Taking the cue from their right-wing conservative radio talk-show hosts, KURV wannabes like Col. Ray and Sergeeeo Sanchez have regurgitated their opposition to what they call the "indoctrination" and "politicization" of our educational system they charge is the aim of Pres. Barak Obama's nationwide address to the nation's school children.
The pack smells blood on the heels of Green Jobs Czar Van Johnson's resignation from the Obama administration for comments made about Columbine and other "radical-communist" quotes made in the course of his public life. In a frenzy, they are striking out at every opportunity to bring down this administration and its policies.
These running dogs of the conservative hate-mongers mouth phrases like "government-run" health care system, "socialism," big government, and other push-button phrases favored by their masters. They complain the "public" option on health care reform is nothing short of socialized medicine, and that Obama's reforms are nothing more than a communist plot to, in the words of punch-drunk Glenn Beck, destroy the republic.
The sharpest complaint came to Obama's school children speech came from Florid
a Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer. He said the speech was an attempt to spread a socialist ideology. However, once he was given an advance copy of the speech he quietly admitted that there was nothing wrong with it.Perhaps many people don't remember that Bush himself was pushing his "No Child Left Behind" educational policies on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, at Emma Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla., when his aides rushed into to inform a befuddled "W" that attacks on the United States were under way.
I don't recall that that time that any of the talk-show pundits ever spoke out about Bush doing the elementary-class circuit to push for his policies. What's the difference now?
It may be that Republicans actually fear that another attack will occur when Obama address the children in this country whose parents don't object to him addressing our students.
Sean Hannity went as far as deliberately confusing Obama with the term "Dear Leader," a gratuitous (and snide) reference to dictator Kim Jong-il of North Korea. Rush Limbaugh repeatedly refers to Obama as the "Great Messiah," and so on ad nauseaum.
Many, if not all, of the presidents in recent memory have made such addresses to our nation's schoolchildren. Where was the outcry then?
Much to their credit (and I don't agree with them often), local federal representatives like Solomon Ortiz, Ruben Hinojosa, and Henry Cuellar, say they will support the health-care reforms contained in the president's bill, with some reservations. During their electronic "town hall" meeting, they specified their objections and tempered down the perfunctory claims by South Texas zealots who defended the U.S. health system as the best in the world and that they didn't want socialized medicine, the government choosing your doctor, and the whole screed manufactured by the talk-show extremists.
They should.
After all, more than half of their constituents in their respective districts are not insured in any way for health, and short of the public option, will continue that way. Hospitals will continue to bear the brunt of serving the uninsured, medical bills will continue to rise, and the medically-underserved population will also grow. The poor will continue to die while only those who can afford it will receive medical treatment.
What ha
ve South Texan communities have to gain by opposing reform? More of the same?Let Obama read to the kids, for God's sake. The worse that could happen is that they might actually think anyone can become president.
3 comments:
New blog and already choosing to be a captive of the present. There is some history here, you should try to research the topic before posting.
In 1991, Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced GHW Bush's speech --they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.
"The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president; it should be helping us to produce smarter students."
- House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt in response to a planned speech by then President G.H.W. Bush to school children in 1991.
Your are correct. However, the responses were not quite as vitriolic as these new folks are spewing. Did they call Bush a doctrinaire, a socialist, a Hitler trying to produce Brown Shirts, Nazi youth, etc.? It's a very different atmosphere we're living through in the present. Did Democrats then urge schools not to show the speech and parents to pull out their children from schools in order for them not to listen to the President? I don't think so. The degree of meanness has been ratcheted up by our new demagogues.
Uh.. yes, they did/do. And: Yes, they did.
Like I had said, you can look it up, but you would have to find areas of research that challenge, not confirm your ideology. Besides, you really don't want to argue degrees of of difference, do you?
My feeling on it is that, it was wrong then and wrong now. Neither side of the political spectrum has the market cornered on 'stupid'.
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