According to a study, "Even with strong racial preferences in admissions to graduate programs, blacks and Latinos are likely to be severely underrepresented on the higher rungs of the educational ladder until the education they receive in the K-12 years improves dramatically."

Walter Williams is blunt in his explanation for this. He uses the word "fraudulent" three times to describe the primary and secondary education received by most blacks.

Quote:Black Education Disaster
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
By Walter E. Williams

Harvard University Professor Stephan Thernstrom's recent essay about "Minorities in College -- Good News, But..." (at Minding the Campus, a website sponsored by the New York-based Manhattan Institute) commented on the results of the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress test: The scores "mean that black students aged 17 do not read with any greater facility than whites who are four years younger and still in junior high. ... Exactly the same glaring gaps appear in NAEP's tests of basic mathematics skills."

Thernstrom asks, "If we put a randomly-selected group of 100 eighth-graders and another of 100 twelfth-graders in a typical college, would we expect the first group to perform as well as the second?" In other words, is it reasonable to expect a college freshman of any race with the equivalent of an eighth-grade education to compete successfully with those having a twelfth-grade education?

SAT scores confirm the poor education received by blacks. In 2009, average SAT reading test scores were: whites (528), Asians (516) and blacks (429). In math it was whites (536), Asians (587) and blacks (426). Twelve years of fraudulent primary and secondary education received by most blacks are not erased by four or five years of college.

This is evidenced by examination scores taken for admission to graduate schools. In 2007, Graduate Record Examination verbal scores were: whites (493), Asians (485) and blacks (395). The math portion scores were: whites (562), Asians (617) and blacks (419). Scores on the LSAT in 2006, for admission to law school, were: whites (152), Asians (152) and blacks (142). In 2010, MCAT scores for admission to medical schools were: whites (26), Asians (26) and blacks (21).

What's some of the response of the black community to efforts to do something about fraudulent primary and secondary education? Voters in Washington, D.C., might provide a partial answer. Mayor Adrian Fenty appointed and backed Michelle Rhee as chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.

She fired large numbers of ineffective teachers, most of whom were black, and fought the teachers' union. During her tenure, there were small gains made in student test scores.

How did all of this go over with Washington voters? Washington's teachers' union, as well as D.C.'s public-employee unions, spent massive amounts of money campaigning against Fenty. Voters unseated him in the November elections and with him went Chancellor Rhee.

Fenty had other "faults"; he didn't play the racial patronage game that has become a part of D.C.'s political landscape. The clear message given by D.C. voters and teachers' union is that any politician who's willing to play hardball in an effort to improve black education will be run out of town.

The education establishment's solution is always more money; however, according to a Washington Post article (4/6/2008), "The Real Cost Of Public Schools," written by Andrew J. Coulson, if we include its total operating budget, teacher retirement, capital budget and federal funding, the D.C. public schools spend $24,600 per student.

Washington's fraudulent black education is by no means unique; it's duplicated in one degree or another in most of our major cities. However, there is a glimmer of hope in the increasing demand for charter schools and educational vouchers.

This movement is being fought tooth and nail by an education establishment that fears the competition and subsequent threats to their employment. The charter school and the educational vouchers movement will help prevent parents and children who care about education from being held hostage in an environment hostile to the learning process. And there's plenty of evidence that children do better and parents are more pleased when they have a measure of school choice.

The fact that black youngsters trail their white counterparts by three or four years becomes even grimmer when we recognize that the education white youngsters receive is nothing to write home about. According to the recently released Program for International Student Assessment exam, our 15-year-olds rank 25th among 34 industrialized nations in math and 14th in reading.

From DegreeDisgusted:

Stalking Steve Foerster Wrote:What would you do if you were president?

Jimmy Clifton Wrote:Great question and I will answer based on if the President had the power to do much more than he currently can.

1. Free all non-violent criminals
Vankirk: Does that include Bernie Madoff, Aldrich Ames and PFC Bradley Manning?
2. Commute all death penalty sentences
Vankirk: How about we have the state legislatures of the 50 states pass legislation banning the death penalty and commuting the death sentences of those already sentenced? That would be a novel idea and constitutional as well.
3. Bring all troops home from overseas
Vankirk: I actually agree with that - let's put them to work rounding up all the illegal aliens and securing the borders.
4. Eliminate the IRS in favor of a flat tax
Vankirk: Which agency is going to collect the flat tax?
5. Beef up the Air Force, Coast Guard, and Navy; use Coast Guard to protect the borders
Vankirk: The USCG can protect the ocean borders, I'd rather have the USMC protect the land borders.
6. Establish a 32-hour work week at 40 hours pay
Vankirk: Thanks for being reasonable. Your pals at the Socialist Party USA want a 30-hour work week
http://socialistparty-usa.org/platform/
7. Unemployment benefits would equal the unemployed's previous wages and last until once again employed
Vankirk: That should really provide an incentive for the unemployed to look for a new job. Also, since you've instituted a flat tax where will the government get the money to pay for increased unemployment, or will you just push the cost to the employers?
8. End "at-will" firing in all states
Vankirk: If you're going to mandate that employers pay laid-off employees full-pay anyway, I doubt that there will be very many layoffs.
9. Eliminate the Department of Education; leave accreditation/approval to the states
Vankirk: Here, here.
10. Reopen all civil rights murder cases and prosecute the guilty to the fullest extent of the law
Vankirk: There's no statute of limitations on murder.
11. Legalize gay marriage in all states
Vankirk: Maybe you should let the voters of each state decide that instead of imposing it from the federal government. I'm not sure but I think that there is something in THE F*#KING CONSTITUTION about it.
12. Outlaw abortion in all states
Vankirk: Ibid
13. Outlaw capital punishment in all states
Vankirk: Ibid
14. Ban psychotropic medications
Vankirk: Why stop at psychotropic medications? Why not extend it to antibiotics or corticosteroids?
15. Privatize Social Security and the Department of Child Services
16. Eliminate the Electoral College
Vankirk: Are there any other parts of the Constitution that you want to "eliminate"?
17. Open up the presidential debates to all third parties
Vankirk: I didn't know that the government ran the debates. I thought that it was private or non-profit entities.
18. Cancel the national debt
Vankirk: Are there any other parts of the Socialist Party USA's platform that you want to implement?
19. One six-year term for the President
Vankirk: Not a bad idea if you can democratically amend the Constitution.
20. Four-year terms for Congress
Vankirk: Again, not a bad idea if you can democratically amend the Constitution.
21. Ban lobbyists
Vankirk: Why not just pass a law banning free speech? Aahhh, that pesky Constitution once again.

If George (George Gollin, George D. Gollin, George Gollinsky) says these things publicly, then how much of a dick must he really show himself to be after 1 or 2 drinks? There are certain things in life that should be kept to oneself. FORTRAN programming activities are damm close to the top on that list.

DD thread

The headline says "why" they got it wrong, but I think they mean "how." Why they got it wrong is because the Chronicle are a bunch of incompetent leftist idiots biased against online and nontraditional schools serving working adults.

The Chronicle included GGU among "private research institutions" when its Carnegie classification is "Masters Colleges and Universities--private." It is not a traditional four-year school. Because GGU serves working adults in need of flexible scheduling, and emphasizes graduate programs, they enrolled exactly six students in the "full time, first time" undergraduate category discussed. If the Chronicle can't get something this basic correct, what else are they lying about?

Quote:12/16/2010 GGU's Graduation Rates: Why the Chronicle of Higher Education Got it Wrong

San Francisco, CA (December 16, 2010) - The inclusion of Golden Gate University in The Chronicle of Higher Education's recent report on graduation rates is based on an erroneous identification of the University's category outlined by The Chronicle's own characteristics requirements for inclusion, as well as misleading data from an irrelevant and small sample size which is counter to the population GGU serves and the institution's mission.

As we currently see it, and based on The Chronicle's own "About The Data" section, GGU should have been excluded from this specific data set in the first place and its inclusion offers a skewed, even wrong, perception of who GGU is and its place in today's sensitive higher education climate.

Here are some top-line counter-points to the study:

1) GGU's undergraduate student population is not in line with the research methodology used by The Chronicle of Higher Ed.

The Chronicle calculated the statistics of "all first-time, full-time students entering in the fall seeking bachelor's degrees who completed bachelor's degrees within six years."

GGU's undergraduate population by definition are all part-time students coming in with transfer units. In fact, this trait for applicants is an admissions requirement for GGU's Undergraduate program tailored specifically to the population GGU serves- working adults in need of flexible scheduling.

2) Since 2003 GGU has had only a total of six "full-time, first-time" enrolled students, a negligible sample size.

3) GGU is a private, non-profit university but by no means a "private research institution", which the article states is another characteristic of Universities under analysis. There are no studies or research being spearheaded by faculty, no scholarships awarded for such independent work that faculty performs. GGU's Carnegie classification is Master's Colleges and Universities - private.

4) The undergraduate population GGU serves is directly counter to the mission of comparative Universities in this study, who are mostly traditional, four-year institutions.

GGU is a non-profit, private university whose mission is to serve working adults through flexible scheduling, online access for the purpose of career advancement, giving students the resources and support to achieve their undergraduate and graduate degrees at their own pace and in tandem with an ever-changing marketplace.

GGU's Undergraduate Graduation Rates are actually quite strong; approximately 50% of the students who have enrolled since 2003 have graduated with their bachelor's degree. Actual graduation rates for our undergraduate students who began prior to 2007 are, on average, 15% two years after program start, 29% three years after program start, 37% four years after program start, 42% five years after program start, and 47% six years after program. For a part-time adult population with life always interfering, this is something to be proud of.

Quote:In Defense of the Liberal Arts
Victor Davis Hanson

The liberal arts face a perfect storm. The economy is struggling with obscenely high unemployment and is mired in massive federal and state deficits. Budget-cutting won't spare education.

The public is already angry over fraud, waste and incompetence in our schools and universities. And in these tough times, taxpayers rightly question everything about traditional education -- from teacher unions and faculty tenure to the secrecy of university admissions policies and which courses really need to be taught.

Opportunistic private trade schools have sprouted in every community, offering online certification in practical skills without the frills and costs of so-called liberal arts "electives."

In response to these challenges, the therapeutic academic Left proved often incapable of defending the traditional liberal arts. After three decades of defining the study of literature and history as too often a melodrama of race, class and gender oppression, it managed to turn off much of the college audience and the general reading public. And cheek by jowl, the utilitarian Right succeeded in reclassifying business and finance not just as undergraduate university majors, but also core elements in general education requirements.

In such a climate, it is natural that once again we are hearing talk of cutting the "non-essentials" in our colleges such as Latin, Renaissance history, Shakespeare, Plato, Rembrandt and Chopin. Why do we cling to the arts and humanities in a high-tech world in which we have instant recall at our fingertips through a Google search and such studies do not guarantee sure 21st-century careers?

But the liberal arts train students to write, think and argue inductively, while drawing upon evidence from a shared body of knowledge. Without that foundation, it is harder to make -- or demand from others -- logical, informed decisions about managing our supercharged society as it speeds on by.

Citizens -- shocked and awed by technological change -- become overwhelmed by the Internet, cable news, talk radio, video games and popular culture of the moment. Without links to our past heritage, we in ignorance begin to think our own modern challenges -- the war in Afghanistan, gay marriage, cloning or massive deficits -- are unique and don't raise issues comparable to those dealt with and solved in the past.

And without citizens broadly informed by humanities, we descend into a pyramidal society. A tiny technocratic elite on top crafts everything from cell phones and search engines to foreign policy and economic strategy. A growing mass below lacks understanding of the present complexity and the basic skills to question what they are told.

During the 1960s and 1970s, committed liberals thought we could short-circuit the process of liberal education by creating advocacy classes with the suffix "studies." Black studies, Chicano studies, community studies, environmental studies, leisure studies, peace studies, woman's studies and hundreds more were designed to turn out more socially responsible youths. Instead, universities too often graduated zealous advocates who lacked the broadly educated means to achieve their predetermined politicized ends.

On the other hand, pragmatists argued that our future CEOs needed to learn spread sheets at 20 rather than why Homer's Achilles does not receive the honors he deserved, or how civilization was lost in fifth-century Rome and 1930s Germany. Yet Latin or a course in rhetoric might better teach a would-be captain of industry how to dazzle his audience than a class in Microsoft PowerPoint.

The more instantaneous our technology, the more we are losing the ability to communicate with it. Twitter and text-messaging result in an economy of expression, not in clarity or beauty. Millions are becoming premodern -- communicating in electronic grunts that substitute for the ability to express themselves effectively and with dignity. Indeed, by inventing new abbreviations and linguistic shortcuts, we are losing a shared written language altogether, much like the fragmentation of Latin as the Roman Empire imploded into tribal provinces. No wonder the public is drawn to stories like "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" in which characters speak beautifully and believe in age-old values that transcend themselves.

Life is not just acquisition and consumption. Engaging English prose uplifts the spirit in a way Twittering cannot. The latest anti-Christ video shown at the National Portrait Gallery by the Smithsonian will fade when the Delphic Charioteer or Michelangelo's David does not. Appreciation of the history of great art and music fortifies the soul, and recognizes beauty that does not fade with the passing fad.

America has lots of problems. A population immersed in and informed by literature, history, art and music is not one of them.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2010/12/1...292142840/

Quote:WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The United States would dearly like to prosecute WikiLeaks founder and operator Julian Assange but it is having a hard time getting a legal grip on him.

The problem is not just physical custody, but of establishing at what point speech -- in Assange's case the publicizing of confidential and classified information -- becomes a crime. Is Assange, paraphrasing Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, crying "fire" in a crowded theater?

Some U.S. politicians, such as Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., have suggested that Assange could be prosecuted under the World War I-vintage Espionage Act, but that could prove problematic. Late last week, lawyers for Assange told a variety of news outlets that he might be indicted under the act soon, though the U.S. Justice Department was denying those reports

Gollin and Johann, back early from his one year sabbatical, go back and forth on a thread predicting the end of DL Truth. Note the interesting technique used by Gollin (Gollum, George D. Gollin, George Gollinsky) and mimicked by the others, ... continually repeat the canard that DL Truth is just one or two people with many on-screen identities to discredit the forum and minimize its legitimacy. This is a technique that has been used with great success by communists the world over and promoted by Gollin hero Saul Alinsky.

DD thread about DL Truth

The big question is why would Gollin continue along the same path that he clearly knows is wrong? Other than the fact that it's a page from the Communist playbook and using it makes George feel like he's a revolutionary of some sort, I can only guess that it makes George feel better if he can rationalize that there are only 1 or 2 people at DLT who think he is a complete asshole. That's certainly better for his ego than coming to the realization that it is the consensus opinion of an entire forum.

Dear Leader was an "ardent Marxist" in college, an extremist even by the standards of his fellow Marxist John Drew. By his sophomore year Dear Leader was a radical who advocated a simple-minded pipe dream of revolution to overthrow the "ruling class" and establish a socialist utopia in the US. And nothing has changed since.

Quote:December 10, 2010
Obama's 'Missing Link'
By Paul Kengor

...[John] Drew was a contemporary of Obama at Occidental College and a Marxist himself. In fact, Drew was a well-known campus communist when Obama was introduced to him as "one of us." "Obama was already an ardent Marxist when I met in the fall of 1980," said Drew, going on the record.

Drew is certainly cognizant of the gravity of his statement. "I know it's incendiary to say this," he adds, but Obama "was basically a Marxist-Leninist." He noted how Obama, in Dreams from My Father, stated that when he got to college, he attended "socialist conferences" and "hung out" with Marxist professors. But what Obama did not explain or clarify, says Dr. Drew, is that Obama "was in 100 percent, total agreement with these Marxist professors."

I asked Drew where, precisely, he believes Obama stands today. Of course, Drew no longer knows Obama, and his main goal in reaching out to me was to clarify where Obama stood at Occidental, which is information that cannot be ignored. That said, he did tell me this: "There are a lot of brands of Marxism. That was one of the key ingredients of my argument with the young Barack Obama. I see evidence of [a] continuing commitment to Marxist ideology every time President Obama traces the furor of the public to underlying economic conditions and inevitable changes taking place in society. In the Marxist model, the economy is the driving force behind change in the other spheres of society."

Drew shared those thoughts with me last spring. More recently, however, we had an even more illuminating conversation when I had the opportunity to interview Drew while I was guest-hosting the Glen Meakem Program, a terrific radio-talk show broadcast from Pittsburgh. Here are edited excerpts of what Drew told me on the air on October 16, 2010:

Quote:Drew: As far as I can tell, I'm the only person in Obama's extended circle of friends who is willing to speak out and verify that he was a Marxist-Leninist in his sophomore year of college from 1980 to 1981. I met him because I graduated from Occidental College in 1979, and I was back at Occidental visiting a girlfriend.

Kengor: Was Occidental known for radical-left politics? Would that have been an attraction to Obama?

Drew: It was considered the Moscow of southern California when I was there. There were a lot of Marxist professors, many of whom I got to know pretty well. ... What I know absolutely for sure -- and this is where I really sought you out and I really wanted to be helpful in terms of the historic record -- was to verify that Barack Obama was definitely a Marxist and that it was very unusual for a sophomore at Occidental to be as radical or as ideologically attuned as young Barack Obama was.

Kengor: You said that Obama was introduced to you at Occidental College as a Marxist? Because you were one [a Marxist] at that point?

Drew: Yeah, that's embarrassing for me, but I studied Marxist economics when I was at the University of Sussex in England. I had a junior-year scholarship over there and I did my senior honors thesis on Marxist economics when I was at Occidental College. And I also founded [the] Democratic Student Socialist Alliance, you know, under a different name, in 1976.

Kengor: John, now you had told me before, and I'm reading from my own book here, "Obama was already an ardent Marxist when I met him in the fall of 1980. [Quotation from above continued.]"

Drew: Yeah, that's exactly right. Obama believed, at the time I met him -- this was probably around Christmastime in 1980 -- because, you know, I had flown out during Christmas break from Cornell, where I was doing my graduate work. Young Obama was looking forward to an imminent social revolution -- literally a movement where the working classes would overthrow the ruling class and institute a kind of socialist utopia in the United States. I mean, that's how extreme his views were his sophomore year of college.

Kengor: And you would know this because you were a comrade, so to speak.

Drew: Yeah, I was a comrade, but I was kind of more what Michael Savage called the "Frankfurt School" of Marxism at the time. I was, you know, I felt like I was doing Obama a favor by pointing out that the Marxist revolution that he and [our friends] were hoping for was really kind of a pipe dream, and that there was nothing in European history or the history of developed nations that would make that sort of fantasy -- you know, Frank Marshall Davis fantasy of revolution -- come true.

Kengor: So you had a realistic sense that even though you liked these ideas, it [Marxist revolution] really couldn't happen or really wouldn't even work.

Drew: Right. I was ... still a card-carrying Marxist, but I was kind of a more advanced, East Coast, Cornell University Marxist, I think, at the time.

Kengor: But Obama thought it was practical -- he thought you could make this happen in America?

Drew: Oh yeah, and he kind of thought I was, you know, a little reactionary --

Kengor: -- that you were conservative compared to him!

Drew: Yeah, like I was kind of insensitive to the needs of the coming revolution. So that's why I said [Obama] was full-bore, 100% into that simpleminded Marxist, revolutionary mental framework.

Kengor: I know people are listening right now who want me to address this -- and especially people who are Obama supporters. To be fair, I mean, look at where you were then and now where you are today.

Drew: Well, yeah, now I'm a Ronald Reagan, churchgoing, Baptist conservative ...

Kengor: But now, okay, so what about Obama? Where do you think he is today? And to the people who are listening and are angry that we're even having this conversation, [I want to tell them this]: Look, you don't want us to talk about this because you don't like what it says about Obama's past, but we have to know this stuff about our presidents. We have to know where they came from. You can't leave this out of biographies. ...

But what do you think it says about him today, Dr. Drew?

Drew: I can definitely kick down some doors here intellectually by nailing down that he had a very consistent ideology, probably from the time that he was [in Hawaii] until he was there with Alice Palmer and Bill Ayers in Chicago. I think his current behavior demonstrates that he does still have these ideological convictions. Whenever he talks about taxing the richest two percent, I think even though he knows that will harm the economy -- to him, that redistribution of wealth is still extremely important. And I think the problem here is that he never studied political science or economics the way I did. He just went straight to law school.

Kengor: No real-world experience.

Drew: Right. He never had any real business experience, never had a payroll to meet, and I think he still is locked in a very dangerous mindset where I think if he didn't fight to redistribute the wealth, he would feel guilty -- as if he were violating a John Rawls' Theory of Justice ideology.

Kengor: And that's what people need to understand. That's why all of this matters. That's why the background is so crucial -- Frank Marshall Davis, what happened at Occidental, goes straight to Columbia from Occidental, the Bill Ayers affiliation, no real-world experience -- this matters. You need to know this in your presidents. ...

On whether or not [Obama] believes in some form of Marxism today, you had told me for my book, "There are a lot of brands of Marxism. That was one of the key ingredients in my argument with Obama. I see evidence of a continuing commitment to Marxist ideology every time President Obama traces the furor of the public to underlying economic conditions and inevitable changes taking place in society."

So it's not that he's right now trying to abolish all private property, but you're saying he has a certain -- he still holds to certain tenets of a Marxist worldview.

Drew: Yeah, I think whenever he talks about people clinging to their guns and their religion due to economic stress, that's just the standard Marxist argument. In fact, that's the argument of alienation and class-consciousness that [Marxists believe that people] hold to, the superficial religious and cultural ideals of the capitalist culture. [Marxists believe that people hold to that] instead of paying attention to the root economic changes, which are supposedly controlling their thoughts and their behavior. So he's still using the Marxist mental architecture in the way he talks about things, and I really think he's surrounded by people that share that mental architecture.

Those are excerpts from my interview with Dr. Drew in October. You can click here to listen to the interview. Moreover, Drew followed up with a short article (click here), noting his frustration over the media's refusal to even call him about Obama.

Clearly, these are important things that at least should be part of the conversation in trying to understand what our president believes and where he came from. Any historian or biographer knows: You don't ignore mentors. To the contrary, you start with the mentors.

And yet, to my knowledge, only a handful of people have interviewed John Drew or bothered with his story, including even the biggies in conservative talk radio. (Michael Savage is an exception. Also, on the web, Trevor Loudon and Scott Baker have shared his story.)

In 2007-2008, our press failed to do its job in vetting this candidate for the presidency. Our liberal "journalists" willfully covered their eyes and ears. And now they'll blast people like me for daring to even bother to investigate and consider these questions. (Actually, they don't blast; they ignore.) And we went encounter the likes of Dr. John Drew and carefully walk through his experiences, they'll dismiss us, as they are dismissing Drew himself.

That's a mistake. Drew has a lot to teach us about a critical missing piece in the puzzle of Barack Obama's early life and political-ideological development. This information would seem rather relevant, given that this is the man now running the mightiest economic engine in the history of humanity.

For the occupant of that position, I personally prefer someone who doesn't have remnants of a Marxist worldview influencing his thoughts and actions. Unfortunately, I believe we saw some of those remnants on display in Obama's words earlier this week, and not for the first -- or last -- time.

This is the industry where pedophile-pandering pervert pornographer Thomas "Chip" White of degreeinfo.com makes his money. How many boys and young men has he lured to their death?

Quote:The Diseases of Pornography
Brent Bozell

Derrick Burts, 24, started working as a porn-film actor in June. By October, he'd contracted the HIV virus. The AP story on Burts contained this jaw-dropping sentence: "He said he began to have doubts about the business after contracting chlamydia, gonorrhea and herpes in his first month of work, but was convinced to keep working."

Burts claimed, "I wasn't stupid or oblivious, I knew what was out there. But it's not something you think about when they fill your head" with lucrative offers and promises that the work is safe. Lured into the porn world with the promise that he looked like money, Burts concluded his greed was unwise: "Making $10,000 or $15,000 for porn isn't worth your life."

Michael Weinstein, head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, took up the Burts case. While he insisted his group isn't anti-porn, "we are astounded that the multi-billion-dollar film industry and its fig leaf of a clinic could not even get it together six weeks after his first HIV-positive test to link (Burts) to appropriate follow-up medical care."

Lawyers for the porn industry's clinic, the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, which performed the HIV test on Burts, insisted any claim he was not properly treated is "not truthful and ... self-serving." But the California Department of Public Health just denied its application to operate. Once again, the porn industry looks shady.

Burts says the clinic told him he contracted the HIV virus at a gay porn shoot in Florida, but the clinic told the press that he must have become infected in his personal life. Translation: Whom are you going to trust -- a porn star or the porn industry? This evolving story comes six years after up to 14 porn actors tested HIV-positive, forcing several porn companies to close.

Porn moguls obviously want the "talent" to feel safe, but they don't want to film scenes with condoms -- for monetary reasons. The pornographers at Vivid Entertainment said when they became a mandatory-condom company for nearly seven years, they saw their sales drop nearly 20 percent.

Pornography isn't just unhealthy for our culture; it's unhealthy for the "talent" that star in these films, with the endless carousel of sex partners. It should be only a matter of time before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (or their California equivalent) starts investigating -- unless, of course, government officials are too afraid of appearing like squelchers of a Howard Stern version of "freedom of speech."

It's ironic that our news media are such evangelists for "safe sex" with condoms, and very critical of anyone who's anti-condom as a menace to society, but they haven't forced that latex gospel on the porn industry, despite the obvious threat of fatal sexually transmitted diseases between strangers on the set.

Then there's the gay-porn industry -- which as a rule requires condoms in films, but doesn't even HIV-test their stars. Without much irony, Jay Barmann of the San Francisco blog SFist reported, "The HIV status of gay porn performers is a particular taboo subject, with a kind of don't-ask-don't-tell attitude proliferating in the industry, which mostly tries to keep performers safe by requiring condom use and which fears bad publicity from performers revealing their statuses."

In response to this environment, the porn company Treasure Island Media recently took the shocking step of promoting a gay couple with one HIV-negative and one HIV-positive partner having "unprotected" sex as "role models." Paul Morris, the company's owner, spoke of demolishing "the HIV-positive closet" and pledged, "We will not allow reactionary individuals and organizations to dictate our behavior." HIV and AIDS are "more or less manageable," he said. "The real battle is against prejudice, ignorance and unfounded and useless fear."

Barmann, no anti-porn "prude," was shocked for the public health and for the rights of actors. "Say what he will about battling prejudice and fear, Morris stands to benefit financially from the unprotected sex his performers agree to have, and he is nonetheless an employer who knowingly puts his workers in harm's way."

Our media just found it wildly controversial that the Pope might hypothetically suggest a male prostitute using a condom may be trying to show a health concern for others. But somehow, there is no controversy or debate when secular sexual progressives fail to crusade against pornographers on something so contrary to their own condom-promoting "safe sex" philosophy. The old AIDS slogan was "Silence equals death." Who will speak out before the next greedy Derrick Burts gets infected?

Just how stupid are the Derricks of this world to get involved in death-trap industries like this?

thomas_jefferson Wrote:dltruth.com -- what's the deal?

Why does that site hate on degreeinfo.com and its members so much? It sounds like some kind of long standing feud. Can anyone explain what the deal is?