When Billy Joel got....Middle Aged

A reliable source tells us that the college football National Championship was last night. Congratulations Georgia Bulldogs. Wow, another national champ from the Southeast Athletic Conference. Seriously, over the last decade the champs have all been SEC + Ohio State. 

Foreign readers, don't trust nobody from the lowdown, dirty, no-good SEC. Think of a Futball team that cheats, gets away with cheating, and then brags about cheating after defeating you 3-nil, all while the authorities let them get away with it.* Those lying bastards in the SEC would sellout their own mothers to win a football game. 

Student athletes...sure.

For those who don't know, college football isn't very big in the Northeast, except for Notre Dameb. But that's because of all the Irish. New Jersey has Rutgers...no mocking now, and it's totally a thing here. Rutgers has been pretending to be a serious college football program for 20 years now. They're in The Big Ten with Mrs. Stroock's own Penn State. She and her sisters think Rutgers should be kicked out of the conference. 

Moving on...

For a decade Billy Joel churned out melodic albums with piano centered songs. This blog believes the man peeked with 1983's An Innocent Man, which is a homage to the Do-Wop and Motown of the 50's and 60's. The videos are so much fun. 

Then we come to 1986's The Bridge. Here's the big track, A Matter of Trust. This a guitar power chord song and the video is channeling The Beatles. Alert viewers will see Ringo and Paul, which is kind of cool. Still, A Matter of Trust is unmemorable. What happened? Watch the video again. Also appearing are Billy Joel's mega-hot fashion model wife and baby daughter. That's what happened. Also, this is the go-go 80's not the manic depressive 70's, which we will discuss tomorrow. 

Hot Air reports future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will kick several Dems off their committees. These include the usual suspects, compromised Eric Swalwell, Mogadishu's own, etc. But Hot Air points out that McCarthy is merely kicking them off some committees, not banning them from committee service en toto. We agree with Hot Air's analysis. Still, McCarthy is making progress, no? Colonel Schlichter, who is always right, likes to tell Dems that they're gonna hate the new rules. Stroock's Books goes even further, and calls on the House to expel Swalwell and Omar. Escalate, GOP. 

*Argentina? Italy? You tell me.

Sell This

Steve Sailer has another long post about advertising data and a hunch he's had since the 1980s that advertising really doesn't work. Those interested in selling books, or anything else should grab a coffee and read, What if Advertising on Google and Facebook (or TV) Doesn't Much Work? We agree. We're thinking one day we'll write a Substack piece on everything we've learned about advertising. But for now here's our experience. 

You can advertise all you want, but it won't matter if people just aren't interested. This was our experience with A Line Through the Desert. Advertising worked with later books. We found ad effectiveness reduced by 50% with each run. By 2017 we had a hunch that we didn't need to run advertisements anymore. We were right, and haven't since. The most effective form of advertisement available to us is getting mentioned by Instapundit. This is a well known thing. It's called an Instalanche. 

Speaking of selling books, Kurt Schlichter, who is always right, released his latest, The Split. He reports  855 sales in 12 hours. That's really interesting. We wonder if he's including presales. We guestimate that his KU page reads amount to tens of thousands in that time span.

Yet more advertising...watching broadcast TV in the New York metro area means getting bombardment with 'get vaccinated!' ads. It's total saturation and it isn't working. These ads talk to citizens like they're children.  Because we're a normal human with interests, things to do, etc, we haven't been paying attention to the national vax rate and are stunned to learn it stands at 56%. In New Jersey the rate is, 64%, because Governor Murphy isn't a condescending A-hole. No wonder Biden and left are furious. That is a complete total failure for an admin that promised a 70% vaccination rate by July. 

Flagging the Donkeys in the 'War on Terror'

Did an hour on the treadmill yesterday. We made a mistake, actually. We started out with a bunch of newish AC/DC songs, like Rock or Bust, which tend to be short. By the time we got up to ten or twelve songs our brain was ready to switch into its end of run mode, but we were 15 minutes short. We pulled through though with a trio of live performances from The Answer.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Jew is even cleverer than we thought.: "According to the story by veteran military correspondent Tal Lev-Ram, a recent story in the Wall Street Journal about a dozen Israeli attacks against Iranian ships ferrying oil to Syria was only “partial” and that Israel’s naval operations against Iran are “deeper and more thorough” than previously reported." Read the article. Israeli operations at sea have been devastating. Remember that the Israelis have been hammering Iran in Syrian for years. This is going to make a hell of a history book one day. Just another bit of news in Bibi's favor. The Ruskis have blackmailed us into writing a column on Tuesday's election. 

This blog hasn't piled on the military over Operation Tucker Carlson. Kurt Schlichter says it better then we can. He makes an especially good point about not being dazzled by uniforms and a lot of metals. These guys here, well, they're the top brass in an endless war. These are the William Westmorelands, the Lloyd  Fredendalls, the George McClellans, the Horatio Gates of our age. These are the donkeys leading lions. 

And don't anyone dare try to accuse us of anything. This isn't about women in the military or combat. That ship has sailed, btw. I had two female students who were in combat in Iraq. One, a red headed, freckle faced marine reservist right out of central casting, the other an MP in the New Jersey National Guard who to an IED to the head and used to tell us how worried she was about her tests. 'You went through all that and your worried about a little test on the British Empire?' We'd say.

Below, the Friday Flag, from a time when America won wars.

The last News Wrap of 2020

We don't do the New Years thing. We have no resolutions to make and we're not in the mood for predictions. In 2016 we predicted Rubio/Haley would win. Also we thought Hillary! would be dead by now. So that's what those are worth. Ok, we have one resolution: consume less news.

Colonel Schlichter predicts pain. We see nothing with which to disagree. Our best guess on Georgia is that the GOP loses. The party down there is a mess and neither candidate inspires. Some are hammering Jew hater Rafael Warnock's Jew hatred. That will just help turn out the black vote. It's a weird relationship, people. 

Over in Israel, the Blue and Whites are dying as six MK's have now left. Damn. We wanted a center-ish party that would hammer the palestinians and hammer the Haredi. Not next year. Benny Gantz thought he could make a deal with Bibi. Fool. Worse, Gantz thought he could stab the other two wings of the Blue and Whites in the back and command their loyalty afterwards. Idiot. Some strategy. This guy was the chief of staff? We shudder. Polls show an electorate that is center right and more right.  Peacenik Meretz is a fringe party and Ben Gurion's Labour, once Israel's natural governing party, is almost dead. Good. The other two major rightwing parties really hate Bibi. It's personal. We suspect Israel will have another deadlock after the March elections. 

The Critical Drinker really doesn't like Wonder Woman 1984. The film is a Woke mess, he says. Which is fine. But WW84 was written and directed by Patty Jenkins, who is doing Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Can't you see it? A fresh, spunky female X-wing pilot shows all the jocks how it's done. Will it be Woke? Is this a Kennedy project or a Favreau project? Favreau is running the TV side of things so....

We're re-reading Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries trilogy. After 34+ years we can still recall reading Janissaries on the way home from the book store and reading the Roman battle in SSR at school, which certainly  says something for Pournelle. We've finished the first book and it's a tight, well written masterpiece. We're shocked at how much we like Janissaries and how easy it was to read. Well done Mr. Pournelle, and thank you. Can't wait to get to the fourth and final volume, Mamelukes.

We're writing what we believe is the final chapter for the main narrative of The Great Nuclear War of 1975. This chapter deals with election and congressional issues. The last shows Rockefeller giving the State of the Union at The Greenbrier. It's a wish list of what needs to be done. Overall 40 states returned electors, congressman and senators. Bobby Byrd survived and he's undisputed master of the senate. We still only got Matt to the Indiana border and still don't know if he finds Stacey and the boys. What do you guys think? 

Notes on Various

In Israel, Netanyahu looks to be in trouble, so what else is new? There are two viable challengers on the right, Naftalli Bennett and Gideon Sa'ar, both getting 15-20 seats. It has been pointed out that Bibi has few friends left, so we don't know how he gets out of this one. He could go left, we suppose. But what's left of the Israeli left, and that amounts to maybe 25 seats in the 120 Knesset, hates his guts. There's the Arab Joint List, about 12 seats....sorry bad joke.

Meanwhile if Boris walks away from the Brexit talks that will begin his rehabilitation for us. Maybe there will be something in that cab after all. We don't believe the walk away talk, though. This is typical brinksmanship and we expect a resolution before Sunday's deadline.

Colonel Schlichter, who is always right, has a great column on the runoff elections in Georgia. Here's a great point for us pessimists out there: 'The Murder Turtle Mitch McConnell is already on the job. He knows what happened in November and his minions will be watching in January. His crew of cutthroats are flooding Georgia with lawyers and gathering poll watchers and count observers.' Read the whole thing, as Professor Reynolds likes to say. Cocaine Mitch confirms judges and wins senate elections, and he's all out of judges.

We don't talk much about the Kungflu on this blog because we like to stick with what we know. But it seems obvious to us that the Wuflu is back because flu and cold season is back. By the way, we took an antibody test out of curiosity. Youngest daughter had a raging flu in February, we had a rather odd cold in October and chatted with someone who tested positive two days later and....negative. Damnit. We admit to being profoundly disappointed. Governor Murphy is complaining about the extreme unresponsiveness of New Jersians to his (snitch) contact tracers and said it needs to stop. Lol, get fucked Murphy. We have to get cholesterol and triglyceride bloodwork next week, That should be, ahem, interesting.

Big tech is coming for you. YouTube announced it's censoring election-skeptical content. There are other options, Rumble for instance. We're on Parlor and Gab and have an account on MeWe. We're glad the DOJ is suing FB. Will Joe's DOJ kill the suit? Depends on what Beijing wants, doesn't it?

We're going to break our rules today and write a World War 1990: Saddam's War scene. Say hello General al-Majid, Saddam's fixer and pro-consul of Province 19. Reader(s) may know him by his nickname Chemical Ali. He's running the war on Kurdistan while making preparations in Province 19.

On The Great Nuclear War of 1975 front, Matt is walking, walking and walking. We finally figured out where he's from, Rhode Island. And he's heading to his family that went to visit the in-laws in Indiana. we'll talk more about it on the Saturday update, but we're really getting confident about having this 100,000 words clean and ready by 1 January. 

Riots (white), Urban Collapse, and Writing

The bilge just kept pumping and pumping until I opened up the engine compartment. 'Wow, that's a lot of water,' I said, 'you know, for a boat.'

Despite naming the boat for our grandmother's home town of Waterproof Louisiana, Hannah Marx Stroock really doesn't like it. That boat is just unlucky and there is no doubt, none whatsoever, that the Waterproof is unlucky becuase she haunts it. None. Never, ever displease a southern woman.

Eventually the bilge drained and we took the boat out. There was no problems, mechanical anyway. But you get three little girls on a boat, horse play, throw in a teenager who cannot put her phone down and a bee sting, it makes for good times.

Kurt Schlichter, who is always right, takes the measure of things, and predicts a big Trump win. We agree. Go ahead and doubt us if you want, but we were right in 2016 and the pollsters were wrong. We are right in 2020 too.

Andy Ngo chronicles another night of riots in Portland. Also riots in Seattle, Chicago. We expect to see a bad one in NYC soon. Seattle's police chief is resigning. This can't go on. Sometime this year the president will fulfill our prophecy of Federal troops being dispatched to a blue city to enforce the law. 

Speaking of, Kyle Smith chronicles the rapid decline of NYC. Yeah...the NYC of cynical, hard bitten, world weary tough guys is long, long gone. We can't wait for all those Williamsburg hipsters to experience an 'authentic' NYC sans street smarts. These people are doomed. We once again urge Governor Murphy to blow up the Hudson River crossings and deploy the National Guard to the west bank of the river with orders to sink on site any boat trying to make the crossing. Stay the hell out of New Jersey, New Yorkers. We don't want your kind here.

Trump is going to give his acceptance speech at the White House or  Gettysburg. Just brilliant. He should hold rallies at sacred sites all across the nation. Gettysburg, the Alamo, Punch Bowl National Cemetery (prettier and more tranquil than Arlington, we kid you not) Ellis Island, Willow Run, Valley Forge...Fuck it, Stone Mountain. Troll level: Trump.

The Biden campaign is falling apart before our eyes. They can't choose a veep and nobody of any talent wants the job anyway. Rumor has it Dixiecrat Joe is interviewing Mayor Pete. That's what it's come to. Willie Brown, Kamala Harris' sugar daddy, the smartest politician in Califronia (not kidding), urges her not to take the gig. We'll see if she's smart enough to take the advice. The Dems are going to get killed and they know it. Hence they're laying the groundwork for post-election chaos and doubt.

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is coming along well. We wrote yet another scene on the Hudson River. Write what you know, we guess. We're aware that this could be overkill, but the Hudson just works for us. Imagine that two mile wide river frozen solid in deep winter. See? Our man is trekking. We know a lot about him. He's a math teacher, likes building models. Had a draft deferment. No urbanite wuss, but definitely not an ex-Marine or biker dude. Just your average man doing what he's gotta do.

More meetings for our presidential commission on Reconstruction. How do you reconstitute state governments? Just how do you hold an election? Who do you get to run against Rockefeller? Whose left? These are the questions that fascinate us. We're worried that there's too many men sitting around and talking, but you people say you like that sort of thing, soooo. We decided Milton Friedman is on the commission. 

We need to readthrough one more story in the short story compilation, reformat (this is easy) and then format the Kindle edition, which is also easy. September 1st, people. To be honest we're not optimistic about book sales for this one. Which is fine. Sometimes the point is to get stuff out there, nothing more. We'll see.

The Power of Saying No

Kurt Schlichter (PBUH), Glenn Reynolds (P also BUH) and other conservatives have talked about saying no cancellers. 

We agree. We also agree that that's easy for us to say. That being said, in our career as an adjunct professor of history at Raritan Valley Community College we said no. Twice. These stories will be familiar to long time reader(s) of this blog.

In the wake of Andrew Breitbart's death (and P also BUH) then as now, we wondered what we could do. We decided to hold a rally and called it, Israel is Great. Well two days before the rally the VP for finance and facilities tried to cancel us. We went immediately to his office and asked to see the man. 'He's in a meeting' the secretary said. 'We'll wait,' we replied. So we had our little meeting and he said political rallies weren't allowed on campus. We pointed out that just a few months before, the professors on campus had a political rally. Our Israel is Great rally went ahead. 

Five years ago now, the RVCC Humanities Department lead by the adjunct coordinator*, tried to screw us. Briefly, the department took a class away from us and then took another class away from us but promised we'd be 'taken care of' later. When that didn't happen they said, 'We will make future assignments on a semester-by-semester basis reflecting your progress toward effective teaching of World History.' You don't treat colleagues that way and you sure as hell don't treat William Stroock that way.

We said, 'Fine. We quit.' They said, 'You can't quit. It's the middle of the semester.' We did our best Pierre Trudeau and said, 'Just watch me.' We prolonged our career there by two semesters.

Saying no works.

*Literary revenge is a fickle bitch, and her gods are cruel.

The Media must be Destroyed

Ahhhh... the annual Army/Navy game, a showcase of tradition and sportsmanship for the service academies. The game is worth it alone for the combined Army/Navy choir rendeition of the Star Spangled Banner. Simply a breathtaking American spectacle.

Degenerate Communist Mike Brehm* of failing USA Today reported that two Army cadets flashed the 'white supremacist' OK symbol on camera.

Of course sentient humans know the cadets were playing the 'circle game'.

The great Kurt Schlichter (PBUH) is already gathering an all-star team of lawyers to bring sicko Mike Brehm and the failing USA Today to justice.  

As the President has said, the media is the enemy of the people.

Hey USA Today, go ahead, accuse me of being a white supremacist. Fuck you. 

*I won't link to this sick pervert's article.

The Academy Sucks

The esteemed Victor Davis Hanson goes on at some length about the sorry state of the Humanities in the Academee. He hits on several themes all of which we have personal experience with. Here is an astute observation:  

Often, the choices of young professors and scholars are limited by career concerns and limited time. If a young, recently minted classics or history Ph.D., lucky enough to land a temporary lectureship, had to make an either/or choice between tutoring all his struggling students in Latin 1A, along with giving community lectures on Spartacus or Thermopylae at the local Rotary Club and junior high, or writing a journal article on the perspectives of ethnic, gender, and race relations and their empirical referents in Roman cults in Asia Minor, or even another scholarly note on abnormal uses of the optative mood in Diodorus, choosing politicization and specialization would be the far wiser career move — even as participating in broad community and undergraduate outreach, in this endangered climate, would be the wiser investment to save an entire discipline.

From an academic standpoint we did normal things like teach World Civ I in the Plato-to-NATO style and write magazine articles in popular publications on subjects people were interested in. Examples of these are on the right hand side of this page.

I was strange and unique to them.

When one walked into the RVCC humanities department, one might as well have walked into the Mos Eisley Cantina. It was an intersectional freak show of weirdos, self-hating whites, radical feminists, communists; one guy named his kid 'Justice'. Writing this just now we sort of regret we weren't still on staff during the election so we could enjoy their pain.

Our militant normalcy (thanks Kurt Schlichter!-there's that attribution thing again) was no problem at all for the department until the new adjunct coordinator decided they wanted to get rid of us.* They thought we were like all the other adjuncts who just have to smile an take it becuase we needed the gig.

They thought wrong.

*We thank you literary revenge. We thank you very much.

Wither Kurt Schlichter

Kurt Schlichter is right, fierce and terrible when he rises to the defense of the hamburger:

Let’s clarify something else. Hamburgers are the King of American Casual Food. You can eat it in a bar, you can eat it in a car. Just don’t eat it in some trendy coastal eatery because they’ll screw it all up and you’ll end up dreaming of a Big Mac.

However he says:

Mandatory condiments are ketchup and more ketchup. One of a hamburger’s key roles is to serve as a ketchup delivery system.

Surely not Heinze Ketchup, the ketchup of heiress and horizontal dowager Theresa Heinze, sugar mama of John Kerry (S-Tehran)?

As it is I'm sure it was only an oversite on the good colonel's part.

On to Mexico City!

Kurt Schlichter (PBUH) asks if we should invade Mexico.

We say, Viva Benicio Del Toro! (Seriously, have you seen Sicario yet? If not, why not? Go watch it. Now! This means YOU.)

Actually, Viva Pershing.

In 1916, after Senor Villa raided Columbus, NM*, President Wilson ordered our man John J. Pershing to lead an expedition down Mexico way. This is where the fun began. Pershing found a Mexican population hostile to American interests, hard to believe, we know. The US Army fought several engagements against Villistas and the Mexican Army.

On a side note, Pershing took with him a butt kissing young captain, whose sister he was trying to schtup, one George S. Patton, who actually got into an Olde Mexico style gunfight right out of The Professionals or day we say, Sam Peckinpaugh's The Wild Bunch**.

Anyway, Schlichter gives us three options for Mexico, a buffer zone- someone's been reading Harold Coyle's worst novel, an all out invasion (Operation Mexican Freedom), or a kind of special forces centric counterinsurgency, which would basically be Sicario.

We say don't fuck around, let's invade Mexico! Why not? As Schlichter suggests we could land a Marine division at Vera Cruz*** . But we want to go a step further. Let's drop the 82nd Airborne right on Mexico City and have the 1st Armored, 1st Cavalry and 1st Infantry Divisions advance south from Texas (each division we code name Martin, Chase and Short while the eventual target, this AMLO fellow, we designate El Guapo). Logistics should be no problem, we can run supply lines right out of Texas and Florida, and elements of the 101st Air Assault can seize airfields along the route of march.

Just think of it. In every town our boys liberate they'll be greeted by caballeros wearing white cotton pants and shirts come a'calling with the church bells, senoritas in long flowing dresses doing that canasta dance thing like Claudia Cardinale****and young boys promising to lay flowers on their graves. Why this would be the best fed occupying army this side of the Rhine. Think of the authentic Mexican cuisine. It'd be like invading Chi-Chi's.

*The army kicked Villa's ass, by the way.

** That's a lot of dead Mexicans. Bonus question, are there more dead Mexicans in Peckinpaugh's The Wild Bunch or more dead Krauts in Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One?

***That's how Winfield Scott did it in '48, 1848.

****She's Eye-talian, mate.

Moore-o-geddon

Well today is this big day!

At stake is Steve Bannon's vision. He took on the Republican establishment by offing sitting senator Luther Strange and then led the fight against the media over allegations of sexual harassment and assault. This election is not about the man but that fight. It's also about Democrat hypocrisy.

Watch this clip of Kurt Schlichter, it's glorious:

'Then why did you vote for Bill Clinton?!'

We love Kurt Schlichter's contempt for the left.

Also at stake is the narrative. If Dems pull this off it portends certain doom for the GOP next November.

Here's what the polls have been showing, via RCP:

Yesterday two more polls came out, one showing Moore up bigly, the other showing Jones up 10.

We think the later is waaaay off and based on a totally unrealistic turnout model. Of course, back in 2012 we insisted all those polls showing Barry up by four or five points were wrong based on their turnout model. We know who was wrong on that one.

It is possible that all the other polls are wrong and this one is right. We say the Jones + 10 poll is a massive outlier. But in the last few days Barry, Senator Corey Booker and company have been touring the state trying to gin up black turnout.

We think Moore wins.

We shall see.

Low Energy Dynasty

Bush Dynasty flack Mathew Dowd tells us that the old GOP is dead and the modern GOP would never nominate Ronald Reagan. He then goes on to smear the GOP by saying the party wouldn't nominate Lincoln. Via Breitbart.

So sayeth the GOP establishment.

One can tell the GOP-e is losing because they say the new GOP, or modern conservatives, or the alt-right, or the 104th Congress wouldn't nominate Lincoln.

It's an old smear.

GOP-e scion Bob Mikel wasn't permanent House Minority Leader for nuthin'.

Republican please.You guys in the GOP-e wouldn't have nominated Reagan. In fact you stood against him not once but twice. First the establishment opposed Reagan's primary run against President Ford in 1976.  Then in 1980 you tried to thrust George Bush on the party. Once Reagan won the nomination the GOP-e urged him to take Ford as his VP.

What was even the point of that?

Remember, Bush, Dowd and that bunch are the ones who just barely beat Jean Francois Kerry (D-North Vietnam) and said, 'You know what this country is crying out for? Some wonky and complicated social security reform. We've totally got the thumbs up from George Will.'

They gave us David Souter on the Supreme Court.

They gave us 'Read my lips...'

They gave us Common Core in Florida.

They gave us Dan Quayle.

What a bunch of losers.

We can't recommend this Kurt Schlichter column enough:

So, here's the thing, dorks. You don't get to win. You don't. You're finished. The Republican Party has changed, and it changed because of you. The fact is that people like you, and people like George W. Bush, are some of the biggest reasons we have Donald Trump. You managed to combine unearned self-guard, condescension, corruption, and a total inability to perform even the most basic tasks of governance into one pompous, annoying package. We're done with you, because you suck.

The column is about the GOP-e and W's shameful speech. We'll go more into that in another post.

Anyway, spare me the lectures on Reagan, Senior Dowd. We know what we get with the GOP- e and the Bush Dynasty.

Read my lips, anyone?

George P. 2028

Stroock's Rules

Alert and appropriately named commenter  'Unkown' asks about my post regarding the Bundy Ranch, Sheriff Arpaio, and jury nullification.

We can't speak to President Trump's motivations. Basically a judge 'convicted' Arpaio of violating a court order that prevented him from 'profiling' Mexicans. As if the problem down their on the Rio Grande is Swedes, Burmese and Basques. Arpaio quite sensibly ignored the order.

We don't really care what the law here is. Arpaio and then Trump stuck it to the left. This is their bag, baby. This is how they operate, man. Pure will to power.

For further thoughts on the matter, we urge reader(s) to explore the works of the incomparable Kurt Schlichter who has gloriously declares, 'Liberals you're going to hate the new rules!'

Remember Alinsky's rule #4: Make the enemy live up to his own set of rules.

Nuke the University

Update: Kurt Schlichter fans, thanks for stopping by! If you like techno-thrillers and alt-history novels, links are above. Thanks again and enjoy.

Every word written by Kurt Schlichter is right.

Let's take his two main points one at a time.

First Schlichter talks about academia being the enemy of all things good and decent. Oh boy is he ever right. Raritan Valley Community College, where I taught for five years, has departments run and staffed by communists, cross dressing perverts, Feminazis, Black Panthers and SJW creeps who give their kids names like 'Justice'. I am not making that up.

As far as curriculum, just insert any whacked-out lefty-prof nightmare you've ever heard of. I actually came in for a lot of grief because I turned my World-Civ I class into a Plato to NATO course. This is what we used to refer to as 'normal'.

Now before we get our second point, we should address something Schlichter says that resonated with us:

Let’s set aside the fact that community college exists to give everyone the opportunity to get some higher education; today, it’s job is to occupy high school students for a few extra years by intermittently teaching them the things the incompetence of unionized teachers ensured they didn’t learn in public high schools.

God Almighty this is so true. The reader should never, ever listen to the 'poor' public school teacher telling them how great and underappreciated they are.  Most school teachers think they are 'light workers'. Yeah you get a week off at Xmas, another in the spring, not to mention summer. And your day ends at three. This doesn't stop them from constantly bitching. I know. I was a sub at Bernards High, Bernanrdsville, NJ for seven years and I listened to them every day.

The kids I got in World Civ and US-I knew dick.

Schlichter moves on to a great point that I can vouch for personally:

At the same time, we can use the law to help facilitate the transition away from the current centralized campus with a bloated administration and faculty/four-year booze cruise model. Laws can mandate and regularize credentialing for technology-based learning to help make non-traditional programs a viable and accepted alternative to a traditional degree. Right now, college is less about learning than about creating a cultural signifier – someone who went to college is “one of us.” But that snobby luxury can’t endure when tuition becomes unaffordable for everyone but ultra-rich folks willing to pony up for their spawn’s sojourn on campus. And it’s unnecessary. To the extent college teaches hard skills – I learned how to beer bong like a boss – students can go on-line at a fraction of the cost to get the specific education they need, without spending time and money on nonsense they don’t. Oppression Studies requirements, I’m looking at you.

I finished up my BA in 2002 at American Public University and earned an MA at same in 2005. Most of the papers I wrote became magazine articles.

On-line education, and I was doing it before anyone had heard of Phoenix, was great for me, and a great way to undermine the communists running higher ed today.