Two Boys Pull Off An Amazing Tablecloth Trick You Have Never Seen

One of the most hilarious emails recently sent to me is the following video of the ‘Tablecloth Trick” sent to me from friend and fellow Prager fan, Mark Waldeland.

Visual curiousity is  such a boy thing……..and I speak from personal experience regarding, but not revealing,  what I did to satisfy my drive of  curiousity when I was the age of the two participating in this video.  

 If I had ever seen any “successful”  Tablecloth trick  video  when I was the boys’ ages of this video, I would have wanted to try it myself…….. when I was certain  my Mother was out of the house  somewhere.  

 

See the following Tablecloth Trick for your own conclusions:

http://biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=30018

Now, click on below to view the Tablecloth Trick again:

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2011-09-09/tablecloth-kids-video-michel-and-sven/

What are conservatives ‘MESSAGING’ to one another about OBAMA MARXISM?

Every day I receive a dozen or two “MESSAGES” advertising some aspect or another of our conservative movement.   These MESSAGES  express concerns about Barack Hussein Obama’s unAmerican politics of racism and class warfare and his absence of  presidential leadership in our times of economic crisis.

 

These MESSAGES from the right, are generalizations, of course.   Yet, nearly all of them are accurate, none of them offensive, and unfortunately identify correctly the political miasma caused by  a foreign Marxist movement emanating from our universities and carried out by today’s Leftwing of the Democrat Party.

 

Most of the MESSAGES come from folks who are or who are expecting soon to be grandparents.    Despite Obama Leftwing propaganda, such people are   not violent, nor are they racists.   Furthermore, many, perhaps most are practicing Christians whose ‘political correctness’ forbids them to swear at and threaten others, thereby confusing Lefties who expect everyone to be as vulgar,  obnoxious, and offesnsive as so many of them  are.

 

Marxists learn to hate Christians and conservatives.   Lefty blacks hate whites who don’t pander to blackness.   Years of  unchallenged hating leads lefties to believe everyone is as repulsive in their views as they are.   This  psychological disease  is called “PROJECTION”.

 

The greatest artist of PROJECTION ever to hit the American political trails is BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA.    Listen carefully to his speeches.

 

Mr. Obama was never educated as an American. 

 

I have no idea who originated the MESSAGE  I am reprinting below.   Friend and neighbor, Bruce Taber, sent it to me.   It has been sent to him.  It’s the message that counts.

 

I am a used-to-be teacher professionally.  I taught the ‘social studies’.   I was good at it…..and still am to some degree.    I observe as a teacher.    And, to the complaint of those who know me and even the few who love me,  I often talk as a teacher.   How can I disagree?

 

The best teacher I have ever met who has taught the ‘social studies’,  is Dennis Prager.    He is the very best.  

 

 If I were dictator, I would force my underlings to listen and study Mr. Prager’s skills of content and delivery………but, as a dictator-teacher, I would advise myself and others NOT to cheapen his messages by discussing them….university class style where students are trained to adjust thinking to the perceived habits of the  Leftwing programmed automaton instructors.

 

I am a democrat with a solid Christian background.   My purpose as dictator, from this background,  would be to train each listener to apply what they have heard to their own life’s story; their own life’s commands as they recognize them.   Each individual can measure  the Prager teachings with their own life’s ‘reality’ without listening to some know-nothing, sour puss, bigotted, envious, racist, atheistic,  intolerant, single minded Lefty crippled by the  complexes of today’s “Learned Class”.  

 

Let truth “will out”…..I would make no demands, such as testing for POLITICAL CORRECTNESS ‘accuracies’ designed by these Leftist misfits to create more leftist misfits.   The goal of my educational  dictatorship would be to strengthen the truths from common living of each individual, stimulated by teachers of the ‘social studies’, who are trained to stimulate thought  about all of the topics of life which affect the dignity of a society based on the pursuit of  “ liberty with justice for all”.

 

In my own college life most of my outstanding teachers were those who taught the natural sciences.    I liked the  approach of climbing the ladder of knowledge in an orderly fashion.    At every level I was achieving results.  

 

Something in my being attracted me particularly  to the plant sciences. It stimulated a curiousity, a drive to understand, a feeling to want to live much closer to the world of plants.     My love for the social sciences…..history, geography, anthropology, politics, human berhavioral issues, religion, etc, etc….satisfied my romance for life.   It entertained me.   

 

I needed hard core knowledge to back up this romance.   My ego hated making mistakes.

 

My favorite university class session ever;    was  a required  class series in Biochemistry.   It was for me a religious epiphany.   I knew life was a miracle with the birth and life of my three children.  That did not involve intellect, but the visceral, the animal instinct of being a Father.

 

I was pursuing my graduate degree in horticulture  at the University of Minnesota.    I had lost  my public school teaching career the previous year.   I was married with three children, working full time, and going to graduate school.

 

The only chemistry class I had ever had was when, as a senior in high school, I was enrolled in “Chemistry”, expecting  to learn something about ‘chemistry’, but instead got a nice-guy teacher, Robert Molkenbur,  whose only interest during his teaching day apparently was  to find out which guys  were dating which girls and why.

 

The University allowed me to take a Beginning Inorganic Chemistry series  simultaneously with a Biochemistry series in which the former was prerequisite to the latter.   I struggled through the ‘elementary’ series, led by one of the worst professor-’teachers’ I have ever known, a morning class followed by the Biochemistry series, taught by Professor Irvin Lerner, the Sun, Moon, and Stars, of my life’s religious  learning experience.  

 

No learnings have ever inspired me more religiously than the daily recitations of this man.   He was outlining for me the miracle of life.  

 

 In his presentations no sentence or clause was more empnatically stressed than any another.   There was no time wasted on discussion with the uneducated.   He clearly enunciated every utterance loudly enough for all to hear.  The class of about 100 students was as silent as Professor Lerner was clear  and precise about his  biochemistry MESSAGE……which never wavered  from the simplicities and complexities of his topic…..especially its human chapters upon which this instructor so cleverly and skillfully relied  to tell his story.

 

Everything in Nature is related one to another.  

 

 I had already learned  this Truth, but never had it been so clearly  demonstrated as in these speakings…..these unspectacular words, but so well organized commands of knowledge put into an order  almost any child  (I, for exanple) could understand and beg for more  clarity to  push  aside  the previously unknown.  

 

I wasn’t alone.  

 

 I had to go to work immediately after each of Professor Lerner’s classes.  I had earlier in life, been a public school teacher for about 14 years, four of them at the University of Minnesota ‘laboratory’ high school.  

 

There were tell-tale signs I wasn’t alone with my experience in Irvin Lerner’s  class.    These were summer school sessions.   Of the 100 or so who enrolled in this biochemistry session, 100 attended every day of every week of each class.     Student attention in almost breathless silence at each session was evidence to me that others  were equally inspired.    At the final lecture, Irvin Lerner’s audience stood and applauded to express whatever  Nature dictated.

 

Now, you, dear readers, become a teacher and review the following MESSAGE  emailed to me this morning.   The intent is to encourage Americans to awaken to the Obama creation of BIG GOVERNMENT WITH BUREAUCRATIC POWER OVER CITIZEN LIFE: 

 

 

“Silence is often misinterpreted but never misquoted!

 

The folks who are getting the free stuff, don’t like the folks who are paying for the free stuff, because the folks who are paying for the free stuff can no longer afford to pay for both the free stuff and their own stuff.

The folks who are paying for the free stuff want the free stuff to stop, and the folks who are getting the free stuff want even more free stuff on top of the free stuff they are already getting!

Now… The people who are forcing the people who pay for the free stuff have told the people who are RECEIVING the free stuff, that the people who are PAYING for the free stuff, are being mean, prejudiced, and racist.

So… The people who are GETTING the free stuff have been convinced they need to hate the people who are paying for the free stuff by the people who are forcing some people to pay for their free stuff, and giving them the free stuff in the first place.

We have let the free stuff giving go on for so long that there are now more people getting free stuff than paying for the free stuff.

Now understand this. All great democracies have committed financial suicide somewhere between 200 and 250 years after being founded. The reason? The voters figured out they could vote themselves money from the treasury by electing people who promised to give them money from the treasury in exchange for electing them

The United States officially became a Republic in 1776, 235 years ago. The number of people now getting free stuff outnumbers the people paying for the free stuff. We have one chance to change that. In 2012. Failure to change that spells the end of the United States as we know it.

ELECTION 2012 IS COMING 
A Nation of Sheep Breeds a Government of Wolves!

I’M 100% for PASSING THIS ON!!! 

Let’s take a stand!!!
Obama: Gone!
Borders: Closed!
Language: English only
Culture: Constitution, and the Bill of Rights!
Drug Free: Mandatory Drug Screening before Welfare!
NO freebies to: Non-Citizens!”

 

               Review the content of the above MESSAGE.    What corrections, if any, would you make which in your view might ‘improve’ the message for distribution to others.

 

It is  my opinion….only an opinion…..that the message content is sound.    I would soften some of the harshness….such as the line “English only”…..I would drop the adverb ‘only’.    Whatever language folks wish to speak in their personal environment is not of any consequence to me.    I would like to keep my second language, Russian, alive rather than letting it die from disuse.

 

I believe it to be true that “Great civilizations are not murdered.   They commit suicide”…..a quote from the 20th Century historian, Arnold Toynbee.    There have been so few  democratic governments in our human history, it believe it misleading to claim, “All great democracies”…..have done this or that in any time period.

 

I cannot think of a democratic government which has lasted over 200 years except our own American version, based on the principles of Protestant democracy and enterprise.    Can you?

 

Dennis, often reminds us when frustrated,  no human being is yet a clone of any other of us.    Each is unique and SACRED…..my emphasis and belief……and I believe Dennis’ as well.

 

As I constantly reminded my students….whatever I write or say is “My opinion, folks…..”

 

 

 

Steven Hayward reviews TEBOW THEOLOGY vs. OBAMA THEOLOGY OF TEAM PLAY

Tebow Theology

by Steven Hayward   at   PowerLine:

“We may not know yet about the Higgs boson (which is being called the “God particle” for some reason), but if the Denver Broncos beat the New England Patriots today—especially with another 4^th quarter miracle—it will be positive proof that God does indeed exist.  Or at least that he is a Broncos fan.  The real test of God’s goodness will come when Denver plays the Dallas Cowboys, which, being America’s Team, is obviously God’s team, too.  What will God do?  I predict a tie in overtime.  Followed by a handholding group hug and prayer at the 50-yard line.

Or at least that’s how you’d begin if you merely want to join the journalistic slipstream about the Tim Tebow phenomenon, where being un-ironic is the original sin—maybe the only sin—of the post-modern mind.  You can tell that most of the media’s treatment of Mr. Tebow’s public piety reflects the simple offense at what they view as bad taste.  Don’t you know you’re supposed to keep that all private, man?

You have to look elsewhere—like the Internet!—to get a more serious consideration of Tebow, like Jeff Pojanowski on the Catholic site Patheos.com:

Popular media, more fixated on cultural conflict than actual culture, work to shape the Tebow phenomenon into a stock, religious-versus-secular kabuki production. In this tired morality play—one reminiscent of debate about the “meaning” of Sarah Palin—coastal New Yorker readers, ironists twittering pictures of themselves “Tebowing,” and handwringing strict-separationists are to square off against red-state, religious rubes with persecution complexes.

More than 30 years ago Irving Kristol wrote that theology has practically ceased being an intellectually respectable form of intellectual activity, and the shallow Tebow commentary is another validation of this.  Very few have been the commentaries that begin to treat the more interesting theological questions which Tebow’s public gratitude toward God raise.  Amazingly the media seem to have forgotten the most basic questions of skepticism, such as why a loving God would favor or intercede on behalf of the Broncos while having no regard for the long-suffering Detroit Lions (or are the Lions out of God’s favor for taking the name of the beast that ate so many early Christians?).  More seriously, while Tebow’s gratitude for his God is fitting (as will be his likely Job-like understanding for the inevitable trial of losing), it opens wide the cornerstone of skepticism, the age-old mystery of faith about God’s tolerance for evil: why credit God’s favor for the Broncos while tolerating the suffering of the starving in Darfur, or . . . pick your own example.  That no one in the press corps so eager to highlight and frown upon Tebow’s public piety thinks to raise this issue, which remains basic to the inquiry of so many sincere seekers after spiritual guidance, or ask Tebow for his answer to it, demonstrates how fully secular we have become.

It is unlikely that Tebow would give a very substantive answer involving all the old paradoxes about free will and such; he is likely to be more fully conversant with the intricate details Bronco’s playbook that the Good Book just now, but in any event his best answer would be 1 Corinthians 1:25: “Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”  (That’s the King James; many modern translations render this “God’s nonsense” or “God’s madness” is wiser than men. . .)  Or you can recur to many of C.S. Lewis’s observations that are harmonious with this essential passage, like this one from The Problem of Pain (where he wrested at length with this basic problem): “The relation between Creator and creature, is, of course, unique, and cannot be paralleled by any relations between one creature and another.  God is both further from us, and nearer to us, than any other being.”*

My theology is too rusty to do this whole matter justice.  But I will say that over the years I have been frequently stunned to hear the most unlikely people describe their highly unusual paths to Christian faith, which have included Billy Graham crusades and the seemingly crazy street corner preachers who mostly annoy the passers-by.  I make it a point, on the rare occasions I happen upon a street corner preacher, to look around the crowd to spot the one or two people who appear to be listening intently.  You can usually spot them.

So Tebow may be the NFL version of the lay street corner preacher, violating all the conventions of good taste and embarrassing even many of his fellow believers, but “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”

*If you’re theologically astute you may pick up on Lewis’s harmony with Karl Barth, one of the pre-eminent Protestant theologians of the 20^th century, but I have to confess to never having mastered much of Barth’s rich teaching beyond his basic quarrel with Thomistic theology.  But Lewis has sometimes been made out to be a crypto-Roman Catholic.  Not too sure about this.

**Hey–does this count as a sports post? [Yes.--JHH]

JOHN adds two observations: First, while perhaps not all Bronco fans are equally scrupulous, Tebow consistently says that God doesn’t care who wins a football game, and he neither seeks nor claims divine intervention. Second, while Tebow might not be a great passer, the evidence suggests that he is a great leader. Those in more important leadership positions might observe Tebow and learn from his example.

Suppose, for instance, you are an important political figure–head of the executive branch, even–and your leadership style includes:

* Going on vacation while your teammates (i.e., fellow citizens) are hard at work;
* Stirring up division among your teammates in hopes that it will improve your standing;
* Suggesting that you are highly superior, but your teammates are dumb, lazy and bigoted, and on the whole not good enough for you;
* Acting remote and aloof whenever your team falls behind in the score;
* When your team loses, pointing your finger at everyone but yourself, including players who haven’t been on the team for years; and
* Running the same plays over and over again, even though they are stopped for no gain, and then, rather than trying something different, attempting to convince your teammates that what you are doing is working great, as though they can’t see the scoreboard.

If you are a politician and this describes your management style, you should pay close attention to a leader like Tim Tebow. You might learn something.

American Democracy Losing to Bureaucratic Autocracy

Decline of Democratic Control and Faith

 in Market Capitalism?

 

 By IRWIN M. STELZER    at the Weekly Standard:

“Here in America, the stalemate produced by congressional Republicans’ unwillingness to raise taxes, congressional Democrats’ unwillingness to cut entitlement spending, and President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to govern lest he lose time from campaigning for reelection, forced the unelected Federal Reserve Board (which Ron Paul wants to eliminate), led by Ben Bernanke (whom Newt Gingrich wants to fire), to battle alone to prevent a double-dip recession. With fiscal policy more or less off the table until after the November 2012 elections, and perhaps even thereafter, the Fed printed money, kept interest rates down, shored up the mortgage market, tried to coordinate its efforts with other (unelected) central bankers in order to avoid contagion from eurozone problems, and pleaded with politicians to act. No luck, no democratically determined economic policy. As a result, the Fed has become the target for the slings and arrows usually directed at elected officials. Not doing enough, cry economists on the left who favour QE III, IV ad infinitum; printing too much money and risking inflation, counter those on the right.  

The second profound change that marked the year now coming to an end was a collapse of support for capitalism and free markets, as those have functioned in 2011. For one thing, the centrally managed economy of China seemed to do better than the market economies of the West. I say “seemed” because the data issued by the Chinese regime often leave much to be desired—we don’t know the true extent of un- and under-employment, its real estate bubble, the living conditions of rural Chinese, the condition of the nation’s banks, or the extent to which China’s success is a result of systematic theft of Western intellectual property. No matter: China is doing better than the U.S., growing at around 7 percent in a slow period, and somehow managing to keep its banking system from collapsing. The regime can take some satisfaction from hearing the rattling of the eurozone’s begging bowl, and the groans coming from America as its IOUs held in Chinese vaults mount. Just as the revival of Italy’s economy by Fascist Mussolini, Germany’s by Nazi Hitler, and the Soviet Union’s by Comrade Stalin were once taken to be the future that worked, as compared to depressed America which didn’t, so Communist China is being trumpeted as the successor to America as the world’s future economic superpower.

This retreat from markets is not confined to those who would sacrifice freedom for economic growth. Newt Gingrich, now leading in the race for the Republican nomination to oppose Barack Obama, thought it good conservative politics to attack Mitt Romney for restructuring companies while running Bain Capital, because among the successes (Staples with 1,521 stores in the U.S., providing more than 70,000 jobs) there were some failures. Not for him, apparently, is economist Allan Meltzer’s view: “Capitalism without failure is like religion without sin. It doesn’t work.”

to read further, click here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/decline-democratic-control-and-faith-market-capitalism_613447.html

Although Unconstitutional, Lefty Court Advances Race-Based College Admissions Anyway

Ending race-based admissions

by  Jeff Jacoby  at the Boston Globe:

“WHEN THE Supreme Court, in the 2003 case of Grutter v. Bollinger , narrowly upheld the use of racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School, it emphasized that such preferences were barely tolerable under the Constitution. They could be used only as a last resort, the court ruled, they must not unduly harm non-minorities, and public universities had to start finding ways to phase them out.

“We are mindful that ‘[a] core purpose of the 14th Amendment was to do away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race,’ ’’ Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for a 5-4 majority . “Accordingly, race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time. We see no reason to exempt race-conscious admissions programs from the requirement that all governmental use of race must have a logical end point. We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.’’

But eight years later, race-based admissions show no sign of moving toward “a logical end point.’’ If anything they are more entrenched than ever. Far from using skin color as a last resort, many universities make it an explicit condition – as Abigail Fisher, a white high school senior, discovered when she applied to the University of Texas in 2008. Roughly one-fifth of the freshman class is selected according to a formula that takes race into account; when Fisher was rejected she sued the university on the grounds that its racial preferences violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Relying on Grutter, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the university’s policy. Now Fisher is appealing to the Supreme Court .

Perhaps in 2003 there was some justification for O’Connor’s expectation that universities would be extremely wary of employing racial preferences. There is no such justification today. The Supreme Court ought to use the Texas case to reiterate what Chief Justice John Roberts memorably wrote in a more recent opinion: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.’’

There are many reasons to do so, beginning with the sheer moral repugnance of judging people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. More than 140 years ago, New York attorney John Jay – grandson of the nation’s first chief justice – urged the Supreme Court to proclaim that the post-Civil War amendments had “destroyed the only exception recognized by the Constitution to the great principle of the Declaration of Independence, and that all state legislation establishing or recognizing distinctions of race or color are void .’’ Had the high court laid down that principle then, decades of racial cruelty might have been avoided.

Nowadays, of course, racial preferences in higher education are justified as both a means of benefiting minorities and of adding diversity to the universities that admit them. But as the Pacific Legal Foundation , the National Association of Scholars, and several other public-policy organizations argue in a friend-of-the court brief, those ends can be achieved without resorting to racial preferences. As proof they point to California, which has banned the use of racial preferences in public higher education since enacting Proposition 209 in 1996.

California’s colorblind policy hasn’t deprived underrepresented minorities of access to higher education. Between 1997 and 2010, the number of black, Latino, and American Indian students offered admission to the University of California system soared from 7,385, or 19.6 percent of all students accepted, to 16,635, or 42.6 percent of the total.

“Since Proposition 209 became effective in 1997, minorities continue to seek and be offered admission to the University of California in greater numbers without resorting to racial preferences,’’ the amicus brief argues . “Accordingly, the University of Texas’s argument that a race-conscious admissions policy is necessary to ensure a diverse student body rings hollow.’’ Nor is California alone: Similar measures have recently been adopted in Michigan, Washington, Arizona, Nebraska, and Florida.

“Racial classifications, however compelling their goals, are potentially dangerous,’’ O’Connor wrote in Grutter. In a nation as multiracial and multiethnic as ours, it is not only unjust but unsafe to allow public institutions to indulge in racial preferences. Fortunately, it is also unnecessary.”