Lefty Ted Koppel’s Delusions

Ted Koppel is one of the most rigid, strident, narrow minded, pedantic Leftwingers that America has produce in the last thirty years in its news industry.    He never me a conservative thought he didn’t hate.   Stuffy, puffy, intellectually paunchy and a bore and whine, this little, very little man who had memorized so many snotty remarks about America, moans about his days  gone by.   Good riddance, Ted Koppel.   The news industry is a thrill without your false fronts and make-believe claims…..

Now, on to Koppel’s  complaint….written  by Ron Rodosh at Pajamas Media……about the more modern, less pretending television news industry:

“As Koppel sees it, the good old days existed when someone giving campaign contributions who was part of a news team would have meant immediate suspension, if not outright being fired. As he writes, it was a time “when the networks considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.”  In those years, the networks “aimed to avoid even the appearance of partisanship.”

That, indeed, is the key sentence, although Koppel does not seem to realize it. He thinks there really was a time when the networks “considered the collection and dissemination of substantive and unbiased news to be a public trust.”  Is that like the years when the late Peter Jennings, his colleague he cites as one who earned the public trust, demonstrated hostility to Israel and a pro-Palestinian point of view that was apparent to most anyone who watched his broadcasts? The same Jennings whose prime-time ABC special on the dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima endorsed entirely and uncritically Gar Alperovitz’s discredited thesis that the U.S. dropped the bomb only to pressure the Soviets, and that its use was completely unnecessary?

Or perhaps he is thinking of those golden years when the entire nation watched Walter Cronkite, whose famous judgment that the U.S. had lost the Vietnam War led Lyndon Johnson to say “if we’ve lost Walter Cronkite, we’ve lost the country.” Does Koppel not realize that the U.S. had not lost when Cronkite claimed it had and that the CBS TV anchor was himself on the anti-war side in the debate and was hardly objective?

It was true that back then, the networks tried to pretend to be non-partisan and objective. They forbade their employees, for example, to attend anti-war marches even if they were completely partisan and on the movement’s side. An old friend of mine was a top producer in those years for 60 Minutes, and she recently told me of her conversations with the president of CBS News in which she argued with him that the entire news division should be allowed to protest the war and attend rallies if they wished. He turned her down, but her partisanship — and that of her colleagues — was apparent, and readily visible in the stories they put on the air.

Then there were the numerous TV reports on both ABC and CBS about Cuba, and how wonderful Castro’s revolution was, and how the people fully supported it. I recall both of Dan Rather’s trips to Cuba, as well as those of Barbara Walters on ABC, and before her, those of the late TV newswoman for ABC (whose name now escapes me) who was a firm left-wing activist privately and who began the coverage of Cuba for the network. In fact, CBS was so partisan that when they had a major story about Cuba, they invoked the aid and help — as did 60 Minutes — of our country’s top Castro apologist, Saul Landau, who arranged the trip, got credit for producing the segment, and was shown on the air reporting for them. True non-partisan objectivity, Ted!

The only difference is that today, the networks have all given up what was always fiction — that TV news people had no opinions and just told the facts. Now the feft has MSNBC and Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and the rest of their crew, and the right has Fox and O’Reilly and Hannity and Beck.

This truth, Koppel tells us, “is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me.” Yes, some commentators are indeed guilty of mistaking their opinions for facts. Beck, as the most recent controversy of his coverage of George Soros has made clear, is most guilty of this charge. But Moynihan’s comment that “everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not his own facts” is itself somewhat flawed. The problem is that, as historians know, one chooses which facts to emphasize and hold as important when one makes an argument. Often those with a contending view will emphasize other facts they believe contradict their opponent’s argument. Very infrequently is the issue of distorting a “fact” the real issue at hand.

Indeed, Koppel ends his piece by making an argument — one that conservatives make a lot and that liberals dismiss. He writes:

But when our accountants, bankers and lawyers, our doctors and our politicians tell us only what we want to hear, despite hard evidence to the contrary, we are headed for disaster. We need only look at our housing industry, our credit card debt, the cost of two wars subsidized by borrowed money, and the rising deficit to understand the dangers of entitlement run rampant.

Where have I heard this kind of argument before? Oh yes — I believe it was by someone talking on Fox News! Perhaps Mr. Koppel should consider applying to them for a new job. A lot of people would like to see him on a major network again.

Yes, he is correct that one problem is that the news division is now seen in the same way as the entertainment division, and like them, they have to show a profit or make budget cuts or face cancellation. Originally, they were supposed to be supported by the entertainment division, and were exempt from the same rules.

But we live in a new age, and the news executives have no choice but to take reality into account. No one hardly watches the big three (CBS, ABC and NBC)  7 pm news shows anymore, and in fact, with the internet and cable, there is no need to. And by the way, were Koppel or the other anchors willing to save their bureaus and correspondents by taking cuts in their average $8 million a year salaries — an act that alone might have prevented the loss he so bemoans of the overseas bureaus?

As for his claim that the old broadcasts “offered relatively unbiased accounts of information,” it is simply not true. Nor is Koppel’s claim that the reporters were only “motivated to gather facts about important issues.”

And so we learn that Mr. Koppel is now an analyst for BBC America. Isn’t the BBC that wonderful outfit that is so biased and one-sided — especially in its treatment of Israel — that most critical listeners and viewers know immediately to take anything it says with a grain of salt? Perhaps Ted Koppel is not aware of this and, recalling the reputation of old that the BBC once had, thinks of it the same way he thinks of the networks in our country in the ’40s , ’50s, and ’60s.

Maybe we should all wait for Al Jazeera America to finally get on the cable channels. Then we can all find a true objective source we know we can trust.

Further comment:   I would say further that Leftwinger, Ted Koppel being unbiased  is defining  Richard Dawkins as a believing Christian.   That he can’t see the obvious is proof itself the man has problems with research and its interpretation.  Sorry, Dennis, I’d like to be more generous, but this man, this Ted is loathsome for his self deception and pretense.

The Obamacare Takeover of the American Health Industry In Trouble?

Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor, writes:

“The ultimate defense is the presidential veto pen. Even with a new majority in the House come January, Republicans concede that winning a repeal vote in the Democratic-controlled Senate is unlikely – and the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto, well out of reach.

But Republicans say they’ll seek every opportunity to repeal the new law and, failing that, to defund it or delay its implementation.

“If all of ObamaCare cannot be immediately repealed, then it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece, blocking funding for its implementation, and blocking the issuance of the regulations necessary to implement it,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R) of Virginia, in a 22-page letter to GOP colleagues in his campaign for majority leader after the Nov. 2 vote. “In short, it is my intention to use every tool at my disposal to achieve full repeal of ObamaCare.”

RELATED- Health-care reform 101: What the bill means to you

No legislation more symbolizes what Republicans – and especially the conservative tea party movement – dubbed the overreach of an out-of-touch Democratic majority. Repeal would be a key vote for an insurgent freshman class eager to demonstrate that the 2010 election is producing change in Washington.

“My advice to [expected incoming] Speaker [John] Boehner is, as quickly as you can, take a simple and direct repeal of ObamaCare to the floor,” said former GOP majority leader Richard Armey, who advised many tea party candidates. “He will find that the House will repeal it with no less than 20 Democratic votes. Don’t worry about what the Senate does.”

Senate Democrats, though holding a small majority, have the clout to block a vote on outright repeal. But Republicans say it’s still important to get both Democrats and President Obama on the record on this issue for the 2012 election.

Votes on law’s controversial features

 

In the likely event that repeal fails, Republicans’ next step is to amplify the law’s controversial features and take them to the floor for stand-alone votes. Exhibit A is a requirement that businesses file a 1099 form with the Internal Revenue Service every time they spend more than $600 with a new vendor. Many GOP candidates campaigned on nixing this provision, which is especially unpopular with small businesses. Mr. Obama has also cited this provision as an example of a “tweak” that could improve the law.

“It involves too much paperwork, too much filing. It’s probably counterproductive,” he said in a Nov. 3 press conference, explaining that “it was designed to make sure that revenue was raised to help pay for some of the other provisions.”

There is plentiful opportunity for delaying or derailing implementation of the law – an effort that could dominate the work of the incoming Congress as decidedly as passing the legislation absorbed the outgoing Congress. Republican committee chairmen are already gearing up to boost the level of oversight on the Obama administration.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R) of California, incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, describes health-care reform as an “unparalleled encroachment of the federal government in the private sector and the lives of individual Americans.” It will be met, he promises, by “vigorous congressional oversight of the massive federal bureaucracy,” including use of his panel’s subpoena power.

“It’s not what the freshmen are going to do but what the new chairs are going to do,” says Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. “Chairmen like Darrell Issa and others can haul [secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services] Kathleen Sebelius before the committee, hold lots of hearings, do oversight to the max. Call it death by a thousand cuts. Even without statutory changes, you can make it very difficult to get health-care reform implemented.”

Oversight hearings to begin in House

 

One of the first oversight hearings will likely probe how the Obama administration intends to attain $500 billion in cuts to Medicare mandated by the health-care reform act. That will involve a trip to Capitol Hill by Donald Berwick, whom Obama appointed, without Senate confirmation and over GOP objections, to head the government’s Medicare and Medicaid programs. Republicans will no doubt ask Dr. Berwick to explain how those cuts can be made and what their effect on seniors will be.

“The guy in charge with half a trillion [dollars] of cuts to Medicare has yet to speak to the American people,” says Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. “The Democrats could have forced him to come up here so they can hear what he has in mind. The [GOP-controlled] House will have that opportunity. Democrats wouldn’t allow it.”

Republicans are also prospecting for ways to delay the new law by using annual spending bills to hold up funding to agencies charged with new health-care responsibilities or to bar agencies from using existing funding streams to advance provisions in the law. They are especially targeting mandates or charges on businesses that could discourage job creation.

In response, Democrats aim to amplify features of the new law that are popular with the public. These include:

• Helping seniors with prescription-drug costs. Seniors who have run up against limits for coverage of prescription-drug costs – the so-called “doughnut hole” in the 2003 Medicare prescription-drug law – started receiving monthly checks in June (not to exceed $250 this year) as a first step toward eliminating the gap altogether.

• Allowing young adults to stay on a parent’s insurance plan until age 26. This provision began to take effect with new insurance plans on Sept. 23, 2010.

• Making 4 million small businesses eligible for tax credits worth up to 35 percent of the cost of providing health insurance to employees.

• Cutting premiums for the government’s new Pre-Existing Condition Insur­ance Plan, mandated by the health-care reform law, in a bid to encourage more enrollment. The federal program is slated to continue until a national ban on insurance companies’ discriminating on the basis of preexisting medical conditions takes effect in 2014.

“Frankly, I don’t think working Amer­icans will stand for a Republican crusade to take away the benefits and protections in the new health-reform law,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa, who chairs both the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (one of three panels that drafted the Senate version of the bill) and the Appropriations subcommittee that funds it. As such, he’s in a key position to block House GOP efforts to defund the bill or void key provisions.

“Republicans are seriously misreading this election if they claim a mandate to drag us back to the days of out-of-control health care spending and insurance company abuses and discrimination,” he added in a statement. “Ordinary Americans will not stand for it, and neither will I…. I will fight any misguided attempt to defund the law or repeal its consumer protections.”

Did midterm voters repudiate reform?

 

Obama cautioned Republicans not to read the midterm elections as a repudiation of the health-care law. The electorate, in fact, gives mixed signals over health-care reform, including its effect on job creation, according to a poll released Nov. 8 by Rasmussen Reports. Just 26 percent of voters say repeal of the health-care law would help create jobs, 36 percent say repeal would not create new jobs, and 38 percent are undecided.

When asked what should be the No. 1 priority of the new Congress, Republicans cite repeal of health-care reform (36 percent) and cutting federal spending (29 percent), while Democrats (63 percent) overwhelmingly favored passing a new stimulus bill to create jobs, according to a Gallup poll of American adults released Nov. 3. But 12 percent of Democrats also cited repeal of health-care reform as their top priority for lawmakers.

“These partisan differences highlight the challenges that face the lame-duck Congress … as well as the new Congress that will take office in January,” says Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, in a statement.”

Obama, No Longer King, Finds Russian Arms Treaty in Trouble with Republicans

What would the world be like if the United States had shed all of its nuclear capability?

Could Barack Husseain Obama be so into the drink that he cannot see what common citizens can see…….how vulnerable our American lives would be if Obamadream of ridding the country of its nuclear weapons actually occured?

Woe is US.

Peter Baker at the New York Times wrote the following article, Obama’s Disarmament Treaty in Trouble, in which he reports that Republicans will likely not agree to Obama’s weapons treaty with Putin’s Russia, an agreement Obama was dreaming about which might lead to American nuclear disarmament.

President Obama’s hopes of ratifying a new arms control treaty with Russia this year appeared to unravel on Tuesday as a Senate Republican leader moved to block a vote in what could be a devastating blow to the president’s most tangible foreign policy achievement.

Mr. Obama had declared ratification of the New Start treaty his “top priority” in foreign affairs for the lame-duck session of Congress that opened this week. But the chances of winning the two-thirds vote required for passage of the treaty appeared to collapse with the announcement by Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and the party’s point man on the issue, that the Senate should not vote on it this year.

“When Majority Leader Harry Reid asked me if I thought the treaty could be considered in the lame-duck session, I replied I did not think so given the combination of other work Congress must do and the complex and unresolved issues related to Start and modernization,” Mr. Kyl said in a statement. The senator added that he would continue to negotiate with administration officials for a possible vote next year.

A failure to approve the treaty in the departing Senate could undermine Mr. Obama’s broader campaign to curb nuclear weapons and eventually eliminate them. The treaty, which would trim American and Russian strategic arsenals and restore mutual inspections that lapsed last year, was supposed to be the first, and easiest, step in a long-term effort to bring an end to age of nuclear arms.

It could also sour Mr. Obama’s two-year effort to “reset” ties with Russia and win greater cooperation from Moscow in areas like counterterrorism, transit routes to Afghanistan and pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear program. Mr. Obama vowed to pass the treaty during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, President Dmitri A. Medvedev, in Japan on Sunday, and is scheduled to see him again later this week at a NATO summit meeting in Lisbon.

Mr. Kyl’s announcement shocked and angered the White House, which learned about it from the news media. Both parties had considered Mr. Kyl the make-or-break voice on the pact, with Republicans essentially deputizing him to work out a deal that would secure tens of billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex in exchange for approval of the treaty. After months of negotiations and the addition of even more money in recent days, the White House thought it had given Mr. Kyl what he wanted.

While the White House intends to press for a vote in the next weeks anyway, many Republican senators who had indicated that they would vote for the treaty had made their support contingent on Mr. Kyl’s assent. Mr. Reid had likewise resisted bringing the treaty to the floor until Mr. Kyl was satisfied. While Democrats said Tuesday that Mr. Reid was prepared to keep trying, they held out little hope.

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Tuesday that passing the treaty was vital, especially to revive mutual inspections. “Given New Start’s bipartisan support and enormous importance to our national security, the time to act is now, and we will continue to seek its approval by the Senate before the end of the year,” Mr. Biden said in a statement.

A Democratic leadership aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to be more candid, said: “If the Republicans’ lead negotiator says we shouldn’t consider Start during a lame duck, I think we have to take him at face value. Having said that, we are going to try and get it ratified in the lame duck.”

If Mr. Obama cannot fulfill the promise of pushing the treaty through Congress, White House officials worry that it will diminish his credibility with world leaders and embolden hard-liners in Moscow who have long expressed skepticism about the rapprochement with Washington – among them, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, who allowed Mr. Medvedev to pursue the warmer ties despite his own doubts.

Critics have said that such worries are overstated and that the Obama administration was too willing to curry favor with Moscow at the expense of American national security.

But while Republicans have criticized the treaty, the main obstacle has been Mr. Kyl’s insistence that it be paired with an expansive investment in modernizing the current nuclear weapons complex. The administration has committed to spending $80 billion program to do that over the next 10 years, but Mr. Kyl has sought more money and greater assurance that the money would come through in future years.

In recent days, the administration dangled an additional $4 billion in hopes of winning his support, but Mr. Kyl held out. The administration has also promised to spend more than $100 billion over 10 years upgrading the triad of nuclear weapons: submarines, bombers and missiles.

The senator’s statement Tuesday blindsided White House. On Monday, an administration official working on the issue expressed hope that a deal could be reached with Mr. Kyl this week. The official,  in an interview Monday, said that the administration had had “very positive conversations” with Mr. Kyl and believed the prospects for approval were “trending more positive.”

Asked if the senator’s statement was meant to close the door to a vote in the lame-duck session, his spokesman, Ryan Patmintra said: “Correct. Given the pending legislative business and outstanding issues on the treaty and modernization, there doesn’t appear to be enough time.”

In his statement, Mr. Kyl said that he appreciated “the recent effort by the administration to address some of the issues that we have raised, and I look forward to continuing to work” on them in the new year.

If the issue carries over to the new Senate, it could be months before it is taken up again and its chances would be even more uncertain given that Republicans picked up six more seats in this month’s elections. Instead of needing eight Republicans and a unified Democratic caucus, Mr. Obama would need 14 Republicans without losing anyone from his own party.

The treaty would restore mutual inspections and ban both countries from deploying more than 1,550 strategic warheads and 700 launchers each. Because the original Start treaty expired last December, the two countries have now gone without inspections for the first time since the cold war.

The administration hoped to follow up this treaty with another more ambitious one that would pare back on tactical nuclear weapons and stored strategic weapons. It also hoped to follow a victory on New Start by reviving the never-ratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. And it envisioned negotiating another new treaty that would cut off production of fissile material.

Depressing Headline, Indeed: “Guantanamo Seven Paid Off!”

John Hinderaker at PowerLine writes depressingly about the depressing payoffs our government pays its enemies not to pursue court action against the government, citing an article in the Telegraph. 

….reminding me of the Arnold Toynbee quote:   “Great Civilizations are not murdered.  They commit suicide!”

“The Telegraph offers this depressing headline: “Guantanamo seven ‘paid off’ to halt legal action against Government.” Al Qaeda’s “lawfare” strategy has paid off handsomely so far, and Western countries, especially the U.K. and the U.S., show no sign of being prepared to respond in any effective way.

A group of former Guantanamo Bay detainees who claim they were tortured with the complicity of the British security services have been paid millions of pounds to drop legal action against the Government.

Al Qaeda directs its terrorists to make claims of “torture” whenever they are caught. Such claims are nearly always false.

Ministers will announce tomorrow that a deal has been reached with the men, at least one of whom is expected to receive more than £1 million of taxpayers’ money.

The former terrorism suspects, some of whom were foreign residents claiming asylum in Britain, were suing the Government for damages over their treatment while in custody. The security services are thought to have pushed for the settlement in order to avoid details of their secret activities being disclosed in court. …

The cost of a long running court case – which could have run into tens of millions of pounds – are also likely to have been a factor. …

Mr Cameron told MPs that the security services risked being “paralysed by paperwork” as they tried to defend themselves in lengthy court cases against allegations of complicity in torture.

MI5 and MI6 have had to draft in dozens of lawyers and take officers off front-line duties as they wade through an estimated 250,000 documents “page by page”, according to one official. They estimated that the court action could last five to 10 years as they worked through the documents and decided what could be disclosed and what could not.

Increasingly, our security depends on lawfare waged between dedicated, mass-murdering terrorists and their well-funded supporters on one side, and government lawyers and bean-counters on the other. The outcome is not hard to foresee”

Denair School Flag Fiasco: Why Was the Boy with the Flag Threatened?

This is a small country we now live in.  Denair, California is just outside Minneapolis when it comes to certain crises.   School authorities throughout  the country are the same whereever they may be.  Only the names change.

A quick review from my earlier blog spot is  this:  A thirteen year-old Denair boy had been riding his bike to school with an American flag attached to it for a couple months.  One day he was ordered (in school language, “asked”)  by some school authority to make it disappear.   Another school authority, who turned out to be the superintendent issued a  statement that the flag was removed for the safety of the 13 year-old bike rider with flag.  

In his statement this authority blamed the press for the publicity and never mentioned why this thirteen year-old boy with flag was in danger for bearing a flag on his bicycle.

Today, I have been searching the internet  for an answer to this very important question for Americans who care about education in American schools.

Being a former teacher I can attest to an unfortunate fact of professional life in education…..school administrators and their representatives are notorious misinformation sources….otherwise known as liars.  But, even I admit, they usually mean well, but they do not think well…… they usually are too fearful to apply good judgment, I learned from  my decades of observation and experience working under them.   As the authoritarians they are, it much more covenient to tell untruths, than to solve problems whether with the public or their staffs.

In my community, Minneapolis, during forced busing days a few decades ago, certain  minority youth were directed by local courts to change schools and were bused to a junior highschool across a  river which previously included other minority students,  but not this particular brand being bused by court order.  The ten worst delinquents  of the school being relieved of their trouble, were those chosen to be bused into a junior highschool which had done some preparation for the new students but, who expected “students like us”, civilized, decent and without guns.   

Such was not the case, for the guns arrived with the new students to a school that previously didn’t experience  anyone talking  back to  teachers and no students did.

But the guns arrived with the new arrivals and were seen by resident students although not drawn as in the old West.  

 I did not teach in that newly  suffering junior high school, but, being a teacher very active in the community, I began to get phone calls from parents of students who were students of mine in the senior high school in the same neighborhood……a high school which could have passed for scripts of “Happy Days” of television fame.

The parents told me about the guns.   Their kids told me about the guns their brothers, students at the now integrated junior high school nearby, had seen.

Apparently the school authorities had discovered the introduction of guns to the community junior high school, as well.   For they instructed one and all verbally, that there were no guns in the junior high school regardless of whether or not they were brought there by the school’s new students, and no one was allowed to talk about anything to anyone about the matter, OR ELSE…..they would be fired…..for the teachers had recently all lost their tenure for participating in a strike against the school system.

That no one in the school administration had any respect for the disruptions  their orders had caused everyone in the neighborhood came from their learnings from leftists of the day.  They programmed the good folks, the ones who put “White Racism Must Go” signs in their windows,  to consider  working class  whites as bigots…….the great unwashed by University of Minnesota learnings.   That nearly all in this ‘class’ were Democratic Party  voters, as was I, seemed to escape the human mind as they politicked against these victims in every  manner, that can be imagined.  That the charge of racist bigotry was absolutely untrue, didn’t matter at all.   Their almost all-white neighborhood schools were going to be integrated whether anyone in the neighborhood liked it or not.  

In the meantime the tolerant deciders with the White Racism signs in their windows, sent their children to private schools.

The University of Minnesota, long worshipped at the altar of secular smoke of purity, had surveys printed and handed out, believing in their ’good works’ for society ‘good’,  professors in sociology gathered to list 50 ways in which enlightened white believers could detect in themselves and in their neighbors signs of white racism in their own eyes, thoughts  or fingers as well as in the eyes, thoughts, and fingers of working class whites whom they had never met and would never meet and be held responsible for the diseases they had caused and spread.

The classic academic “racism” against the white working class, was set in action making all sorts of  the university and college educated feel very good about themselves…..Democrats, nearly all.

These leftwing do-gooders have never been held responsible for the damage to the communities they destroyed as well as the disruptions cause be the young people travelling thither and yon, because it was the politically correct thing to do deemed so by the socially advanced citizens, judges and polticians.

Here is all I have found from my search for reasons why Cody of Denair  was stripped of his American flag for his own safety:

“Officials said the supervisor acted out of concern for Cody’s safety after some other students made threatening remarks and in the wake of a Cinco de Mayo incident that raised racial tensions over displaying a Mexican flag. The district later reversed its stance and posted a letter to the community on its Web site, but the issue had made several national newscasts and blogs.

Sunday’s meeting was called to discuss a potential lawsuit after a civil rights group sent the district a legal letter regarding the matter. About two dozen people were at the meeting. Cody and his family did not attend.

Before board members moved into closed session — standard procedure for any legal issue — they listened to sometimes emotional public comment.

“I’m not against Denair schools at all,” said Cassie Olson, a 25-year resident who is helping to organize a flag walk to school this Monday. Like many other community members, Olson said she didn’t believe the school was trying to suppress Cody’s First Amendment right of free expression, but took the wrong action out of concern for his safety.

“When the threat was made, the flag shouldn’t have been the issue at that point,” she said. “The threat was an issue. It should have been dealt with.”

Veteran Don Morelli, who took part in a Veterans Day program at the school last week, agreed.

“My personal opinion as a veteran is I’d like to see every kid come to school with an American flag on his antenna or on his bicycle,” he said. “We never win a war by running away form it. We win a war by holding our flag high and going forward.”

Going forward also was on the mind of Jim Lawson. The Denair parent said he is worried about “nutjobs” who have gotten involved in the situation.

“My students come here to learn,” he said. “They don’t need distractions. … The flag issue aside, I need a safe place for my children to come to school.”

Parraz thanked the speakers Sunday — and others who have called his office at all hours from around the world. “I know all the time zones now,” he said.

Troubled by how the situation has put Denair on the national radar, he said his first thought was of his late father, himself a veteran. “I was trying to think of what he would have told me.”

Parraz said he talked to his mother, and she agreed he should apologize to everyone involved. He said he has apologized to the Alicea family and “I want to personally extend an apology to Cody. I love that young man. I used to be his principal.”

Parraz asked Olson for an opportunity to speak at this morning’s event. She agreed. And he thanked Morelli for his service, and for his suggestion.

“I like your idea of an American flag on every bike,” Parraz said. “Maybe that will be a new tradition in Denair.”

It’s conceivable the district will be able to provide the flags: one Internet drive seeks to send the office a million U.S. flags.
Read more: http://www.modbee.com/2010/11/14/1429514/denair-superintendent-apologizes.html#ixzz15SnU0ISJ“

 

The above article was from one written at KCRA.   This next article was written by Patty Guerra at Bee in Turlock, Modesto:

“Before leaving the lot to continue his ride to school, Cody exchanged a hug with Denair Unified School District Superintendent Ed Parraz, his former school principal. Parraz again apologized for the incident and took responsibility.

“This happened on my watch,” he said, pledging to learn from the issue and move the district ahead.

A campus supervisor last week told Cody to put his flag in his backpack over concerns for his safety and in the wake of a Cinco de Mayo incident over the Mexican flag.

Cody’s stepfather, Robert Kinser, called a TV news crew after he learned what happened.

“(Cody) would have just done as they asked,” he said. “But I thought I should call the news after I tried to call the school and see if we could meet in the middle on this.” Though the district reversed its stance — Parraz said he’d be happy if every student in Denair had a flag on their bikes — the issue went viral on the Internet and newscasts. Several national bloggers picked up on it and encouraged followers to contact the school district, one suggesting that a million flags be sent to Denair. State Sen. Jeff Denham, recently elected to Congress, offered to fly Cody to Washington, D.C., for his swearing-in ceremony in January.

The Denair school board held an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss a potential lawsuit from a rights group that has threatened to sue.

But while pundits and politicians have picked up on the issue, organizers said the local effort was designed to show the country that Denair as a community is not anti-flag, or anti-American.

“We’re here today to support all the Codys,” said Lisa De Los Santos, who organized Monday’s rally and walk to school. “We have to stop intolerance … racial tension won’t go away with a flag in a backpack.” The crowd made its way down Main Street to the school, where it gathered around the flagpole for a hearty Pledge of Allegiance and rendition of the national anthem.

Cody again thanked everyone for coming and tried to make his way into school.

Shawn Alicea said his son didn’t expect the matter to grow into a national issue.

“I think it all kind of blew up in his face,” he said after giving Cody a hug and sending him into class. “He’s such a soft-spoken kid. But he’s taken it quite well. He’s got a lot of support.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6U2hB-Pz4zs&feature=player_embedded#!

Further comment:   Please note that there are  absolutely no details regarding the threats against Cody for his crime of displaying a flag on his bike.  I’d bet Mr. Parraz was, indeed,  thinking of the boy’s safety.   But he seems to be hiding the real story which caused the issue.

Fifteen minutes later,    I found the following at Rush Limbaugh’s radio show a transcript of his reference to the Cody matter.  It gives  us a clue of the nature of the American public school these days of political correctness enforced by leftwing school authorities:

“This is the kind of thing that we laugh at. We hear this, and we get temporarily outraged by it.  But you have here a kid being told you can’t even put the US flag — the American flag — on the back of his bicycle because it’s going to offend somebody.  Why is it that The Offended always win?  I don’t care who they are.  The Offended always win.  Whatever somebody says offends them, whoever the person doing the offending is has to stop it.  I remember the good old days, folks (and they weren’t that long ago) I was dining one evening at the famous 21 Club in New York.  Back in the good old days when culture and refinement were on full display, and while dining afterwards you could light up a great cigar at your dinner table and consume your postprandial beverage.

I was doing so one night, and a guy next to me called to a maitre d’ over and said, “You gotta get him to put that out.”

The maitre d’ said, “Sir, if you don’t like it we can move you to a different part of the restaurant.” 

“Well, that offends me!” 

“Well, if it offends you we’ll take you to some other part of the restaurant.”

Now, of course, those days are gone.  You can’t even smoke outside, cigarettes, cigars, or what have you. 

 By the way, [Denair Unified School District Superintendent Edward Parraz] said ‘Our Hispanic, you know, kids will, you know, bring their Mexican flags and they’ll display it, and then of course the kids would do the American flag situation, and it does cause kind of a racial tension which we don’t really want’” and they don’t want to deal with it at school. (interruption) What do you mean, how does he have a job?  It’s California.  What do you mean, how does he have a job?  This guy is considered enlightened!  This guy is preventing racial tensions.  The very appearance of the American flag produces racial tensions! This is where we are.  This is the kind of stuff. Look, this is not an isolated incident.  We’ve chronicled this kind of stuff for you to the entire 23 years of this program.” 

Final Comment:   As I thought…..Mexican flags should have been banned.   California is not yet Mexico.  I don’t think Mexico could afford owning California.      Every classroom should display an American flag to remind each and every student exactly which country is paying for the students’ education.     Is it any wonder with all these mal-educated lefties in charge of our schools Americans have forgotten what it means to be an American?

The Superintendent should be fired.

Ramesh Ponnuru: Reasons Why 2010 Republican Victors Won’t Repeat 1995 Errors

Despite media and other Left Wing propagandists in America, the Republican Party has been a minority Party for about 80 years.  Occasionally, a conservative president might be voted into office, but Congress is almost never in synch.   Then there are the Nixons, Fords, and George H.W. Bush who drifted with the winds.

There was some hope for a new voice in Washington in the late autumn of 1994 with a rare Republican victory, its  first rule in Congress for four decades.  Bright lights arrived in Washington, but things conservative dimmed quickly.  The Republicans messed up.  

Ramesh Ponnuru compares the November Republican sweep into the House of Representatives with that  similar Republican victory years ago with the following article from the National Review Online.   Will Republicans make the same mistakes and alienate the electorate again?

“Next year in Washington is not going to be a replay of 1995. The analogy is on everyone’s mind in the capital. Many Republicans worry that President Obama will win the public-relations war against Speaker-to-be John Boehner as handily as Bill Clinton bested Newt Gingrich. They should relax.

The parallels are obvious. Both times, a young Democrat had succeeded George Bush in the presidency and then worked with a Democratic Congress to push a liberal agenda. In the next election Republicans ran against big government and won elections up and down the ballot, picking up governorships and seats in the Senate, the House, and state legislatures. Pollster Kristen Soltis points out that much of the data from the 2010 election looks nearly identical to the numbers from 1994. In both elections, for example, roughly 55 percent of independents chose Republican congressional candidates.

Republicans don’t want what happened after the last Republican takeover to recur. During the winter of 1995–96, the new Republican Congress battled with Clinton over the budget — a battle that reached its climax in partial shutdowns of the government. The public sided with Clinton. His approval ratings rose while Gingrich’s plummeted.

The conservative campaign to limit the size and scope of the federal government never really recovered from this defeat. Within a few years congressional Republicans were beginning to run for reelection on pork and incumbency rather than reform, and George W. Bush was advancing a “compassionate conservatism” as a way of distinguishing himself from the Gingrichites.

But there are several differences between 2011 and 1995 that should work in favor of Republicans.

First, Republicans won a larger House majority. In 1995, Republicans had the smallest majority of any Congress since the 1950s. Conservatives were a majority of the majority, but not a majority of the House. Holding the conference together on votes was a constant challenge: Budgets would be too tight for party moderates and too loose for conservative firebrands.

Boehner’s task will be easier. Republicans have the largest majority they have had since the 1940s. For the first time in the modern history of conservatism, the House has an outright conservative majority. Michael Barone says that House Republicans are in the sweet spot: They have enough members that Boehner can let some Republicans out of tough votes, but not so many that they have no cohesion.

Second, Republicans did not take the Senate, as they did in 1995. As a result, the public will be less likely to hold them responsible for governing the country. When House Republicans passed legislation that could not pass a Republican Senate, conservatives were demoralized and the party looked incompetent. Neither effect will be as pronounced if a Democratic Senate kills House-passed conservative legislation.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, will have an easier time keeping his conference together in the minority. Getting Rand Paul to sign off on a McConnell agenda would be a lot harder than getting him to agree to oppose Harry Reid’s. Finally, if there are veto fights with President Obama, they will necessarily involve legislation that had significant Democratic support.

Third, the fact that Republicans came up short in the Senate elections will probably temper their triumphalism. At the start of 1995, a lot of conservatives believed that history was on their side and would roll over anyone standing in their way. They thought Clinton was a sure loser. The Republican takeover was widely described as a “revolution.” This time Republicans are well aware that Obama could win reelection and that Republicans could lose House seats in 2012.

Fourth, having been through 1995, Republicans have learned the lesson that you can’t govern from the Hill. That year Republicans tried to restrain the growth of Medicare. The decision to take on a popular entitlement was the most important reason Clinton won the budget battle. Republicans will not try anything nearly as ambitious this time. Either they will make a deal with Obama — which would require him to make the first move — or they will explain that real reform cannot come until Republicans get reinforcements in Washington. Boehner was surely aware that his election-night comment that “the president sets the agenda” would be his most widely quoted remark.

Fifth, the new Republican majority is more seasoned. The last Republican House before 1995 adjourned in 1955. Almost none of the Republicans who took Congress in 1995 had ever been in the majority. Most of them had not even contemplated being in the majority until the 1994 campaign. The new majority includes many congressmen who were in the old majority until January 2007. They know the ropes — and so do many of their aides. There won’t be as much need for on-the-job training.

Sixth, the new Republican majority is less factionalized than the old one. The moderate contingent was much larger in 1995, though it was declining even then. Journalists said that Gingrich would have a hard time managing the new conservative members of Congress — the “revolutionaries” — just as they are now saying that Boehner will have his hands full with the new congressmen from the tea parties. But House Republicans have been operationally in sync with the tea parties since the start of the Obama presidency, uniformly opposing both the stimulus and Obamacare and almost unanimously opposing cap-and-trade and card check as well.

Seventh, Obama isn’t Clinton. The former president started his political career in a relatively conservative state. During his governorship, Arkansas gave its electoral votes to Republican presidential candidates three times. Clinton also ran the Democratic Leadership Council, which sought to pull the party rightward. Obama has had much less experience of appealing to conservative and moderate voters. He did it in the general election of 2008 only under exceptional circumstances and with a very short record. It’s not clear that he is interested in “triangulating” against congressional Democrats and Republicans, much less that he is capable of it. Keep in mind that at this point in his presidency Clinton had already relied on Republican votes to win a high-profile fight over trade. Obama has done nothing similar.

Most analysts trace the beginning of Clinton’s comeback to the Oklahoma City bombing, when he was able to become the country’s mourner-in-chief while also linking the atrocity to his opponents’ antipathy to big government. Obama seems far less deft. His response to the Fort Hood shootings last year showed no ability to rally the country at a moment of trauma.

Eighth, Obama has to deal with a larger, angrier, and more implacable Left than Clinton did. The Left was chastened after three Republican presidential terms when Clinton took office. When Clinton signed welfare reform in 1996, a few of his appointees resigned but there was no revolt. Obama cannot be so sure that MoveOn.org, MSNBC, etc., will stay in his corner if he triangulates. His freedom of action is more circumscribed.

Ninth, Boehner isn’t Gingrich. The new Republican leader is sometimes emotional — he teared up repeatedly during his election-night press conference — but he is not grandiose. Gingrich, by contrast, told confidants in 1995 that he was “moving the planet.” Boehner has learned from the experience of Gingrich and Tom DeLay that he is better off keeping a low profile. No congressman can win media cycles day after day going up against a president one-on-one. Boehner knows it. Boehner isn’t as full of ideas as Gingrich was, but he won’t make as many mistakes either.

Tenth, McConnell isn’t Bob Dole. McConnell is smarter and more interested in policy, and he understands people to his right. Most important, perhaps, he isn’t running for president. Dole was running for president, and one of his principal rivals, Phil Gramm, was also in the Senate. Dole had to run the Senate, pretend to be the movement conservative he wasn’t, and negotiate with a president he was trying to replace. McConnell doesn’t have any of these burdens.

Eleventh, the public seems more concerned about federal spending than it was in 1995. Back then, the deficit was seen as a symbol of the irresponsibility of the ruling class in Washington, D.C. Now it is seen as an imminent threat to the country’s future. That won’t make cutting spending easy, but it should make it less politically dangerous.

Republicans’ memories of 1995 are a little distorted. They overstate the electoral fallout of their defeat in the budget showdown. Clinton would have won reelection in 1996 even if there had been no budget battle: It was a great year, with peace, prosperity, and falling crime rates. Republicans didn’t lose that many seats, either, and those congressmen who lost almost all did so because they had made personal mistakes (such as not tending to their districts) rather than because they had tried to cut Medicare.

But in any case, next year isn’t going to be a rerun of 1995. If Republicans come a cropper, it will be for different reasons than they did last time.”

Thomas Sowell Reviews the Deficits and the Deficit Reduction Commission

Probably by now, most citizens realize what a mess we have in Washington…..but I doubt Mr. Obama is one of these citizens.   We shall soon see.   It seems to me he is quite pleased with himself and is miffed only at the election results….the results, not what caused the results.  Again, we shall see.

There are names in this world those of us who believe in the traditions of America must know….both the friends and America’s enemies, such as George Soros and Noam Chomsky,  and perhaps the present president, depending upon what his next steps might be.

Thomas Sowell is one of those good names with a good mind, and a good pen to describe what that mind “has in mind”.

He writes the following at today’s realclearpolitics site:

“Another deficit reduction commission has now made its recommendations. My own recommendation for dealing with deficits would include stopping the appointment of deficit reduction commissions.

It is not the amount of money that these commissions cost that is the issue. It is the escape hatch that they provide for big-spending politicians.

Do you go ahead and spend the rent money and the food money– and then ask somebody else to tell you how to escape the consequences?

If President Obama or the Congress were serious about keeping the deficit down, they could have had this commission’s recommendations before they spent hundreds of billions of dollars, handing out goodies hither and yon to their pet constituencies.

I don’t know why people agree to serve on these bipartisan commissions, which save the political hides of the big spenders after they have run up huge deficits. Back in the 1950s, there was a saying: “If you didn’t invite me to the take-off, don’t invite me to the crash landing.”

Deficit commissions make it politically possible to spend money first and get somebody else to recommend raising taxes later. They are a virtual guarantee of never-ending increases in both spending and taxes.

Why provide political cover? Leave the big spenders out there naked in front of the voters! Either the elected officials will change their ways or the voters can change the officials they elect.

There is no special information or wisdom available to unelected deficit commissions that is not available to elected officials. Nor are they more far-seeing than politicians.

Cutting defense spending to save money? That is one of the oldest moves in the liberal play book. Some soldiers may pay with their lives for this, but that could be years from now– and after the next election, which is as far as most politicians think.

The biggest immediate tax issue is whether the Bush tax cuts will be extended for everyone. Here, as elsewhere in politics, sheer hogwash reigns supreme.

Nancy Pelosi claims that the “tax cuts for the rich” cannot be continued because it would be “too costly.” Although former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey says, “Demagoguery beats data” in politics, here are some data anyway.

The first big cut in income taxes came in the 1920s, at the urging of Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. He argued that a reduction of the tax rates would increase the tax revenues. What actually happened?

In 1920, when the top tax rate was 73 percent, for people making over $100,000 a year, the federal government collected just over $700 million in income taxes– and 30 percent of that was paid by people making over $100,000. After a series of tax cuts brought the top rate down to 24 percent, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income tax revenue– and people making over $100,000 a year now paid 65 percent of the taxes.

How could that be? The answer is simple: People behave differently when tax rates are high as compared to when they are low. With low tax rates, they take their money out of tax shelters and put it to work in the economy, benefitting themselves, the economy and government, which collects more money in taxes because incomes rise.

High tax rates which very few people are actually paying, because of tax shelters, do not bring in as much revenue as lower tax rates that people are paying. It was much the same story after tax cuts during the Kennedy administration, the Reagan administration and the Bush Administration.

The New York Times reported in 2006: “An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the projected budget deficit this year.”

Expectations are in the eyes of the beholder– and in the rhetoric of the demagogues. If class warfare is more important to some politicians than collecting more revenue when there is a deficit, then let the voters know that.

And spare us so-called “deficit reduction commissions.”

//