend to the Birkenstock clad masses of academics, students and the ever popular greying ponytail demographic. The speech was filled with the usual toxic socialist claptrap we have come to expect from the latest out of touch liberal that the Democrat party has offered up for our amusement. But it is worth noting that in this performance Barry the Kid brought back John Kerry's "Global Test":

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.

"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.

This is the leftist view of how a society should be organized; with the philosopher kings deciding for all the "little people". But as Ayn Rand said, "There are no little people in America".

This nation is exceptional because it was the first in history to be founded on the idea that people could, and should, be free to run their own lives with only a minimal government to attend to those things that had to be done by the state. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights lay out a system in which we are to have maximum freedom and liberty. A system that recognizes that people are best left to govern their own lives because that is their natural right and because it works better than any top down authority.

But as we know from our own history and the history of the rest of the world, our system doesn't just work here. It has been transplanted to many other places where, to the degree that the people consistently adopt it, it results in similar progress for them as well. Greater prosperity and progress have been the outcome when other nations have moved in the direction of democratic capitalism.

But all of this is lost on the left because they don't learn from history, even when they bother to study it. They are mesmerized by their utopian dream. A dream of power and state omnipotence unfettered by constitutional limits on their reach into all of our lives. And note that Barry the Kid only cares for the opinions of those who hate us, not those who have joined us in the comradeship of freedom. The only voices that he hears and respects are the voices of systemic failure. The voices of dictators and tyrants who gather all power and authority to themselves. Like John Kerry, he is one of those who always blame America first. He wants to listen to our enemies, but not our friends. Is Barry the Kid the best that we can expect from the Democrat party? It would seem so.

The more Barry the Kid opens his mouth the more he reveals just how juvenile and unprepared he is for the job he is seeking. This guy is really dangerous because he is so stupid. Hillary looks like a genius next to this guy and that's saying a lot. Check out the audio from Hugh Hewitt here.

Breaking the Back of High Oil

Investor's Business Daily has a series of editorials on the current situation regarding energy that should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get past the leftist propaganda on the matter. (And by the way, whatever happened to the leftist shouting about "no blood for oil"? If we had been in Iraq for oil, wouldn't it be really cheap by now? But I digress.)

The reality is that the Democrats in congress and their allies in the media have been shrieking for years about how we have to protect endangered mosquitoes in ANWAR. They have prevented us from developing new sources off of our own coasts. They have prevented us from building new refineries and nuclear power plants. And now we are paying the price at the pump.

For the last 28 years, Democrats in Congress and a few Republicans have again and again opposed our drilling for oil in Alaska's ANWR area when we knew it contained at least 10 billion barrels of oil we could be using now.

• For the past 31 years, Congress repeatedly prevented us from building any new oil refineries that we now badly need.

• More recently, congressional Democrats defeated and discouraged any bill that would let us drill in the deep sea 100 miles out. However, it's somehow OK for China to drill there.

• As a further indictment of our Congress, since the 1980s it has continually stopped all building of nuclear power plants while France, Germany and, yes, Japan, plus 12 other major nations, did build plants and now get 20% to 80% of their energy from their wise and safe nuclear plant investments.

• From 1990 to 2000, U.S. crude oil demand rapidly accelerated by 7.41 quadrillion BTUs, according to Department of Energy data. And our rate of foreign oil dependency dramatically increased while our domestic oil production steadily declined.

Have You Stopped Beating My Wife Yet?

Barack Obama went on mainstream media to warn conservatives and republicans not to make his wife an issue in the campaign. How juvenile do we think this guy is anyway? His wife has clearly made herself an issue by campaigning for him and by putting forward all of the vile hate filled rhetoric that we have heard from Jeremiah Wright. Her bizarre Indiana stump speech speaks volumes about just what the Obamas want to impose on this nation and why any thinking person who values liberty and freedom should wish to keep this woman as far away from the White House as possible. She is a legitimate target in this political season because, like Hillary before her, she is a two for one deal with Barack. You vote for him and you get her depressing totalitarian vision as well. So I say, fire away with both barrels. She asked for it.

The Biofuels Backlash

The Editors of The Wall Street Journal bring us this article on the current results of the ethanol boondoggle that has created a crisis in both oil prices and food shortages at the same time. For students of free market economics it comes as no surprise to find that government "solutions" are always less efficient than what the market provides. But as we can see from this latest eco-scam there are plenty of secondary effects as well. Like all of those starving people in the third world that the environmental leftists claim to care about as they are sipping their Starbucks lattes.

The real solution to this problem is, of course, to get the government and all of the tie-dyed activists the hell out of the way and let the best and brightest people we have in business and science do their jobs. Our energy companies have been hamstrung for decades by ridiculous government policies that have kept them from drilling for oil, building refineries and building nuclear power plants. Now we find that we are suffering from shortages in food and fuel as a result. Let us liberate the energy companies from the fascism of big government do-gooders and grey haired hippies who never bothered to take a science or economics class in their lives. Let our people in energy do what they are supposed to do; provide us with energy. And let the farmers do what they are supposed to do; grow food for us to eat. And then we won't have to worry about any shortages except the shortage of intelligence in Washington.

St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, and for 30 years we invoked his name as we opposed ethanol subsidies. So imagine our great, pleasant surprise to see that the world is suddenly awakening to the folly of subsidized biofuels.

All it took was a mere global "food crisis." Last week chief economist Joseph Glauber of the USDA, which has been among Big Ethanol's best friends in Washington, blamed biofuels for increasing prices on corn and soybeans. Mr. Glauber also predicted that corn prices will continue their historic rise because of demand from "expanding use for ethanol."

Even the environmental left, which pushed ethanol for decades as an alternative to gasoline, is coming clean. Lester Brown, one of the original eco-Apostles, wrote in the Washington Post that "it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed." We knew for sure the tide had turned when Time magazine's recent cover story, "The Clean Energy Myth," described how turning crops into fuel increases both food prices and atmospheric CO2. No one captures elite green wisdom better than Time's Manhattan editors. Can Vanity Fair be far behind?

All we can say is, welcome aboard. Corn ethanol can now join the scare over silicone breast implants and the pesticide Alar as among the greatest scams of the age. But before we move on to the next green miracle cure, it's worth recounting how much damage this ethanol political machine is doing.

To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America's corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.

Jeremiah Wright and Michell Obama Audio

All last week Hugh Hewitt played audio of the incendiary speeches of the very angry Jeremiah Write and the very angry Michelle Obama. These have to be heard to be believed. The self-pity and sanctimony are palpable for all who have ears to hear. And there is no shortage of audio to listen to. It is impossible for any rational person to listen to this and not come to the conclusion that Barack is anything other than a radical. And given his association with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn the connection is even more clear. Obama sat in that church for 20 years. He listened to these kinds of sermons for 20 years. He is a friend to domestic terrorists who he has known for years. What more do you need to know?

Character Matters

In this article by Kyle-Anne Shiver we take a look at the consequences of the speech last week in which Barack Obama threw his pastor of 20 years Jeremiah Wright under the bus. And if you have some respect for logic and reason then you have to come to one of two conclusions. Both of them reflect poorly on Mr. Obama. The election of a President is as much about character as it is about the issues that may happen to be at hand. For if an individual is to rise to the challenge of the issues that may confront the nation, then it will be character that allows him to do so. Judgment and perception are critical in how a President acts and reacts to the many events that will arise during his term in office. And by Obama's own words we now know that he is a liar. For he has either lied to all of us, or he has lied to his friends. Ms. Shiver lays out the alternatives:

With Obama's Philadelphia-speech, hedging and squirming around specifics, and now with his final, "unequivocal," outright disowning of Jeremiah Wright this week, I have more evidence than I need to conclude that Barack Obama is either one of two things:

Behind Door #1: He is a reprehensible liar, who privately still believes, and has always believed, in the philosophy espoused by his long-time pastor, spiritual mentor and "uncle" figure, Jeremiah Wright, but for opportunistic motives, now publicly disavows his own true beliefs; or

Behind Door #2: He is a man of no integrity whatsoever, who has partaken of another man's friendship and political help for nearly 20 years, who has now publicly dumped and disgraced this benefactor for personal gain. Jeremiah Wright is not some flunky that Obama hired last week out of a far-left think tank or fresh from the halls of Harvard. The two men were close, like family, by the candidate's own pronouncements.

Whether the real Obama is behind Door #1 or Door #2, only Barack Obama now knows for certain. But either way, he has disgraced himself in the eyes of many Americans, and if he offered his hand, some of us older-timers would decline to shake it.

If he truly believes the philosophy of his chosen church, and now denies it because he sees that it is a small-minority view, he defines himself as a wimpy scoundrel, unworthy of being Commander in Chief.

Having the courage of one's convictions is something I would hope my twelve year old would have, and if he didn't, I would be deeply ashamed and know myself to have been a very bad parent. Barack Obama was nearly 30 years old when he first met and befriended Jeremiah Wright, and upon their very first meeting, the Reverend Wright informed Obama that his "fellow clergy" considered him "too radical." He was warned by Wright himself. Obama was no innocent waif, as he now contends.

On the other hand, if Barack Obama vehemently disagrees with the tenets of Wright's philosophy and worldview, but stayed with the man, respected him enough to have him perform a wedding and baptisms, and gave thousands of dollars of his own money to support the black liberation cause, and garnered prestige and political clout from his association with Wright, then Obama demonstrates that he is a man without a well-formed conscience. An unabashed user of another for personal gain.

Would I take my children to a church where someone like David Duke was passing himself off as a minister of Christianity? Would you?

Logic does not permit us to continue in the belief that Obama is some kind of new phenomenon on the political landscape. Rather, he is just another in a long line of machine politicians who is able to do what he has to do in order to get what he wants. And that is a very small and low standard indeed.

The Thrill is Gone

Mark Steyn has a bit of fun in this article with Barack Obama's press conference in which he throws Jeremiah Wright under the bus. The fun part here, from Steyn's point of view, is the self-absorption that has been revealed by this entire episode. Not only has Obama turned out to be something less than a holy messiah descending on a silver cloud from on high, but his wife has turned out to be a bit of a shrew as well. And I think we will be hearing a lot of fun sound clips from her in the not too distant future because she is too arrogant to keep quiet.

“Do you personally feel that the Reverend betrayed your husband?” asked Meredith Vieira on The Today Show.

“You know what I think, Meredith?” replied Michelle Obama. “We’ve got to move forward. You know, this conversation doesn’t help my kids.”

Hang on. “My” kids? You’re supposed to say “It’s about the future of all our children,” not “It’s about the future of my children” — whose parents happen to have a base salary of half a million bucks a year. But even this bungled cliché nicely captures the campaign’s self-absorption: Talking about Obama’s pastor is a distraction from talking about Obama’s kids.

By the way, the best response to Michelle’s “this conversation doesn’t help my kids” would be: “But entrusting their religious upbringing to Jeremiah Wright does?” Ah but, happily, Meredith Vieira isn’t that kind of interviewer.

Mrs. O is becoming a challenge for satirists. My radio pal Hugh Hewitt played a clip on his show of the putative First Lady identifying the real problem facing America:

“Like many young people coming out of college, with their MAs and BAs and PhDs and MPhs coming out so mired in debt that they have to forego the careers of their dreams, see, because when you’re mired in debt, you can’t afford to be a teacher or a nurse or social worker, or a pastor of a church, or to run a small non-profit organization, or to do research for a small community group, or to be a community organizer because the salaries that you’ll earn in those jobs won’t cover the cost of the degree that it took to get the job.”

So just remember, when you are about to question some aspect of Obama's fitness to be President, you should be quiet because it just isn't good for Michelle's kids.

LA Times Journalist Apparently Flunked Math and Civics

Wahington served one term; who knew?

Mary McNamara, LA Times television critic and presumably a college graduate who is not one of the bitter people that cling to guns and bibles, brings us this review of the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries "John Adams". Her review is somewhat underwhelming to say the least, and sounds more like a pep-rally for competing networks Showtime and TNT, to say nothing of how she probably comes off in person at the right cocktail parties.

Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion and if Ms McNamara doesn't like HBO, well that is her right. But as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, while people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. And Ms. McNamara seems to think that George Washington served only one term.

In his portrayal of our second president, Paul Giamatti creates a man perpetually dissatisfied, disgusted by the preening ambition of politics even as he is infected by it. If his relentless crankiness was a bit hard for some of us to take in early episodes, in the second half of the series it makes much more sense. While exhorting angry men to throw off the shackles of tyranny offers many opportunities for rhetorical fabulousness, setting up a new government is a bureaucratic nightmare, with oversized personalities disagreeing over things both petty and fundamental. George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term. "I know now what it is like to be disliked," he says to Adams, his perpetually disliked vice president.

One can only be astounded that this sort of error made it through layers of editors and fact checkers and ended up on press despite the fact that any 5th grader with an internet connection would have been able to look it up. But perhaps more amazing is that apparently Ms. McNamara managed to spend four years at an expensive university without taking so much as a basic American history course in which she might have learned what people my age knew in elementary school. Were I to offer Ms. McNamara an opinion, it would be to immediately write to her alma mater to ask for a full refund of her tuition so that she can pay for a more modest educational goal that might lead to a career better suited to her level of ability.

She might even get to spend some time with the rest of us bitter people in the Midwest who didn't go to an elite school.