George Rebane
The flowering Obamagate scandals are simply “controversies” as National Propaganda Radio spent a great deal of time this morning assuring its audience. Nothing special here, the President always comes out to the formally prepared East Room in the evenings to remark on little kerfuffles or differences of opinion. Everyone go back to sleep.
Pioneer aviator Lyman Gilmore was celebrated yesterday at the school of his name. There was a big ceremony for students and speakers to recognize Nevada County’s contribution to early aviation. The event included an organized overflight by a large group of local aviators, some of them with national reputations. The flight was comprised of 18 private aircraft led by Jim Booth in his now familiar yellow AT-6 warbird followed in close formation by three members of the Ryder Flight. Getting all those airplanes in the air, oriented and lined up, and then back on the ground on a very windy day was a grand feat of organization and heads up piloting by all participants – H/T to our own Bob Hobert (Ryder Flight leader and RR reader, who also sent me the pic) for organizing and getting everyone briefed and debriefed. I was happy to be invited by Jim to again fly in the rear seat of the T-6.
“Untruth” versus lie. The media, led by Fox News, seems to have some problem with those terms. Even the conservative Dr Charles Krauthammer (around our house known as ‘The Bonze’), their most noble of nationally syndicated commentators, dripping with gravitas, can’t bring himself to call a lie a lie – well, he did once last night. On the air politicians aren’t lying, they’re telling “untruths”. For us with simpler minds, an untruth is any statement that is not true independent of the intent behind its utterance – misreading a clock and then falsely reporting the time is an untruth. A lie is a known untruth told with intent to deceive. Most politicians are inveterate liars, it’s part of the job requirements – let’s call a spade a spade when their lies are obvious to the whole country.
Rosa Koire will present an update on Agenda21, and how this UN inititiative has been making progress ‘Behind the Green Mask’. Here’s the info –
When: Tuesday May 21, 2013, 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
Where: Grass Valley Veterans Hall, 225 S. Auburn Street, Grass Valley
Admission: $20 at the door; $15 in advance
Advance tickets: BriarPatch Co-op, online at www.cabpro.net (special events tab) or by calling CABPRO (530) 478-1331
Those of us a bit paranoid about government training guns on its own citizens (aka us), should keep their eye peeled on the first steps that our military has now taken in this direction. Obama’s Pentagon has “unilaterally” granted itself powers to aid local law enforcement agencies to curb “civil disturbances” by changing some wording in the US Code covering ‘Defense Support of Civilian Law Enforcement Agencies’ (more here).
[update] New speech codes will be sweeping the nation starting with the college campuses and the revision of what consists of sexually harrassing speech. This will not stop with either the campuses or sexual harrassment. All the while our astute progressives are protesting, 'What new regulations? there're no more new regulations. And let's talk about Bush instead.' Obama's fundamental transformation is on a roll. (more here).
[18may13 update] Well, it looks like it's CYA time in embassy land, at least in the mid-eastern part of the world. Now that everyone's attention is on the Benghazi debacle, tragedy, and cover-up, no ambassador in that part of the world is going to be left behind in alerting the mother temple (aka Foggy Bottom) that threats to their embassies and consulates are increasing. (more here) For sure Kerry is not going to hang on to Hillary's hand as he helps Obama throw her under the bus. So we are sure to see some visible muscle deployed closer to where the action is anticipated. And playing his cards right, maybe ol' John can emerge out of all this as the new, improved, and heroic hopeful for 2016. Crazier things have happened.
CTA on ‘cultural competency’ – a peek into the pus
The American school is one place where a student new to our country should unambiguously learn what are our customs, language norms, behavioral protocols, dress codes, etc in the course of being taught the subject matter for which he is attending class. There is already precious little time to get the lesson into the little darlings’ heads without detours to account for what may or not be familiar or acceptable to one or another student. The lesson behind the lesson that the foreign student should learn is that when he’s in American society, then do as Americans do. His home and relatives, not the classroom, are the place and people to teach, practice, and perpetuate his culture of origin.
The fundamental lesson to be learned is that we Americans respect your culture to the extent that you learn and practice America’s culture when in our public arena. We want you to become at one with us, and not the other way around. Diluting that effort to acculturate foreign students in our schools in order to demonstrate ‘cultural competency’ works to impede, or at least slow down, assimilation. And this goes doubly for students who come from global cultures which have already self-declared and demonstrated themselves to be inimical to traditional American values and mores. (As a non-English speaker from Europe, I was among the tens of thousands of foreign kids fortunate enough to have been introduced to America in public schools at a time when such progressive impediments were not in vogue.)
In sum, this is yet another illustration from the catalog of crap that burdens unionized teachers in public education to the ultimate detriment of us all.
Posted at 11:21 AM in Agenda 21, California, Culture Comments, Our Country | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)