TELLING IT LIKE IT IS !

Truth is the beginning of wisdom…

Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Barack Obama’s “America [Must] Serve” Plan

By Scott Shields
Published 03/19/2010

Throughout Barack Obama’s campaign for president, he expressed his desire to increase community service in America. He outlined his plan, called “America Serves,” on change.gov, the website that provided details of his presidential agenda and transition. A screen-shot of America Serves is still available at www.politicallore.com/images/change.jpg.

President Obama’s plan for community service is now described as a part of the White House’s agenda, and is outlined at http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/service.

The introductory paragraph for America Serves on the original presidential transition website read as follows:

When you choose to serve – whether it is your nation, your community or simply your neighborhood – you are connected to that fundamental American ideal that we want life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness not just for ourselves, but for all Americans. That’s why it’s called the American dream.

I also am a strong believer in community service, and I volunteer my time for multiple causes. (One could argue that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is not simply an American ideal, but that the Founding Fathers believed the Creator endowed all men with those rights, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, but that may be splitting hairs.)

After that lofty introduction, however, details for Obama’s plan are listed. Details that, when analyzed, are not so inspiring; nor would the Founding Fathers be thrilled that their words were associated with it. President Obama informs us that he will “call on” Americans to serve. In Obama’s world, however, “call on” does not mean “ask” – it means “require.”

Children will be “required” to give 50 hours of community “service” in middle school and high school. An “energy-focused” youth-jobs program will “provide disadvantaged youth with … getting practical experience in fast-growing career fields.”

My immediate thought is that maybe – just maybe – I might have a better sense of whether my preteen or teenage child should be performing community service, or whether he might have other needs that require time spent elsewhere. Maybe I’ve had to hire a tutor to help him, or maybe he needs to watch a younger sibling after school. Maybe we have only one car and have limited ability to take him to and from the place of community service.

Regardless of the circumstances, I do not want the government reaching into our home and giving us another mandate about how to raise children.

College conscripts

One section of the America Serves plan indicates that President Obama will “require” 100 hours of service in college. Like many of the statements candidate Obama made and President Obama has made, it is not quite true. College students will actually be required to give 100 hours per year of college. A student who attends four years of college (the most common duration) will have a burden of 400 hours.

In exchange for the 100-hours-per-year commitment, President Obama proposes an American Opportunity Tax Credit of $4,000 a year.

A tax credit is a curious compensation vehicle for college students because the vast majority do not generate sufficient income to take full – or even partial – advantage of that tax credit. Perhaps he envisions that the tax credit will carry forward for future years, but is that not simply a payment for services? And how can a program be called “public service” when the “service” is required and is compensated? I would like to know how that differs from requiring every college student to be a federal-government employee.

But the federal government’s intervention into college and universities does not end with mandatory conscription of every student. America Serves also calls for “at least” 25 percent of College Work-Study funds to “support public-service opportunities instead of jobs in dining halls and libraries.” [Emphasis mine.]

The height of arrogance, but typical. The government is, apparently, not only entitled to intervene in the operations of a university, but also feels that at least 25 percent of work-study jobs are simply not needed. After all, colleges don’t need fully staffed dining facilities and libraries, do they? Or, perhaps, those jobs really are needed — in which case the colleges will simply have to hire workers to replace the work-study students the government has decreed should not be toiling in demeaning positions in cafeterias and libraries.

Retiring Americans will also be “engaged” to participate in America Serves. (The language is unclear whether “engaged” means “invited to volunteer” or is Obama-speak and participation will be mandatory.)

Note, also, that referring to “retiring” (not “retired”) Americans leaves open the possibility of similarly conscripting those Americans who may still be working full-time, raising children, supporting their parents, et cetera. After all, many “retiring” Americans are looking to at least 15 years of working before being eligible for Social Security benefits. (Wouldn’t paying Social Security taxes be considered “serving your community”?)

Slavery is not freedom

Thus, President Obama manages to invoke the lofty principles of the Declaration of Independence (“life, liberty, pursuit of happiness”) and infuse them with the exact opposite meaning: mandatory government labor. This written sleight-of-hand is a clever – though Orwellian – act of commingling the idea of forced labor and the warm glow of patriotism and humanity. Nevertheless, it will take a more profound man of letters to convince me that forced labor promotes life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

And forced labor is what it is. For how else do you refer to mandatory community service? Sure, Obama may declare that “your” community service could be configured how you want – if you’re a college student in a pre-med program, for example, you could serve in a hospital. If you are a high-school student and want to work with your hands, you could serve with a carpenter.

But what if your schedule is jam-packed with school, sports, and a paid part-time job? What activity will you curtail to meet your “civic duty”?

And what if someone refuses to participate in America Serves? Saying “no” to the government is not like saying “no” to a boss or to a teacher; it is not like saying “no” when asked to volunteer your time to a cause or an organization. Sure, saying “no” to a boss or teacher has negative consequences, but saying “no” to the government is almost never an option. (If you doubt that, try saying “no” to the IRS, a judge, or a police officer.) Having a monopoly on legalized violence means never having to accept “no” for an answer – whether or not it is unfair to the citizen.

Most galling of all Obama thinks he and the government have a right to take decision-making out of students’, parents’, and professionals’ hands, and to insist that the government has a claim on their time because it knows best. Many people choose not to perform community service, but Obama does not respect that decision; rather, he believes that community service provides such great benefits to society that individual decisions not to participate have no legitimacy.

One of the benefits of voluntary community service is the opportunity to willingly help others less fortunate or to promote a cause about which one feels so passionate that he offers his most valuable asset – his time. In return, the volunteer can take great pride in knowing he has done something worthwhile.

But can psychic benefit be achieved if the person is forced to assist others, or forced to select a cause to promote? There is just as much potential to feel that the activity is punishment – as if the “volunteer” is a cog in nothing more than a glorified chain gang.

I have no doubt that some children and adults would benefit from being exposed to the kinds of undertakings America Serves might promote and from participating in them. However, to subject all affected Americans to the program for the possibility that some may derive benefit is the same thinking that has led to all Americans’ paying taxes to support pet projects of some members of Congress.

In a very real sense, how is mandatory, government-enforced service any different from slavery? In both situations, you do not have a choice about whether to participate – you must participate with minimal (if any) recompense.

Murray Rothbard describes involuntary servitude in his classic discussion of individual rights, For a New Liberty:

[What] is slavery but (a) forcing people to work at tasks the slavemaster wishes, and (b) paying them either pure subsistence or, at any rate, less than the slave would have accepted voluntarily. In short, forced labor at below free-market wages.

Obama would counter that, under America Serves, Americans will have a multitude of choices to fulfill their obligation. But that is a specious argument, because the most important choice – whether or not to participate – is not an option. Just consider America Serves to be cafeteria-style involuntary servitude.

[Can you once again say socialism?]

THE NECESSITY OF CHRISTIAN ACTIVISM

Posted by straight shooter on February 11, 2010 under Education, General, Religion, Social Concerns

Truth, Love, and Endurance

Dr. King and Christian Activism

As Americans observe Martin Luther King Day today, I am reminded of the rich Christian tradition of activism in this country. For millions of Christians who have gone before us, activism was considered fruit of the faith. Not only was the civil-rights movement led by evangelical Christians like Dr. King, so too were campaigns for abolition and women’s suffrage heavily influenced by Christians expressing their faith.

But for much of the 20th century, Christians – especially white evangelicals – shied away from activism. Part of the reason is that from about the 1920s to the 1970s, many evangelical Christians simply withdrew from the public square. Defeats in Prohibition and the discouraging results of the Scopes trial left many evangelicals disheartened. Soon the rich activist tradition was lost or divorced from true faith.

But in the African-American community, Christian principles and hopes prodded the rise of the civil-rights movement. It was not until the ’80s with the rise of the Moral Majority, that activism began to resurface among white evangelicals. Unfortunately, as Tim Stafford notes in his new book, Shaking the System, by then, “The very idea of Christians advocating for public causes created panic among secularists and dreams of utopia (a long-lost Christian America?) among true believers.”

This is why I like Stafford’s book so much: It draws from the rich history of Christian involvement to revive that lost knowledge of what it looks like to be a Christian activist.

True Christian activism, Stafford writes, always begins with the truth. “That means,” Stafford says, that “the true activist is a witness, anxious to pass on truth to others.” This is how the abolition movement began in the United States. About 30 years before the Civil War, the truth that slavery was a sin began to break through the consciousness of more and more Americans.

Soon all activists, however, learn that not everyone can handle truth. That is why a second thing that any Christian should know about engaging the world with a Christian worldview is to expect resistance. When truth collides with the status quo, Christian activists had better know where their ultimate hope lies.

Christians must also have a strategy for shaking the system: from prayer to dialogue, from political involvement to pressure tactics such as boycotts and strikes.

But above all, like Dr. King, the activist must possess courage and an unyielding faith in the God of justice. Injustice does not loosen its grasp easily. We must be prepared for a long haul, drawing on the rich resources of community and that abiding hope and passion for truth. And we must avoid violence: in our rhetoric and our actions. As Martin Luther King reminded those who gathered at his home after it had been bombed, “Don’t get panicky. … I want you to love our enemies. Be good to them. This is what we must live by. We must meet hate with love.”

So if the life of an activist holds so much discouragement and risk, why get involved at all? Because a Christian understanding of the world compels us to combat injustice and promote truth. That is a thought worth reflecting on, when we speak of people like Martin Luther King – a man who exhibited those qualities.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill authorizing curriculum that teaches children embryonic stem-cell research heals – when in fact it doesn’t!

Randy Thomasson of SaveCalifornia.com tells of the $3 billion approved in 2004 for the research has produced no effective treatments for diseases and other medical conditions. “All the trials have shown that human embryonic stem cells cause tumors and cancer in patients and tissue rejection,” he says, quickly asking: “Where’s the real success? It’s in adult and cord blood stem cells. Over 73 effective treatments, and that’s the direction to go.”

According to Thomasson, the bill signed by the governor perpetuates another falsehood that is being pumped into young minds. Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that is teaching school children the lie that embryonic stem-cell research heals people, when it doesn’t. That it doesn’t harm people and it doesn’t kill, when it does … it destroys human embryos.

Thomasson urges parents to take decisive action on behalf of their children, especially in light of the governor’s recent signing of another bill that calls for schools to honor radical homosexual activist Harvey Milk annually.

Appropriate parental action here includes taking youngsters out of public school, homeschooling them, or placing them in private institutions of learning. Get them out of the public schools of indoctrination if these things are happening in your public schools!

THE BITTER HOMESCHOOLERS’ WISH LIST

Posted by straight shooter on October 6, 2009 under Education, General

by Deborah Markus, from Secular Homeschooling

1. Please stop asking us if it’s legal. If it is – and it is – it’s insulting to imply that we’re criminals. And if we were criminals, would we admit it?

2. Learn what the words “socialize” and “socialization” mean, and use the one you really mean instead of mixing them up the way you do now. Socializing means hanging out with other people for fun. Socialization means having acquired the skills necessary to do so successfully and pleasantly. If you’re talking to me and my kids, that means that we do in fact go outside now and then to visit the other human beings on the planet, and you can safely assume that we’ve got a decent grasp of both concepts.

3. Quit interrupting my kid at her dance lesson, scout meeting, choir practice, baseball game, art class, field trip, park day, music class, 4H club, or soccer lesson to ask her if as a homeschooler she ever gets to socialize.

4. Don’t assume that every homeschooler you meet is homeschooling for the same reasons and in the same way as that one homeschooler you know.

5. If that homeschooler you know is actually someone you saw on TV, either on the news or on a “reality” show, the above goes double.

6. Please stop telling us horror stories about the homeschoolers you know, know of, or think you might know who ruined their lives by homeschooling. You’re probably the same little bluebird of happiness whose hobby is running up to pregnant women and inducing premature labor by telling them every ghastly birth story you’ve ever heard. We all hate you, so please go away.

7. We don’t look horrified and start quizzing your kids when we hear they’re in public school. Please stop drilling our children like potential oil fields to see if we’re doing what you consider an adequate job of homeschooling.

8. Stop assuming all homeschoolers are religious.

9. Stop assuming that if we’re religious, we must be homeschooling for religious reasons.

10. We didn’t go through all the reading, learning, thinking, weighing of options, experimenting, and worrying that goes into homeschooling just to annoy you. Really. This was a deeply personal decision, tailored to the specifics of our family. Stop taking the bare fact of our being homeschoolers as either an affront or a judgment about your own educational decisions.

11. Please stop questioning my competency and demanding to see my credentials. I didn’t have to complete a course in catering to successfully cook dinner for my family; I don’t need a degree in teaching to educate my children. If spending at least twelve years…[in] public school left me with so little information in my memory banks that I can’t teach the basics of an elementary education to my nearest and dearest, maybe there’s a reason I’m so reluctant to send my child to school.

12. If my kid’s only six and you ask me with a straight face how I can possibly teach him what he’d learn in school, please understand that you’re calling me an idiot. Don’t act shocked if I decide to respond in kind.

13. Stop assuming that because the word “home” is right there in “homeschool,” we never leave the house. We’re the ones who go to the amusement parks, museums, and zoos in the middle of the week and in the off-season and laugh at you because you have to go on weekends and holidays when it’s crowded and icky.

14. Stop assuming that because the word “school” is right there in homeschool, we must sit around at a desk for six or eight hours every day, just like your kid does. Even if we’re into the “school” side of education – and many of us prefer a more organic approach – we can burn through a lot of material a lot more efficiently, because we don’t have to gear our lessons to the lowest common denominator.

15. Stop asking, “But what about the Prom?” Even if the idea that my kid might not be able to indulge in a night of over-hyped, over-priced revelry was enough to break my heart, plenty of kids who do go to school don’t get to go to the Prom. For all you know, I’m one of them. I might still be bitter about it. So go be shallow somewhere else.

16. Don’t ask my kid if she wouldn’t rather go to school unless you don’t mind if I ask your kid if he wouldn’t rather stay home and get some sleep now and then.

17. Stop saying, “Oh, I could never homeschool!” Even if you think it’s some kind of compliment, it sounds more like you’re horrified. One of these days, I won’t bother disagreeing with you anymore.

18. If you can remember anything from chemistry or calculus class, you’re allowed to ask how we’ll teach these subjects to our kids. If you can’t, thank you for the reassurance that we couldn’t possibly do a worse job than your teachers did, and might even do a better one.

19. Stop asking about how hard it must be to be my child’s teacher as well as her parent. I don’t see much difference between bossing my kid around academically and bossing him around the way I do about everything else.

20. Stop saying that my kid is shy, outgoing, aggressive, anxious, quiet, boisterous, argumentative, pouty, fidgety, chatty, whiny, or loud because he’s homeschooled. It’s not fair that all the kids who go to school can be as annoying as they want to without being branded as representative of anything but childhood.

21. Quit assuming that my kid must be some kind of prodigy because she’s homeschooled.

22. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of prodigy because I homeschool my kids.

23. Quit assuming that I must be some kind of saint because I homeschool my kids.

24. Stop talking about all the great childhood memories my kids won’t get because they don’t go to school, unless you want me to start asking about all the not-so-great childhood memories you have because you went to school.

25. Here’s a thought: If you can’t say something nice about homeschooling … just shut up!!!

An excerpt from a column on 9/8/2009 Marcia titled: Here’s what I REALLY think (an open letter to liberals)

Dear liberal neighbors, acquaintances, friends and family,

I’m a conservative.  A political and social conservative.  I know that some of you assume that means I’m mean-spirited, selfish, intolerant, greedy, and perhaps even evil.  But before you write me off, allow me to explain what I really think.  You might be surprised to find that, at least in some areas, we want the same things.  We just disagree on how to get them.

I believe in limited government.  While I think government has many important roles to play (most importantly providing a military to protect our country), in general I believe the less government the better.  For one thing, bureaucracy too often breeds inefficiency, mediocrity, or even worse by not rewarding performance.  Anyone who’s been to his local Department of Motor Vehicles, or his post office for that matter, can attest to that.  But even if government bureaucracies worked perfectly, why would I (or anyone, for that matter) want to be subject to any more laws and regulations than I already am?  I believe I’m better at running my life than my congressman is.

As a believer in small government, it follows that I want my taxes to be as low as possible.  I prefer to spend my own money as I choose, not because I’m greedy, but because I’ll spend it more wisely and carefully because I earned it.  Government waste is a given.  And while I do believe the government should help the neediest among us, welfare states simply do not work.  Bill Clinton knew that well enough to act on it.  I believe individuals should be encouraged to be as charitable and generous as possible.  (As a Christian, I believe it’s my responsibility to help take care of people in need.)  But I also believe individuals fare better when they take responsibility for their own lives.  Dignity comes from taking responsibility, not handouts – and dignity breeds motivation. George Will summed it up nicely when he wrote that “excessively benevolent government is not a benefactor.”  I believe in equal opportunity, but I don’t believe that equal outcomes can (or should) be mandated.

I believe in personal freedom.  The less government bureaucrats have to say about my personal life, the better.  Naturally we’re all subject to the laws of the land, but it’s another thing entirely to have my family’s healthcare run by committee, for example.  Having lived through a few years without employer-provided health insurance, I know how tough that is.  I’d still prefer that to the British system in which my brother had to wait three months for an MRI to determine what a doctor here diagnosed by my description alone: that he’d suffered a stroke at the age of 38.  Guaranteed healthcare doesn’t mean much when it’s dangerously slow and just plain lousy.

Most public school systems are sad but perfect examples of how tax-supported bureaucracies simply don’t work.  As a conservative, I believe in school choice.  Not only would individual students benefit, it would inspire healthy competition and remind administrators that they are answerable to parents.

I am also a social conservative.  I believe in traditional Judeo-Christian values, and want the freedom to continue to worship as a Christian.  I also want the right to raise my children with those values.  I don’t want my children taught that the practice of homosexuality is right any more than my liberal neighbors want their children taught that it’s wrong.  Liberals who wouldn’t want their children taught Christian precepts in school should be able to understand why conservative Christians don’t want their children taught un-Christian precepts.  In fact, if public schools focused on academics and left social and moral issues to parents, we’d all be better off.  Social change dreamed up and forced on society, including children, by a few Washington insiders is a truly frightening prospect.  Too much power in the hands of a small group of any persuasion is a dangerous thing.

In a nutshell, I’m for limited government that acts to preserve opportunity and encourage personal responsibility.  I’m for small government that allows me the freedom to believe what I choose to believe, and raise my children accordingly.  I believe it’s my duty to help people in need, and that while government has a role to play in that regard, it is among the least capable of institutions to do so with positive long-term outcomes.

Ronald Reagan captured the conservative ethos in another quote from that famous 1964 speech: “[Y]ou and I have the ability and the dignity and the right to make our own decisions and determine our own destiny.”

david-horowitz-banner

F o r m e r   C o m m u n i s t

Dear Fellow American,

Barack Obama and the socialist leadership in Congress are working furiously to change America!  They want to transform our nation and they’re spending trillions of tax dollars to do it.

I am not talking about the type of misery Jimmy Carter inflicted on our nation.  Conservatives were able to reverse the course Carter had put us on.  But what we’re seeing today isn’t like anything you and I have ever seen!  I’m talking about a whole scale, radical transformation of our nation.  From our national defense to our foreign policy to our free market economic system.  Obama and company have implemented and have plans to further implement massive government control over each of us.

Americans – your friends and neighbors – do not fully realize the radical changes Barack Obama and the socialists in Congress are foisting upon our way of life!

But you do. And I do as well. Today the Obamaites, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid – the small but powerful group of left-wing radicals who are at the controls of this transformation are all disciples of the 1960s radical Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals, was the Little Red Book for the college radicals of the 1960s. I know, I was one of them.

I understand better than most Alinsky’s deep, deep hatred of America. A hate that ran so deep he wrote a blueprint for tearing our nation down. And while I outgrew and repented my anti-Americanism and came to see how great and generous our country is, many agents of the radical left never grew up.  In fact, today many of them are leaders in Congress and in our White House, all embracing Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals – the road map for turning our nation upside down.

With every passing day we see what lays behind the Administration’s piecemeal efforts to take over the car makers, the banks and the health care system: creating a new America that will bear little resemblance to the country in which we grew up.  You and I must counter this. The Freedom Center willingly takes on the Paul Revere role.  We have a massive media blitz planned detailing precisely the radical transformation we’re undergoing.

I am writing a new booklet that I must blanket on college campuses as the new school year starts.  This booklet – “Alinsky’s Rules for Obama’s Radicalism” – paints a clear picture of Barack Obama’s agenda for our nation.  And we have prepared an advertisement to run in papers around the country calling on Americans to derail this train before it’s too late.

Sincerely,

David Horowitz

President & Founder of the Freedom Center

P.S. The idea that the disciples of Saul Alinsky – a man who so hated America he detailed a plan to tear it apart – are running our nation is hard to swallow. But the facts bear it out. Stand with me and the Freedom Center as we ride like Paul Revere across the nation and sound the alarm!

I have read extensively and have personal experience with universal health care. The real fact is that Obamacare … in its present 1,000-plus-page H.R. 3200 form … cannot and will not provide the remedy required for health care reform.

We know this Obamacare House bill grants government the authority to come into homes and usurp parental rights over child care and development. But did you know that the underlying source that is spearheading this initiative behind the scenes, as “adviser” to the Obama administration, is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a bioethicist and breast oncologist and brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. And that his bible for health care reform is his book Healthcare, Guaranteed.

Dr. Emanuel has served as special adviser to the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for health policy as far back as February, when he confessed to the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times that he was “working on (the) health care reform effort.” Was this the first draft of Obamacare?

If you want to know the future of America’s universal health care, then you must understand the health care principles and plans of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. It is far more than a coincidence how much Emanuel’s book parallels Obamacare’s philosophy, strategy and proposed legislation.

First, Emanuel rejects any attempts at incremental change or reform to our health care system (Page 185). What is needed, he concludes in his book (Page 171), is an immediate and totally comprehensive reconstruction of health care as we know it. That, of course, describes the vision of Obamacare to a T.

Second, in the chapter “Opening the Door to Comprehensive Change,” starting on Page 171 (which reads more like a political and mass-manipulating strategy than a health care manual), Emanuel drives home “a key political lesson: the need to rush the legislation through.” (Seen this methodology being used lately?!)

Third, as Obama crusades around the country pitching Obamacare, he continues to avoid giving virtually any specific details of the program. That, too, is a strategy of Emanuel’s: “Americans need to avoid the policy weeds. Focusing on details will only distract and create tangles and traps (Page 183).” So “details” of health care reform are “weeds”? That is why we continue to hear only warm and fuzzy generalities from Obama, such as, “If you’ve already got health care, the only thing we’re going to do for you is we’re going to reform the insurance companies so that they can’t cheat you.”

Fourth, Emanuel describes a comprehensive government health care program that is run completely by a national health board and 12 regional health boards (“modeled on the Federal Reserve System” — Page 83). Critics would say, “But that is not the national board as described in Obamacare or H.R. 3200.” Not yet, anyway. D oes anyone doubt that the duties and power of the national “Health Benefits Advisory Committee” will morph and grow over time? And what power will it wield when it is like the Federal Reserve?

Fifth, Emanuel believes in the “phasing out of Medicare (and) Medicaid (pages 88-89 and 94-95).” Could their eventual termination be the reason Obama’s administration won’t merely reform those programs to accommodate its universal health care desires?

Sixth, Emanuel believes in ending employer-based health care (pages 109-112). As any businessman knows, why would a company pay the exorbitant costs for employees’ private health insurance when it can benefit big-time from a free ticket for government health care coverage? Some have even proposed that provisions in the House’s health care legislation, under the titles “Limitation on new enrollment” and “Limitation on changes in terms or conditions” (Page 16 of H.R. 3200), could essentially make individual private medical insurance illegal.

Seventh, Emanuel believes a universal health care program could be paid for by phasing out Medicare and Medicaid, adopting a value-added tax of at least 10%, etc., and then allowing Americans themselves to “pay extra with after-tax dollars” (Page 100) for additional medical benefits (beyond the government program). The truth is that whether the money comes from higher corporate taxes, taxing employer-provided health insurance, eliminating health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts, limiting the deductibility of medical expenses, increasing taxes on selective consumptives or the middle class, etc., or all the above, trust me; sooner or later, we all will pay.

Eighth, enough has been written lately about Emanuel’s end-of-life counsel and consultation, including withholding his advice from The Hastings Center Report (in 1996) that medical care should be withheld from those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens. … An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.”

I find it striking that Obama’s ethics similarly have allowed him already to pass more laws increasing the terminations of life in the womb than any administration since Roe v. Wade. To add insult to injury, Congress repeatedly has rejected amendments to this universal health care bill that would prevent federal funds from being used for abortions.

In short, whether in title or not, Emanuel is Obama’s health care czar. Obamacare is a junior version of Emanuelcare. Or should I say the beginning stage of Emanuelcare? What’s almost eerie is how they both could be juxtaposed to intersect in full bloom sometime in America’s future.

One last thing: Someone once said, “If two people think so much alike, you can bet that one person is not thinking.”

Think about it!

CHILDREN’S ONLINE SAFETY

Posted by straight shooter on July 31, 2009 under Education, General, Social Concerns

Making the Internet safer for children and families.

1. Let’s talk about ‘sexting,’ or the practice of sending explicit messages or photos via cell phone. How do parents deal with this issue?

One of the most important things that parents can do is to be informed and not assume that their child is immune from any type of Internet danger or risk. Actually one in five teens have admitted that they are ‘sexting,’ or have done this in the past. One of the things parents can do is not provide Internet access. You can also limit the ability to text.

2. What about social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace?

Be aware that the popular social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, do have age restrictions. However, a young person can go on and be dishonest about their age and get a social-networking profile.

If a parent decides to let their child on a social-networking site, it’s important to instruct them to keep their profiles private, so that only people within their own circle of friends can view their private information. It’s also important to let kids know that no information is truly private. The parent also needs to have access to their child’s profile. The only way the parent can view their child’s profile is if the parent has set up a profile and has been added as a friend. So, there is a tremendous amount of cyber-parenting required to keep your kids safe.

3. What about Internet or fantasy games?

Online gaming does create a number of issues and problems beyond just the violence and the fact that it can be addictive. Anytime a young person is gaming online, they can actually be playing with people that they don’t know. So any of those issues of anonymous predators can come up in the gaming world. It’s important for parents to realize that their kids can be playing with perfect strangers who may want to cause them harm.

But there are also parental controls on the popular gaming devices. We always encourage parents to use ‘rules and tools’ on all Internet-enabled devices. Whether it’s an online gaming device, a cell phone, a laptop, a desktop, you have to use safety rules and software tools. They are there so that parents can limit the amount of access that their kids have anywhere in the online world.

4. Even Internet searches can be dangerous for kids. Is there anything parents can do to lessen the danger?

Kids can access any type of content online. It’s important to recognize that the same laws and regulations that shield kids in print and broadcast, for instance, from pornography, do not necessarily apply online or are not being enforced online. Parents must use an Internet filter. This is very, very important. Filters will catch 95-plus percent of the inappropriate content.

What is so nice about them is that you can set different filter levels for different ages of kids in your household, and they allow you to block different categories as well. Most search engines have a preference level so you can have filtered search results, but a parent has got to go and turn those on. If you don’t know how, then learn or don’t give them access. Parents are the stewards of their children’s innocence.

5. What about file sharing, peer-to-peer networks and that sort of thing?

Peer-to-peer file-sharing networks are the most difficult parts of the Internet to effectively safeguard your children because they are passing from computer to computer. Many of the filters and parental control companies will actually allow you to block all the file-sharing programs. The bottom line is you can’t filter file-sharing programs, so blocking is the only way to stop that.

Socialism

THE BLINDING OF THE AMERICAN PUBLIC

Posted by straight shooter on July 9, 2009 under Education, General, Homosexuality, Political, Social Concerns

The blindness of the American public has been developing by intention since the 1960’s. Most special interest rights groups were targeted by Marxists for ideological control. (Told by a one time member of the American Communist Party.) If Marxists expressed themselves as “communists” no one would have listened to them. Instead, they worked their way into the leadership of various advocacy groups and began conning people within the groups and changing the ideology to a socialistic one. Thus, so called “women’s rights” groups could care less about the rights of conservative women, or Christian women, or women who oppose abortion, etc. To them all that matters is the socialist agenda as far as it can be advanced by women, or Blacks, or Hispanics, or the environment, etc. They are used as pawns.

The media and public school systems were also a primary target of Marxists, just as Marx exhorted them to do. Our young people, and young voters, are showing the effects of this kind of “brain washing” today. Brain washing from indoctrinated professors and teachers utilizing revisionist textbooks and materials that are tailored to the message they desire to have communicated.

This causes people, and special interest groups, today to be willing to see and embrace what they want from Obama, and at the same time steadfastly ignore what is wrong in the consequences of such actions.

I hope that enough people will come to their senses, see Obama and other liberals/socialists for the con artists they are, and where all of this is heading to, if the behavior doesn’t change and put an end to voting these crazy narcissists into office.