Back in June, ConservativeDailyNews.com printed a list of 1,001 Reasons for why to vote against Barack Obama.  The first 50 reasons are listed below, and you can find the entire list of 1,0001 reasons here:

List of 1001 Reasons to Vote Against Barack Obama:

1. The man started his presidency off with a bang by botching his oath of office.
2. For good measure, he set the tone for his administration for allowing Chief Justice John Roberts to take the blame for the error.
3. Obama promises on the campaign trail to immediately shut down Guantanamo Bay.  The detention facility is open three years later and counting.
4. In the same breath, he promises to restore habeas corpus. Three years into his term, he signs the National Defense Authorization Act, which leaves open the possibility of indefinite detention of American citizens.
5. President Obama ordered the assassination of an American citizen.
6. As Senator, Obama spoke out against but voted for the Patriot Act.
7. As President, he extended it, with an auto-pen, while he was in France.
8. Obama continues the “Bush practice” of extraordinary rendition.
9. As a candidate, Obama promises to end the War in Iraq and bring all troops home within 16 months. He even says in 2007 that it would be the first thing he would do in office, and that “you can take that to the bank.” As president, he announces all troops would be withdrawn by the end of 2011 (34 months later).
10. Obama states the Afghan War would conclude in June 2011, but projections now have us running into 2014.
11. As Senator, Obama opposes the surge in Iraq. He claims that increasing troop levels by 20,000 would actually increase sectarian violence.
12. When pulling troops out of Iraq, Obama tries to claim success for ending the war, without giving credit to Bush or the troops for any “victory.” The Bush surge was what turned the tide in the war.
13. Sectarian violence is up sharply since Obama pulled troops out of Iraq in December 2011.
14. President Obama refuses to say “victory” is necessarily the goal in Afghanistan. Obama reasons the U.S. should not project the image of Emperor Hirohito being forced to sign a treaty of surrender before Macarthur to end the war against Japan.
15. Emperor Hirohito did not sign the treaty of surrender ending the war against Japan. It was his foreign minister Shigemitsu.
16. Obama  plans to ease travel restrictions to communist Cuba in 2009. And in 2011.
17. The president pledges a “new beginning” with the Cuban dictatorial regime.
18. A glance at a Cuban-U.S. relations timeline running to December 2011 shows nothing changed.
19. President Obama greets Venezuela’s socialist dictator Hugo Chavez warmly at the Summit of the Americas.
20. Earlier that month, Chavez calls Obama an “ignoramus.”
21. At the same summit, President Obama sits patiently through a 50 minute diatribe against the United States delivered by socialist strongman Daniel Ortega, only scribbling notes instead of walking out with his diplomatic team.
22. President Obama meets a grinning Daniel Ortega at the same summit.
23. When asked later by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper what he thought of the anti-American tirade, President Obama replies, “It was 50 minutes long. That’s what I thought.”
24. The attempted subversion of the rule of law in Honduras by the socialist president Zelaya, which would have unconstitutionally put him on the ballot for a third term, prompts his judicial removal from office. Obama condemns the supposed “coup” as “not legal.”
25. President Obama directs his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to cut off $30 million in aid to Honduras.
26. Election fraud propelling anti-Israel Iranian president and saber-rattling madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back to power leads to a mass civil uprising. Despite reports of widespread and cruel bloodshed repressing the protests, President Obama says nothing for ten days.
27. President Obama refuses to “intervene” in pro-democratic Iranian protests.
28. Obama’s first call as president is made to the Palestinian Authority’s Fatah leader President Mahmoud Abbas.
29. Obama’s first formal interview is conducted with Al-Arabiya television.
30. One of President Obama’s first executive orders is to greatly restrict the influence of lobbyists in his administration.
31. Years later, it is well-known that the Obama administration routinely meets with lobbyists off White House grounds, where Secret Service logs are not kept.
32. In 2012, Obama promotes a recent lobbyist with Mexican illegal immigration advocate La Raza from a position as director of intergovernmental affairs to director of the Domestic Policy Council.
33. The second executive order Obama gives is one reversing Bush era rules safeguarding prior administration’s records. It narrows “executive privilege.”
34. Obama invokes executive privilege within the first year over the gatecrasher fiasco.
35. In late 2011, the Obama administration refuses to turn over all communiques relating to the politically seedy financing of bankrupt solar panel company Solyndra.
36. Another early executive order froze pay for White House staffers making over $100,000. A year later 74% of staffers got a pay raise, many of them to well over a $100,000. (Freezing pay does not apply to promotions or position changes.) The average boost was 9%, three times private sector average.
37. The next year, 54% got a raise. The average increase was 8%, and of those who got raises, it was nearly 16%.
38. Barack Obama was declared by presidential historian Michael Beschloss as “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” Beschloss gushed that Obama’s IQ was “off the charts,” but when pressed by radio host Don Imus, he could not say what Obama’s IQ was.
39. Despite being heralded as a brilliant thinker, Obama still to this day refuses to release his college records.
40. Barack Obama received a degree from prestigious Columbia University, where hardly anybody recalls him attending there.
41. As editor of the Harvard Law Review, Barack Obama anonymously wrote one article – championing abortion.
42. The one quote provided from the article cited by Politico contains a grammatical error – “in to” instead of “into.”
43. A letter to a Harvard newspaper written by Obama shows rampant grammatical errors, including a demonstrable lack of subject-predicate agreement.
44. In Dreams from My Father, Obama makes known that he “chose his friends carefully” and deliberately sought out “Marxist Professors,” “structural feminists,” and discussed with his friends the socialist, anti-colonialist revolutionary Franz Fanon.
45. Before becoming president, Barack Obama authored not just one, but two biographies, making him millions of dollars.
46. In his book The Audacity of Hope, Obama was cited as saying The Constitution is a “living document,” that can be interpreted “in the context of an ever-changing world” (i.e. however he wants).
47. Before becoming an author, the president admitted he wrote some “very bad poetry.” This is true. Just one sample shows the same tendency to split a conjoined word: it’s not “under water,” it’s “underwater.”
48. Literary analysis performed by an expert at detecting forgery and fraud points to the strong possibility that Obama’s biographies were written by ghostwriters.
49. Additional evidence shows that the ghost writer for Dreams from My Father may very well have been unrepentant socialist terrorist and then-contemporary English professor William Ayers of the Weather Underground.
50. When Barack Obama was young, he was mentored by Moscow-connected Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. Identified as only “Frank” in his biography Dreams from my Father,  it was claimed that “Frank” was a poet on par with contemporary communist poet Langston Hughes. It was later discovered that this had to be Davis, a poet who had indeed joined the Communist Party USA. Obama later confirmed the relationship with Davis while attempting to distance himself from him.

The remainder of the list of 1001 Reasons to Vote Against Barack Obama can be found at http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2012/06/1001-reasons-to-vote-against-barack-obama-complete-edition/

Below is a letter sent out by local businessman Mark Dorf to his personal database that provides an insightful look into the state of the world we live in today:

Dear Friends,

I am taking a break at my desk from a hectic  day and doing some reflecting again.  This often times gives me “agita” and today’s no different as I am pondering the state of affairs the US (and the West) faces with Arab radicalization.  It seems that our administration is constantly trying to supply explanations and excuses for events in the post-revolution Arab states, and simply ignoring the root causes.

Such attempts at explanations only fuels the fire of radicals.  Simply put…… appeasement = empowerment and empowerment creates an emboldened enemy who believes they will prevail.

How many more Embassy attacks will it take for us to wake up and stop the appeasement.  The facts show that Arab states are increasingly being radicalized by their new found “democracy.”  Countries with new governments (Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt) and their new leaders do not challenge the domestic opinion on the street which has been negative towards America for a long time and became even more negative since the Arab Spring.

America used to be acknowledged as a champion of democracy, a defender of values, a bridge-builder between people and nations, and an example for the entire world to emulate. In the Middle East, this image of America is unfortunately quickly losing its place in the hearts of democracy lovers and peace makers of this fractured region.

I remember hearing on radio last week a comment that the White House’s policies are actually empowering Islamists.  So, that’s what I’m ruminating about right now and it makes me mad, really mad and disappointed.  Where’s our backbone, where’s our pride?

It sure seems like President Obama’s policies have made the Arab world more extreme and pushed us further apart since his reign in office.  He certainly didn’t embrace the George Bush belief that “your either with us or against us.”

But it’s certainly not just the Obama White House.  For decades now, the US like many Western nations have pandered, pampered and put up with Arab regimes atrocious behavior toward us.  Ever since the early days of Lawrence of Arabia our state department have been essentially a group of political figures living in a fantasy world creating a top heavy Arabist mind set.

One of the foremost authorities on Islam is Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer at Bar-Ilan University and the director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East and Islam (under formation), Bar Ilan University, Israel backs up my points from a recent piece he published.  The following are several of these facts he points out;

–          In April 1983 Hizb’Allah – the long arm of Iran in Lebanon – blew up the embassy of the United States, in another breach of its sovereignty, and killed 63 people, and in October of that same year demolished Marine headquarters in Beirut killing 241 American soldiers and citizens. The American reaction was to flee from Lebanon, which very much encouraged Hizb’Allah and its patrons in Iran and Syria, and caused the United States to appear as a country without a backbone. A month before this, in March of 1983, Hizb’Allah attacked the United States embassy in Kuwait, and in June, 1985 Hizb’Allah organized the hijacking of an American passenger jet of TWA. In June, 1996 Hizb’Allah carried out an attack on an American military base in Saudi Arabia, and all of these attacks carried out by Shi’ite Hizb’Allah with Iranian inspiration were left unanswered by the Americans.

–          Despite the international ban on Iran to export weapons, and on Syria to import them, Iran supplies the murderous regime in Syria with weapons, ammunition and fighters who are air-lifted over the skies of Iraq. The Americans know this and don’t do a thing.

–          Another American failure, no less important than the failure in Iraq, is the failure to stop the military nuclear program of Iran. We only need remember the Soviet missile crisis in Cuba (1962) to see the difference between then and now: Then, the determination shown by John F. Kennedy, president of the United States, caused the Soviets to fold up within two weeks, while today, the softness that the world presents – led by the United States – vis à vis Iran, has enabled the state of the Ayatollahs to progress in their military nuclear program for more than 15 years.

–          Thus, in a continual process of declining strength, the United Stated has become a paper tiger in dealing with the Arab and Islamic world. The Islamic bandits draw strength from American weakness, and it is precisely Obama’s attempts to engage the Islamists, beginning with the Cairo speech (June 2009), that increases the Islamists’ demands from him.

–          Islamic zealots sense the American weakness and increase their pressure. The Americans have adopted the culture of “political correctness” that makes them “be nice” even if the one they are dealing with is not nice at all. They enable Islamic organizations to act freely in the United States, to establish mosques almost without limitations and preach violence against the “infidel” in these places, under the right of freedom of expression, of course. People who are identified with radical Islam come and go in the White House and serve as “advisers” to the president and the secretary of state. During the past generation, the State Department has led the conciliatory and defeatist policy of the United States, which has brought the superpower of  the past to be only a paper tiger in the eyes of the Arab and Islamic world.

–          The ignorance of the administration in the eyes of the Middle East has been proven over the past three years, when more than once, people of the government issued statements such as, “The Muslim Brotherhood is mainly a secular movement”, “Iran can be persuaded by diplomatic means to stop enriching uranium”, “There is no proof of the existence of a military nuclear program in Iran” and “Islam is a religion of peace”. When the heads of the American government speak thus, the Muslim Brotherhood on the Sunni side of Islam, and the Iranians on the Shi’a side, know that they have nothing to worry about. The “Great Satan” has lost its teeth and its will to use its horns. Usama bin Laden is gone, but his ideology is alive and kicking in the hearts of far too many people, in the world in general and in the United States in particular.

–          Middle East peace is given only to those who cannot be vanquished, and freedom is given only to him who is ready to fight for it. The Middle East is no place for bleeding hearts, and especially those whose glory has passed and is no more. The Arab and Islamic world knows how to appreciate and honor only those who honor themselves, who know how to draw a clear red line and then be willing to battle anyone who desires to harm them, to go to battle in order to guard the freedom of their region and their global glory.

I firmly believe that a policy of appeasement” will never keep “radical Islamism” from spreading throughout the Middle East.  Consider the mess we were in under President Carter’s management of the Iranian hostage crisis in the 70’s.  It took the fear the Iranians had that Ronald Reagan would bring down the wrath of the Almighty if he got into office.  It was no coincidence that the U.S. hostages left Iranian airspace the very minute that Reagan swore the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981.
Recent US policy has been to look at what we have done wrong, and see what we can do to put it right.  This is counter to Muslim culture and only makes us look weak in their eyes.  The reality in that part of the world is that they respect power.  They detest weakness.  The US has become a toothless tiger with our constant apologies for things we shouldn’t need to apologize for.

The consequences of the U.S. failure to understand the basics of Muslim culture is becoming deadly to America.  The Muslim world believes America is weak, and America can be defeated.  This is a VERY dangerous position to be in as it is when an enemy thinks you are weak is when they will attack.

If you look at the new U.S. policy towards the Muslim Brotherhood, it has not gained us support of the Islamists, despite the Obama administration’s attempt to placate the enemies of democracy at the cost of abandoning its traditional liberal friends.

We empower the Islamists when American leaders apologize to terrorists who attack us.  For example, the recent crisis with the film that was made by Coptic living in America and financed by family living in Egypt; it seems like we are acknowledging that America itself was guilty of the creation of the film.  America’s apologies did not help. The fire spread all over the Arab/Muslim world.

Instead of making apologetic speeches by mid-level officials, I would have liked to have seen our President speak out to all news media stating that while we can deplore the actions that the filmmakers made by making the film, our constitution provides that opportunity.  It is not endorsed by the American people and government.  And then lay down the hammer, that murdering our citizens will have harsh consequences diplomatically, economically and even militarily.  Under settled principles of international law, attacks on diplomats by, or permitted by, governments can be considered acts of war.

We should make it clear that America rewards our friends and punishes our enemies. 

Instead, Muslim rioters get cajoled. And that’s absolutely crazy. If these people are going to hate us (which they do), we need to just accept that fact and stand up for what we believe, without apology.  The facts have shown that radical Islamists hatred for the United States will never abate because of their rejection of many American values that are felt to be inimical to those of radical Islamists.

The same Muslim society that turns violent whenever its holy figures are disparaged, revels in the horrific portrayals of Jews and Judaism in Arab media.  Arab and Muslim movies and television shows contain hateful anti-Semitic motifs, endorsed by respected Muslim academics, that the Muslim viewer “eats up” enthusiastically.  Even their curriculum for young students.

Michael J. Totten at the Gladstone Institute wrote that, Something offensive to Muslims (along with something offensive to just about everyone else in the world) is posted on the Internet several times every second, yet massive international uprisings break out only periodically. What we saw last week was a raw play for political power by radical Salafists. By ginning up an anti-American mob and forcing President Mohamed Morsi, a Muslim Brotherhood member, to send riot police after the demonstrators to protect the American Embassy, the Salafists were able to make him look like a tool of the West.  Salafist preachers ginned up a similar mob in Tunisia.

Look at Egypt today.  It’s in shambles.  A broken military leadership, rampant economic ruin continually worsening.  They need help.  We can help them, but why should we since they are not acting like an ally or a friend.  Members of Congress are publicly questioning whether the Egyptian government deserves any more aid. This question is an excellent start. We certainly should make it clear to Morsi that we can make his job and his life a lot more difficult than the Salafists can.

We need to be prepared to pull the plug on our aid to Egypt.  Contrary to concerns that if we did that, they’ll get aid from Iran or Russia, then let them do so.  Interestingly, those countries are not providing Egypt with any economic solace in the first place.   Why not?  We all know that Sunni’s and Shia have a huge animosity and hatred towards each other.  The Muslim Brotherhood has been quoted stating that Shia’s are worse for Islam than Jews!  Our providing aid to them is not benefitting us at this time anyway.  Given our own deficit we are struggling with, let some other countries bleed money.

Let’s take a look at how our actions have affected our relationship with our only true ally in the Middle East, Israel.  Remember Barack Obama the campaigner.  Prior to his winning the Presidency his words were promising to friends of Israel.  Unfortunately, his actions as president have been alarming and damaging to a relationship of trust between our two democracies.

I recognize there are altering opinions about if Obama has been good or bad for Israel.  His supporters will say that he has continued to financially support Israel.  That is true.  For example beyond the $3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel that the president requests and that Congress routinely approves as president, he responded by providing full financing and technical assistance for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range anti-rocket defense system.  And it should be noted that he has increased aid to Israel and given it access to the most advanced military equipment, including the latest fighter aircraft.  But, keep in mind these requests are supported and approved by Congress.  I’m not sure Obama really could have not acted as he did.

Obama singles out Israel for condemnation over and over but says Israel has no better friend in the speeches he gives.  He blames Israel for the lack of peace talks but not the Palestinians who have refused to come to the table for years (more empowering with his original statements).  He says his commitments to Israel’s security is unshakeable, but he pressures Israel not to take military action against Iran.

My point here is not to question whether Obama has been good to Israel, but how his policies and commentary has empowered Islamists.  That is the point of my argument.

Our  Middle East policies are in shambles.  Obama made the statement early on in his Presidency that a president “who doesn’t look like other presidents.”   Perhaps he thought such a sentiment would endear America to Arabs.  If so, it has been proven unfounded.

So have other assumptions. Like the idea that Iran’s mullah regime would negotiate with us if we uttered soothing words and turned a cold eye on Iranian dissidents, as Obama did in June 2009.

Remember in his June 2009 “New Beginning” speech in Cairo where he said that the tension between the US and the Muslim world that “has been fed” by colonialism and the Cold War?  This was appeasement.  Perhaps if such rhetoric was spoken to a culture that is empowered by apology it would have worked.  Muslim culture is quite different and all it did was had Muslim leaders laughing at America.

He made the comment “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”   True enough, but we know what’s best for us, and what has happened over the past few years regarding our relationships with the Arab world has not been best for us.

Since the 9/11/12 attacks on America, Muslims have been protesting over much of the world, from Tunisia to Yemen to Bangladesh, and in some cases, have been assaulting our embassies.

The ostensible reason for the latest protests is a video produced by someone in the United States criticizing the Prophet Muhammad. But that’s obviously just a pretext, used by Islamist terrorist organizers to whip up frenzy in nations with large numbers of angry unemployed young men.

The threat of such attacks deserves a more stern response than a campaign trip to Vegas, a misstatement of settled policy and skipped intelligence briefings.

Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in Commentary Magazine that,  We don’t agree with tasteless insults aimed at Islam. But the Muslim mobs and those that rationalize their actions have no standing to gripe about anybody else’s behavior and must be bluntly told as much.    Insulting Judaism and Christianity in the Arab world is part of these countries’ mainstream discourse. Anti-Semitism is so deeply ingrained in the Muslim media that it is merely a matter of routine more than anything else. Western leaders should send a harsh message warning Arab and Muslim governments that we are aware that they don’t have clean hands on this issue. It should be made plain that monitoring Western speech about Islam is not their concern.

Instead, we apologize.

Do you notice that it is hilarious to many Americans to mock other faiths but outrageous to mock Muslims and Islam.  Why is that?  Maybe it’s because nobody has ever been harmed, much less killed, making fun of non-Muslims.

And the accusations that America is Islamaphobic.  If so, then why are America’s Muslims freer and more prosperous than Muslims in any other part of the world. Their daily lives show that the narrative about a U.S.-Islam war is a myth.

In conclusion, it’s time that we become the tiger with teeth, big, sharp and ferocious teeth.  We need to take a strong diplomatic stance.  We should tell the diplomats and representatives from these countries that there will be no more money, no more military support, no more of anything until they prove to America that they deserve the goodness of America and that they NEED actually MUST control the radical elements in their countries.

Those leaders need to take responsibility of their position in the world and stop blaming America.  These countries are taking the side of our enemies.  We need to send such a message and back it up.

That’s how I feel, how about you?

Below is a post from RomanticPoet on Friday regarding Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers.

Terrorist Professor Bill Ayers and Obama’s Federal School Curriculum

by Mary Grabar

September 21, 2012

Three years after the Department of Education announced a contest called Race-to-the-Top for $4.35 billion in stimulus funds, some parents, teachers, governors, and citizen and public policy groups are coming to an awful realization about the likely outcomes:

• A national curriculum called Common Core
• Regionalism, or the replacement of local governments by federally appointed bureaucrats
• A leveling of all schools to one, low national standard, and a redistribution of education funds among school districts
• An effective federal tracking of all students
• The loss of the option of avoiding the national curriculum and tests through private school and home school

Working behind the scenes, implementing these policies and writing the standards are associates from President Obama’s community organizing days. In de facto control of the education component is Linda Darling-Hammond, a radical left-wing educator and close colleague of William “Bill” Ayers, the former leader of the communist terrorist Weather Underground who became a professor of education and friend of Obama’s.

When these dangerous initiatives are implemented, there will be no escaping bad schools and a radical curriculum by moving to a good suburb, or by home schooling, or by enrolling your children in private schools.

How was it that 48 governors entered Race-to-the-Top without knowing outcomes?

It was one of the many “crises” exploited by the Obama administration. While the public was focused on a series of radical moves coming in rapid-fire succession, like the health care bill and proposed trials and imprisonment of 9/11 terrorists on domestic soil, governors, worried about keeping school doors open, signed on. Many politicians and pundits praised Obama on this singular issue, repeating the official rhetoric about raising standards.

It stands to reason, though, that education policies would be consistent with Obama’s agenda. After all, one of his most controversial associations, highlighted during the 2008 presidential campaign, was with an education professor, Bill Ayers. As a terrorist, he and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, had dedicated their Prairie Fire Manifesto to Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy. It was for this reason that Kennedy’s son, Christopher Kennedy, chairman of the University of Illinois board of trustees, voted against bestowing “professor emeritus” status on Ayers after he retired. “I intend to vote against conferring the honorific title of our university whose body of work includes a book dedicated in part to the man who murdered my father, Robert F. Kennedy,” he said.

THE OBAMA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION: WHERE DID BILL AYERS GO?

Back then, the former bomber and co-founder of the communist terrorist Weather Underground organization was Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The two had worked together closely from the year Ayers hosted a political launch party for Obama, in 1995, to 2002. At the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, “the brainchild of Bill Ayers,” they funneled more that $100 million to radical groups like ACORN and Gamaliel, which used the funds to promote radical education.[i] This initiative was also promoted by Arne Duncan, now Secretary of Education. Also as board members of the Woods Fund, Ayers and Obama channeled money to ACORN and the Midwest Academy.[ii]

When initial White House visitor logs were released in 2009, the administration quickly dismissed speculations about visits by “William Ayers.” That was a different William Ayers Americans were told. The Obama administration is appealing an August 17 order to release the other visitor logs in response to a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch and others.[iii]

It appears, however, that “the” Obama-friendly Bill Ayers has been visiting Washington, D.C. for education-related matters.

In October 2009, the year before he retired, Ayers had an encounter with the “Backyard Conservative” blogger at Reagan National Airport. At that time, there was speculation about Ayers being the real author of Obama’s autobiography, Dreams from My Father.Ayers teased that he was indeed the real author.

Blogger and law professor, Stephen Diamond, noted that no one asked why Ayers would even be in Washington, D.C. It turns out that Ayers was one of three keynote speakers at a conference sponsored by the Renaissance Group, which, according to Diamond, was dedicated to problems of poverty, diversity, and multiculturalism—and the inability of white teachers to deal with them. The other two speakers were Secretary of Education Duncan and U.S. Under Secretary of Education, Martha Kanter.

It is not clear what Ayers spoke about at this particular conference. But my analysis of his courses and methods at the University of Illinois determined that his purpose is to radicalize future teachers—and by extension their students—for the purpose of sparking a revolution and overthrowing capitalism.

It is shocking that Obama Education Department officials would appear at a conference that also featured someone like Ayers. On the other hand, their boss, President Obama, worked with Ayers in Chicago, and this kind of collaboration is not entirely surprising. We are left, however, wondering about the precise nature of the role that Ayers is playing in the development of this federal education plan. But his participation in this conference clearly suggests he is playing a role of some kind.

At this three-day conference, Mr. Nevin Brown of Achieve, Inc., made a presentation on the “Common Core State Standards” Initiative. A recipient of the largesse of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Achieve would become a key player in revamping education under Common Core. Hence, Ayers was a major speaker at a conference that was involved in developing a new national curriculum. If Achieve has ever disavowed Ayers or his teaching methods, we could find no evidence of this on the public record.

The notion of a “Common Core” seems to recall E.D. Hirsch’s traditionalist Common Knowledge curriculum, which emphasizes the need for students to understand America’s cultural and national heritage. But Common Core is not that at all. Many have been fooled, and an estimated 80% of the public does not even know about Common Core.

Common Core is part of an effort to implement regionalism, the replacement of local governments by regional boards of federally appointed bureaucrats, who in turn are beholden to international bodies. Regionalism will eliminate the freedom parents now have in choosing neighborhoods with good schools because tax funds will be distributed equally. There will be no escape in home schooling or private schools either, because the curriculum will follow national tests. Students will be tracked through mandatory state records that will then be accessible to Washington bureaucrats. Ultimately, all students will be subject to education mandates implemented by Obama’s radical cronies.

NOT LETTING A CRISIS GO TO WASTE

“Race to the Top” required that states commit to yet-to-be-written Common Core standards in math and English/Language Arts (ELA). Today, Common Core has the support of Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and was included in the platform of the Democratic National Convention. It was embraced by former Republican Florida Governor, Jeb Bush, much to the consternation of Tea Party groups, who see this as an unconstitutional federal takeover of education. The Republican Party is divided.

Emmett McGroarty and Jane Robbins, in their white paper “Controlling Education from the Top: Why Common Core Is Bad for America,” describe the pressure and sleight-of-hand that led governors to sign onto a commitment that was then changed before the ink had fully dried. They reveal that rather than being a state-led reform initiative, as touted, the new standards were written by a few well-connected, but non-qualified, education entrepreneurs. The history goes back decades, but in the most recent phase, the vision for Common Core was set in 2007, by the Washington-based contractor, Achieve, Inc., in a document entitledBenchmarking for Success.

The question is: Why was Bill Ayers keynoting a conference attended by the two highest officials in the Education Department and by Achieve, essentially the project manager of the nationalized education curriculum? It may be years before we know how often Ayers visited the White House, but the Ayers educational brand or philosophy is all over Common Core.

Some states are waking up. Virginia pulled out when Governor Bob McDonnell was elected. Georgia, Indiana, Utah, South Carolina, and others have begun the effort to extricate themselves.

When South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said she would support a state legislative effort to block Common Core, which her predecessor had instituted, Education Secretary Arne Duncan dismissed her concerns about nationally imposed standards as “a conspiracy theory in search of a conspiracy.”

But it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to realize that Common Core will ultimately dictate the curriculum. Two consortia of states (SBAC and PARCC)[iv] have been given $360 million in federal funds to create national Common Core-aligned tests and “curriculum models.” Well-connected companies, such as Educational Testing Service (ETS) and the multinational textbook company Pearson, are in competition to design the test. David Coleman, a chief architect of the Common Core standards for English/Language Arts, recently was named President of the College Board, which administers tests, including those designed by ETS, like the SAT.

The Education Department on August 12, 2012, announced another competition for $400 million in Race-to-the-Top funds for local districts to “personalize learning, close achievement gaps and take full advantage of 21^st century tools.” Such a competition cleverly bypasses recalcitrant states and lures individual districts into the federal web.

The feds’ announcement echoes Common Core’s emphasis on personalized learning and leveling of achievement through technology and collaboration (the “21^st century skills”). Common Core emphasizes “in-depth” reading of short passages, rather than long fictional or historical narratives. The Publisher’s Criteria reveal that a focus on short texts will equalize outcomes. Text selection guide B mandates that “all students (including those who are behind) have extensive opportunities to encounter grade-level complex text” through “supplementary opportunities.” The strategy of gathering students into groups to collaborate on short passages ensures that no one advances beyond others.[v]

In the tradition of John Dewey, multiple “perspectives” and “critical thinking” are emphasized over the accumulation of “facts.” Common Core advertises itself as promoting “skills,” rather than content. The skills, though, do not promise to make students more knowledgeable about literature or history, but to make them “critical thinkers” in the tradition of the radical curriculum writers who are selectively critical of the U.S. and the West.

BILL AYERS IN THE CLASSROOM

In 2008, attention was focused on Bill Ayers’ past as a terrorist; this, Stephen Diamond maintains, missed the real damage, which was political. Diamond, a social democrat, calls Ayers a “neo-Stalinist,” in line with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, whose country Ayers visited to make speeches about education being the “motor force of revolution.” According to Diamond, Neo-Stalinism is an “authoritarian form of politics which attempts to control and build social institutions to impose state control of the economy, politics and culture on the general population.” Ayers and his allies used the “critical policy area” of education, and through four aims: “local school councils,” small schools, social justice teaching, and payment of reparations through education spending.

Local school councils and “small schools” are efforts to escape modern schools that, in Ayers’ estimation, “are all about sorting and punishing, grading and ranking and certifying” and demanding “obedience and conformity.”[vi] Ayers’ numerous, supposedly scholarly, books and articles are filled with such hyperbole that depicts demands of the regular school day, like objective tests and class periods, as evidence of a police state.

Former Senior Policy Advisor to the Department of Education and member of the California Mathematics Framework Committee, Ze’ev Wurman, testified that the Common Core overlooks basic skills, lowers college readiness standards, and offers “verbose and imprecise guidance,”[vii] while dictating that geometry be taught by an experimental method that was tested on Soviet math prodigies in the 1950s—and failed.

In English classes, teachers will reduce the amount of time spent teaching their subject of literature to only 50 percent, and then to 30 percent in high school, a move criticized by education reform professor Sandra Stotsky. Replacing literature will be “informational texts” like  nonfiction books, computer manuals, IRS forms, and original documents, like court decisions and the Declaration of Independence. Documents, like the Declaration, however, are taught in a manner that downplays their significance. Overall, students will be losing a sense of a national and cultural heritage that is acquired through a systematic reading of classical literature and study of history.

Although the official rhetoric promoting these standards is more muted, the approach parallels Bill Ayers’ pedagogy. The replacement of traditional mathematics with “conceptual categories” lends itself to advancing a social justice agenda, as Ayers colleague Eric Gutstein does through his math education classes. The Common Core emphasis on having students simply explore original texts parallels the John Dewey-inspired approach that Ayers favors, of having students “discover” and “construct” knowledge. Not wanting to be beholden to outside, objective measurements of students’ knowledge, such teachers promote other more subjective measures, like displays of “deep” understanding, “higher-order” thinking, and ability to collaborate. By all indications, the testing being developed now will use such criteria.

THE ROLE OF BILL AYERS “PAL” LINDA DARLING-HAMMOND

Stanley Kurtz, in his latest book, Spreading the Wealth, maintains that a nationalized curriculum is part of an effort to replace local governments with regional boards, who would disburse local tax dollars equally among school districts. Once all schools are the same—with the same curriculum and the same funding—people will no longer have the incentive to move to good suburbs. While Obama’s community organizing mentor, Mike Kruglik, implements the regionalism advocated by the Gamaliel Foundation through Building One America, Ayers’ close associate, Linda Darling-Hammond, exercises “de facto control”[viii] through education.

Both Ayers and Darling-Hammond were leaders in the small schools movement. She has published in a collection edited by Ayers. Both have been advocates of ending funding disparities between urban and suburban schools, ending standardized testing, and attacking “white privilege.” She has been a board member of CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning), a group housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago, that provides studies of, and services for, Emotional Intelligence in schools—but really emotional manipulation aimed at making students global citizens.

Both also failed to improve schools or test scores. Ayers’ Annenberg Challenge failed miserably. The school created by Darling-Hammond, Stanford New Schools, which targeted low-income Hispanic and black students, had the distinction of making California’s list of the lowest-achieving five percent. Much of the reason may be her “five-dimensional grading rubric” of personal responsibility, social responsibility, communication skills, application of knowledge, and critical and creative thinking. Yet, Darling-Hammond served as education director on Obama’s transition team. In a January 2, 2009, Huffington Postcolumn, Ayers argued for her nomination as Education Secretary. That summer, Darling-Hammond pushed Common Core in the Harvard Educational Review.

Darling-Hammond is in charge of content specifications at the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), which received $176 million of federal Race-to-the-Top money to develop Common Core testing. She appears frequently as a speaker and board member of other affiliated organizations. For example, she sits on the Governing Board of the Alliance for Excellent Education, Inc., recipient of a $500,000 Gates grant “to advocate for high school reform at the federal level in order to educate federal policy members about Common Core standards. . .”

In the August 2009 Harvard Educational Review, Darling-Hammond gave a preview of new standards as she argued for “deep understanding” and advancing beyond “the narrow views of the last eight years” by “developing creativity, critical thinking skills, and the capacity to innovate.” New assessments would use “multiple measures of learning and performance.” These would presumably emulate “high-achieving nations” that emphasize “essay questions and open-ended responses as well as research and scientific investigations, complex real-world problems, and extensive use of technology.”

In an April 28, 2010, Education Week article, “Developing an Internationally Comparable Balanced Assessment System,” Darling-Hammond claimed that the new assessment system is “designed to go beyond recall of facts and show students’ abilities to evaluate evidence, problem solve and understand context.” Bill Ayers, throughout his writings, likens the testing for “facts” to a factory or prison system, and agrees with Darling-Hammond’s emphasis on criteria like “student growth along multiple dimensions.” Such buzzwords thinly disguise an agenda of replacing the objective measurement of knowledge and skills with teachers’ subjective appraisals of students’ attitudes and behavior.

Former testing foes, like Columbia Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins, now advance Common Core standards. Although long an incubator of anti-testing advocates, Columbia has produced the authors of the popular Pathways to the Common Core (2012), one of them Calkins.

Pathways is maddening in its lack of specificity. Repeatedly, the authors inveigh against “skill-and-drill” and favor “deep reading” and “higher-level thinking;” but they fail to say how this will be done or even what it means. They discuss “read[ing] within the four corners of the text” and having readers get “their mental arms around a text,”[ix] but offer no specific, much less tested, strategies for improving reading comprehension. They contradict themselves when they cite studies that show that students who read fiction improve reading levels and then promote nonfiction. When examples of informational texts are given, they are most often from left-leaning publications, often on trivial subjects.

Common Core thus promises to eliminate the idea of a common core of knowledge—through the privileging of leftist “informational texts” and material presented in a scattershot manner. The national and cultural identity that is conveyed through a wide and interconnected exposure to literary works from Mother Goose to Shakespeare will be undermined.

Yesterday, The National Review Online published Thomas Sowell’s article on Obama’s proposed policies that have repeatedly failed around the world.  You can read the article for yourself below:

The Fallacy of Redistribution
By Thomas Sowell

Barack Obama and Joe the Plumber in 2008

The recently discovered tape on which Barack Obama said back in 1998 that he believes in redistribution is not really news. He said the same thing to Joe the Plumber four years ago. But the surfacing of this tape may serve a useful purpose if it gets people to thinking about what the consequences of redistribution are.

Those who talk glibly about redistribution often act as if people are just inert objects that can be placed here and there, like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design. But if human beings have their own responses to government policies, then we cannot blithely assume that government policies will have the effect intended.

The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The Communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.

In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler’s Holocaust in the 1940s.

How can that be? It is not complicated. You can confiscate only the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally have kept tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.

People in industry are not inert objects either. Moreover, unlike farmers, industrialists are not tied to the land in a particular country.

Russian aviation pioneer Igor Sikorsky could take his expertise to America and produce his planes and helicopters thousands of miles away from his native land. Financiers are even less tied down, especially today, when vast sums of money can be dispatched electronically to any part of the world.

If confiscatory policies can produce counterproductive repercussions in a dictatorship, they are even harder to carry out in a democracy. A dictatorship can suddenly swoop down and grab whatever it wants. But a democracy must first have public discussions and debates. Those who are targeted for confiscation can see the handwriting on the wall, and act accordingly.

Among the most valuable assets in any nation are the knowledge, skills, and productive experience that economists call “human capital.” When successful people with much human capital leave the country, either voluntarily or because of hostile governments or hostile mobs whipped up by demagogues exploiting envy, lasting damage can be done to the economy they leave behind.

Fidel Castro’s confiscatory policies drove successful Cubans to flee to Florida, often leaving much of their physical wealth behind. But poverty-stricken refugees rose to prosperity again in Florida, while the wealth they left behind in Cuba did not prevent the people there from being poverty-stricken under Castro. The lasting wealth the refugees took with them was their human capital.

We have all heard the old saying that giving a man a fish feeds him only for a day, while teaching him to fish feeds him for a lifetime. Redistributionists give him a fish and leave him dependent on the government for more fish in the future.

If the redistributionists were serious, what they would want to distribute is the ability to fish, or to be productive in other ways. Knowledge is one of the few things that can be distributed to people without reducing the amount held by others.

That would better serve the interests of the poor, but it would not serve the interests of politicians who want to exercise power, and to get the votes of people who are dependent on them.

Barack Obama can endlessly proclaim his slogan of “Forward,” but what he is proposing is going backwards to policies that have failed repeatedly in countries around the world.

Yet, to many people who cannot be bothered to stop and think, redistribution sounds good.

MD Republican Candidate for Congress Ken Timmerman will be appearing on the Chris Plante Show tomorrow at 11:00 AM.  Be sure to listen!

Below is the latest edition of the Help Save MD Newsletter which discusses the Amnesty Threat & Why Stopping In-State Tuition Is Important.

THE MARCH TO AMNESTY CONTINUES

The Obama Administration, with massive support from Labor Unions continues to push for amnesty, delayed deportations, work permits and voting rights for the more than 20 million mostly Hispanic illegal aliens resident in the United States and Maryland. This effort was most blatant during the Democrat’s Convention in Charlotte, NC earlier this month where a young illegal alien student was invited to the main stage to speak in front of all the delegates.

Strange how putting God and Jerusalem in the Dem’s party platform was a major controversy but supporting illegal alien lawbreakers was seemingly welcomed by all in attendance.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/5/young-face-put-on-illegal-migration/

Even more telling was the mother of San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro (a future star of the party), who was highlighted to the national audience. Turns out mom, Maria del Rosario Castro (did you catch her mug?) was a leader in a Mexican radical group called La Raza Unida (The Race United) which was a separatist, anti-white, socialist organization which sought to create a Chicano state within U.S. borders. Yikes! Like mother, like son! Time to enforce all immigration laws.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/05/mother-dem-convention-star-castro-called-alamo-defenders-drunks-crooks/

Delayed Deportations are getting approved by the Federal Government in droves, even with very questionable paperwork being submitted by illegal aliens who qualify. The illegal aliens are being processed for work permits as well. In Maryland, these same illegal aliens want in-state tuition so they can further abuse Maryland taxpayers and the system and get an education on the cheap.

That’s why we must work together to get Maryland voters out on November 6. We all worked hard to get Referendum # 4 on the ballot – In-State CollegeTuition for Illegal Aliens.

If Maryland voters stop in-state tuition for illegals it will send a strong message to the nation that the illegal alien lawlessness and amnesty must stop now!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/documentation-for-deferred-action-leads-to-confusion-among-illegal-immigrants/2012/09/13/25faa7ce-fb71-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html

On Monday, NiceDeb posted an article by John Hinderaker of Powerline about the fact that Barack Obama and his minions are so used to controlling the press that they seem to think they can get away with anything.  You can read the article for yourself below:

Is the Dam of Obama/Clinton Lies Beginning to Crack?

Maryland Republican Candidate for Congress Ken Timmerman released a statement today regarding the murder of four U.S. diplomats in Libya:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

RAPE AND MURDER OF U.S. AMBASSADOR SHOWS U.S. WEAKNESS;
REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE CALLS FOR MUSCULAR RESPONSE

“We must take concrete steps on the ground, using unilateral U.S. military and intelligence assets, to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice, one way or another.”

Kensington, MD – September 13, 2012 – Maryland Republican Congressional candidate Ken Timmerman, who has spent the past 30 years reporting from and about the Middle East, issued the following statement on the brutal murder of four U.S. diplomats in Libya:

“My heart goes out to the families of our diplomats who were so savagely murdered in Libya on Sept. 11.

“I got to know Ambassador Stephens more than a decade ago when he worked on the Iran Desk at the State Department, and appreciated his candor and devotion to our country.

“This crisis now spreading throughout the Middle East was sadly predictable. Just as the seizure of our diplomats in Tehran by Islamist fanatics in 1979, it was created not by any alleged “provocation,” but by the perceived sense of U.S. weakness.

“When the evil-doers believe that the United States will not react, will not fight back, they attack. This is not a mysterious concept.

“It’s time that we face reality: the so-called Arab Spring the United States aided and abetted has ushered in an Islamist Dark Age descending upon much of the Middle East that endangers Americans, endangers Christians and other religious minorities, and endangers Israel.

“It also directly threatens the authentic, pro-freedom forces in these countries that Ambassador Stephens and his colleagues tried bravely to nurture.

“This is not the time for pathetic hand-wringing and retreat. This is time for America to stand up.

“I believe we must take strong and unambiguous actions.

“On the diplomatic front, the Obama administration should suspend all aid to Libya until the government there brings ALL the perpetrators to justice and provides armed protection to our diplomatic facilities and personnel.

“We must demand similar protections from other governments in the region, and if they fail to provide adequate protections, we should suspend aid until they do.

“We must make sure the U.S. Marines guarding our embassies in the region carry live ammunition and have adequate body armor. According to military bloggers, U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson refused repeated requests from her Marines to carry live ammo. If true, she should be relieved of duty.

“We must also take concrete steps on the ground in Libya, using unilateral U.S. military and intelligence assets, to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice, one way or another.

“The evil ones must understand that they cannot torture or murder Americans with impunity.”

On Monday, the blog RomanticPoet posted a video of the speech that Allen West recently gave to the Republican Jewish Coalition. You can read the article and view the speech below:

Speaking the TRUTH; BUT will YOU Listen?
======================
I wish THIS MAN was our President! Finally we are witnessing someone that has the courage, speaks the TRUTH and is able to coalesce Patriots (Republicans, Democrats and Independents).
I will support the Romney/Ryan ticket in November, BUT this man should at least be considered for the Secretary of Defense cabinet position.
******************
Republican Jewish Coalition
U.S. Congressman Allen West was the first in the line up and particularly bold, expressing his thoughts toward the Obama administration in front of several hundred of his biggest fans.

West kicked off his fiery speech by saying, “once upon a time people would say Republican, Jewish, and black conservatives were oxymorons and we didn’t exist. Well I’m here to tell you that we exist and we are not going away!”

See the short speech that had the audience on their feet roaring with applause.

Yesterday the Washington Examiner featured a story on the 18-page report issued by the Department of Health and Human Services and Internal Revenue Service regarding the regulations to describe what a “full-time employee” is as it relates to Obamacare.  You can read the entire article below:

Feds need 18 pages to define ‘full-time’ for Obamacare

One of the most-anticipated new federal regulations governing which companies will be required to provide health insurance under Obamacare has finally landed–with a thud.

In the latest indication of how complicated putting the Affordable Care Act into action will be, the Department of Health and Human Services and Internal Revenue Service issued 18-pages of regulations just to describe what a “full-time employee” is. Of note, to the Feds a full-time employee works an average of just 30 hours a week, not the normally accepted 40 hours.

The IRS rule is key because companies with more than 50 full-time employees must provide health insurance under Obamacare, or be fined. Business groups have been warning that small companies might try to replace full-time workers with part-time help to avoid being forced to offer health insurance in 2014, but the 30-hour full-time definition is likely to undermine those plans.

The lengthy 18-page definition caught some in the business world by surprise. “It’s scary,” said Randy Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce senior vice president for labor, immigration, and employee benefits. “It’s just a small example of two words under our healthcare law of 2,700-pages,” he said, adding: “It says to me things are awfully complicated.”

Johnson noted the new Obamacare ruling to demonstrate how oppressive federal regulations have become on American business. At a press conference to discuss the costs of regulations and state of the economy, Johnson said that Obama has added 11,327 new pages of federal rules and regulations.