Edumication

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Sat 8 Nov 2008 02:10

Black North Carolina pro-Obama teacher caught on tape belittling deployed soldier’s daughter for supporting McCain

Posted by: T2M
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[Teacher Diantha Harris belittles Kathy, a deployed soldier’s daughter for supporting John McCain. Listen as Harris lies about not belittling the student at the end of the tape]

The election may be over, but more allegations of political bias in public schools are surfacing. 

A North Carolina superintendent said Friday that he was "shocked" after viewing video footage of an elementary school teacher harshly questioning a student in class for supporting John McCain.

William Harrison, superintendent of Cumberland County Schools in Fayetteville, has launched an investigation of the teacher, Diatha Harris, and has promised to bring disciplinary action.

In a video produced by a Swedish production company and posted on YouTube, Harris is seen asking her elementary school students whom they support for president. She tells them that they can support whomever they want, but when one student says John McCain, Harris responds derisively, "Oh my, John McCain." When another student said she supports McCain, Harris replies, "Oh Jesus, John McCain."

Harris also asks a female student to explain why she supports Obama, to which the student replies that Obama meant change — such as ending the war in Iraq.

"So in other words, Barack is going to end that war in Iraq," Harris said before turning to a girl who had announced her support for McCain. "Now talk to me, because your dad is in the military. Talk."

The student doesn’t say anything, but Harris goes on.

"It’s a senseless war. And by the way, the person that you’re picking for president said that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to," Harris said. "So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years."

Public school teachers are allowed to discuss politics in the classroom but are required by law to present issues from all political sides and not press agendas.

Harrison said he found the military aspect of the interaction especially worrying and promised to take action.

"Most disconcerting was the military slant that made its way into this discussion. We are a military community, serving over 15,000 military students and their families. We value the sacrifices, not only of the military parents but also those of their families," he wrote Friday in a statement on the Cumberland County Schools’ Web site.

He continued: "Please be assured that the actions exhibited in this video are not consistent with the vision of the CCS. Moreover, the actions of one teacher do not represent the 7000 employees in our organization."

Click here to read the full statement.

The video was part of "From Bill to Barack," a Swedish documentary that followed up with average Americans who had been thrown into the spotlight in the 1992 election. Harris was featured because her ex-husband, Roy Harris, had convinced former President Bush to come into his North Carolina living room and tell his children what he had done for them.

Harrison said that once the video was brought to his attention, he immediately launched an investigation. "Personnel laws prevent me from releasing information regarding individual employees and personnel action taken. I can assure you that upon completion of the investigation, I will take appropriate action," he said.

A receptionist at Mary McArthur Elementary School said that Harris did not want to comment on the case. Wanda McPhaul, Assistant Superintendent of Cumberland County Schools, said that she would not release the name of the student involved or pass a message on to the family.

This wasn’t the first time the 2008 presidential election became fodder for an education controversy.

In October, an eighth-grade literature textbook used in public schools came under fire for including pages featuring Barack Obama’s 1995 autobiography, "Dreams on My Father."

And a video came out in October titled "Obama Youth –Junior Fraternity Regiment," in which African American students marched into a classroom and repeated a mantra about how Obama had inspired them. The display was organized by a teacher at the Urban Community Leadership Academy, a public charter school.

In September, a school came under fire for suspending an 11-year-old boy because he wore an anti-Obama shirt to school.

Source

 

Fri 24 Oct 2008 12:46

Do Americans Understand What Socialism Is?

Posted by: T2M
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By Frank Salvato

Barack Obama’s short but illuminating conversation with Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher has ushered the subject of Socialism to center stage. By stating that he champions an economic policy that would “spread the wealth around,” Senator Obama alarmed many Americans who recognize the parallels between his statement and one espoused by French Socialist Louis Blanc in 1840:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
In defense of his statement, Obama, his campaign and his massive army of Obamabot surrogates have come out hard against those who are making the correlation between the Obama economic agenda and the Marxist economic model.
During a campaign stop in Richmond, Virginia, Obama scoffed at the charge that his economic policies were born of Socialist ideology and the Marxist influence predominant among the adults who surrounded him in his youth, calling the use of such "implausible" arguments an, "indication they have run out of ideas."
A barrage of callers to conservatives talk radio programs – not surprisingly the overwhelming majority of them Black, took an indignant tone calling any and all criticism of Barack Obama’s economic policies – and for that matter any criticism of Barack Obama at all – as an emanation of the underlying racism that exists in each and every Caucasian heart in the United States…not among other races, not among the Black population, just the Caucasian race.
One Kansas City Star editorialist, Lewis Diuguid, concurred with the talk radio program callers in declaring, albeit in that publication’s blog and at great homage to the art of “spin,” that those noting the similarities between “spreading the wealth around” and wealth redistribution are “racist.” We are, of course, well within our purview in declaring that the mainstream media has become increasingly irrelevant in matters of fact and honesty, especially where the 2008 election is concerned.
The “instant-on” protestation of Obama, his campaign and his Obamabots indicate one of three things:
1) They are angry that someone has finally had the nerve to call them out on the inequitable practice of wealth redistribution; rewarding the non-productive among us with other people’s hard earned wages.
2) They are arrogantly over-exposing their penchant for playing the race card whenever someone doesn’t immediately roll-over and give them exactly what they want, degrading the hardships, sacrifices and accomplishments of generations past.
3) They have absolutely no clue as to what Socialism is.
Socialism, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is defined as:
“Any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods; A system of society or group living in which there is no private property; A stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done.”
So, what does this mean?
Socialism promotes increased government control over the private sector, both socially and in business. It is achieved by instituting a system that redistributes wealth in an effort to artificially equalize wealth in society, regardless of productivity. When a politician says – in no uncertain terms – that he believes it is a good thing to excessively taxing the productive only to redistribute those extracted taxes to the non-productive, exclusively for the sake of altering the social status of individuals, he possesses a Socialist ideology.
The belief that government has the authority to take a citizen’s earnings, no matter what the amount, to bestow it upon another citizen in a quest to socially engineer a more equitable society is squarely rooted in Socialist dogma. This belief is championed and possessed by Barack Obama and is proven beyond doubt in his statement to Samuel Wurzelbacher:
“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody.” (Emphasis mine).
The complete text of Karl Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program statement is as follows:
“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
Some say that Barack Obama is a great orator. Other say he reads the teleprompter pretty well. And still others think that he is simply a political con-artist specializing in bovine feces. But after comparing Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Program statement and Obama’s “Joe the Plumber” statement I think it is safe to say that Barack Obama is, simply put, a well-marketed Democratic Socialist peddling a pathetic and failed ideology under the guise of “hope” and “change,” just like Fidel Castro circa 1959.
And there’s nothing “racist” about that.
 

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