Newt's comments weren't tactful, but they were factual -- and needed

    A year ago South Carolina’s lieutenant governor caused quite a ruckus when he suggested that welfare recipients who fail drug tests or refuse to attend parent-teacher conferences should lose their benefits.
    Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who was raised in a working-class family, quoted his grandmother: "My grandmother was not a highly-educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem. If you give an animal or a person ample food supply, they will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that, and so what you gotta do is you gotta curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
    It’s important to note that Bauer never said anything about whites on welfare, or Indians on welfare, or blacks on welfare. He was only talking about the problem of welfare dependency and irresponsible behavior in general.
    Even though Bauer’s comments had nothing to do with race, they were immediately denounced by the Greenville, S.C., chapter of the NAACP, which said there was no need for him to apologize. The only acceptable action on his part would be to withdraw from the governor’s race. Why? What does welfare have to do with the NAACP?
    In Flint and Detroit, Mich., the NAACP protested a five-year limit on welfare payments. Other NAACP chapters have denounced efforts to limit welfare payments.
    When Valerie Jarrett spoke at the Martin Luther King memorial service at Ebenezer Baptist Church she politicized the event by criticizing Republicans for not supporting President Obama’s proposal to spend federal tax dollars to hire local policemen, firefighters and teachers. The congregants went wild.
    The fact is, of course, that not so much as one cent of federal money is ever supposed to be spent hiring local police, firefighters or teachers. These people are hired only through state and local taxes, not federal oppression. And yet Ms. Jarrett and the wildly cheering Ebenezer congregants have attempted to turn this purely political difference into a black-white issue.
    When a white politician tries to address this, he is suddenly branded a racist. Newt Gingrich dared to say that the NAACP should tell blacks they need paychecks, not welfare checks. A bunch of blacks acted insulted, but they shouldn’t be. It’s their own chapters that have promoted welfare.
    Newt said there were families and even neighborhoods where children were never exposed to honest work, and that the only role models they had were drug dealers. Racist, racist, racist! Or so the politically correct crowd roared. Anyone who thinks this is racist needs to read about the infamous Cabrini-Green project in Chicago, where a survey found that 29 percent of residents were employed full time and another 11 percent were employed part time. What the survey showed was that most residents were single mothers not working. The only work their kids saw anyone doing was the dealing of drugs. It’s just a fact, and it’s not racist to point it out.
    Most of Cabrini-Green has been torn down, with the last building coming down last year. And that’s a good thing! But there are other projects out there that are just as bad. And it should be noted that there are areas of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia where a culture of sloth, drug use and immorality have also taken hold of very substantial portions of the white community. It’s a problem, and if a black person wants to take note of the fact that it is a problem I offer them only thanks, not name-calling.
    There are dysfunctional pockets of poverty in this country. In urban areas the residents tend to be black. In rural areas outside the South the residents tend to be white. Frequently the behavior of these people perpetuates their poverty. That’s just a fact.
    If, as a society, we can’t even mention the fact that we have a problem we certainly aren’t going to begin to solve it. I will admit conservatives could sometimes use a little more tact in discussing these things, but I’d much rather support a candidate who talks about finding a solution to our nation’s problems than one who talks about how to be tactful about it.

Obama just made Jan Brewer a best-selling author

    Although I am a great admirer of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, I didn't know she had written a book -- a life story and political memoir. I know now.
    She greeted President Barack Obama to her state on Wednesday, and Obama wasted no time in criticizing some of the things the book said about her efforts to control the plague of unlawful immigration afflicting her state and our nation. She defended herself, of course, and at one point wagged her finger at him. He then then turned away while she was still talking.
    I've found that if I disagree with someone, it's best not to bring up that disagreement while we're trying to be cordial. Obama apparently doesn't agree.
    Gov. Brewer has nothing to be mad about, though. I predict sales of her book will increase dramatically. In fact, they apparently already have. I had never heard of the book, but as of today it is ranked as Amazon's first or second ranked book on politics or social policy and 56th overall. According to one website that apparently tracks such things, yesterday Gov. Brewer's book came in as Amazon's 311,472th best seller.
    Thanks Mr. President!

Sen. Rand Paul should bring defamation action against lying airport goons

    Sen. Rand Paul recently refused a TSA patdown at the Nashville airport after he set off a metal detector. Apparently these detectors are set to give false positives to force patdowns of people who don't really set off the machine. He wanted to just walk through again.
    An incident report describes Paul as acting in an "irate" manner. Yet a video of the entire incident shows Paul standing calmly inside a glass cubical. In other words, either the TSA or law enforcement officers intentionally lied about Paul's behavior for the purpose of defaming him.
    I do not believe their false and defamatory statements are privileged. There is no privilege for a law enforcement officer to file a false police report. Paul needs to file a defamation action against these goons.
    I respect that TSA officers have been given a job to do. But when they and police lie about innocent citizens they cross the line. They must be held to account.

Nancy Reagan said husband passed torch of conservatism to Newt

    We've had to put up with a lot of bull malarkey recently about how Newt Gingrich "insulted" Ronald Reagan.
    And make no mistake: There were times when Newt Gingrich was highly critical of Reagan and the Reagan administration. The same is true for Ron Paul. Newt's criticism was based on the fact that he thought Reagan was being too liberal. I admire both Gingrich and Paul for holding Reagan's feet to the fire.
    Now think about it. We're constantly being warned that we shouldn't vote for Gingrich because he's a closet liberal. Now we're being told that we shouldn't vote for Gingrich because he thought Reagan was too liberal.
    In the world of politics, we sometimes criticize those with whom we agree. Over the years, Gingrich was one of Reagan's biggest supporters, and was one of the biggest supporters of the conservative cause. He was a maverick before John McCain knew what that word meant. When the rest of the Republican party was mucking about trying not to make waves he was screaming bloody murder. And more than anyone, he deserves the credit for engineering the Republican takeover of 1994, the effects of which are still being felt to this very day.
    Here's a video made long after Gingrich had "insulted" and criticized Reagan, in which Nancy Reagan claims that Barry Goldwater passed on the conservative mantle to Ronald Reagan, who in turn passed it on to Newt Gingrich.
    I grew up idolizing Ronald Reagan, but that doesn't mean I wasn't sometimes irritated with him. Gingrich's criticism of his rare liberal meanderings makes Gingrich more qualified to be president, not less.
    Oh, and here's the Youtube video of Nancy Reagan claiming that Ronald Reagan passed on the conservative mantle to Newt.

Now is time to plan for summer academic camp

    If you are thinking about signing your kids up for a summer enrichment camp, now is the time.
    Two or three weeks at a summer enrichment camps generally costs a fraction of the price of a traditional summer camp. They offer a great time, and some education to boot!
    Lucy will be attending Concordia Language Villages for the fourth summer this year. She's attending Lac du Bois, which is the French village at Bemidji, Minn. They also offer programs at Hackensack, Minn., but my understanding is that the facilities at Bemidji are better.
    Concordia offers language immersion camps for all ages, from one-week camps for 7-year-olds to month-long camps offering high school and even college foreign language credit. In addition to common languages like French, Spanish and German, Concordia offers such languages as Arabic, Chinese, Danish, Finnish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish.
    The only bad thing I can say about Concordia is that it shouldn't have to exist at all. French, German, Chinese and Japanese ought to be available at every elementary, jr. high and high school in the country. But since that is not going to happen, Concordia is the next best thing.
    You owe it to yourself to visit the Concordia Language Village website. Each village is designed with architecture designed to reflect that of the country whose language is being taught. There are some videos and photos from last year posted as well. Lucy has had a blast every year and is looking forward to another year of fun.
    A couple of years ago Lucy also attended Jr. Vet Camp at Auburn and really enjoyed it. Last year we waited too late to sign up and got shut out. This year the dates conflict with her language camp, so again she can't go. But she highly recommends it. Auburn has a beautiful campus, and the grounds around the residence halls are actually far prettier than at Ole Miss.
    Ash has not been interested in Concordia because he's been afraid he might learn something. But Ole Miss is offering a Summer Academy this year that offers actual high school credit to rising eighth-, ninth- and tenth-graders that is attracting his interest. Among the courses offered for his age cohort are Mississippi Writers, Environmental Chemistry, and Astronomy.
    Admission to the Ole Miss program is limited to students with a "B" or higher average in their four core subjects for the past three years and the Fall 2011 semester. They must have permission from their school principal and two teacher recommendations. The cost of the three-week program is $695 for day students and $1,460 for boarders. Ash told me he wanted to sleep in his own bed, to which I said, "Hooray!"
    There are lots of other academic programs out there, but you have to look a bit harder for ones that serve in the middle school bracket. But they are out there and worth looking for. If you are interested, sign up SOON! These programs tend to fill up quickly.
    Oh, and if anyone knows of a good creative writing program for rising seventh-graders, please let me know. I think Lucy is a star just waiting to shine.

My iPhone is dying and I want a decent-size phone, not a Chiclet

    I need a new smart phone.
    Now wanting and needing are two different things. I've wanted a new cell phone for well over a year now. My iPhone 3GS has served me fairly well for the past three years or so, but more than a year ago the screen messed up a bit. I lost about an eighth of an inch on each side. Kind of annoying when the letters get cut out of text, but it's still worked just fine.
    The volume toggle fell off a few months ago. But I've still be able to adjust the volume, so just another hassle to live with.
    But now the "silence" toggle has broken. From time to time, the phone will ring even though in "silent" mode. And it constantly vibrates as if I'm switching it back and forth between silent and regular mode.
    I've been able to silence the ringer manually by going in to setting and cutting the volume down. But this is time consuming and means I don't hear calls if I don't stop to turn the volume back up. Bottom line is if your phone won't go to "silent," you can't go to church, funerals, picture shows, restaurants, or you name it.
    I've even decided what kind of phone I want: THE BIGGEST PHONE MADE! That may be the Galaxy Note, soon to be released for AT&T. It has a paltry 5.3-inch screen; bigger than the iPhone by far, but still way too small.
    Attention Cell Phone Makers! We aren't just using our phones to talk these days. We need to use them to navigate, to surf the web, and to take lots of notes. In other words, we need a really big screen.
    The Galaxy Note has been a big success in Europe, but prior to its release a lot of people were going around complaining that it was "too big," particularly that it was too big to fit in a pocket. What a crock! I can fit my Kindle Fire with its 7-inch screen in most of my pants pockets, so a teeny-tiny Galaxy Note will fit with no problem. I just wish it were bigger.
    When it comes to design, the rule is that "form follows function." What that means is that the form a thing takes should be determined by what its function is. Back when we were all merely talking on our cell phones it made sense to make them as small as possible. No longer. We use our phone for big things and thus need big phones.
    Most readers of this blog will perhaps fondly remember their first cell phone. Remember the large bag phone, the size of a very large lunch box. Remember how easy it was to carry it to a meeting or whatever when you needed to? Some people even had them built into briefcases, Maxwell Smart style. I loved my bag phone; it had great reception and the size simply was not a problem.
    Then came the "brick" phone. It was a huge cell phone that was designed to be more portable than a bag phone. No way was that thing going in a pocket, though. And the signal had a weaker wattage than the bag phone.
    If you were to see someone with a "brick" phone today, they would look goofy. But they didn't look goofy back then. We envied those lucky people.
    So the phone manufacturers need not worry about making their smart phones too big. Build them we enough power and we will come.
    Meanwhile, I'm eagerly awaiting the official U.S. launch of the Galaxy Note. Unless, of course, something larger and better comes along first.

Book describes horror of Dust Bowl and Hoover's unwitting role

    In my recent post on Freedom Betrayed: Herbert Hoover's
Secret History of the Second World War
and Its Aftermath I mentioned that Hoover had a role in causing the Great Depression by advocating a $1 per bushel guarantee on the price of wheat in 1917 when he was head of the U.S. Food Administration.
    Woodrow Wilson had appointed Hoover to that position as the United States was entering World War I. Hoover was known at that time as one of the world's leading humanitarians. Hoover's proposal did exactly what it was designed to do in 1917 and the years afterwards: It dramatically increased crop production so that for the next several years the United States was able to feed both itself and Europe. Mass starvation was averted.
    In 1917 America was still an agricultural nation, and these high prices set in place one of the greatest financial booms of all times. The "roar" in the Roaring 20s came from the unprecedented farm profits shouting their way through America's economy.
    Prices stayed high for several years, but eventually the bottom fell out. The problems with American banks that surfaced in the 1930s had their beginnings in the farm crash of the mid-1920s. As farm prices fell farmers tried to raise more and more, making both the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s much worse.
    My source for this information, and much more, was The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl, by Timothy Egan.
     I read this almost five years ago, and it is one of the better books I've read. It describes the economic and ecological disaster that was the Dust Bowl. I've always heard of the Dust Bowl, but this book explains what it was really like and to some extent why it happened.
    I had never heard of "dust pneumonia," for example, but it was apparently not uncommon at the time for a child to be sitting a classroom one day where he would cough up some blood. A few days later he would be dead.
    If this book made enough of an impression on me that I'm still thinking about it almost five years later, obviously it is a good book. If you love learning about our nation's history, or just love a great story, this book is for you.
    I'm not sure I want to share all of this information with my Dad. He grew up blaming Herbert Hoover for all of the nation's ills. If he could lay credit or partial credit for the Dust Bowl on Hoover I don't think I could ever get him to "zip it," as Mort Downey used to say.
    On a self-serving note, if you should buy the book by using my link, I think I will earn a small commission. It won't cost you any more. So help the Colonel!