Knowledge Creates Power

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Obama’s Sept. 8th Speech to America’s Schoolchildren

President Obama told a student reporter last month that he would be making an address to schoolchildren on September 8th, 2009:

ServiceWire has the announcement and broadcast schedule for the speech.

The Daily Paul picked up the story last week and linked to teachers’ manuals pegged to Obama’s address, which have now been linked on Drudge.

The questions we are hearing from parents is:

What is the Obama’s agenda?

Is this brainwashing step one?

Is this the first step to Americorps?

The documents have a heavy activist bent:

During the Speech:

• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate. As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

What is the President trying to tell me?

What is the President asking me to do?

What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something. Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

• Students can record any questions they have while he is speaking and then discuss them after the speech. Younger children may need to dictate their questions.

After the Speech:

• Teachers could ask students to share the ideas they recorded, exchange sticky notes or stick notes on a butcher paper poster in the classroom to discuss main ideas from the speech, i.e. citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty.
• Students could discuss their responses to the following questions:

What do you think the President wants us to do?

Does the speech make you want to do anything?

Are we able to do what President Obama is asking of us?

Partial transcript:

Harris:We want to talk about the presidential election. I want to ask you, who are you pulling for? Raise your hand.

Student: Obama.

Harris: You pullin for Obama. Who you pullin for?

Student: Obama.

Harris:Any of you pullin for John McCain? That’s fine, say him as well.

Student: Obama.

[Cathy, the daughter of an American soldier answers McCain.]

Harris: John, oh lord, John McCain.

Oh Jesus, John McCain.

Ok, now I wanna axe you somethin.

Why are you pullin for John McCain? It’s ok, but why are you pullin for John McCain?

Cathy: I thinks it’s because my parents are going for him too.

Harris: Ok, your parents are going for him. Why are you pullin for Ba-RACK. Barack.

Student: I just want a black president sometimes.

Ok, you want a black president.

Student: The reason why I want Barack Obama is because he’s making good changes in the good country and stuff like that.

Harris: So, he’s making good changes for our country. Now can you tell me just a little bit more, like what type of changes?

Like not having big fights between Iraq and having soldiers killed.

So in other words, Barack is going to end that war in Iraq. What do you all know about that war in Iraq?

[Harris addresses Kathy] Talk, cause yo daddy in the military. Talk. It’s a senseless war! And by the way, Cathy, the person that you’re picking for president said that our troops could stay in Iraq for another hundred years if they need to!

[Camera pans to Cathy, in near tears.]

Harris: So that means that your daddy could stay in the military for another hundred years!

Reason number 999,999,965 to take control of your own children’s education.

GLENN COOK: Politically correct mumbo-jumbo in our schools

Do you fret about whether you're raising your child correctly? Not to worry. Even if you're deeply involved in your children's lives and happy with their social development, you have an eager partner in rearing your offspring: the Clark County School District.

Of course, the district's ideas of what qualities make up a model youngster are probably very different from yours. But hey, we all have time to do a little debriefing after homework every night, right?

Monday was the first day of the new school year, and it proved to be more of a learning experience for me than it was for my fifth-grader. He brought home a pile of papers last week that included the 12-page school district booklet, "Elementary Students: Behaving Positively at School."

I opened it, wanting to make sure I was familiar with the guidelines regarding bullying, drugs, classroom disruptions and other legitimate school concerns. Instead, I was greeted by a full page of mind-numbing, politically correct mumbo-jumbo under the headline, "The Challenge of Excellence -- Be Positive!"

The page highlights the "six qualities believed to be basic to positive human conduct": integrity, respect, responsibility, courage, justice and empathy. Worthy enough -- to a point.

Unfortunately, most of the 34 bullet points that follow have nothing to with those six qualities, and certainly have nothing to do with helping kids master their multiplication tables and learn how to spell. A sampling of the pap includes (keep in mind, this is for elementary students):

-- "Working for peace in the global village"

-- "Acknowledging prejudices and striving to overcome them"

-- "Displaying the courage to be imperfect"

-- "Practicing diligence"

-- "Striving to change long standing habits and replace them with open, searching minds"

-- Providing "opportunities that enable them to be fair to themselves and others"

-- "Struggling with unsettled questions to gain understanding or insight"

-- "Recognizing the interdependence among peoples"

-- "Seeking social justice"

Those last two nuggets aren't character-development tools -- they're political ideals. "Social justice" is the new rallying cry for egalitarianism, the belief that everyone should enjoy the same social and economic standing regardless of their abilities or contributions. It is a philosophy, increasingly embraced by far-left Democrats, that seeks not merely equal opportunities, but equal outcomes through the redistribution of wealth and the imposition of racial, ethnic, gender-identity and sexual orientation quotas on darn near everything.

It's this kind of rubbish that makes parents, taxpayers and employers question whether school systems are focused on indoctrinating students instead of educating them.

"This is what we're looking for, with the goal of producing responsible citizens," school district spokesman Michael Rodriguez said of the page. "These are the kind of citizens that society ultimately expects from its education system."

Really? Did I miss the vote on that? Yes, society counts on children becoming law-abiding, productive adults, but it expects parents and families to provide that guidance, not schools.

The sheet's list of bullet points includes behavioral no-brainers such as "treat others as you would like to be treated" and "thinking about consequences of decisions," but most of the claptrap is redundant or contradictory, unfit for a self-help paperback. Under "integrity," kids are urged to embrace "working with people of different views." Under "courage," they're told to value "listening carefully to others with varying viewpoints," and under "empathy," the message is "building rapport by appreciating other's (sic) ideas and opinions."

But the "integrity" heading also advises "taking a stand on issues."

In elementary school? Are these people serious?

"This is something that goes back to the Carlos Garcia years," Associate Superintendent Edward Goldman said of the sheet and the district's former chief executive, who quit in 2005. "We have literally thousands of documents, and unless something comes up, we don't update them all. We have to get direction from the brass to change it."

Don't expect that direction to come from the School Board. Last year, voters chose Linda Young, the district's longtime director of the Equity and Diversity Education Department, over Ronan Matthew, one of the finest high school principals this valley has ever had, for the District C seat. Young has made an entire career out of emphasizing feel-good gobbledygook over academic substance.

Her interview with the Review-Journal's editorial board last fall was quite revealing. Young was discussing what she thought were the qualifications most important in a good teacher, and was asked where she would rank a teacher's knowledge of subject matter among those qualifications. Young said that actually knowing what you're supposed to teach ranked somewhere between fifth and eighth, far behind making kids comfortable in class, being able to understand their feelings, and being able to tell whether they're eating properly.

Seriously.

There's irony in the fact that most teachers roll their eyes and laugh about this nonsense. Goldman said elementary teachers probably have never even seen the sheet that my son brought home. These instructors are far too busy managing their classrooms, moving through material and handing out discipline to worry about whether little Johnny is spending enough time "working for peace in the global village."

Rather, this blather is reflective of the culture that dominates the administration of public school districts. These are people who've been subjected to years and years of soul-crushing windbaggery in this country's colleges of education in order to receive the master's degrees and doctorates required to climb the leadership ladder and bump up their pay.

If anyone in the administration were ever brave enough to question why the district was wasting paper -- and the time of parents -- pointing out the "six qualities believed to be basic to positive human conduct," they'd be exposed as heretics. They'd be punished.

UNLV's Office of Diversity and Inclusion -- headed by a radical education professor -- actually lobbied the Legislature this year to greatly expand the time spent on a "comprehensive multiculturalism curriculum" in all Nevada elementary schools. Thankfully, the legislation died.

These people don't trust you to take the time to talk to your children about all the differences that you and your kids don't notice and don't care about. So it leaks into public education -- sometimes in drips, sometimes in gushers -- through politically correct textbooks, worksheets and booklets from headquarters.

All this serves as yet another warning to parents that if you don't take the time to impart values and explain the world we live in, the state will be more than happy to do it for you.

Glenn Cook (gcook@reviewjournal.com) is a Review-Journal editorial writer.

More Columns by Glenn

Source: MichelleMalkin.com/reviewjournal.com

And if you haven’t, before you have your kids read one of the books on Obama, mostly written by him, perhaps you want to read the, first!?!

Obama Perhaps Too Personally Conflicted About Both Race and Religion to be a Post Racial Person

Obama's friends
Wondering what President Obama is thinking? That's easy -- take the President's very own advice. In the third Presidential debate he told America if they wanted to know how he's thinking on an issue, just look at who's around him. We took him up on that one and the result of 'look at who's around him' is quite frightening. From 'rights for animals to sue' to 'forced abortions' to 'global government,' Obama's friends all have one thing in common: crazy, radical viewpoints. Meet them HERE and HERE .

Quotes from Obama's books. Taken out of context or not, the pattern was and still is his equating everything to race, even though he denies it.

From Dreams from My Father, "I CEASED TO ADVERISE MY MOTHER'S RACE AT THE AGE OF 12 OR 13, when I began to suspect that by doing so I was ingratiating myself to whites"

From Dreams from My Father, " I FOUND A SOLACE IN NURSING A PERVASIVE SENSE OF GRIEVANCE AND ANIMOSITY AGAINST MY MOTHER'S RACE".

From Dreams from My Father, "The emotion between the races could never be pure..... the THE OTHER RACE (WHITE) WOULD ALWAYS REMAIN JUST THAT: MENACING, ALIEN AND APART"

From Dreams from My Father, "never emulate white men and brown men whose fates didn't speak to my own. IT WAS INTO MY FATHER'S IMAGE , THE BLACK MAN, THE SON OF AFRICA, THAT I'D PACKED ALL THE ATTRIBUTES I SOUGHT IN MYSELF.

From Dreams from My Father, "THAT HATE HADN'T GONE AWAY," he wrote, BLAMING WHITE PEOPLE,- SOME CRUEL, SOME IGNORANT,sometimes a single face, sometimes just a faceless image of a system claiming power over our lives."

From Dreams from My Father, "There were enough of us on campus to constitute a tribe, and when it came to hanging out many of us chose to function like a tribe, staying close together, traveling in packs," he wrote. "It remained necessary to prove which side you were on, TO SHOW YOUR LOYALTY TO THE BLACK MASSES, TO STRIKE OUT, and name names"

From Dreams from My Father, "I had grown accustomed, everywhere, to SUSPICIONS BETWEEN THE RACES.."

Quote from Barack Obama's book, Dreams from My Father: "The person who made me proudest of all, though, was [half brother] Roy .. He converted to Islam."

From Dreams from My Father, "In Indonesia, I had spent two years at a Muslim school""I studied the Koran..

"From The Audacity of Hope: "Lolo (Obama's step father) followed a brand of Islam ...."I looked to Lolo for guidance".

From The Audacity of Hope, "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

From The Audacity of Hope, "We are no longer just a Christian nation," "We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers."

Obama presented himself as the great hope for everyone, the post-racial (half-black/half-white) Christian President, with an understanding for the Muslim world, growing up in the islands and having family of Asian decent as well, who benefited from a system that included affirmative action, even though he had already written all the words above. Then surfaced Reverend Wright with his “God Damn America” and clips of his anti-white rants in church, as well as evidence of Obama’s ties to radical Bill Ayers and a record of the most liberal voting record in the Senate; followed by Michelle Obama’s claim that “For the first time in my life I am proud of America”. But America, including most “white” people, wanted Obama to be what he portrayed, so they looked the other way, they didn’t read the available books often written by Barack himself, and they voted for ‘hope’ and change, for a better Country… not for one they no longer recognized.

Obama is not who he presented himself as and actually appears to be anything but conflicted. His statements and actions since becoming President are pretty clear. It is becoming exceedingly evident that there is no hope or positive change on the horizon; it is exactly the opposite. The question is only, “Will America wake up and stand up quickly enough?” Everywhere you go, people are realizing and verbalizing that something is not right. When your gut is telling you that, you need to listen!

Do you ever wonder why someone as eloquent as Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t speak without a teleprompter and is so measured in his words? We’ve heard community organizer, Obama, speak extemporaneously and with excitement in some old clips, so we know he can. Is it perhaps that the teleprompter keeps our President on message and keeps his real feelings and thoughts from slipping out?

There are many parallels that can be drawn between events in recent history and Barack Obama and his White House Team. Who will join the few brave souls that have already said for all of us, “The Emperor Has No Clothes”', before the average American no longer has a voice? The clock is ticking…

Ask Marion/Knowledge Creates Power

Some Suggested Reading, If You Haven’t Read Them Already!

White House Enlisting the National Endowment of the Arts

Seg 1 - Taped Conference Call of the National Endowment for the Arts

Seg 2 - NEA Teaming Up with White House to Push Obama Agenda

Seg 3 - Government Tax Dollars Being Used for Gov. Propaganda

The White House is enlisting hand-picked members of the National Endowment of the Arts to produce art to help the White House push the Obama Agenda. This is a group that depends on them, in large part for finances. I believe we used to call that coercion for propaganda?!?

If u-tube links don't work go to: Propaganda as Art

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power – Cross-Posted: Daily Thought Pad

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Tea Party Movement Stages the First ‘BuyCott’s at Whole Foods – Join the BuyCott and Support Whole Foods and Freedom of Speech!

Tea Partiers staged a Buycott today, Tuesday, September 1st at 6p.m. in St. Louis and in Dallas, Texas.

The Nationwide Tea Party Coalition said Friday that local members plan to shop Tuesday night at a Whole Foods in Town & Country to support the grocery store chain chief executive’s opposition to a public health care option.

John Mackey, founder and CEO of Austin-based Whole Foods, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this month opposing a government health care option.

Tuesday’s “buycott” started at 6 p.m. and the they ran out of carts for the store within 20 minutes

“We are asking supporters to do all their week’s grocery shopping that night,” said Dana Loesch of the St. Louis Tea Party. “Most tea party supporters are not regular customers of Whole Foods, and we want to show our support for Mr. Mackey’s championship of free-market health-care reforms.” And we would encourage them, tea party groups in other areas and other supporters of Freedom of Speech to continue to shop at Whole Foods… perhaps making the first Tuesday of every month a group shop.

Tea Party Patriot Gina Loudon is asking anyone who cannot attend should SAVE THEIR RECEIPTS and mail them to Gina at:

Gina Loudon can be contacted by email at Gina@stlouisteaparty.com.
The Nationwide Tea party Coalition is also supporting this effort.

--More information here.

The Digital Journal has more on the BUYcott.

The Buycott was covered by Greta Van Susteren on Fox’s Greta Wire earlier tonight.

Support Freedom of Speech… Organize a Buycott in your area!

Holder Comes Under Fire From Both Parties

Destroying the myth that Eric Holder is independent of Obama

Bill Sammon Slams Eric Holder’s “Independence” – FoxNews Sunday Video

Destroying the myth that Eric Holder is independent of Obama

Bill Sammon Slams Eric Holder’s “Independence” – FoxNews Sunday Video

Holder’s CIA decision comes under fire

By Reid Wilson and Ian Swanson - 08/30/09 07:44 AM ET

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations of high-value detainees came under attack Sunday from key figures in both parties.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who has steadily defended the Bush administration’s policies since leaving office, called it a political investigation and repeated his defense of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which he said had thwarted terrorist attacks.

While Cheney’s defense of waterboarding was condemned by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and several Democrats on Sunday, McCain and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) both agreed with Cheney’s criticism of Holder’s decision.

“I think the timing of this is not very good,” Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” She said her panel is studying interrogation techniques, and suggested Holder should allow that work to continue without appointing a special prosecutor. “Candidly, I wish the attorney general had waited,” she said.

McCain said he agreed with President Barack Obama that it is time to move forward from the fights over interrogation policies that characterized the Bush years.

While Holder has the right to appoint the special prosecutor and should be granted some autonomy by the White House, McCain said the decision is a mistake.

“The attorney general has a unique position in the cabinet; obviously he can't be told what to do by the president,” McCain said. “But I think it's a mistake, and I think in the future we'll find out it's a mistake.”

Holder’s decision came as a bit of a surprise, as before Holder’s announcement last week, Obama had suggested he did not want to re-open scars by appointing a special prosecutor.

At the same time, Obama had made it clear that he wanted to have an independent Justice Department. Democrats believed Justice had become politicized during the Bush administration under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Liberals in Obama’s base have welcomed Holder’s decision and would have been critical if Justice had decided not to investigate the interrogation policies.

McCain, who has long criticized the use of torture to gain information from accused terrorists, flatly rejected Cheney’s statement that the use of waterboarding has kept the country safe by providing useful information on the activities of terrorist groups.
He said the use of the techniques violated the Geneva conventions, hurt the United States’s ability to work with allies and helped al-Queda recruit terrorists.

“I got that from an al-Queda operative in a prison camp in Iraq,” said McCain, who recounted a trip to Iraq with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) where they met with a former high-ranking member of al-Queda.

McCain asked the al-Queda member why he thought the group was successful in Iraq after the U.S. invasion, and was told that in addition to the chaos that persisted after the invasion, the pictures of detainee abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison “allowed me to recruit thousands” of new members.

McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, also said information could have been obtained in other ways, and that someone undergoing waterboarding will say anything to make the pain stop.

Earlier Sunday, Cheney in a pre-recorded interview with Fox harshly criticized Holder’s decision and said Obama should have stopped him.

“I think it's an outrageous political act that will do great damage long term to our capacity to be able to have people take on difficult jobs, make difficult decisions without having to worry about what the next administration's going to say about it," Cheney said on Fox News Sunday.

“I think if you look at the Constitution, the president of the United States is the chief law enforcement office of the land. The Attorney General is a statutory officer, he’s a member of the cabinet,” Cheney said.

“I think he’s trying to duck the responsibility for what’s going on here, and I think it’s wrong,” Cheney said.

Others expressed worry that the investigation could further lower morale at the CIA, hurting counter-terrorism efforts.

“They're making it so that people at the CIA are afraid to do anything, and we don't want that situation,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the longest-serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“We want the toughest people we can have to handle the situation and don't want them thinking twice that they're going to get indicted or they're going to have to go through unpleasant experiences in Congress or that they're going to be mistreated and especially those who give legal opinions,” Hatch said on CNN's State of the Union.
Instead of investigating those who carried out waterboarding and other tough tactics, Cheney said the Obama administration ought to pursue a different approach.

“We had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda," Cheney said. "The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, 'How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?’”

Tony Romm contributed to this story

Source: The Hill

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power – Cross-Posted: Daily Thought Pad

Cheney: Serious Doubts About Obama

Fascinating Perspective: Princess Diana's Death Offers Lessons for Health Care Debate, 12 Years Later

In Britain's Beloved Royal's Death, Experts Find Guidance in French Health System

The Mercedes 600 carrying Princess Diana and her companion Dodi Fayed was traveling more than 85 miles per hour when it hit a concrete pillar head-on in the Place D'Alma underpass, crumbling like an accordion.

A look back to the hours after the death of Princess Diana 10 years ago.

Both were killed, as well as the driver, Henri Paul -- later proven to have been under the influence of alcohol.

The Paris accident -- just before 12:30 a.m. local time 12 years ago today -- ended the life of one of Britain's most celebrated royals, unleashing a torrent of emotion in that historically stoic culture and catapulting Diana to near sainthood status.

In the days that followed, she was memorialized as the "People's Princess," as those devastated by her loss turned on the nation's out-of-touch monarchy, whom they blamed for her tragedy.

Conspiracy theories, all unsubstantiated, abounded. Had she been assassinated by the royal family so her estranged husband, Prince Charles, could marry his longtime love Camilla Parker-Bowles? Did the British Secret Intelligence Service bump her off because she was pregnant with Egyptian Fayed's Muslim child?

But the most baffling question was whether doctors could have done more to prevent Diana, 36, from dying.

The horrific accident illustrated the difference between the French and U.S. approaches to emergency care -- a relatively small piece of the French medical system, but deemed by some people to be the best in the world and often cited as a model for U.S. health care overhaul.

When rescue workers arrived, Diana was conscious, uttering, "My God" and "Leave me alone" to the swarming paparazzi. Although she had suffered internal injuries, she did not arrive at the Parisian hospital for 110 minutes -- too late for the surgery that some speculated could have saved her life.

Diana's last hour -- in cardiac arrest and bleeding to death -- was spent in a mobile medical unit parked a few hundred yards from Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, where an emergency team followed French protocol and administered treatment at the scene of the accident and en route to the hospital.

At the time, many people surmised that had a U.S. ambulance responded, Diana would have been rushed to the nearest emergency room, where a full set of professionals and diagnostic equipment might have revived her.

Colloquially known as "scoop and run," the U.S. system is grounded in studies that show a trauma victim's best chance for survival is reaching the operating room within 10 minutes.

Under the French system, "stay and play," a fully equipped medical ambulance with a doctor stabilizes the patient and then directs him or her to a specialized hospital, even if it is miles away.

PHOTO The scene of the car crash which killed Diana Princess of Wales, shown in this file photo, her companion Dodi Al Fayed and their driver Henri Paul is shown, August 31, 1997.

The scene of the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, in this file photo, her companion, Dodi Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, Aug. 31, 1997. (Getty Images)

Car Crash Victims Served 24/7

"When a patient rolls into the American system, they have a level-one trauma center that runs 24/7, with every specialty and myriad resources for a patient in a car crash," said Dr. Preeti Jois-Bilowich, emergency room doctor at the University of Florida's Shands Hospital.

Two or three paramedics focus on the ABCs of first responder care: airway, breathing and circulation. Each state has different licensing requirements for its emergency workers and ambulance services.

In France, the government-run Service d'Aide Médicale d'Urgence (SAMU), or Emergency Medical Assistance Service, provides more uniform care, coordinating the mobile resuscitation units. Teams always include one doctor, usually an anesthesiologist or emergency room physician, and a driver who serves as a technician and a nurse paramedic.

In Diana's case, a doctor who was passing by was the first on the scene and called for the ambulance, which arrived in seven minutes. He saw no visible injuries and treated her for shock with oxygen.

Fayed and Paul both died at the scene and were taken directly to the mortuary.

The SAMU team spent an hour treating her in the tunnel. Then, following French emergency standards aimed at not further injuring the victim, they drove slowly to the hospital about 4 miles away.

Yards from the hospital, her blood pressure dropped and the ambulance stopped again to revive her.

Diana Delayed 110 Minutes Before Death

Diana didn't arrive until after 2 a.m. -- 1 hour and 45 minutes after the crash -- and underwent an emergency thoracotomy. Coroners pronounced her dead from hemorrhaging that resulted from major chest trauma and deceleration that caused a rupture of the left pulmonary vein.

Later, surgeons said that her heart had been displaced from the left to the right side of her chest.

In the 1998 book, "Death of a Princess," Time magazine reporters Thomas Sancton and Scott MacLeod were critical of the French system, arguing that Diana could have been saved in a hospital operating room. SAMU was so upset with the indictment, according to the authors, that they threatened to sue.

But Sancton and MacLeod later rescinded their theory, based on evaluations of the medical records, in a 2004 Vanity Fair piece on the British inquest into Diana's death.

"I have actually revised my conclusions based on a fascinating series of interviews with a trauma specialist in Houston," Sancton wrote in an e-mail to ABCNews.com. "The bottom line is, whatever the merits or demerits of the French emergency medical system, poor Diana was a goner from the beginning because of the particular nature of her deceleration injury."

Defenders of the French system say that major road accidents like Diana's represent only about 12 percent of all emergency calls. Most are falls, domestic accidents, cardiac arrests and neurological problems.

And even Jois-Bilowich of the University of Florida, who did her medical internship with SAMU in Paris in 2006, sees its advantages.

French Emergency Workers Treat and Leave

"A lot of time, you get to the scene and you realize you can treat the patient right there," she said. "You can reassess in about 20 minutes and probably leave. Somebody who has diabetes in the morning and didn't eat and had a hypoglycemic episode -- their sugar comes up and is good and you leave.

PHOTO The Prince of Wales, Prince William and Prince Harry look at floral tributes to Diana, Princess of Wales outside Kensington Palace, in this September 5, 1997 file photo in London, England.

From left, Prince Charles, Prince Harry and Prince William look at floral tributes to Diana, Princess of Wales, outside Kensington Palace, in this Sept. 5, 1997, file photo in London, England. (Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)

"Here, they get transported to the emergency department and adds one more patient to an already overburdened emergency room.

"In France, you have physicians available and you treat it right there," she said. "You take the drug bag to the scene, it has just about anything you can imagine. It's a mini-crash cart. It's kind of like a mobile emergency department, with limitations."

But those limitations can be significant without X-ray or sonogram capability onboard. Jois-Bilowich recalled one Paris call during her internship in which a man collapsed at an apartment construction site.

The team set up a mini-emergency room and, for 45 minutes, ran an EKG, did CPR and began medication for a heart attack.

Without full emergency room diagnostics, doctors had to make an educated guess on the drugs. They were right, he survived but, had he ruptured an aorta, the drugs could have caused more problems or death. "You make judgment calls," Jois-Bilowich said.

The French emergency care reflects the overall health attitudes of that nation -- delivering basic primary care and health education to everyone will mean fewer expensive emergency room visits and hospitalizations later on.

Amid the health care debate here, some Americans are taking notice.

The French, at 10.7 percent of the gross domestic product, spend less than Americans do on health care at 16 percent of their GDP, according to 2009 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development health data.

French Health Care Tops World

The World Health Organization recently rated the French system as the best in the world. By comparison, the United States rated 37th. The average life expectancy in France is 79.4 years, two years fewer than in the United States.

Both countries are struggling with rising drug costs, aging populations and unemployment, but about 65 percent of all French citizens, compared with 40 percent of all Americans, are happy with their medical care, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The French can choose their own doctors, see specialists and have access to some of the most sophisticated research and medical technology in the world, according to Victor Rodwin, professor of health policy and management at New York University.

"The American and French system share similar dimensions," he told ABCNews.com. "They are both based on fee-for-service practices, there is a large element of private provision and they also have a small equivalent of the gap supplement insurance like Medicare. It's a public-private mix."

In France, everyone is covered, regardless of their ability to pay, with an emphasis on primary care to prevent long-term illness.

"What we do is quite different," Rodwin said. "We take care of people, but not everyone, and we do it once they get very sick. We take diabetics with flare-ups and asthmatics in the emergency room, but we don't do primary care or health education as well for the poor.

"Our population is much sicker compared to France," according to Rodwin, whose research finds that Americans have the highest rates of avoidable hospitalizations -- two and a half times higher than the French -- for treatable conditions like pneumonia, asthma, diabetes and congestive heart failure.

That's according to a 2008 study from the National Institute of Public Health and the Environment. "The French have a term -- solidarity," Rodwin said. "Since World War II, the system is grounded in the philosophy that everyone should have access to health care. That doesn't mean everyone is treated equally. There are those who are more educated or higher socio-economic groups that use more specialty care and probably have access to better quality care, but everyone has access to the minimum."

Mary, a freelance writer who did not want to use her last name, lives in Paris and is a "big booster of the French system."

The school nurse called the fire department after her son had an asthma attack several years ago.

"Soon after, I received a call from a doctor on the scene telling me exactly what was going on and what treatment Luke was getting at the school," she said. "He suggested taking Luke to the hospital for a few hours of observation, after which I could pick him up."

U.S. Emergency Rooms 'Tangle of Forms'

"I find the emergency room responses the most dramatic change from the U.S.," Mary said. "I've always had excellent health insurance in the U.S. and I've found every American emergency room visit a tangle as I fill out form after form and sign over my first born before anyone will even look at an injured or sick kid.

"Here, because everyone is insured, there's never any questions in hospitals that people will be treated, and treated quickly, because there's no worry someone's going to be stiffed with the bill."

Jois-Bilowich agreed that the French system is more cost-effective and that most people admitted to U.S. emergency rooms are treated and then released. But, she argues, the U.S. system of trauma care is superior.

As for the ill-fated accident that took the life of Diana, she won't venture a guess at what her outcome might have been in the United States, noting that even simple trauma cases can "crash" on the operating table.

"I, personally, really hate the retroscope," she said. "We weren't there and we didn't know the circumstances. Every patient is an individual human being and not a computer system, and so many things can confound what you think is a simple situation."

This does example, however, brings us back to the same end as much of the ObamaCare debate. In the end… with the good and bad, there is no better system than the American healthcare system. We survive and virtually everyone gets treated. The cost is too high because there is fraud in several arenas, too many frivolous lawsuits, Big Pharma and the AMA put money before patients is certain instances and line their pockets and they and the Insurance industry is not regulated enough in some areas, like being allowed to exclude people because of previous conditions and over regulated in other areas like not being able to sell insurance across state lines. But fixing those things and insuring everyone except illegals that are truly indigent and not paying for unnecessary elective surgeries and abortions is a heck of a lot cheaper than ObamaCare and keeps the government out of our lives (anymore than it already is) and the crucial medical decisions where they belong…. between doctors and patients and their families.

Let’s Start Over On Health Reform

No on ObamaCare – Yes on Incremental Common Sense Reform

No public option of any kind (which includes the new buzz word co-ops, single-payer, or new government run program)
No rationing
No centralized government database of patients
No coverage of illegals – we can’t afford it (and that will get rid of the need to supply free translations services, taxation of citizens and not illegals for services, and forcing ‘legal’ aliens into a government option)
No abortions paid for by taxpayer money
No cuts in Medicare and Medicaid
No Mandatory End or Life or Duty to Die Discussion with the Elderly, Wounded Veterans or Parents of Special Needs Kids/People
Yes on Tort Reform
Yes on Fraud and Record Duplication reform of Medicare and Medicaid
Yes on Fraud and Record Duplication Reform of Veterans and Reservation Programs
Yes on Insurance Reform including No more Previous Condition Restrictions
Yes on Inter-State Health Insurance Sales
Yes on Allowing individuals, the self-employed and small businesses to form and join consortiums to qualify to buy insurance at lower group rates
Yes - Payment System based on outcome instead of number of procedures
Yes - Inclusion of coverage of natural supplements and holistic methods and procedures

I Read the Health-Scare Bill & Obama Is Lying!

'STOP OBAMACARE' PETITION

HR-3200 - full report

Only 6% of Eligible Homeowners Helped From Obama's Housing Program

Making Home Affordable Program hasn't helped enough, some say

(CNN) -- When President Obama unveiled the Making Home Affordable Program in March, he said it would help "responsible folks who have been making their payments" reduce their monthly mortgage bills and avoid losing their homes to foreclosure.

The Making Home Affordable Program aims to help homeowners avoid losing their homes to foreclosures.

But six months into the program, only 6 percent of the 4 million eligible homeowners have gotten help. A lot more say they've been frustrated with the runaround they've been getting from lenders.

Are the new program's growing pains responsible for the slow start, as bankers say, or is pain to their bottom lines really preventing the program from working, as critics say?

The Making Home Affordable Program is supposed to work this way:

In return for billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout money, banks would offer loans that would reduce troubled borrowers' monthly mortgage payments to 31 percent of their income. To qualify, a homeowner must have an income and must live in the house, and that house can't be worth more than $730,000.

The bank is also allowed to calculate the value of the mortgage against the profit it would make from a foreclosure.

Banks are prohibited from selling a house in foreclosure while the homeowner is being considered for an adjustment. The Treasury Department oversees the program, and the banks signed contracts with Treasury binding them to cooperate. Watch more about how the program has worked so far

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has been so unhappy with the program's pace that he called in lenders for a meeting and demanded they do better.

In a July 9 letter to one servicer, JP Morgan, Geithner and Shaun Donovan, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, wrote "there is a general need for servicers to devote substantially more resources to this program for it to fully succeed and achieve the objectives we share."

They called on the banks to hire more staff, expand their call centers and allow homeowners "an escalation path for borrowers dissatisfied with the service they have received."

The mortgage industry's top lobbyist says any problems to date are the growing pains associated with getting such a massive program up and running.

"It is working, and it needs to be given some time," says John Courson, head of the Mortgage Bankers Association. He says banks are still staffing up and getting the program off the ground. "It took 90 days to get out the rules and the procedures and the forms, and so that's a fairly new program," he said.

Courson says that lenders are still "training more and more staff as they are getting more and more people who are familiar with this program."

He insists that the banks want to cooperate.

"It's in the banks' best interest to work with those borrowers to keep those loans on the books and avoid foreclosure," Courson said.

But critics say that the program works against the banks' best interests, as the homeowners who most need the program are the riskiest bets.

"If the borrower is really in trouble, [the lenders] probably don't want to do the modification, because they think there's a good chance the borrower will redefault, and they will do a lot of work and they won't collect money," said Paul Willen, an economist with the Boston Federal Reserve who has studied bank foreclosures and modifications.

"The problem with this is in some deep sense, you can't penalize the banks for acting in self-interest. It's a for-profit business."

Others are critical of the voluntary nature of the program and the Obama administration's hands-off relationship with lenders.

The Treasury Department official charged with overseeing the program insists it's "off to a strong start, with hundreds of thousands of trial modifications already underway."

Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Michael Barr acknowledges that "servicer performance has been uneven, but servicers have committed to ramping up efforts to improve the process for borrowers," and he insists that "the administration will hold these institutions accountable for their progress."

He says Treasury is on track to help 3 million to 4 million homeowners in three years.

Diane Thompson of the National Consumer Law Center has a theory on why the Obama administration isn't getting tougher with the banks: "This is a voluntary program. I think Treasury has been very concerned to make sure that servicers [the banks] are willing to participate."

She's convinced that banks will improve their track record only if they're forced to make loans.

"Until it's made a mandatory program, I think we will not see a significant drop in foreclosures," Thompson said.

Another problem with the program is that banks don't always have the final say.

Many of these mortgages are held by private investors, and the bank simply acts as a middleman. If investors think they can make more money by foreclosing than modifying the loan, experts say the bank is powerless to override that decision.

Susan Wachter, professor of real estate and finance at the Wharton School, explains, "These are contracts. The government does not have the right to rescind contracts. The government can legislate all they want, but there can be lawsuits."

Willen adds: "What's upsetting about this is that with Making Home Affordable, what you ended up with may be worse [than doing nothing]. We're giving more money to banks, and not preventing many foreclosures."

The Treasury Department has begun stepping up pressure on banks. This month, it began publicly reporting the number of the program's loans the banks had offered, as a way to shame banks into better participation rates.

While JP Morgan-Chase has enrolled 20 percent of its eligible customers and Citibank 15 percent, two banks that got the biggest bailouts have some of the lowest enrollment rates, according to Treasury: Wells Fargo has enrolled 6 percent of eligible customers, and Bank of America 4 percent.

Both banks say that those numbers are misleading -- that they have many more offers in the pipeline and have increased staffing.

Bank of America also says it is bigger than other banks, so it has more applicants to process. Wells Fargo also says that it has refinanced many hundreds of thousands of loans outside of the government program.

Courson said many other banks are also offering their own mortgage modification programs, and if you count those, "a million and a half borrowers were assisted in the first six months in this year."

Multiple administration officials insist to CNN that there is adequate oversight of the program and that the Treasury Department has enlisted Freddie Mac to monitor the banks.

A Freddie Mac official, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity because it is acting "at the direction of Treasury," told CNN that its investigators visit banks, but only after giving the banks' management notice that they're coming.

The agency reviews loan documents, but only those that lenders provide. There are no surprise visits, no tape recordings of bank calls to assure quality assurance, and no way to respond to individual homeowner complaints.

Recently, Freddie Mac began random reviews of cases in which homeowners were denied Making Home Affordable loans. So far, Freddie Mac has not found a single instance of noncompliance worth referring to the Treasury Department for a penalty.

The Treasury Department was unable to show CNN any instance of a lender being penalized for breaking the program's rules.

By Jessica Yellin - CNN National Political Correspondent

I have personally had the experience of dealing with this program and system to help a family member who needed some help trying to wade through this program. It is a nightmare! The people who need the program the most, don’t qualify for help and then only 6% of the people who do qualify have received help. Another Obamanomics nightmare program that didn’t work! Ask Marion~

Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

Czar of the Day… Green Jobs Czar Van Jones (Updated)

Van Jones Unhinged (Remaking America)

After weeks of asking the White House to answer questions on the radical background and beliefs of Obama's Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, they STILL have not responded. Probably with good reason because the guy is a radical Marxist and has latched on to the Green jobs movement in order to achieve 'social justice.' Take a look at this video from waaaaaay back in 2009 where he says:

"And our Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didn't want, where it was all hot and windy, well, guess what. Renewable energy. Guess what, solar industry. Guess what, wind industry. They now own and control 80% of the renewable energy resources. No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth. Give them the wealth. Give them the dignity. Give them the respect that they deserve. No justice on stolen land. We owe them a debt."

Watch U-tube Video Here: Van Jones Keynote at “Powershift” 09

(If you can’t watch the whole thing… skip to about the 11 minute mark)

GLENN: From high above Times Square, this is the third most listened to show in all of America. Hello, you sick twisted freak. I want to take another look with some new audio now that I swear to you I cannot believe that there is no one in this country that is willing to take on this audio, that is willing to ask the tough questions. I cannot believe that I am alone. I know you are there, too. You must feel the same way. Where is everyone? I want you to hear some new audio from the green jobs czar, specific adviser to the president for green jobs, or whatever they want to call him. What I want you to do is give me ten minutes. I need you to take a good hard look at who Van Jones is. I told you, well, for the last couple of months that this guy is an avowed, self avowed radical revolutionary communist.

In the last few days George Soros and the left have been trying to scrub this guy's image clean to the point where they are actually now claiming that he has totally transformed from communist into raging capitalist. All of a sudden he's a combination of Bill Gates and J. Paul Getty. He's main streamed now. The perfect young go getting entrepreneur to kick job creation into high gear. All he wants to do is create green jobs, right? That's like saying Sonia Sotomayor just wants to make the best decision based on the law. Then what's all this social justice thing? It has nothing to do with the laws. It has nothing to do with the Constitution. It's about social justice. Could the same thing be said about the green jobs? Because that's all he wants to do, remember, just create new green jobs. "Well, I hate to intrude with the facts here." But let's listen to Van Jones' own words. Granted, we do have to go way, way, way back. I mean, I don't even know how old Barack Obama was when this event happened. It was clear way back, time machine before April. Yes, yes. We have to go all the way back into the past to March, to the Power Shift '09 conference. Just before Van Jones was appointed as our president's special advisor, someone that would advise the president of the United States on how to create green jobs, just before that appointment he said this:

VAN JONES: This movement is deeper than a solar panel. Deeper than a solar panel. Don't stop there. Don't stop there. No, we're going to change the whole system. We're going to change the whole thing. We're not going to put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system. We want a new system.

GLENN: We want a new system. We want a new system. A new system of what? He says he's talking about more than just solar panels. What are you talking about, wind energy? New system of what? Well, let's listen to the entire context of this statement. He is saying that this cannot be only about new forms of energy. Listen carefully, America.

Video: Complete Van Jones speech. Skip to about the 11 min mark...

VAN JONES: All we do is take out the dirty power system, the dirty power generation in a system and just replace it with some clean stuff, put a solar panel on top of this system. We don't deal with how we are consuming water, we don't deal with how we're treating our other sister and other brothers' species, we don't deal with toxins, we don't deal with the way we treat each other, if that's not a part of this movement, let me tell you what you'll have. This is all you'll have. You'll have solar powered bulldozers, solar powered buzz saws, and biofuel bombers and we'll be fighting wars over lithium for the batteries instead of oil for the engines and we'll still have a dead planet. This movement is deeper than a solar panel, deeper than a solar panel. Don't stop there. Don't stop there. No, we're going to change the whole system.

GLENN: When will America wake up? The left has started a revolution. No different than Hugo Chavez. When Hugo Chavez was elected, he was elected by Democratic process. But he did not tell the people when he was running that he was a communist. Can we stop claiming that this man, Van Jones, is an average everyday capitalist America, an American? Is that I mean, did that sound like you, Iowa? Did that sound like you, Nebraska? Did it sound like you, Texas? Did it sound like you, Florida, Georgia, Maryland? Did it sound like you, New Hampshire? It sure sounds like Berkeley, California, San Francisco, California, and now Washington, D.C. We must start having the necessary critical discussion of, do we want communists, radicals, revolutionaries in the United States government as special advisors to the president of the United States? Do we even want communists to have lunch with our president? I wasn't comfortable with Putin having lunch with Barack Obama. We had to do that. Barack Obama did not campaign openly on changing the whole system, or did he? Five days before the election this now tells us much.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

GLENN: Are we changing the whole system? Very few Americans paid attention then. Are you paying attention now?

You know, I don't want to believe these things about our president. I didn't want to believe the things that I believed about George W. Bush, that he was in bed with gigantic global corporations, that he was harming our security by keeping our border on the south open for some God only knows reason. I didn't want to believe those things. I certainly didn't want to say those things. Those things hurt me financially. Those things hurt me to say. It hurt me in business; it hurts me as an American. Now I'm saying very similar things except the stakes have been raised. If our founding principles are somehow or another no longer relevant, if the system in which this country was founded is somehow unjust or unworkable now and communism, Marxism, socialism is the right and relevant path, then that is the discussion in a republic we have. But to subversively bring in a new system through the back door in the middle of the night and build it piece by piece by overwhelming the system, that is not acceptable. But this goes farther than whether Van Jones is a capitalist or a communist. Listen to what Van Jones said at this same conference.

VAN JONES: And our Native American sisters and brothers who were pushed and bullied and mistreated and shoved into all the land we didn't want, where it was all hot and windy, well, guess what, renewable energy. Guess what, solar industry. Guess what, wind industry. They now own and control 80% of the renewable energy resources. No more broken treaties. No more broken treaties. Give them the wealth. Give them the wealth. Give them the dignity. Give them the respect that they deserve. No justice on stolen land. We owe them a debt.
GLENN: We owe them a debt. Remember when I told you that Barack Obama said that reparations he's against because they don't go far enough. We owe them a debt. Does that rhetoric sound familiar to anyone? Have you heard that before?

REVEREND WRIGHT: We believe God sanctioned the rape and robbery of an entire continent. We believe God ordained African slavery. We believe God makes Europeans superior to Africans and superior to everybody else.

GLENN: Is this Marxism? Is this socialism? Is this racism? Is this freedom of speech? Is this mainstream? What is this, America? History, our children, our grandchildren will demand an answer! No answer is not good enough! You will have to answer. If we lose man's freedom, you will have to answer at the foot of God. You will at least have to answer at the feet of your grandchildren. No answer, putting your head in the sand is no longer good enough. You must pay attention and you must demand an answer! That didn't sound familiar to you, those two things didn't sound alike to you? Let's try it again. Here's more from Van Jones. Again, to be fair, this is from the ancient history catalog from this past March.

VAN JONES: What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about our immigrant sisters and brothers? What about people who come here from all around the world, who we're willing to have out in the fields with poison being sprayed on them, poison being sprayed on them because we have the wrong agricultural system and then we're and we're willing to poison them and poison the Earth to put food on our table but we don't want to give them rights and we don't want to give them dignity and we don't want to give them respect?

GLENN: Where do you even begin on that? The wrong agricultural system. Now, this is from an interview he did as the head of the Ella Baker Center.
VAN JONES: The white polluters and the white environmentals are essentially steering poison into the people of colored communities.

GLENN: Have you heard this any has the president ever been around anyone who has ever said anything like that before Van Jones?

REVEREND WRIGHT: The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment. They purposely infected African American men with syphilis.

GLENN: The president of the United States has tried to pass himself off as a guy who just sat in Jeremiah Wright's Black Liberation Theology church for 20 years. A friend. He's like an old uncle. He didn't even notice. He baptized Barack Obama's children. He baptized Barack Obama, but he never heard these things before. And even if he did hear them, he didn't really even notice. Okay, so that's the explanation for the crazy uncle. What is the explanation this time? What is the excuse this time for appointing the same type of radical, saying almost damn exact same words as Jeremiah Wright to an influential position in our government? Is it that you didn't vet these people?

Because gee, that sounds like a problem, that our president of the United States didn't vet him enough to know. Is it that the FBI didn't do its job? I mean, we found all of this stuff. Sure, I only have a staff of seven producing books, TV, radio shows, I only have a staff of seven. And all of a sudden we can come up with these things. Gee, you'd think the FBI or the president of the United States would surely be able to find these things.

When I asked the White House to answer, did you know of his radical past, the White House issued a statement. Their response was the green jobs special advisor is very narrowly focused on creating green jobs. As if that was an answer to the question of why this guy is in our government, anywhere near our president. It's not an answer. It's not an answer. And this one's not your crazy uncle. And this one's not way, way, way, way back in the past.

When let me rephrase this. How. How, America. I ask this sincerely. Show me where I have it wrong. I want to be wrong, but I can't find any other way to explain this. The president is wearing a mask. He has surrounded himself with radicals and revolutionaries. He has surrounded himself his whole life with radicals and revolutionaries. How? How? Please, help me. Read it another way. Show me the error of my ways. If you can't do that, show me how I can get this word out to more people. How do we wake people up? How do we wake Democrats up? Democrats, is that who you are? Are you this person? Do you believe those things? If you do, we're in much bigger trouble than I thought. I don't believe that's who the American people are. There are Democrats that I vehemently disagree with. I don't believe they think those things. He's not the only guy in this administration that feels this way!
Look, I know this is the hard truth. I don't want to believe them, either. But these statements from Van Jones are from this last spring. I have more that I'm not prepared to release yet because it paints even a bigger, more terrifying picture, and I'm not going to release them until I can fill in all of the dots on this picture. But why am I the only one bringing you this? Why will no one bring this information? The answers that I can come up with, either they are afraid and I understand that or because they think it just doesn't matter. Am I the only American, just you and me? Is it just us? Are we the only one left that think that this might be important, the guy who is creating the green jobs is doing it to repay for smallpox blankets?
Let me just leave you one more time with the words of the special advisor to the president of the United States.

VAN JONES: This movement is deeper than a solar panel, deeper than a solar panel. Don't stop there. Don't stop there. No, we're going to change the whole system. We're going to change the whole thing. We're not going to put a new battery in a broken system. We want a new system. We want a new system.

And that is just the beginning. Listen to the amazing FREE audio HERE.

And can you guess who else was at Power Shift 09? Yep, Nancy Pelosi… Guess it is a lot better to hang out with Communists who want to remake America than answering the questions of Real American at Town Halls.

Comments about video at the time of this posting:

conservativesunited (2 minutes ago)

The American people are waking up to the radical, anti-capitalist, marxist ways of this guy and many other people Obama is putting into his administration. Obama is burning the Constitution with help of thugs like this guy. Game on!

Rocky32084 (24 minutes ago)

These Marxist thugs are going to be exposed and the people are going to revolt BIG TIME.

Obama at 42% now and most don't know about all of his ties to Marxist.
We made a BIG MISTAKE!!

Italman45 (1 hour ago)

Pitty that these young idiots are all being brainwashed by a bunch of community organizing thugs........

Italman45 (1 hour ago)

They are all thugs, and Obama is at the top of the list, along with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid,Barney Frank...Etc.....Just break out the fireing squad already.....Enough Is Enough of this bullshit already

MegaFreedomseeker (5 hours ago)

Isn't it nice to see who our current President has around him for Advisors.
This man thinks crazy thoughts.

--------

Arguing with Idiots - Czar Jones

It's a Czar Tuesday! Glenn's new book Arguing with Idiots (pre-order) comes out later this month and today’s argument centers around the Czar of the Day: Van Jones. The self avowed Communist has a lot to say -- which is a good thing, because we know exactly where he stands. Next time your 'in the tank' friend who blindly supports Obama complains, get the facts on his radical Czars. If they STILL aren't turned around, then congratulations, you are friends with a Commie!

By the way, over the weekend now that Communist Van Jones’ true colors have been exposed, his Wikipedia was re-written making him read like a Capitalist… Wow remember that word? Not a word we hear in this Country anymore.

Obama ‘Green Czar’ on 9/11: Blame U.S. ‘Imperialism’

White House 'rowdy communist' held vigil for Muslims

JERUSALEM – One day after the 9/11 attacks, President Obama's "green jobs czar" led a vigil that expressed solidarity with Arab and Muslim Americans as well as what he called the victims of "U.S. imperialism" around the world. Read The Full Article

Posted: Daily Thought Pad – Cross-Posted: Knowledge Creates Power

Related Resources:

Prejudice in Paradise - Hawaii Has a Racism Problem

Hmmm… Add the anti-white racist sentiment of Hawaii’s problems to Obama’s radical black and socialist mentors… and perhaps there is a clue to what is really going on with Barack Obama. Obama is half white and was raised by a white mother and then his white grandparents… so why all the focus on race and his racist reactions to situations even though intellectually he talks about being post racist.

White Americans voted for Obama in large numbers and since the election, except for a couple of crazies on the left fringe like Jeneane Garafalo and TEAM OBAMA itself I have not heard a peep from anyone about race related to President Obama. People do or don’t like Obama, like with all politicians, but his personal popularity has been at the top of the scale with all races. And the people who do dislike or disagree with Obama’s leftist views do so because of the liberalism, not because Obama is black. The race card has been played by the White House… it is not an issue with average America.

Prejudice in Paradise

Celia Padron went on a Hawaiian vacation last year, lured by the prospect of beautiful beaches and friendly people. She, her husband and two teenage daughters enjoyed the black sand beach at Makena State Park on Maui. But a Hawaiian girl accosted her two teenage daughters, saying, "Go back to the mainland" and "Take your white ass off our beaches," says Padron, a pediatric gastroenterologist in New Jersey.

When her husband, 68 at the time, stepped between the girls, three young Hawaiian men slammed him against a vehicle, cutting his ear, and choked and punched him, Padron says. Police officers persuaded the Padrons not to press charges, saying it would be expensive for them to return for court appearances and a Hawaiian judge would side with the Hawaiian assailants, the doctor contends.

Trask Professor Haunani-Kay Trask believes Native Hawaiians have every right to feel hostile toward whites.

"There is no doubt in my mind [the attack] was racially motivated," she adds.

With no known hate groups and a much-trumpeted spirit of aloha or tolerance, few people outside Hawaii realize the state has a racism issue. One reason: The tourism-dependent state barely acknowledges hate crimes. That makes it hard to know how often racial violence is directed at Caucasians, who comprise about 25% of the ethnically diverse state's 1.3 million residents. Those who identify themselves as Native Hawaiian — most residents are of mixed race — account for nearly 20%.

Hawaii has collected hate crimes data since 2002 (most states began doing so a decade earlier). In the first six years, the state reported only 12 hate crimes, and half of those were in 2006. (All other things being equal, the state would be expected to have more than 800 such crimes annually, given the size of its population, according to a federal government study of hate crimes.) There was anti-white bias in eight of those incidents. But that doesn't begin to reflect the extent of racial rancor directed at non-Native Hawaiians in the Aloha State, especially in schools. For example:

The last day of school has long been unofficially designated "Beat Haole Day," with white students singled out for harassment and violence. (Haole — pronounced how-lee — is slang for a foreigner, usually white, and sometimes is used as a racial slur.)
A non-Native Hawaiian student who challenged the Hawaiian-preference admission policy at a wealthy private school received a $7 million settlement this year.
A 12-year-old white girl new to Hawaii from New York City needed 10 surgical staples to close a gash in her head incurred when she was beaten in 2007 by a Native Hawaiian girl who called her a "fucking haole."
A vocal segment of Native Hawaiians is pushing for independence to end the "prolonged occupation" by the United States and governance by natives.
Demonstrators shouting racial epithets at whites disrupted a statehood celebration in 2006.

Anti-white sentiments such as these have been more than 200 years in the making. The pivotal event occurred when American and European businessmen, backed by U.S. military forces, overthrew Hawaii's monarch in 1893 and placed her under house arrest two years later. The United States annexed the islands as a territory in 1898, and they became a state in 1959.

Little wonder then that as Hawaii prepares to observe the 50th anniversary of becoming the 50th state on Aug. 21, it will a muted celebration, devoid of parades or fireworks.

Classroom Warfare
Tina Mohr has lived in Hawaii for 25 years. She has Native Hawaiian friends. But in the 2003-04 school year, her twin blond-haired daughters, aged 11 at the time, began getting harassed by Native Hawaiian kids at their school on the Big Island. "Our daughters would come home with bruises and cuts," she tells the Intelligence Report.

One of her girls was assaulted twice in the same day. In one scuffle, she had her head slammed into a wall, and her attacker continued to threaten her. Her daughter suffered a dislocated jaw and had headaches for five weeks, Mohr says.

The torment continued in the summer between 5th and 6th grades. Native Hawaiian girls stalked and threatened her daughters and yelled "fucking haole" at them. Midway through the 6th grade, Mohr began to home-school her daughters.

She filed a complaint with the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education in 2004. It was only recently, on Dec. 31, 2008, that the division finally released its report. The report concluded there was "substantial evidence that students experienced racially and sexually derogatory name-calling on nearly a daily basis on school buses, at school bus stops, in school hallways and other areas of the school" that Mohr's children attended.

The epithets included names such as "f*****g haole," "haole c**t" and "haole whore," according to the report. Students were told "go home" and "you don't belong here." Most of the slurs were directed by "local" or non-white students at Caucasians, especially those who were younger, smaller, light-skinned and blond.

The report also concluded that school officials responded inadequately or not at all when students complained of racial harassment. Students who did complain were retaliated against by their antagonists. "They learned not to report this stuff," Mohr says of her own daughters.

The Hawaii Department of Education settled Mohr's complaint with a lengthy agreement in which educators promised to take various steps to improve the reporting, investigating and eliminating of student harassment in the future. Today, Mohr's daughters are again attending the school where they used to have trouble. They haven't been assaulted, but one was threatened on a school bus earlier this year.

Racial Legacies
The resentment some Native Hawaiians feels toward whites today can be chalked up in part to "ancestral memory," says Jon Matsuoka, dean of the School of Social Work at the University of Hawaii. "That trauma is qualitatively different than other ethnic groups in America. It's more akin to American Indians" because Hawaiians had their homeland invaded, were exposed to diseases for which they had no immunity, and had an alien culture forced upon them, he says. Stories about the theft of their lands and culture have been passed down from one generation to the next, Matsuoka adds. (One difference now, of course, is that Native Hawaiians in Hawaii are far more numerous than American Indians are in their own ancestral regions, where the Indians remain politically weak and largely marginalized by the far larger white population.)

Racial violence directed at whites in Hawaii, while deplorable, is minor compared to the larger issues underlying it, Matsuoka says. The Hawaiian spirit of aloha "is pervasive, but you have to earn aloha. You don't necessarily trust outsiders, because outsiders [historically] come and have taken what you have. It's an incredibly giving and warm and generous place, but you have to earn it," he says.

Further fueling the resentment that some Native Hawaiians feel for outsiders are attempts by the latter to usurp entitlement programs given the former to redress previous wrongs. In recent years, non-native residents have used the courts to try and rescind these entitlements on grounds that they are racially discriminatory and violate the U.S. Constitution.

conklin Kenneth Conklin

Retired professor and "anti-sovereign" white activist Kenneth Conklin and others prevailed in a lawsuit in 2000 that challenged a requirement that trustees of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs — OHA — be of Native Hawaiian descent. OHA oversees huge tracts of lands that the United States took from Hawaii when it annexed the islands as a territory, and collects revenues from them for programs that benefit Native Hawaiians.

The state government was going to sell 1.2 million acres of these lands to developers for two state-sponsored affordable housing projects when OHA and four Native Hawaiian plaintiffs sued to stop the deal. A state court sided with the government, but the Hawaii Supreme Court reversed in favor of the plaintiffs. This March 31, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Hawaii high court erred and sent the case back for further action.

There also was an unsuccessful legal challenge to the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, passed by Congress in 1921. The act allows a Hawaiian agency to make 99-year leases at $1 per year to Native Hawaiians (but not other residents) for authorized uses on lands ceded to the United States when it annexed Hawaii. More than 200,000 acres of land were designated for uses such as homes and ranches.

One of the more protracted legal battles involved a lawsuit filed in 2003 by a non-Native Hawaiian student against the hugely wealthy and influential private Kamehameha Schools. Kamehameha operates three campuses for the benefit of children of Hawaiian ancestry. The student's attorneys contended that violates civil rights laws. As the U.S. Supreme Court was about to announce last year whether it would hear the case, Kamehameha paid $7 million to settle it out of court.

'A Hateful Place'
A violent incident with racial overtones in 2007 near Pearl Harbor prompted a good deal of soul searching about race in Hawaii. A Native Hawaiian man and his teenage son brutally pummeled and kicked a Caucasian soldier and his wife near Pearl Harbor after the soldier's SUV struck the other man's parked car. The son shouted "fucking haole" while attacking the soldier. The husband and wife suffered broken noses, facial fractures and concussions. A prosecutor said the assault was a road-rage incident, not a hate crime. But it generated much debate on newspaper websites and blogs about the use of the word haole and whether whites are the targets of racism in Hawaii.

"It is a hateful place to live if you are white," wrote a woman on one Hawaii website's comments section. A Hawaii native who is white wrote, "Racism exists in Hawaii. My whole life I've never really felt welcome here." A sailor stationed at Pearl Harbor added that "this island is the most racist place I have ever been in my life."

Other white residents, however, wrote that they had had no such experiences. And many people maintained that arrogant mainlanders are the most likely to incur natives' wrath. It's their "cultural inability to be humble [that] is a huge contributing factor in a lot of violence against them," one person wrote. "There is a high degree of arrogance and lack of respect that mainlanders exhibit," added another.

A Hawaiian Studies professor at the University of Hawaii, Haunani-Kay Trask, is one of the most caustic critics of whites in the islands. In her 1999 book, From A Native Daughter, Trask wrote: "Just as … all exploited peoples are justified in feeling hostile and resentful toward those who exploit them, so we Hawaiians are justified in such feelings toward the haole. This is the legacy of racism, of colonialism."

In a poem titled, "Racist White Woman," Trask wrote: "I could kick/Your face, puncture/Both eyes./You deserve this kind/Of violence./No more vicious/Tongues, obscene/Lies./Just a knife/Slitting your tight/Little heart."

Trask's opposite number is Conklin, the "anti-sovereignty" white activist who has lived on Oahu for 17 years and says he loves Hawaii's culture, spirituality and history, but is labeled a racist by some of his detractors. He wrote a book entitled Hawaiian Apartheid: Racial Separatism and Ethnic Nationalism in the Aloha State.

"Here in Hawaii, there is no compulsion to speak out on racist attacks. There are all these hate crimes and violent things happening to white people and you don't hear sovereignty activists speaking out against it," says Conklin, who manages a massive website on Hawaiian issues. "The violence has been going on for years and it's always been hush-hush."

State and Race
It's against this backdrop that Hawaii approaches its 50th anniversary of statehood. The non-celebration will consist largely of educational events at various venues. Iolani Palace won't be one of them. Once home to Hawaii's monarchy and where the last monarch was imprisoned after her government was overthrown, the palace is a potent symbol of anti-statehood — and anti-white — sentiment.

Republican state Sen. Sam Slom learned that the hard way. Although Statehood Day is a holiday in Hawaii, there were no celebrations for about 10 years, until he organized one in 2006 at the palace. He and others were confronted by demonstrators shouting racial epithets. Slom, who is Caucasian and has lived in Hawaii since 1960, said the 30 to 40 "hard-core" protesters intimidated a high school band, which left early, as well as some spectators.

The 50-year anniversary events figure to be "soft celebrations" aimed at defusing sovereignty passions, Slom says. "It is a divisive wedge that some people have exploited," he says. "There are people who have made it a racial thing. [But] the vast, overwhelming majority are proud to be United States citizens."

Still, a statehood commission planning commemorative events opted not to re-enact the phone call to the Territorial House of Representatives meeting at Iolani Palace in 1959 informing representatives that Congress had voted in favor of Hawaiian statehood. Commission member Donald Cataluna strongly opposed a reenactment, according to the Honolulu Advertiser, saying he "didn't want any blood to spill."

That won't completely mollify sovereignty activists, Slom predicts. "There will be protests, there's no question about it."

By Larry Keller

Source: Southern Poverty Law Center – Intelligence Report – Fall 2009

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