The Democrat Thread

[HuskyCaucasian]

Reagan preached tax cut gospel to America’s students

Putting aside possible ulterior motives, the conservative freak-out over President Obama’s planned speech to students urging them to stay in school and work hard is due to fears that Obama will use his platform as an opportunity to push his agenda on unsuspecting students. Ironically, that’s exactly what President Reagan did two decades ago.

 

On November 14, 1988, Reagan addressed and took questions from students from four area middle schools in the Old Executive Office Building. According to press secretary Marlin Fitzwater, the speech was broadcast live and rebroadcast by C-Span, and Instructional Television Network fed the program “t o schools nationwide on three different days.” Much of Reagan’s speech that day covered the American “vision of self-government” and the need “to keep faith with the unfinished vision of the greatness and wonder of America” but in the middle of the speech, the president went off on a tangent about the importance of low taxes....

[BigSqwert]

Love the hypocrisy.

[HuskyCaucasian]

I just heard the school I work for will not be televising it.

[BigSqwert]

I just heard the school I work for will not be televising it.

WTF is this country becoming? Unreal. I could never have imagined growing up as a kid that the President of our country would be censored to students.

[HuskyCaucasian]

WTF is this country becoming? Unreal. I could never have imagined growing up as a kid that the President of our country would be censored to students.

However, they are telling parents that if they want to watch it they would encourage the parents to sit down at watch it online with their children.

[GoSox05]

I'd like to see a copy of the speech. I bet its just the typical "work hard and get good grades" type speech. People act like he is going to be quoting Lenin and Marx.

Edited September 4, 2009 by GoSox05

[HuskyCaucasian]

I'd like to see a copy of the speech. I bet its just the typical "work hard and get good grades" type speech. People act like he is going to be quoting Lenin and Marx.

he'll be quoting the Qur'an.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Our official statement to the parents/students:

We have made the decision to not watch President Obama's address Tuesday during school hours. During his address, President Obama will be speaking to students regarding the beginning of the school year.

 

If you would like to know the text of the speech, it will be available Monday on the White House website. At that time, if you feel that this is an important message for your student(s) to watch, we encourage you to sit down with them and watch it together online Tuesday afternoon. It will be available on YouTube.

 

This would be an excellent time for you to help your child set goals for the year, as well as create a plan to achieve those goals.

 

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the principal.

[kapkomet]

Reagan preached tax cut gospel to America’s students

4 middle schools does not equal the entire country. And then it was rebroadcast with the choice - remember most areas didn't have access to this. Try pissing up some other tree.

Edited September 4, 2009 by kapkomet

[StrangeSox]

4 middle schools does not equal the entire country. Try pissing up some other tree.

 

the speech was broadcast live and rebroadcast by C-Span, and Instructional Television Network fed the program “t o schools nationwide on three different days.”

[Balta1701]

I'd like to see a copy of the speech. I bet its just the typical "work hard and get good grades" type speech. People act like he is going to be quoting Lenin and Marx.

(Checks to see that he's in the Dem thread)...

 

He'll actually be reading this.

A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her pet goat in her house. She played with her pet goat in her yard.

 

But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps.

 

One day her dad said, "That goat must go. He eats too many things."

 

The girl said, "Dad, if you let the goat stay with us, I will see that he stops eating all those things."

 

He dads said, "We will try it."

 

So the goat stayed and the girl made him stop eating cans and canes and caps and capes.

 

But one day a car robber came to the girl's house. He saw a big red car near the house and said, "I will steal that car."

 

He ran to the car and started to open the door.

 

The girl and the goat were playing in the backyard. They did not see the car robber.

[HuskyCaucasian]

"Obama, Dont preach socialism to the kids... Becuase we want to teach ultra-conservatism to them in the classroom"

 

Texas Board of Ed to Force Publishers to Push "Right" ideas

 

While Republicans are busy gnashing their teeth over President Obama's imminent indoctrination of the nation's schoolchildren, there's an education story bubbling up in Texas that could have considerably more far-reaching consequences.

 

The GOP-controlled State Board of Education is working on a new set of statewide textbook standards for, among other subjects, U.S. History Studies Since Reconstruction. And it turns out what the board decides may end up having implications far beyond the Lone Star State

.......

Approved textbooks, the standards say, must teach the Texan student to "identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly, and the Moral Majority." No analogous liberal figures or groups are required, prompting protests from some legislators and committee members.

 

The standards on Nixon: "describe Richard M. Nixon's role in the normalization of relations with China and the policy of detente."

 

On Reagan: "describe Ronald Reagan's role in restoring national confidence, such as Reaganomics and Peace with Strength." (That's it.)

 

The Cold War section is rendered as "U.S. responses to Soviet aggression after World War II ... "

 

The state board of education, made up of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, has to vote on the standards twice in the coming months before they would go into effect.

.....

Here's what makes this a national story: what happens in Texas doesn't stay in Texas, says Diane Ravitch, professor of education at NYU.

 

That's because Texas is one of the two states with the largest student enrollments, along with California. "The publishers vie to get their books adopted for them, and the changes that are inserted to please Texas and California are then part of the textbooks made available to every other state," says Ravitch, who wrote a book about the politics of textbooks.

 

Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute explains it as a simple economic calculation by the big textbook publishers. "Publishers are generally reticent to run two different versions of a textbook," he says. "You can imagine the headache the expense the logistics, the storage, all of it."

[StrangeSox]

The Texas BoE is full of ultra-conservatives.

[Balta1701]

Spot on.

*** Remind us again how the media is biased…: Finally, here’s one more thought about the entire controversy over Obama’s education speech on Tuesday: Since the White House has said the text of the speech will be available for 24 hours before he delivers it and since they altered the lesson plan language, why is this still a controversy? The ability of the conservative media machine to generate a controversy for this White House is amazing. In fact, this is an example of a story that percolates where it becomes harder and harder for some to claim there's some knee-jerk liberal media bias. (Does anyone remember these kinds of controversies in the summer of 2001?) The ability of some conservatives to create media firestorms is still much greater than liberals these days. How effective is the conservative media machine? Just ask Van Jones…

[Rex Kickass]

For all the gushing of Obama slipping below 50% in the Gallup poll that Drudge was orgasming about, it doesn't seem to be happening in the next few days at week. Obama's tracking poll seems to have rebounded in the last ten days from 50-43 approval (+7) to 55-38 (+17).

[jasonxctf]

being the good journalist that he is, i'm sure drudge posted the rising approval numbers on his website.. right.

[BigSqwert]

being the good journalist that he is, i'm sure drudge posted the rising approval numbers on his website.. right.

In extra huge font too!

[mr_genius]

being the good journalist that he is, i'm sure drudge posted the rising approval numbers on his website.. right.

 

 

In extra huge font too!

 

[BigSqwert]

LMAO

 

"CNBC's Maria Bartiromo needs to stick do doing what she does best: standing around on the floor of the Stock Exchange looking like a cross between Sophia Loren and that thing that co-piloted the Millennium Falcon with Lando Calrissian in Return of the Jedi." —Chez Pazienza

 

 

LINK

[Cknolls]

The difference is that Reagan's speech came in November 1988 after the election. A little bit different context.

[BigSqwert]

I can appreciate there's a question of whether the Department of Education erred in the wording of one sentence in the supplementary materials. It's reasonable to think officials should have been more cautious.

 

But that's not what this is about. The administration not only edited the supplementary materials, but has offered to make the text of the address available in advance, just so everyone can see how innocuous it is. It's made no difference. Conservatives don't want school kids to hear a message from their president. Those who claim superiority on American patriotism have decided to throw yet another tantrum over the idea that the president of the United States might encourage young people to do well in schools.

 

This is what American politics has come to in 2009.

 

LINK

[kapkomet]

LINK

That's reasonable. The "crapstorm" I have heard is more about the lesson plans after - not the speech itself. If parents did their jobs, the speech would be what it is anyway. Meaning, if it was a policy speech, you tell your kids that it's a policy speech. If it's nothing more then Obama telling kids to work hard and stay in school, big deal. With that said - the NEA and some of these other dips***s need to let it rest at that.

 

[BigSqwert]

"Barack Obama definitely the first black man to get attacked by the right for telling kids to study hard and stay in school." --Josh Marshall

[bmags]

kind of sad that politics nowadays has nothing to do with policies.

 

I

[BigSqwert]

How did I miss this quote from the Bartiromo article?

 

being someone with an all-access pass to every corridor of Wall Street, she hasn't just drank the Kool-Aid -- she's let herself be bukkaked with it.