That’s Right Nate

When I was in church a couple Sundays ago, I was aghast at the left wing filth that the minister was spouting off.   I called him on it after services and he looked at me and just kind of shrugged his shoulders saying, “Well, it’s the Bible Nate, not much I can do about the word of God.”  Fortunately, the good people at Conservapedia are under no such compunction.   They have embarked on The Conservative Bible Project, which is designed to give us a more conservative Bible.

If you’re not familiar with Conservapedia, it is a heroic bunch of conservatives who recognized that many facts, by their nature have a liberal bias.   To counteract this bias they formed a conservative alternative to Wikipedia.   Now, they’re taking on the Bible and frankly it’s about time.  For example, their web page lists Luke 23:34 as a liberal corruption–Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Frankly, the Jesus in the current Bible version is a wimp.   I mean sure he’s got all sorts of cool superpowers like walking on water and turning water into wine, but mostly he just goes around curing people.  If this was a comic book, Jesus would hardly be Justice League material.  He’d probably find himself in the Doom Patrol or Guardians of the Galaxy with a bunch of other also rans.   The Conservative Jesus, has a lot more potential.  Check out his run in with the money changers at the temple:

¹²And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,

¹³And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

Now, see how conservative Jesus deals with the same problem:

¹²And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that protested in the temple and overthrew the tables of the trade unionists, and the seats of them that sold doves,

¹³And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of socialists.

The difference is certainly subtle, but now we have a Jesus that sticks up for capitalism, not just a savior, but a kick butt take no nonsense conservative.   Remember Matthew 5: 38 -44 where Jesus preaches to turn the other check–Not anymore.

5:38

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ ^F23

5:39

But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.

5:40

If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also.

5:41

And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.

5:42

Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.

5:43

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor ^F24 and hate your enemy.’

5:44

But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,

Now, here is the Conservative Bible version.  The differences are subtly, but even these changes seem to make the Bible stories come alive for me:

5:38

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ ^F23

5:39

But I tell you if he pulls a knife, you pull a gun.  If he shall send one of yours to the hospital, then shall ye send one of his to the morgue.

5:40

If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, tie him up in litigation for so long that it is cheaper to just by his own cloak.

5:41

And whoever compels you to go one mile, make sure that he pays you.

5:42

Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away. Instead loan to him with reasonable usury.  Then bundle his debt with the debt of others so that a derivative shall be made.

5:43

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor ^F24 and hate your enemy.’

5:44

That seems like pretty good advice to me.

Wow!  That’s a Jesus that I can respect and one that nobody is going to be taking advantage of either.  Just look how Jesus’ resurrection is handled in John 20: 26-29:

²⁶And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you.

²⁷Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.

²⁸And Thomas answered and said unto him, My LORD and my God.

²⁹Jesus saith unto him, I am back Thomas and thou hast seen me, know that this time it is personal.   I am getting the disciples back together.  It is time we taught Pilate a lesson

I can’t wait for the release of this version of the Bible.   I hope that it isn’t only Jesus who is changed, but other Biblical figures as well.   Just the thought of Joshua proclaiming loudly for all to hear, “Mister Jericho, tear down this wall” gives me shivers.   The only way we can eliminate liberal bias from such important things as the word of God is to rewrite it.  I’m glad to have the good folks at Conservapedia to do it for me.

The best thing about being a Republican is sometimes hard to put a finger on.  I enjoy the moral superiority of my political positions as much as the next guy and Republican women are out of sight.   They don’t call it Fox News for nothing if you know what I mean.   However, I think the best thing about being a Republican is that we are the party of self-reliance.  We believe in pulling ourselves up by own own bootstraps and that is also the American spirit.   Nowhere do I see this Republican can do spirit as clearly as in the area of foreign policy.

• Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) is in Honduras in order to give his support to the junta who recently launched a coup against a leftists President.  This is the kind of guts that Obama and the other countries in the region have lacked in their condemnation of seizing government power by force.
• Senator Jim Inhoffe (R-OK) who I recently described as one of our best hopes against the forces of science hoping to undermine our country’s values is going to Copenhagen to present the other side on the global warming debate.
• House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) traveled to Israel where he spoke out against President Obama’s opposition to expanding settlements.
• Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) boasted in June that he told Chinese officials  not to trust America’s budget numbers. “One of the messages I had — because we need to build trust and confidence in our number one creditor,” said Kirk, “is that the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed.”
• Sarah Palin (R-?) recently gave a speech in Hong Kong where she criticized America’s foreign policy in a wide variety of issues.

As you can see, we’ve stopped waiting for the Obama presidency to make foreign policy decisions for us.  We’ve taken the initiative and we’re making our own more sensible foreign policy.  This is exciting, but I believe we can do much more and we must.   As a party, we must join together to issue an extremely strongly worded ultimatum to both Iran and North Korea that we are through pussyfooting around and we will not accept their continued nuclear threat.  We should let them know that if they do not back down we will hire an army of military contractors to crush their petty regimes.

Furthermore, it is time for us to let the rest of the world know we are done apologizing.   Obama has his embassies in other countries, we should have our own embassies too.   Let the other countries in the world know that we will be conducting our own foreign policy from now on.   Most of the military is Republican regardless of what they tell you and you know that they will follow us.  If we want more troops in Afghanistan, let’s just ask the troops and tell them it’s for the GOP.  This is the vision our founding fathers had for this democracy where know man shall have his foreign policy dictated to him by an unjust tyrant, but shall create his own foreign policy with other like minded individuals.

I really haven’t been able to figure out how to react to the news that Chicago lost the Olympics.   At first, I was a big proponent of bringing the Olympics to Chicago because I am a big believer in the Olympic spirit of kicking the crap out of the rest of the world to prove that your country is supreme.  I also hoped that it would start a landslide of gentrification through Chicago with the police finally crapping down on homeless vagrants in the poorer parts of the city.  I knew that the city would probably be about $5 billion in debt when the dust cleared, but I’d get to see beach volleyball players up close.

However, as soon as President Obama began to publicly support the Olympics my attitude changed.  I know for one that that anytime Barrack Hussein Obama is involved with an international group like the IOC, it is because he is working on creating a new world order or alternatively apologizing for American domination.  I also don’t see how we really lose out as a city by not getting to see the greatest ping pong players in all of Finland or the greatest cyclists in all of Bulgaria.   Let’s face it what America does best is self-storage and it is unlikely we would really be able to put our prowess on display at the Olympic games.

Now, that we lost to Rio I am outraged.   Didn’t we launch a coup in Brazil and put a puppet government in place in the 50s?   What kind of puppet government is this?   If we had thought Brazil was a real threat we should have let them know that we didn’t approve of them competing with us.   The obvious answer to this slight is for Chicago to hold their old Olympics in 2016 and give athletes a choice to go to either games.  The Olympics give out medals, but we could give out cold hard cash.   Let’s put capitalism to work for us and let the world cry out “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Arne Duncan and Mayor Daley designed many of the policies responsible for increased violence at Fenger High School

[First, I'd like to let my regular readers know that this will be a very different type of post from me. This is a serious issue that any real reporter should have been able to unravel in about 5 minutes.  Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of journalism in many places in Chicago.  I felt compelled to write about it and I can't see how to make this pithy or humorous.   Somethings do need to be serious I guess.  It's taken me 880+ posts to get to a serious story and I really hope it is at least 10 times that many before I get to another one.]

Last week a 16 year old high school student named Derrion Alberts was brutally killed during a violent battle between rival students from Fenger High School.   Nothing can possibly absolve his attackers from their responsibility in this tragic death.   However, there are explanations for what happened and how a public became a war zone that I think deserve a second look.

Fenger High School is located on Chicago’s Far South Side at 116th and Michigan.  The neighborhood has been a pretty tough neighborhood for a long time, but it was in the early 1980s when a lot of area’s jobs went away never to return.   At one time Fenger had been a pretty solid school.  It had outstanding shop programs that were designed to help students make their way into the work force, but of c0urse those classes eventually got phased out in favor of a 100% college preparatory curriculum.  This one size fits all education has been a mainstay of high school in Chicago since the 1990s.

Located at 131st and Doty, Carver High School was a neighbor and rival of Fenger.   The children of Altgeld Gardens Housing Project went to Carver High while the children of a neighborhood nicknamed “The Ville” went to Fenger.   Five years ago, as part of Mayor Daley’s Renaissance 2010 program, Carver High School became Carver Military Academy and the students from Carver High School were displaced to Fenger.   Immediately, trouble began between the kids from Altgeld and the kids from “The Ville”.   This unfortunately has become an all too common problem with education reform as practiced by Mayor Daley and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.  In one of the most gang ridden cities in the United States, the constant closing of schools has frequently forced kids to cross into different gang territories to go to high school.   The result has been a skyrocketing youth homicide rate.

Fenger High School was a powder keg, but the one thing that seemed to keep the situation under control was a dedicated faculty.    One by  one the schools around Fenger were replaced by charter schools.  Calumet became a campus of Perspectives charter school and Englewood became the Urban Prep charter school and a small school with admission by lottery.  Fenger sadly received all the students that the other schools wouldn’t take.   Then the inevitable happened.   Because of poor test scores, the Chicago Public Schools announced that they would make Fenger a turnaround school for the 2009 school year.

There is an excellent writeup of the hearings by Kristine Mayle at Substancenews.net. The community came out to argue against doing so, but the board went ahead with their plans.  If you aren’t familiar with the term turnaround school-it is being pushed by President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan nationwide.  In a turnaround school, the faculty and principal of a school are removed and replaced by new teachers.   Sometimes, the schools close for a year and a lot of money is spent of rehabbing the school.  Unfortunately, by doing this, the CPS got rid of almost everybody in Fenger High School who knew the students and new the neighborhood.  The result was a dramatic increase in gang related violence both inside and outside the school.

On the day of the shooting, shots were reportedly fired at Fenger High School and a call was made to the police, but apparently nothing was done to deal with the trouble bubbling just below the surface of a normal Thursday at the high school.  Would a more experienced faculty and administration who were familiar with the students and the neighborhood have been able to act to stop the violence from escalating?  It’s impossible to say.   However, it is schools just like Fenger nationwide that are targeted for these kind of changes as part of education reform.  Parents, faculty, and community leaders warned of escalating violence that could happen, but they were ignored.   A 16 year old honor student was killed.   Sadly, he was not the first victim of school reform and he probably will not be the last.