Keep Your Child Home From School On September 8th?

[sharon kinsella]

I'd love to know what Lakewood Schools have done about all the other presidents speaking to the school kids. I didn't know it, but all of them have.

Bad black man. Bad, bad, bad black man.

[Bill Call]

First let not forget when Bush 41 addressed the students and ask for the help, they turned to America and ask for their help. Are you saying it is wrong for the President to address students, or ask for help? Are you saying the president or for that matter NO ELECTED OFFICIAL should ever speak to students, and at the end ask for their help to keep the county,
city, state, country better?

I wasn't a fan of either Bush. To the extent I offered some support for the NCLB act it was only because it offered some feeble attempt to measure performance.

I would be perfectly happy to have a President who when asked "What are you going to do to help Johnny read?" answered, "Don't ask me ask your local school board".

The two main reasons people support federal involvement in local schools is:

1. Deficit financing can be used to fund earlier retirements and bigger paychecks and larger bureaucracies
2. See number 1.

President Obama is a true believer. The foreign rulers he supports live in dictatorships like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran and Syria. The foreign rulers he opposes live in democracies like Columbia, Israel and Poland. He supports those rulers for the same reason FDR admired Mussolini, they get things done. One of the ways they get things done is to have one central authority in the school system decide what is taught and what is thought.

[Jim O'Bryan]

I'd love to know what Lakewood Schools have done about all the other presidents speaking to the school kids. I didn't know it, but all of them have.

Bad black man. Bad, bad, bad black man.

Sharon

I would like to use your quote to clean up a misunderstanding.

I am not suggesting the Board, nor the Superintendent are Racists. Far from it. I know for
a fact nothing could be farther from the truth.

I am saying that the people calling the schools to stop the elected president, from doing
what every other president has not been allowed to do are. Or they are simply "not American,"
to quote some of the more conservative members of the Deck over the past 6 years. When
it applied to President Bush being "all of ours Commander in Chief." Seems kind of Facist* to me.

We live in a world of taking our balls and going home.

In children it is a teaching moment.

In adults its

Pitiful.

* Dictionary.com
Fas⋅cism
  /ˈfæʃɪzəm/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [fash-iz-uhm] Show IPA
–noun
1. (sometimes initial capital letter) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.


.

[Justine Cooper]

Bill,
Your stereotypes of "liberals" (read all liberals as facists or whatever) is no different than others who voiced opinions on "repbulicans" read by some as "all republicans" or by one as being singled out or called out. Where is the outrage there then from the liberals being stereotyped? And the truth is that it is strictly republicans who have a problem with our country's leader encouraging education.
Lynn is right. Let parents who are consumed with fear of what hidden message may lie in the president's speech to opt out.

What if those of us banned together to pull our kids out to take them home to watch the speech live? What if we found the president's speech about the positives of education important enough to do that?

And on keeping the government out of school? 10% of the budet of our schools are from the federal government. That is why no state or local school board would stand up to say "NO way" to NCLB. They can you know. But won't because they will give up the federal money. When you are a parent of a special need child at second grade level in seventh grade (let's say) and that child has to take a standardized test on 7th grade level (read to him or her since he/she can't read because of a brain birth defect), then you would understand how that parent realizes on a much deeper level how the government can screw up education. But a positive message from the president isn't even in the same ballpark.

I can't even address the N. Korea and other communist killing nuclear nations that "liberals" hate other than to say we are a laughing stock to them when they read that parents are pulling their children out of school or running to the school board with fears of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES MESSAGE TO KIDS ABOUT THE POSITIVES OF SCHOOL! A bloody laughing stock we must be. Great meassage to send. How about the importance of the message of a united STATES and a strong union backing our leader to send to to other countries? Imagine that message sent.

[Kristine Pagsuyoin]

Thank for your last reply, Justine. At this point, I am finding it hard to wrap my mind around some of the ridiculous things people say that I can't even form a response.

I have already talked to my kids about the Obama speech and have asked what their thoughts are on the issue. We talk about teachable moments in education and I hope that if teachers aren't able to broadcast the speech that they dialogue with their students on the debate. That does bring up another point, I think teachers who wanted to broadcast the speech should have been able to do that. Where is the trust for our excellent teachers in using their discretion in using the broadcast as part of what they think is a valid asset to their lesson that day? The district's decision to not broadcast took that choice out of the hands of the teachers. Isn't the reason why we hire excellent teachers is that they have the capability to make good relevant educational choices for our students?

[Lynn Farris]

Bill you said:

Liberals hijacked the term liberal back in the early 1900's. It use to mean free minds and free markets, individual rights, individual values, individual freedom and personal and economic growth.

In the traditional sense I am a liberal.

Hey finally common ground. I think those things do still mean liberal. I think the neo cons and the religious fanatics have highjacked the Republican party. I thought it meant smaller government, keeping government out of our life, balanced budgets, no nation building. I admired several Republican Presidents, in fact I had a picture of Teddy Roosevelt hanging up in my home. Liked Eisenhower too. But I'm sure you would label both of them Progressives now. Teddy started the National Park system for all of us to enjoy - not just the rich. Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex.

However, throughout the U.S. history we have decided that some things are so important that we subsidize them as a society for all. These include the national parks, public schools, public libraries, military for defense, fire departments, police departments. We also provide health care for our seniors.

The question that is in front of us on national health care is multi fold. But the basic moral one is should we all be able to buy into the same health care that we as citizens pay for - for our elected officials and government employees? Do all of us deserve health care as a right? Just like senior citizens do? Is the right to health care as important as the right to read books? Why is health care in the US the most costly in the World, but we are ranked what 37 or 38 in quality ? Costa Rica a developing nation has better health care and a longer life span at a fraction of the cost of what it costs in the US. If we can't get control of the costs, only the very rich will be able to afford health care. And the culprits are the insurance companies.

The majority of bankruptcies in the US are due to health care and the majority of those people are insured. Certainly you can't believe that this system is working.

So this isn't a decent into socialism as you suggest or worse. It should be an intelligent debate about the best direction for our country about values and economics. Both the costs of doing something and the cost of doing nothing.

But in my humble opinion, you lose credibility when you state: President Obama is a true believer. The foreign rulers he supports live in dictatorships like Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran and Syria. The foreign rulers he opposes live in democracies like Columbia, Israel and Poland. He supports those rulers for the same reason FDR admired Mussolini, they get things done. One of the ways they get things done is to have one central authority in the school system decide what is taught and what is thought. Diplomacy and talking with people instead of calling them Evil Doers isn't a bad thing. Doesn't mean that you agree with them, it means allowing diplomacy to work instead of pre-emptive war.

You also lose credibility when you act like it is dangerous for children to hear a message from the President that staying in school and working hard is good.

[sharon kinsella]

Jim - Exactly. Also you can use the quote anytime because that is what I mean by it.

Bad black man. Bad, bad, black man.

[Roy Pitchford]

While it now feels too late...

Progressive is the "new" term for "liberal".

Incorrect. They shouldn't be used synonymously. Progressivism is not as much a "party" as it is an ideology under which individual liberties and personal property mean nothing if they conflict with the goals of the government. Progressives exist on both sides of the "political spectrum" as people view it now.
On the right, progressives believe in Statism and American expansion through military strength.
On the left, progressives believe in Statism and expansion through internationalist entities (UN).

"Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete."
-Rod Serling, The Obsolete Man

Your definition of Progressive is communism and no one is suggesting that in any way shape or form.

While I will agree that progressivism is NOT communism, they have close ties.

Contemporary progressivism

The fourth and current liberal Progressive movement grew out of social activism movements, Naderite and populist left political movements in conjunction with the civil rights, GLBT (Gay rights), women's or feminist, and environmental movements of the 1960s-1980s.[18] This exists as a cluster of political, activist, and media organizations ranging in outlook from centrism (eg. Reform Party of the United States of America) to left-liberalism to social democracy (like the Green Party) and sometimes even democratic socialism (like the Socialist Party USA).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism_in_the_United_States

Woodrow Wilson, big on progressivism, said the following:
"It is very clear that in fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not one in the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members...Democracy is bound by no principle of its own nature to say itself nay as to exercise of any power."

Liberal and Progressive are no more to be feared than Conservatives. I do believe Republicans are much better at staying on the talking points and working lock step together than the Democrats are. If the Dems could every stay on point and work together, the things they could do.

There are divisions in both parties. At the moment, the democrats only appear more divided.

On a continuum, liberals/progressives do care more about their fellow man not just thinking solely about how they can enrich themselves. They do believe that a great nation is defined by how we treat the poorest of our citizens.

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
- Ben Franklin

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
-William J. H. Boetcker

Conservatives give welfare to the richest in our country, wall street tycoons, the oil companies, big industrial farms, whereas liberals want to feed the hungry and treat the sick.

No, liberals never gave ANY money to the evil banks or to GM and Chrysler. You know, those corporations that were too big to fail.

Liberals/Progressives believe in the bill of rights, conservatives want big brother monitoring our every step in a false belief that will make us safe.

...under which individual liberties and personal property mean nothing if they conflict with the goals of the government.
That is not what our Bill of Rights is about.
If you truely believe in the Bill of Rights, how about standing up for the 10th Amendment? You know, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Congress and the Presidents (Ds & Rs) have been far exceeding their Constitutional powers for decades.

The odd thing though is the country has moved so far to the right that Clinton and Obama would have been good Republicans, when I was young. Now the Dems are where the Republicans were 50 years ago (when Eisenhower warned of the Military Industrial complex) and most of the Republicans are out on the fringe.

Maybe you're right about Clinton and Obama, but you're not going back far enough. Obama and Clinton don't hold a candle to FDR or, going back farther, Woodrow Wilson.

We only have a few liberals left in our congress. Dennis Kucinich is one and I for one am very proud to have him representing me. But they are marginalized by the right wing media and made to look like fools. I dislike much of what President Obama is doing, because he is taking such baby steps, when we need bold action. You claiming him to be too liberal is just downright silly. I think he is way too conservative.

That, then, is nothing more that an issue of point-of-view, not "downright silly". A person from Euclid saying that downtown is west while a person in Westlake says it is east.
As for Dennis, the man took a easel and chart to a RADIO debate with Howard Dean in 2004. It didn't take the media to make him look like a fool.

The President wants the children of the US to inspired, to work hard in school and to achieve. We gave away our manufacturing base. We can't compete with 3rd world labor, so if we want to maintain our standard of living, we have to be smarter than everyone else. Boy is that a scary message, stay in school and work hard.

That is not part of the president's job, it is the parent's job.

Perhaps you feel you can trust the principal of the school, but the President of the U.S. and the Leader of the Free World is too dangerous to talk for 20 minutes to your child about staying in school and working hard.

Let me take President Obama AT HIS OWN WORD. He said during the final debate:
"Now, the reason I think that it's important to just get these facts out is because the allegation that Senator McCain has continually made is that somehow my associations are troubling.

Let me tell you who I associate with. On economic policy, I associate with Warren Buffett and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar, the Republican ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO.

Those are the people, Democrats and Republicans, who have shaped my ideas and who will be surrounding me in the White House."

Let's look at who he has surrounded himself with:

"Pressure, pressure pressure...We need to apply pressure and to direct that pressure not at the government, but through the government at our true opposition - the broadcasters."
- Mark Lloyd, Chief Diversity Officer, FCC -

"...my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press...this freedom is all to often an exaggeration...blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies."
- Mark Lloyd -

"Because every old person was once young, an emphasis on life-years does not discriminate against anyone; the very people who lose when older also gained when younger...in producing regulatory impact analysis...agencies should inquire into life-years, and take into account of that inquiry in deciding what to do."
--Cass Sunstein, head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs--

"[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law... Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf."
--Cass Sunstein--

"A program of sterilizing women after their second or third child, despite the relatively greater difficulty of the operation than vasectomy, might be easier to implement than trying to sterilize men."
--John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

"Indeed, it has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."
--John Holdren

"If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility--just as they can be required to exercise responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns--providing they are not denied equal protection."
--John Holdren

"I met all these young radical people of color -- I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary."
--Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality



"Conversely, services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia. A less obvious example Is is guaranteeing neuropsychological services to ensure children with learning disabilities can read and learn to reason."
--Ezekiel Emanuel, health-policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget

In the Lancet, Jan. 31, 2009, Dr. Emanuel and co-authors presented a "complete lives system" for the allocation of very scarce resources, such as kidneys, vaccines, dialysis machines, intensive care beds, and others. "One maximizing strategy involves saving the most individual lives, and it has motivated policies on allocation of influenza vaccines and responses to bioterrorism. . . . Other things being equal, we should always save five lives rather than one.

"However, other things are rarely equal--whether to save one 20-year-old, who might live another 60 years, if saved, or three 70-year-olds, who could only live for another 10 years each--is unclear." In fact, Dr. Emanuel makes a clear choice: "When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get changes that are attenuated."


"Principles for Allocation of Scarce Medical Interventions" The Lancet, January 31, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374463280098676.html

I'll ignore Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Jeff Jones, Wade Rathke, Dale Rathke Dr. Joseph Lowery, Rev. Michael Pfleger and Reverend Wright.

Obama wants us to look at who he surrounds himself with...well...I think I have a right to be concerned.

Heaven forbid all the white kids see a successful, compassionate black man.

Bad black man, bad.

Congratulations! You just pulled the race card. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sit down and watch Pursuit of Happyness.

I hope you were able to read through that whole thing.

[Jim O'Bryan]

OR more eloquently put...

The name "Barack appears in the Bible, and harkens the End of Days..."

http://www.voe.org/

http://billcloud.org

http://www.jvim.com/

"No control over their life anymore as if it is being dictated bu someone in Washington..."





.

[Roy Pitchford]

OR more eloquently put...

The name "Barack appears in the Bible, and harkens the End of Days..."

http://www.voe.org/

http://billcloud.org

http://www.jvim.com/

"No control over their life anymore as if it is being dictated bu someone in Washington..."





.

I'm here for a healthy debate. You cannot dispute what I said, so you ignore it and attempt to distract and ridicule by making me out to look like some kind of wacko.

Rule 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

Rule 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
-- Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

To be honest, I expected nothing more. Thank you for proving me right.

[Bill Call]

Rule 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.[/i]
-- Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

To be honest, I expected nothing more. Thank you for proving me right.

Mr. Pitchford you are very good at this. Where have you been?

One thing I noticed about many (not all) liberals on this site is that the personal insults start about 20 words into the debate.

What the President hoped for on Tuesday was to give a political speech followed by teachers obediently regurgating the party line. He and many of this followers are not pleased.

I can hear it from here: "Oh myyy goddddd someone someone dis dis DISAGREES!!!!

[Gary Rice]

Is it time for "kumbayah" yet? (smile)

Note- to my "liberal friends" here:

Having gone into serious debate with Roy on another thread, I'll simply remark that if others decide to do the same, they'd best come well prepared.

There's a new kid on the block here, and like Bill, he comes VERY prepared to engage in debate, with both intellect and facts.

Now, so far, I agree with both Roy and Bill ONLY in a VERY small percentage of what they are saying. To both of their credits though, they seem to avoid getting too personal, and that's a good thing indeed.

I suppose at the core of this entire discussion for me (and frankly whether one is Republican, Democrat, Liberal, Conservative or whatever) there lies a fundamental question of human rights, independent thought and ethics.

So much of what is being said and written these days by so many, whether left or right, goes so counter to what I learned from my faith, my parents, my education, and my life experiences.

Jim likes to talk about "critical thinking" and he has a point there. These days it seems that critical thinking (read- to decide for ones' self on issues after careful evaluation) is once again being supplanted with "groupthink", wherein a person's own thoughts are to be sublimated, or at least colored by their own background, political party, economic stature, personal associations, or whatever.

We HAVE to realize that these kinds of pressures are not new. The entire 20th Century was a blood bath over the question of individual critical thinking vs. ideological "groupthink" regarding a number of persuasions.

If there's an enemy here, I would point to the "groupthink" type of mentality that has always sought to destroy an individual's ability to question.

From the 1500's in Germany came the song "Die Gedanken Sind Frei". That is, thoughts are free. Expressing this "radical" notion brought persecution and misery for thousands then, and millions more later...

...but that notion would not go away.

That's why you won't hear libera l or conservative, Republican or Democrat "party lines" from me. Never Never Never! Do I nominally belong to a political party? Presently yes....so long as they don't overly get me upset....Do I have a left-right bias? On some matters, perhaps, but I believe that God gave me a mind, and God willing I WILL use it to think for myself, thank you.

As for the President's speech being heard in school? Again, I believe that's a matter of timing and educational presentation for the school to decide. They have the right, as well as the responsibility to critically think too.

Die Gedanken sind frei indeed.

And on that point of thoughts being free, (although I cannot speak for them) I would hope that Roy and Bill and Jim and Sharon and Lynn and most of you and I would possibly agree.

Kumbayah, anyone?

Back to the banjo....

[Justine Cooper]

Roy,
On this part of your post alone:

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer."
- Ben Franklin

You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
-William J. H. Boetcker

What IF the point of inspiring youth -and yes my guess is a black man who rose our of poverty and race to become president particularly wants to encourage inner city youth-IS to empower the weak and lift the wage earners and teach them to do for themselves?

The racial achievement gap in this country has widened since the 1980s. All the "reforms" aren't working. And Ben Franklin wrote this before the health care companies made billions and the predatory lenders and banks made billions while several parts of the country fell like a house of cards. It is not about destroying the rich to help the poor. Do you not think it is possible to help the poor without "destroying the rich"? As a liberal, I want to educate and empower individuals. How do you propose we do that with children in poverty and domestic violence and drugs in the home or homes without all that where parents are losing jobs out of no fault of their own? Because our economy has failed while big companies got rich. It is a very differnt day than the days of Ben Franklin and I bet he would be turning in his grave watching the destruction of our country.

As a former social worker, I worked with children in foster homes, often not better than their home, confused, abused, neglected and wondering why mom isn't coming to get them. I have seen things that no child should ever have to live. As a liberal I fight for the child. I would give my right arm to get parents to take care of their children and "do the right thing". But it is not happening in this country in a high percentage of homes. And for those kids we have to step in and educate and empower. How do you think we can help in this fight for the kids then?

I have heard black families say that the Cosby show was the first positive role model of African Americans they ever saw and it made such a difference they shaped their lives to go to college and be like the Cosby's. The Cosbys! A ficitonal show! Imagine what Obama, a black president can do for some! Even a small percentage!

[Justine Cooper]

And one more note: If the health care crisis crumbles like the housing market, instead of falling house prices and empty abandoned foreclosed homes and destroyed neighborhoods, we will have people sick, dying and bleeding in the street. Don't think that won't happen like in certain third world countires. Because they can't afford to go to the hospital or no hospital will take them. We will have children without parents because they died of something that may have been curable. We will have outbreaks of the swine flu that will kill many and didn't have to. Preventative care won't happen for many. Contagious diseases will emerge after not being aroundn for decades (oh some of that is already happening)!

This is SO NOT about "destroying" the rich health care companies and SO about keeping our country healthy and vibrant and taking care of young, old, and in the middle! Yes I want the plan revised some more but we have to find affordable health care for every individual in this country. I hope the man who got his finger bit off in a health care "debate" turned physcial has health insurance!

[Roy Pitchford]

Rule 12: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.[/i]
-- Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals

To be honest, I expected nothing more. Thank you for proving me right.

Mr. Pitchford you are very good at this. Where have you been?

I guess I would have been considered part of the "silent majority." I always saw what I thought was wrong around me, but I was content to express it only to myself or my family.
A popular phrase is "I was blind, but now I see." but that does not suit my situation.
"I was mute, but now I speak."

What changed me? I read a quote in a book:
"The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict."
Martin Luther King Jr.

Having gone into serious debate with Roy on another thread, I'll simply remark that if others decide to do the same, they'd best come well prepared.

There's a new kid on the block here, and like Bill, he comes VERY prepared to engage in debate, with both intellect and facts.

Now, so far, I agree with both Roy and Bill ONLY in a VERY small percentage of what they are saying. To both of their credits though, they seem to avoid getting too personal, and that's a good thing indeed.

Thank you, Mr. Rice. That may be one of the best compliments I've gotten. Definitely the best one here.

Dr. King also said this:
"Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time... [man must] overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation."