Tag: students

New York High School Kids Recite The Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic. Why That Was Wrong.

On By kingsjesterIn Christianity, Politics1 Comment

 

pledgeofallegiance

Have you heard what happened in Upstate New York earlier this week?

The Times Herald-Record reported that

An effort to celebrate national Foreign Language Week by reading the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic Wednesday has polarized Pine Bush High School into angry factions.

The morning’s regularly scheduled announcements included the Arabic reading of the pledge. According to students, the announcement was greeted by catcalls and angry denunciations in classrooms throughout the school by students who felt the reading was inappropriate.

The reading became the subject of angry talk throughout the school and a cascade of tweets both from students who criticized the reading and those who supported it.

The controversy has “divided the school in half,” according to school Superintendent Joan Carbone. She described the reading as “something that was supposed to be good but turned out not to be.”

Early Wednesday afternoon, high school Principal Aaron Hopmayer made a building-wide announcement explaining the reading’s context and apologizing to students who took offense.

The apology appears to have done little to quell the situation; it may, in fact, have fueled resentment from students who feel the reading was appropriate.

Carbone said she had received complaints from district residents who had lost family members in Afghanistan and from Jewish parents who were equally outraged by the reading.

Pine Bush is no stranger to controversy. In 2013, Jewish parents sued the district and administrators in federal court, accusing them of being indifferent to chronic anti-Semitic behavior.

Carbone said she has learned that state Education Department regulations specifically say the Pledge of Allegiance should be read in English.

Students on both sides of the issue took to Twitter to voice their feelings. Said one, “People who don’t like PB should take a vacation. I hear the Middle East is nice this time a year?”

Another student tweeted, “The pledge should always be said in English. They could’ve just said “Good Morning” in a different language each day.”

A student who supported the reading, senior Miranda Monroe, said she felt it was “wrong to discriminate – the whole thing is wrong.”

Andrew Zink, president of the student assembly and senior class president, ordinarily reads the morning announcements. When he was asked to allow the reading to take place in Arabic, he agreed, but added in a telephone interview later, “I knew exactly what would happen.”

“I knew many wouldn’t support it,” he said.

Nevertheless, Zink said he’d do it again, “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

No. It’s not.

Why would an average American High-Schooler feel this way?

Simple. This young man has been raised under the freedom-stifling indoctrination of a State Educational System which genuflects to the ideology of Political Correctness.

This ideology preaches that all cultures are equally good, all “religions” lead to God, America is NOT exceptional, and American Patriotism is “jingoistic”.

Oh, and if your parents do not believe this “truth”, you should ignore them….and snitch on them to the authorities…especially if they own a gun.

The multi-headed snake of Political Correctness has been slithering its way into our Popular Culture for years.

However, it really kicked into high gear with the immaculation…err…inauguration of its messiah, Barack Hussein Obama (mm mmm mmmm), who has stated that America is “not Just a Christian Nation” and those of us here in the Heartland, are “bitterly clinging to our Bibles and guns”.

Growing up in the Heartland of America, starting in elementary school, every student said the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, facing the American Flag in the corner of our classroom with our hands placed firmly over our hearts.

And, I can tell you from first hand experience, that act of allegiance and reverence for our country still takes place every morning in schools across this country, including those here in Mississippi.

Why is this done?

Is it some sort of arcane ritual that has no meaning in this Modern America, where our Liberal politicians preach that diversity is what makes America strong and that the “Melting Pot” image of a unified America is no longer relevant?

Liberals, all over the Internet, have been asking what difference does it make that these kids decided to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic?

I’m glad you asked, Libs.

The Pledge of Allegiance is more than just words being said to an inanimate object.

Just as America’s Founding Fathers pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” to one another, as they fought to secure our American Freedom from the forces of tyranny, every time Americans recite our Pledge of Allegiance, we are pledging our loyalty to each other as Americans, and to our country.

This is not a pledge to be taken lightly. This is not a pledge which was designed to be said in the language of our enemies.

This is a pledge which was meant to be said sincerely and said in a way that honors the flag of our country, a symbol which brave men have fought and died for in defense of our liberty.

As I have written before, my friend Johnny McDonald once wrote that “liberty is freedom with responsibility”. Our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance is a pledge of responsibility… a responsibility to keep America “The Shining City on a Hill”… a country where legal immigrants can begin their new lives as Americans…”one nation under God with liberty and justice for all”.

Maybe those High School Students in Upstate New York were never properly explained the meaning of the Pledge of Allegiance?  As I take my leave today, America’s Clown Prince, Mr. Richard (Red) Skelton, will explain it, so that even they might understand.  God Bless America!

Until He Comes,

KJ

 

Obama Speaks to Black Caucus on Ferguson, Blames Cops, While Memphis Experiences More Youth Mob Violence

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

policeline9292014President Barack Hussein Obama addressed the Congressional Black Caucus this past weekend. And, of course, our National Community Organizer spoke about the Ferguson Riots, from the viewpoint that you would expect a Community Organizer to have…

The widespread mistrust of law enforcement that was exposed by the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man in Missouri exists in too many other communities and is having a corrosive effect on the nation, particularly on its children, President Obama says. He blames the feeling of wariness on persistent racial disparities in the administration of justice.

Obama said these misgivings only serve to harm communities that are most in need of effective law enforcement.

“It makes folks who are victimized by crime and need strong policing reluctant to go to the police because they may not trust them,” he said Saturday night in an address at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual awards dinner.

“And the worst part of it is it scars the hearts of our children,” Obama said, adding that it leads some youngsters to unnecessarily fear people who do not look like them and others to constantly feel under suspicion no matter what they do.

“That is not the society we want,” he said. “It’s not the society that our children deserve.”

Obama addressed the Aug. 9 shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown carefully but firmly, saying his death and the raw emotion it produced had reawakened the country to the fact that “a gulf of mistrust” exists between residents and police in too many communities.

The shooting sparked days of violent protests and racial unrest in the predominantly black St. Louis suburb of Ferguson. The police officer who shot Brown was white.

“Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement – guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness,” said Obama, who has spoken of enduring similar treatment as a younger man.

He said significant racial disparities remain in the enforcement of law, from drug sentencing to application of the death penalty, and that a majority of Americans think the justice system treats people of different races unequally.

Now, I realize that, in Obama’s world, it is much more politically expedient to blame those trying to uphold the law, instead of those breaking it.

But, it takes two to tango.

Take my Hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, for example…

TheBlaze.com reports that

Another teenage mob went wild Friday, WREG-TV reported, allegedly flooding streets, damaging cars and beating an elderly man:

Police said a large group of teens flooded the streets near Central High School Friday just before 10:00 p.m.

“Had I had been armed we would have had a lot of kids laying in the Bellevue street that night,” Sharon Mourning said.

Mourning said she would have done whatever she needed to protect herself.

“So we just driving and all of a sudden all of the kids ran into the middle of the street,” Mourning explained.

Mourning and her daughter Princess were driving on Bellevue Friday evening.

“It was like a whole group of kids coming from the game,” Princess Onwibiko said.

“All of a sudden just bout 20 kids are on top of my car with about 40 more kids around my car and they kicking, they stomping, they jumping, you know they hitting the windows,” Mourning said. […]

Police reported another man was attacked in his car after honking his horn at the teenagers to move out of the way.

“They had done bricked his car, stomped his car, did the same thing,” Mourning explained.

Mourning reported seeing the teenagers beat an elderly man and another teenager.

“I actually looked at the child. His face was bleeding. You know they had done beat him,” Mourning said.

Did police lay down the law?

Not exactly; WREG reported that two 17-year-old were given juvenile summons and sent home.

Mourning said law enforcement’s response was insufficient.

“Memphis is going to burn if they don’t control these children,” she said.

Memphis’ sky-high levels of violent crime helped make Tennessee the most dangerous state in America in 2012, and while the city’s schools have improved somewhat since the “dropout factory” days of 2002, Memphis students’ high school graduation rate was barely above 70 percent in 2013 — leaving a depressingly large chunk of the city’s youth with days (and nights) free for mob outings.

So, how does Memphis’ Leadership plan on combating youth violence?

By rewarding it.

Back on September 25th, Mayor A.C Wharton announced his plan to stop these mobs of “poor, impoverished” youth (carrying the latest in cell phones) from vandalizing businesses and attacking innocent people.

Promising more still to come: Thursday night Mayor A C Wharton revealed part of his battle plan to fight youth violence.

For the first time since his youth violence forum three weeks ago, Mayor Wharton told WREG community centers and youth programs may be a part of the answer.

Mayor Wharton said his plan will be ready by the end of the year, so if more money is needed, it can be worked into the budget.

In the meantime, he’s got a few ideas in the works, like keeping community centers open on the weekends.

“We are now keeping those centers open on Friday and Saturday nights for basketball and fun things,” said Wharton

Each of the four centers attracts one hundred kids, and it will cost the city $80,000 to keep them open for the rest of the year.

“If there are one hundred boys in a community center on a Friday night, at 8:30 and 9 p.m., they are not getting shot and not shooting anybody,” said Wharton. “Then maybe when the churches will see the city is keeping its community centers open, and then the churches will maybe open their gyms on Friday and Saturday nights.”

He said he got word Thursday that Memphis was accepted to ‘My Brother’s Keeper.’ It’s a federal program for boys and young men of color that offers mentoring and skills to help them succeed.

Wharton applied to the program, and has the next 120 days to create a plan of action.

Wharton said he’s also expanding the Memphis Ambassadors‘ program from 400 kids to 1,000.

Right now, 2,000 kids apply for the program.

“They are required to adopt community service programs, maintain good character, stay in school , stay out of trouble and they get a stipend,” he said.

Wharton said he is also working on creating programs that offer career guidance and character building.

He activated a Youth City Council, which was created in 2007 but never formed.

Wharton said, “by the end of this year,” he will have a concrete plan, so if more money is needed, he can work that into the budget.

Wharton said he talks to Director Toney Armstrong every day, and doesn’t think more cops need to be hired to stop youth violence.

However, he said MPD is creating their own plan like cracking down on hot spots where youth violence is happening.

“For those who for whatever reason are beyond a reach of these programs, we have stepped up enforcement,” Wharton added.

In a related story, posted by local NBC Affiliate, WMC-TV, on September 24th,

With more than a month into the school year, thousands of students have not shown up for class.

Shelby County Schools officials put the number of no shows this year at 9,052. That data comes from the board of education’s Tuesday meeting.

Educators say the report doesn’t necessarily mean that all 9,000 plus kids are truant. Some may have moved away, changed schools, or registered privately.

“In this age and era of kids having multiple options: charter Schools, ASD, municipality districts,” William White with SCS Planning and Accountability said. “It gets a little more complicated trying to get these numbers.”

Superintendent Dorsey Hopson says this is still a big problem. He says one complicating factor is the lack of a shared student data between districts.

School board members offered suggestions. They suggested moving up registration to start the process sooner or being proactive about recruiting. Others suggested working with individuals schools and principals, as well as community leaders to track down students.

“I don’t want the headline to be that the numbers don’t support truancy, because we have a truancy problem here that we need to figured it out,” Hopson said.

Hopson says right now they have no way to cross reference other school districts and figure out whether the no shows are registered at municipal schools.

Whether through truancy or miscalculations, SCS predicted a total number of students around 117,000. At a cost of about $8,000 per student, only having 108,000 could cost the district money to use in the classroom.

My beloved hometown of Memphis, Tennessee has been gutted by decades of poor financial stewardship and corrupt Black Democratic Leadership, who never saw a dollar they couldn’t spend, or a relative or friend that they couldn’t give a job with the city to.

And now, Memphis’ chickens have come home… to roost…brought about by a failed school system which turned in its charter in a successful scheme to take over the more affluent county school system, only to see the county municipalities start their own individual systems, Memphis’ black citizens murdering each other every night, and gangs of black teenagers beatomg the snot out of innocent people, simply because they’re bored, they have no parental guidance, and they know, as “juvenile offenders”, that nothing will happen to them.

There will be very little national news coverage about what happened to this lady and her child, just around the corner from historic Crump Stadium, just as the beat-down at the Kroger Parking Lot has faded from the National Scene .

President Obama will not address Memphis’ problem.

And, Outgoing (Praise the Lord) Attorney General Eric Holder is noticeably silent as well as are the Justice Brothers, Revs. Jackson and Sharpton.

For, boys and girls, the harsh reality of  an out-of-control populace of a Democratically-ran city, well on its way to becoming another Detroit, must be ignored at all costs…due to political expediencies.

Because, for these self-serving Democrat Liberal Politicians, as President Barack Hussein Obama himself has conceded, it is not about the content of the character of those who break the law, but rather, the color of their skin.

Until He Comes,

KJ

Michelle Obama to America’s Students: Shuddup and Eat Your Arugula

On By kingsjesterIn PoliticsLeave a comment

michelle1Remember when American First Ladies were gracious and classy?

Man. Do I miss those days.

Thehill.com reports that

First Lady Michelle Obama said it was “natural” that kids are “grumbling” over new requirements for schools to fill vending machines and lunch lines with healthier food, but that it would not deter her from improving child nutrition.

“Change is hard,” the first lady said in an interview withChannel One. “And the thing about highly processed, sugary, salty food is that you get addicted to it. I don’t want to just settle because it’s hard.”

The first lady said she knew children “are grumbling because they have to make changes,” and said her daughters roll their eyes when she forces them to eat their vegetables.

“But I know that I’m doing it because I’m giving my kids the best that I know I can give them,” Obama said.

The first lady also encouraged children to try “vegetables that have a little flavor, sweetness” to them like broccoli, celery and carrots.

“Don’t be mad because there are changes,” she said. “Figure out why the changes are important, and then find out how you make it work for you.”

New requirements for snacks sold in school vending machines implemented this year require food to be less than 200 calories, have less than 35 percent saturated fat, and have zero grams of trans fat. The switch has elicited some outrage on social media, with students complaining that some of their favorite treats are no longer available.

The swap has also given additional ammunition to congressional Republicans, who are pushing the administration to allow some schools to opt out of new, stricter school lunch requirements. The GOP lawmakers say the new regulations are driving up lunch costs for schools, and that children aren’t eating food they don’t like.

But the first lady dismissed those complaints, saying there was a way to serve food that was healthy and still tasted good.

“Look, I wouldn’t want to eat a nasty lunch either. Quite frankly, no one wants to eat bad food,” Obama said. 

She added that she did not “want to give up because it’s expensive.”

“I don’t want that to be the excuse,” she said.

The question is, Mrs. Obama, are you going to install “Food Nazis” in every school cafeteria across the country, which is still participating in your Diet Plan, to make sure the kids eat their arugula?

Because if you don’t, a whole lot of food…and money is going to go down the cafeteria disposal.

Last July, wach.com reported that

The National School Lunch Program is a massive effort to get healthy meals to American Students.

Critics argue that there’s waste in the program because the summer food service program is incentive based. The Government Accountability Institute says taxpayer money is being spent to generate enrollment, even if the need for food is not great enough to get families to the program.

“Food is not enough to attract students,” said Peter Schweizer of GAI. “So they do a lot of social activities; they have to have raffles and contests to encourage people to come. If it’s a feeding program designed to meet legitimate needs, they shouldn’t have to do that.”

That’s not the only complaint. The School Nutrition Association, which lobbies for cafeteria workers, says new USDA mandates of a fruit and vegetable on every plate, even if the child doesn’t want them, is causing plate waste.

An estimated $1 Billion worth of food is going in the trash each year.

USDA Secretary Kevin Concannon admits the new standards are indeed rigorous, but he says his agency is helping struggling school districts. On the charges that money is spent to boost enrollment, Concannon says federal tax dollars can only be spent for the preparation of food.

“What we’ve done to counter [plate waste] is to educate the children, educate the parents and find fun ways in which they can explore new foods and new taste,” said John Shana of Maryland Food Bank.

The U.S. Congress passed the Hunger Free Kids Act in 2010. The FDA insists implementation of the program is working.

There are several churches and organizations locally working to help feed children during these critical summer months.

Right now Harvest Hope is in the process of looking for more faith partners for its back pack program.

The department of social services has the summer food service program which is federally funded.

Look at this picture of some of Mooch’s school lunches…and, try to keep your last meal down.

MichelleObamaschoollunchprogram9282014

How did we get to this point?

The New York Times published the following story on January 25th, 2012:

Hoping to combat the growing problem of childhood obesity, the Obama administration on Wednesday announced its long-awaited changes to government-subsidized school meals, a final round of rules that adds more fruits and green vegetables to breakfasts and lunches and reduces the amount of salt and fat.

The announcement came months after the food industry won a vote in Congress to block the administration from carrying out an earlier proposal that would have reduced starchy foods like potatoes and prohibited schools from counting a small amount of tomato paste on a slice of pizza as a vegetable. Under the latest rules, potatoes are not restricted, and tomato paste can qualify as a vegetable serving.

The rules were announced by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Michelle Obama at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Va.

“As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat and ensure that they have a reasonable balanced diet,” Mrs. Obama said in a statement. “And when we are putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria.”

About 32 million children participate in school meal programs each day. The new rules are a major component of Mrs. Obama’s campaign to reduce the number of overweight children through exercise and better nutrition.

The rules are the first changes in 15 years to the $11 billion school lunch program. They will double the amount of fruits and vegetables children are served in school and will require that all grains served are whole grains.

All milk served must be low fat, and for the first time the rules set limits on levels of salt and trans fats. They also set a minimum and maximum calorie intake per day based on student age.

The government estimates that the rules will add about $3.2 billion in costs to the program, about half the cost of the proposed rules that were blocked last year.

Past First Ladies always took a cause to tackle during their husbands’ terms.

Usually, it was a non-intrusive cause such as literacy or combating hunger in America.

Not, in the case of our globe-trotting (on our dime) present First Lady, “Moochelle” Obama.  Under the guise of battling Childhood Obesity, she decided to sic the food police on America’s school menus, turning our children into the Liberal Administrations’ own personal lab rats and overruling the parental authority of the average American Family.

Mrs. Obama has had to adjust her diet plan over the last two years, because children were not receiving enough nourishment from her Diet Plan and literally falling out by the middle of the afternoon.

In response to this danger to the health of their students, several school systems across the nation have told the First Lady what she can do with her non-nutritious Diet Plan, the latest being the Liberal Bastion of New York State!

Do Americans a favor, Mrs. Obama.   Stand in front of a full-length mirror, with your back to it, and look over your shoulder.  Perhaps then, you’ll realize just how hypocritical you’re being.

You know…Glass Houses?

Until He Comes,

KJ