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What They've Thought
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What They Thought November 6, 2005 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
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The President’s participation in the fourth Summit of the Americas representing 33 Latin American nations, focuses attention on that very big continent to the south of us. We tend to ignore it most of the time. It is right on our doorstep as we share 2,000 miles of a common border with Mexico and it proceeds from there down to Tierra Del Fuego at the tip end of Argentina. The White House press briefing prior to the Summit was filled with phrases such as “a strategic partner” (Panama) and “a global democratic partner” (Brazil). Air Force One will get a workout as the President visits both countries after the Argentinean summit meeting. Behind the smiles and handshakes, however, there’s another story. Since the 1950’s Fidel Castro has been running his own little communist paradise in Cuba. Not far away in Venezuela, his biggest fan, Hugo Chavez, is busy imposing communism there. Having come to power in a coup in 1999, he has been increasing the government’s control over the entire economy ever since. Since Venezuela is a provider of oil to the U.S. and since Chavez is using that money to stir up all kinds of trouble for us, we will, sooner rather than later, be unable to ignore him or the rest of the continent. Even at this early stage in the game, it’s beginning to look like we are going to have to eventually “liberate” Venezuela. Chavez is no shrinking violet. He continually calls the U.S. “the imperialist power” and “the world’s most evil regime.” Chavez has become a little globetrotter, meeting with Mohammad Khatami, Iran’s former president, and Moammar Gaddafi, Libya’s dictator. He’s made an oil deal with China and has announced a major weapons purchase from Russia, Brazil, and Spain. Need it be said that, with the rise in the price of oil, he is swimming in money? Major Juan Diaz Castillo, Chavez’s former Air Force Operations Chief who defected, revealed that Chavez has been busy donating money to al Qaeda, is protecting and helping train Colombian and Arab terrorists, and “is working to form a bloc of countries to fight the U.S.” So Venezuela is a big problem even if most of the population does not support him, but like Cubans, has little opportunity to overthrow Chavez. Another admirer of Castro is the president of Brazil, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva. His other heroes include Saddam Hussein and Hugo Chavez. His government and military is chock full of communist party officials and other leftist radicals. In a March commentary, “Caudillos to Communism”, Gordon Frisch takes the reader on a travelogue that spells big trouble to the south of us. Frisch spent more than twenty years in oil and gas exploration, working in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. For the last 17 years he has edited a financial and geopolitical newsletter. Writing about Argentina, Frisch notes that “The Pew Research Center says that anti-Americanism is the highest in Argentina of any Latin American country at 73%.” Its president is Nestor Kirchner who has plans for the “Cubanization” of Latin America that mirror similar movements in Uruguay, Bolivia, and Peru. Geopolitical experts, however, contend that Argentina, Brazil and Chile will stay friendly to U.S. interests because their economies are better developed, are growing, and will benefit far more by trade with us than by going the route of Venezuela. Maybe. In Ecuador, the president, Lucio Gutierrez, was a militant member of the Marxist Peronist Party. In Bolivia, Frisch puts his money on Evo Morales of the leftist MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) Party to be the next president. You could put the names of most Latin American nations into a hat and, no matter what you pulled out you would find Leftists. Even Chile, a U.S. ally and widely considered to be the only free, democratic nation on the continent, has a new president, Ricardo Lagos, a militant socialist who was that nation’s ambassador to the former Soviet Union under the Marxist Allende government from 1970 to 1973. The CIA helped get Chile’s president, Salvador Allende, overthrown. It is one of its best-known success stories and one can only hope that the CIA has a big room in its headquarters with maps of Latin American nations on the walls and plans to deal with its current crop of communists. Ronald Reagan did his best to thwart the control of Nicaragua by the Sandanistas, but they are back in power. Former President Carter will be remembered for relinquishing U.S. control of the Panama Canal. Today in a nation of only two million people, 40,000 of them are legal Chinese residents and another 150,000 Chinese are not. When the U.S. withdrew, Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong-based front company for the People’s Liberation Army and the communist party, leased and now controls port facilities at both ends of the Canal. As Frisch puts it, “Panama is close to becoming a de facto Chinese puppet.” It was once our puppet, bought and paid for by Theodore Roosevelt and the U.S. funding that built the Canal. And it is a chokehold that can deny our navy from moving its ships from the Atlantic to the Pacific or vice versa. This holds true for all commercial traffic as well. Little wonder that, in November 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao took a two-week tour of Latin America making all kinds of deals throughout a continent that is rich in natural resources and is home to many communist parties, and a phalanx of narco-terrorist groups that make the Middle East look like a vacation spot. Latin America, if it continues to pursue a Socialist/Communist future, could turn out to be the next destination for the U.S. military after it gets through changing hearts and minds in the Middle East. |
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Millionaires and the poor have one thing in common and it quite simply is the ability to repeat their results with alarming regularity. In Mexico they have had several land reforms wherein they took from the rich and gave to the poor. Each and every time they did this within a few generations the same families were right back to being haves and have-nots. If one looks at any millionaire these days, and even in the past, one can see that most of them went from rags to riches and back to rags a few times before they managed to keep it and stay on top. Look at the usual winner of any lotto and you’ll see the same thing. They had nothing and in a matter of a few years they once again had nothing and were soon in worse shape than they had been in the first place. This is because our perspectives on life have consequences. There is a "poor" way of thinking, a "rich" way of thinking and a "middle-class" way of thinking. There have been several incidents lately that the liberal media won’t touch. I guess I should say the mainstream liberal media. I guess the evil bloggers will have to drive these stories into the mainstream so we can all have a rational discussion. That seems to be the way things get done these days. One incident is the Maryland elections for Lt. Governor. Michael Steele is running for that office and the black Democratic leaders in that state have justified the racially driven smears against him. They see a major problem with him: He isn’t a liberal. They yelled "Uncle Tom" and threw Oreos at him. One blogger from the left painted nice big red lips and frosty white eyebrows on him. They say his views are anti-black. In North Carolina there was an instructor for the N.C. State’s Africana Program who said that white people are the problem and they need to be exterminated from the face of the Earth. His name is Kamao Kambon. He said a lot of other things that if a white person said them about any minority they would have been demonized and dragged through the streets. There is one school teacher I saw in the news lately who is suing her school district because, when she tried to actually do something about a student she had who was threatening her sexually and with other forms of violence, she was fired. She was told that his cursing at her in class and acting the way he does is just "part of their culture." I hope she takes these people to the cleaners and gets every one of them fired. If there were a white supremecist student doing the same thing, he would be the one in trouble, and justifiably so. Those who are in power and justify these types of actions aren’t helping these people. They are teaching them that black racism is okay and don’t worry about the white racism because we’ve got them under control. What will happen to the kids taught by these jerks? They won’t be able to read or write because that didn’t matter as much as their feelings. They will be uncivilized and won’t be able to get anywhere in life, and they’ll blame everyone but the people who taught them it was okay to act like that. To me the most disturbing part of this is that it is so prevalent. Black kids who do well in school get the Michael Steele treatment from their peers. This happens at a time in their lives when fitting in matters the most. So it is a cycle that is very difficult to break. It is obvious that busing didn’t help very much either. We seem to be worse off now than we were when they started busing. That is because of the people at the top in their organizations. Let’s look at that comment they made as they justified their actions. What is anti-black these days? (Other than those who keep leading them down the same sad paths so many of them are on.) It is an ideology that speaks no longer of racial equality, but of economic equality. Simply put, that is communism or socialism. It is obviously no longer about race so much as it is about an economic ideology that always fails. At the top of that pile of noisy malcontents we see rich people who’ve become fat on their donations. They are the ones who will perpetuate this sad mess. Here is a simple little rule that we should judge any of these action by: If a white person would get into trouble for it so should a black person. If a media source is afraid to get the discussion out into the open they should from that moment forward be regarded as a major part of the problem. If we don’t deal with this problem openly and rationally, we’re going to look like New Orleans did recently. I now look at Katrina as the Cat In The Hat storm. That great big pink stain is now all over the place. Another place that should be teaching all of us a lesson is France. They’ve just gone through well over a week of well-organized violence. These rioters are mostly Middle Eastern, but their problems sound somewhat familiar except for that little Jihadist excuse that’s so popular over there. I keep expecting to pick up a paper and see that Jacques Chirac has ceded the entire country to them and fled to Elba. Reference Links: http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20051101-104932-4054r.htm R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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For many years, Americans have wondered what it would be like to have a female president. This fall, ABC decided to answer that question by installing Geena Davis in the White House as President Mackenzie Allen in the new fall drama, Commander In Chief. Ostensibly, this is a show that’s supposed to make women feel good about themselves. Moreover, it’s a show that’s supposed to let working moms know they can do anything if they put their minds to it—even if it means balancing national security, a relentless press, and cunning political opponents with having a husband and kids. Basically, it’s the same fairytale they’ve been drilling into schoolchildren’s heads for decades—the one that says if you turn in your homework, brush your teeth, and go to bed when you’re told to, even you can become president some day. Only in this fairytale, the hero isn’t a prince. She’s a princess. And in the end, she becomes the queen. Well, from what I understand, audiences are eating this up at the moment. Commander In Chief is the fall season’s “most watched” new show. To me, this doesn’t mean anything. Third Rock from the Sun was probably the “most watched” new show once, too. Chief’s actors walk and talk like they’ve got one of Bill Clinton’s famous cigars up their butts. The dialogue sounds like a script full of stage directions. The plots are thin. And the characters are as flat as dime store training bras. But I’m fine with that. It’s a terrible program, but, hey, if it makes working mothers feel good about themselves—great. That’s all that matters. Lord knows, it’s no worse than Lifetime. And besides, they’re a segment of the population that doesn’t get to watch nearly enough TV. But the problem I have with this show isn’t that it targets working mothers as an audience. It’s that it plays off their very worst fears. And far from advancing the cause for women, it suggests that, to be successful, women should act more like men. Take the October 25th episode, for instance. In it, the president learns that a terrorist has been captured crossing the Canadian border with a bunch of explosives. [Cue Emmy Award-winning melodrama.] Now, right off the bat, the mind races with possibilities. Where was this terrorist headed? The Hoover Dam, maybe? An oil refinery? A skyscraper? A bridge? A highway? A nuclear power plant? Or hell, Trump Taj Mahal? No. Our country is a land of many landmarks, and this terrorist basically has his choice of any one of them. But where does it turn out he was headed with those explosives? An elementary school in Missouri. That’s right. An elementary school. In Missouri. And he came all the way from Saudi Arabia to do this. Soon we learn that this terrorist was part of a cell with designs on blowing up no less than four—count ‘em, four—elementary schools in Missouri. All in an apparent attempt to ruin Halloween for Geena Davis’s six-year-old kid. Luckily, we go to commercial after learning this, and when we come back all the bad guys have been magically captured. Case closed. Roll the credits. Time for Boston Legal. But see what I mean by playing off working mothers’ fears? Just think about the scenario here. Terrorists blowing up school buildings. It’s like Usama bin Laden meets Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Working moms bite their nails at the mere thought of it. Why would terrorists do this, though? Where’s the strategic value in blowing up elementary schools? Are they worried the kids might be learning about freedom in there? I’m not saying terrorists wouldn’t bomb schools, necessarily. Those guys who held a school hostage in Russia certainly proved they would. But my point is, Geena Davis doesn’t know why they’d do it. And more importantly, she doesn’t care. Like her, we’re just supposed to accept that evil men from Saudi Arabia are out to kill random Midwestern schoolchildren. And like her, we’re supposed to accept that this is what you get when you send your kids to be with strangers every day. Like many of the men who held the office before her, America’s first female president doesn’t have the balls to consider how having American troops in 130 countries may be inspiring terrorism, or how, if nothing else, it spreads thin the armed forces and leaves us largely undefended back home. She just takes the reins of America’s empire, safe in the knowledge that these are dangerous times. Every English teacher I ever had tried to convince me men caused most of the problems in this world. But maybe war, power, aggression, and so on have less to do with penises than with who wears the pants. It’s accepted as fact in this country that for women to get ahead, lots of times, they have to act like men. That’s fine. Every woman is her own person anyway. Some might act like men naturally. I’m just not sure why working moms are supposed to feel good about this. “Mac” Allen may be America’s first female president. And her opposition to such things as torture may show her kinder, gentler side. But when push comes to shove, she still assumes a father figure position. Which isn’t a knock on fathers, mind you. It just makes me wonder why having a working mom as president is supposed to be some big kind of deal. Commander In Chief isn’t going away any time soon. I’m relatively sure of this. So if people want to watch it, great. Let them. I just happen to think they’re watching it for the wrong reasons. This show lacks the capacity to depict a president—any president—with any amount of depth. The only reason people are watching it is because she’s a female. And, to me, that’s the wrong reason to throw your weight behind a president—even a fictional one. Maybe I’m missing the point here. Maybe I’m watching this show from the wrong side of the gender inequity fence. (Hey, I’m a guy. My team is 43-0 when it comes to winning the White House.) But if you ask me, two other ABC hits—Desperate Housewives and Wife Swap—do more to make women feel good about being women than Commander In Chief, with its [Insert Authoritarian Here] mentality, ever could. Though, of course, neither of those shows conveniently pave the way for Condi Rice vs. Hillary Clinton… Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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Two separate bills were proposed this week, one in the House and one in the Senate, each to determine how to pay the cost of educating the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Both bills would allow funding to make its way outside the public school system. But that is where the similarity ends. The first bill, H. R. 4097, called The Family Education Reimbursement Act, was introduced by Reps. John Boehner (R-OH) and Bobby Jindal (R-LA) on Thursday, October 20, 2005. It is an innovative and progressive bill which would, “allow families and schools to bypass existing bureaucracies” 1 and instead follow a simple, one-time enrollment process which would establish an account of up to $6700.00 for use by each child, pre-K to 12th grade. This money would be used to reimburse any public, private, or charter school enrolling the student. “The accounts will be available to families for the duration of the 2005-2006 school year. When the school year is complete, any unused balance will be credited back to the federal Treasury. This will ensure that resources are available throughout the school year for families, while taxpayer dollars are accounted for at the program’s close.” 2 The second bill, unnumbered, is part of larger emergency recovery bill and known as “Equitable Participation”. It was introduced by Sens.Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) with Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-CT) on Friday, October 21, 2005. It is obvious that Kennedy was playing both sides of the aisle, towing the NEA line and proposing that 2.4 billion in federal aid would be left in the hands of the public schools; while giving them the authorization to redistribute up to $6000.00 per child and $7500.00 per disabled child to public, private, or religious schools –based on the number of displaced students presently enrolled. Although the usual suspects are screaming about both bills being vouchers because they provide public money for students to attend private schools, the contrast between their proposed applications is almost laughable if Kennedy’s idea wasn’t expected to be taken seriously. The difference in quality between the above proposals is strikingly similar to those introduced at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Madison painstakingly constructed The Virginia Plan over several months while the New Jersey Plan was slapped together in a few days. Both plans were taken under consideration when the framers of our constitution got together in Philadelphia that long summer to modify The Articles of Confederation. In the long run, The Virginia Plan; a radical departure from the stated intentions of the convention and which basically created a new constitution, was adopted over the New Jersey Plan; which would have preserved the essential nature of the Articles of Confederation, understood at that time to be ineffective. The rest is history. The Enzi-Kennedy proposal would essentially maintain the status quo public school monopoly over education and is clearly intended to placate the NEA who circulated a letter opposing a more streamlined approach to hurricane relief and opting instead to force displaced victims to navigate the existing education bureaucracy. Regarding that same letter, Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner (R-OH) said, “It's disappointing that even in a time of crisis, the NEA is not willing to relinquish its stranglehold on bureaucracy and consider new ideas to meet the needs of individuals affected by these unprecedented natural disasters." 3 The Family Education Reimbursement Act, “calls for an experienced, independent contractor to act quickly to establish a system that would reimburse schools.” 4 The money from the accounts could be used to reimburse multiple schools because it follows the child. The Boehner bill takes into consideration that hurricane victims are still finding new places to live. Allowing the money to follow the child will ensure that all schools will get reimbursed for the time each student spends in that school. The Kennedy plan would credit schools for currently enrolled displaced students, but if some students move away and enroll in different schools, those schools would not be reimbursed for the cost of educating these transfers. Ted Kennedy is on
record stating that “This bill puts the interests of the children
victimized by Katrina ahead of politics and ideological battles."
5 3, 4
Education
Leaders Criticize NEA for Politicizing Hurricane Education Relief Nancy Salvato Web Site Contact Back to Top |
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No column this week.
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©2004-2005 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
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