Someone call the Wah-mbulance. Spoiled rich kids mad that school costs are rising

Remember when college kids at least pretended to protest significant things like civil rights (good) and an end to the war in Vietnam (bad)? Now they are protesting because tuition is rising.

That's right. A bunch of angry kids--most of whom are no doubt there on scholarships or their parents' money anyway--are now tearing up the campuses of the University of California in both Los Angeles (UCLA) and Berkeley (UC Berkeley), aided by SEIU union thugs who are fighting to prevent some unnecessary janitors from being laid off.

Well I can understand part of the student's anger. Tuition is being raised 32% in one bite, and that is a lot of money. However I cannot be sympathetic to the university after perusing it's 2009/2010 list of offered classes. If they are as far in the red as they claim to be, why aren't they eliminating some of the stupid-ass courses that they offer which have absolutely no value to anyone trying to obtain a paying post-school job in the real world?

Just to highlight a few:

African Studies. What is this? All I know is that it has eleven tenured professors and it's own building on campus. Are we in Africa? Are we training students to go work in Africa? Whatever it is, it is apparently separate and apart from it's Afro-American Studies Department, which has sixteen professors. Are you telling me that the University can't afford to pare any of this stuff back?

Then there's the American Indian Studies Department, with eight more professors. Last I checked, you were born an indian; you didn't go to school to learn how to become one (unless you're Ward Churchill, of course.)

So that's thirty-five professors there, each of whom makes well over $100,000 per year. Are you telling me that the school can't cut even a few of these positions?

But there's more. There is a Latin American Studies program, A Chicano and Chicana Studies program...in fact there appears to be a whole department set aside just to study pretty much any different culture or self-described interest group, including (of course) Women's Studies, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies, and one that really has me scratching my head: Ethnomusicology. Whatever the hell that is, it has more than fifty professors pulling down paychecks. Seriously--who gets a degree in "Ethnomusicology" and goes on to do anything except perhaps teach ethnomusicology at some other institute of useless learning?

If the University of California is really doing that badly financially, perhaps they should eliminate some (or all) of these fluff programs and focus on teaching students practical coursework like medicine, law, science, mathematics, computers, robotics, engineering, advanced writing, physics, and other things that will actually help them get real jobs with cutting-edge firms where they can make money and actually produce things that will make life better for everyone? That's what colleges used to be for, back before they decided to water down the curriculum with junk classes so that even stupid kids could get (basically worthless) degrees that wouldn't even qualify them to manage a McDonalds. And coincidentally, it's students of this sort today who are locking themselves in campus buildings and sitting in trees to protest. The students enrolled in the practical coursework are noticeably absent from their little unwashed mobs. Those students are too busy studying and getting ready to go out and succeed on the world.

Hopefully when they make their mark on America and have a comfortable life, they'll remember their former peers--the Ethnomusicologists or the Transexual Studies students--and when they see one bagging their groceries or just standing around with a "Will Work For Food" sign, they'll toss them a few coins just for that old school tie.

The face of the American left-winger

Here they are, folks. The left-wing liberal spoiled brats from the seat of liberalism--Berkeley, California. They're doing what they do best--screeching obscenities from trees and hurling poop at people, just like their intellectual peers in the chimp exhibit at the local zoo. According to this news story, the delightful trust-fund kid in the tree calls herself "dumpster muffin" and she personifies today's elitist soldier-hating, progress-obstructing, American-flag-burning, Barrack-Obama-loving liberal piece of trash.

These kids, who have obviously had nothing better to do, have been sitting in trees on the grounds of the University of California's Berkeley campus since December, 2006--a whole year and a half. And they're doing it simply because they don't want to see the university remove these trees--which the university owns--and build a new recreational building which every student for decades will actually be able to use and enjoy.

Sitting in trees, screaming, and flinging poop at people. For a year and a half. While the rest of the world moves on.

WTF?

Don't these kids have parents who care enough to notice them missing and order them to get down and get on with their lives? Presumably there are parents somewhere who are paying the tuition for these wanna-be primates, because God knows, kids who do this stuff probably don't have what it takes to make it into college on any sort of scholarship. Sadly, kids like there, their equally useless peers, and their overly-indulgent parents, represent the typical Barack Obama voter today. It's people like this that'll go to the polls in November to try to cancel out your intelligent, thought-out vote along with mine, by punching a ballot for Obama.

They won't be alone, of course. They'll be joined by the same Berkeley faculty members who try to bargain them out of the trees, offering them food and water if--pretty please--they just bag their feces and urine and send it down for disposal instead of hurling it at passers-by. (An offer which the kids rejected, at which point the faculty started sending them up water anyway, because God forbid one of these life parasites might get so thirsty that they actually have to come down.)

Real American leaders would not be bargaining with these spoiled brats. Real leaders would have given them three warnings and then sent the chain saw teams in to cut the trees down, liberals notwithstanding. Real leaders would understand that a few of them would regrettably get hurt, but it would result in a virtual cessation of copycat stunts once the other liberal kids realized that they were now in the real world where actions and decisions have consequences.

But they aren't in the real world. They're in Berkeley. They're in an alternate universe where our military members are spit on openly and told that they aren't welcome in town by the city council, and where extremist protesters are given reserved parking places in front of the military recruitment centers by the city. Berkeley was the first city in America that told it's firefighters that they could not fly American flags from their firetrucks as a show of support for all of the firefighters killed in New York on 9/11, for fear that our nation's flag might make some foreigner who doesn't like our country uncomfortable as he or she walks down the street in Berkeley.

Berkeley is not part of any America that I know, and if and when I get to be President, it's getting fenced off and no one's coming out unless and until they swear allegiance to our country, salute our flag, say the Pledge--including the "under God" part--and sing the Star Spangled Banner sufficiently well enough to earn applause from real Americans at any Rodeo, NASCAR event, or other proper sports venue: Baseball, Football or Hockey.

Of course when I'm President, those tree-swinging, poop-flinging Obama-supporting brats will be knocked out of those trees by Secret Service agents firing bean bags and/or pepper balls, and they'll all be down before I've finished my swearing-in ceremony. Then they'll all be doing 8 hours community service for each and every day that their ridiculous imitation-Orangutan act went on. Let's see... December, 2006 until... Yeah, we'll be having some clean highway medians and parks under my administration, and a lot of spoiled trust-fund kids will get to know what it's like to actually have to get up and go to work like real Americans for a change.

Vote for me and Lagniappe in November.