Florida Passes Plan For Racially-Based Academic Goals
The Florida State Board of Education passed a plan that sets goals for students in math and reading based upon their race.
The plan has infuriated many community activists in Palm Beach County and across the state.
“To expect less from one demographic and more from another is just a little off-base,” Juan Lopez, magnet coordinator at John F. Kennedy Middle School in Riviera Beach, told the Palm Beach Post.
“Our kids, although they come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, they still have the ability to learn,” Lopez said. “To dumb down the expectations for one group, that seems a little unfair.”
Others in the community agreed with Lopez’s assessment. But the Florida Department of Education said the goals recognize that not every group is starting from the same point and are meant to be ambitious but realistic.
But Palm Beach County School Board vice-chairwoman Debra Robinson says:
“I’m somewhere between complete and utter disgust and anger and disappointment with humanity,” Robinson told the Post. She said she has been receiving complaints from upset black and Hispanic parents since the state board took its action this week.
Robinson called the state board’s actions essentially “proclaiming racism” and said she wants Palm Beach County to continue to educate every child with the same expectations, regardless of race.
http://tampa.cbslocal.com/2012/10/12/florida-passes-plan-for-racially-based-academic-goals/
Biden Acknowledges Obama 'Leading from Behind'
At a campaign fundraiser in Connecticut today, Vice President Joe Biden talked up the Obama administration's foreign policy of "leading from behind."
Biden " suggested that Ryan and Romney's comments that the U.S. was 'leading from behind' present considerable risks for the nation's interests," according to the pool reporter's write-up of Biden's comments.
Biden then said in reference to his debate with Paul Ryan last week, according to the pool report, "When you ask as I did on Thursday night...'how do you disagree with us in terms of leading from behind, what would you do differently?'''
Members of the Obama administration have long tried to distance themselves from when one anonymous adviser told the New Yorker magazine that Obama's foreign policy was one that favored "leading from behind."
As Obama foreign policy spokesman Tommy Vietor said last year, "No one in this White House ever said leading from behind. It wasn't even sourced to an administration official, but rather the more nebulous 'adviser.' There are hundreds of people who could credibly be called an 'adviser' to the president, and there are hundreds more who go to D.C. cocktail parties and claim to be one. ... I hope we can stop talking about a thinly sourced background quote and focus on the president's actual record of decisive leadership on foreign policy."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/biden-campaigns-leading-behind-foreign-policy_654457.html
Biden's Contempt By Irwin M. Stelzer
Joe Biden showed us just why Washington isn’t working, why politics has become so nasty, why stalemate is the order of the day: The Obama administration have contempt of anyone who respectfully offers ideas that challenge theirs -- or would challenge them if given even the slightest consideration.
That is what is important about what the ever-loyal New York Times describes as Vice President Biden’s “wide grin and aggressive demeanor” -- to be fair, they do mention “smirking” -- and Republicans see as rudeness, which is too mild a word for this occasion. Biden’s demeanor and his treatment of “my friend” Paul Ryan tell us why we are careening towards the fiscal cliff. Politics may not be beanbag -- the all-purpose excuse for television ads that skirt the truth and border on character assassination -- but neither is it supposed to be beanball, in which you behave in a way that prompts retaliation rather than reconciliation of competing views.
Biden showed that Democrats not only disagree with the Romney-Ryan views of the role of government in domestic and foreign affairs: They have utter contempt for such views, cannot even conceive of the possibility that the other side has a credible point of view, one that warrants thoughtful consideration and response rather than derision. That’s one reason President Obama did so poorly in the Denver debate: Certainty of his own virtue and wisdom relieves him of the necessity of considering the merit in the arguments of political opponents, and the structure of the White House shields him from criticism.
When faced with opposition his chosen battlefields have been venues in which the other guy never gets a chance to respond. Attack the Supreme Court when delivering a State of the Union speech; all the justices can do is sit there and take it. Don’t like Paul Ryan’s proposed reforms of Medicare? Invite him to a talk you are to give at a university, and then attack him from the podium -- a set-up in which no response is possible. Don’t like any of the proposals for modification of Obamacare? Don’t try to find some merit in them that might bring reluctant members of the opposition on-side, just muscle it through using a Senate majority and rather unusual procedural tricks.
And if even that seems too much like beanbag, issue executive orders: Don’t enforce laws to nab illegal immigrants; or dilute Bill Clinton’s signature achievement, welfare reform, by granting waivers although the law prohibits them; or effectively repealing a congressional act that gives workers an opportunity to prepare for impending lay-offs. The heir to Woodrow Wilson shares his predecessor’s view that the separation of powers and checks and balances are annoying relics of the very different era in which our Founding Fathers lived.
Biden’s eye-rolling, dismissive laughter and what all observers agree were smirks were his way of telling his opponent that the Obama administration finds opposition views worthy only of derision, and unnecessary to consider because we have the muscle to do as we damn please -- “We won,” as the president put it in his best Chicago-style hardball manner when negotiating with Republicans.
That’s why we are where we are. Of course Republicans seem stuck in their no-new-taxes rut: Any ideas they might have to offer as part of a compromise deal will produce smirks from the Vice President, distortions from the Senate Majority Leader, and “We won” from the President.
Anyone who is wondering about America’s future should consider just what our fiscal condition will look like with a man in the White House who thinks it’s “terrific” that his Vice President treated his opponent with unconcealed contempt. And anyone with a sense of history must be wondering whether Alfred E. Smith, the great, four-time Democratic governor of New York and presidential candidate in 1928 who was his party’s original “Happy Warrior”, is spinning in his grave as the title his affability earned him is passed on to a man whose debate smiles reflected no such thing.
That is what is important about what the ever-loyal New York Times describes as Vice President Biden’s “wide grin and aggressive demeanor” -- to be fair, they do mention “smirking” -- and Republicans see as rudeness, which is too mild a word for this occasion. Biden’s demeanor and his treatment of “my friend” Paul Ryan tell us why we are careening towards the fiscal cliff. Politics may not be beanbag -- the all-purpose excuse for television ads that skirt the truth and border on character assassination -- but neither is it supposed to be beanball, in which you behave in a way that prompts retaliation rather than reconciliation of competing views.
Biden showed that Democrats not only disagree with the Romney-Ryan views of the role of government in domestic and foreign affairs: They have utter contempt for such views, cannot even conceive of the possibility that the other side has a credible point of view, one that warrants thoughtful consideration and response rather than derision. That’s one reason President Obama did so poorly in the Denver debate: Certainty of his own virtue and wisdom relieves him of the necessity of considering the merit in the arguments of political opponents, and the structure of the White House shields him from criticism.
When faced with opposition his chosen battlefields have been venues in which the other guy never gets a chance to respond. Attack the Supreme Court when delivering a State of the Union speech; all the justices can do is sit there and take it. Don’t like Paul Ryan’s proposed reforms of Medicare? Invite him to a talk you are to give at a university, and then attack him from the podium -- a set-up in which no response is possible. Don’t like any of the proposals for modification of Obamacare? Don’t try to find some merit in them that might bring reluctant members of the opposition on-side, just muscle it through using a Senate majority and rather unusual procedural tricks.
And if even that seems too much like beanbag, issue executive orders: Don’t enforce laws to nab illegal immigrants; or dilute Bill Clinton’s signature achievement, welfare reform, by granting waivers although the law prohibits them; or effectively repealing a congressional act that gives workers an opportunity to prepare for impending lay-offs. The heir to Woodrow Wilson shares his predecessor’s view that the separation of powers and checks and balances are annoying relics of the very different era in which our Founding Fathers lived.
Biden’s eye-rolling, dismissive laughter and what all observers agree were smirks were his way of telling his opponent that the Obama administration finds opposition views worthy only of derision, and unnecessary to consider because we have the muscle to do as we damn please -- “We won,” as the president put it in his best Chicago-style hardball manner when negotiating with Republicans.
That’s why we are where we are. Of course Republicans seem stuck in their no-new-taxes rut: Any ideas they might have to offer as part of a compromise deal will produce smirks from the Vice President, distortions from the Senate Majority Leader, and “We won” from the President.
Anyone who is wondering about America’s future should consider just what our fiscal condition will look like with a man in the White House who thinks it’s “terrific” that his Vice President treated his opponent with unconcealed contempt. And anyone with a sense of history must be wondering whether Alfred E. Smith, the great, four-time Democratic governor of New York and presidential candidate in 1928 who was his party’s original “Happy Warrior”, is spinning in his grave as the title his affability earned him is passed on to a man whose debate smiles reflected no such thing.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/joe-bidens-contempt_654452.html#read-more
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