Blog Smith is inspired by the myth of Hephaestus in the creation of blacksmith-like, forged materials: ideas. This blog analyzes topics that interest me: IT, politics, technology, history, education, music, and the history of religions.
The previous Pope, Benedict, had approved the move, but Francis solidified it.
The "Martyrs of Otranto" were 813 Italians who were slain in the southern Italian city in 1480 for defying demands by Turkish invaders who overran the citadel to renounce Christianity.
HOUSE HEARING ANNOUNCED On Tuesday, May 14, the PA House Education Committee will hold a hearing on their Big Government “solution” to educational standards known as Common Core. Unfortunately, the hearing will lack fairness and balance with Education Secretary Tomalis, an advocate of the one-size-fits-all Common Core, being the only speaker.
So one may ask: why have a hearing if only a pro Common Core advocate is allowed to speak? It certainly sounds like the only reasons for a House hearing are to placate those Pennsylvanians who are against Common Core and to be able to later claim that they indeed held a hearing.
If you are as outraged by this action by the House Education Committee as the leadership of Pennsylvanians Against Common Core are, please contact members of the Education Committee and demand that an impartial, balanced hearing be held that includes knowledgeable opponents to expose the many failures and inadequacies of Common Core. The first phone call and email should be directed to House Education Committee Chair Paul Clymer at 717-783-154 or 215-257-0279pclymer@pahousegop.com and then go here to find phone numbers and emails of the remaining members of the Committee. Please also consider contacting House Majority Leader Mike Turzai who apparently sees nothing wrong with another Big Government solution to what should be a local issue at 717-772-2470 and mturzai@pahousegop.com
BALANCED SENATE HEARING TO BE HELD On Wednesday, May 15, the PA Senate Education Committee will hold a hearing on Common Core. Unlike the House hearing, this hearing will be fair and balanced. The Senate public hearing on the Common Core Standards will be held in Harrisburg at 1 PM. The hearing will be held in Hearing Room 1, in the North Office Building to the right of the Capital Building.
Pennsylvanians Against Common Core greatly appreciates that Senate Education Committee Chairman Mike Folmer has planned a truly balanced hearing and has allowed opponents to Common Core to arrange to bring in three outstanding and well known proponents of local control. Neal McCluskey from CATO Institute, Joy Pullmann from Heartland Institute along with Cheryl Boise from Commonwealth Education Organization will be testifying against the standards. Compromised Testimony Testifying at the Senate hearing in favor of the Common Core are David Patti from the PA Business Council (PBC) and Joan Benso of PA Partnerships for Children. It should be noted that both groups and speakers have been compromised by accepting huge amounts of money from the Gates Foundation in order to promote Common Core.
The PBC received a $257,391 grant in Aug. 2012 to “educate Pennsylvania opinion leaders, policymakers, the media, and the public on Common Core State Standards and the Common State Assessment.” While the PAPC received -$595,859 in 2011 to promote college readiness from Gates and then received another $100,000 in 2010.
If you are not aware, the Gates Foundation is far and away the largest supporter of Common Core, having given away $104 million to promote Common Core across the country to groups like PBC and PAPC. This amount does not include their funding of the two supposedly neutral “state-led” groups that designed Common Core, the National Governor’s Association ($30,679,116) and the Council of Chief State School Officers ($71,302,833) to develop the Common Core” as part of the push into implementation.
Questions to be Answered Since there will be no opposition speaking at the House hearing and the Senate Hearing will only allow questions from Committee members, we suggest the following questions of the proponents:
1. What are the costs of implementation and who did the analysis? 2. Will implementation costs of Common Core be included in the next fiscal year budget? 3. Why does this have to be done right now and imposed on every district instead of testing these unproven methods on a smaller sample? 4. Why are we doing this without proof it works? 5. How are we guaranteed that Teachers do not go from "teaching to the PSSA test" to "teaching to the Common Core Standards test"? 6. You said this was initiated by Pennsylvanians. Who? a. What was their expertise and where are they now? b. Do they stand to benefit financially? 7. If this will supposedly improve students’ education but you can't point to anywhere where it has been done and worked, why not start with the bottom 5% of failing schools in PA? 8. Who wrote the standards? 9. Who paid for Common Core development? 10. You say that curriculum and testing are not involved in Common Core. Do not the standards drive curriculum and testing?
Please continue to promote the Pennsylvanians Against Common Core on-line petition and Facebook page. We would like to be able to attend the May 15 Senate hearing with a petition with more than 10,000 signatures and we need your help in reaching out to your friends and contacts to make that happen.
Please educate yourself about the perils of Common Core Curriculum and get the word out to others. After reviewing the information my evaluation of this programs is:
Common Core Curriculum=Communist School to Work
There is a short 5 part video by Jane Robbins below:
About the Stop the National Common Core Power Grab: Reclaim Local Control of Education DVD video. The video:
·Explains the origin of the Common Core – its genesis with private, progressive education interests in Washington, DC – and how the federal government imposed it on the states by tying its adoption to a chance at Race to the Top grants.
·Demonstrates that by adopting the Common Core, a state relinquishes its control over what is taught in its schools and paves the way for a national curriculum designed by unaccountable entities in Washington.
·Explains that the standards not only lack “rigor,” but in fact will diminish the education our children receive in English language arts and mathematics.
·Outlines the problems with the national tests that are being designed – behind closed doors – to align with the Common Core.
·Shows why the costs of implementing the Common Core will dwarf any federal grants received as a reward for adopting the standards.
·Reveals the federal dictates to build massive student-data systems so that students can be individually tracked from preschool through career – all in the name of producing “workers” who can “compete in the global economy.”
Simply put, the Common Core is designed to replace local and parental control over education with centralized, top-down control. The purpose is to train students for jobs, not educate them to be full, thoughtful citizens in our democratic republic. If we do not take action now to prevent this destructive experiment on our children, it will be too late.
Please watch this video and share it with others.
Click for Part 1: Chapter 1 Origins of the Common Core Chapter 2 Testing Mandates
Click for Part 2: Chapter 3 Education Without Representation Chapter 4 Sub-Standard Standards
Click for Part 3: Chapter 5 Intrusive Data Tracking Chapter 6 High Price Tag
Click for Part 4: Chapter 7 National Standards Do More Harm Than Good Chapter 8 Future Effect of Common Core
Click for Part 5: Chapter 9 Where Does All This Lead? Chapter 10 Take Action!
And for a wealth of information and a preview of the type of data that will be collected please visit:
“No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against,” the dissertation reads.
If this is what his academic research shows and it passed muster at Harvard then I don't understand why he should resign. Research has demonstrated that race differences in average IQ are largely genetic.
“We need a bill that is going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.”
“They want to keep guns out of the hands of bad guys but they don’t have any regulations…to do it,” another woman says, identified possibly as Democrat state Sen. Loretta Weinberg by the Star-Ledger.
“They don’t care about the bad guys,” yet another female voice chimes in. “All they want to do is to have their little guns and do whatever they want with them.” The Star-Ledger reports that those comments sound like they came from another Democrat, Sandra Cunningham.
“That’s the line they’ve developed,” a woman who sounds like Democrat state Sen. Linda Greenstein says, according to the Star-Ledger.
State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:
“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
Obama was giving the commencement address at Arizona State University in 2009 where he joked about auditing the president of ASU and their board of regents.
Parents of fallen service members spoke at a press conference, an event during which they accused the U.S. government of complicity in the deaths of their sons. The families highlighted a number of grievances, including the notion that military brass invited a Muslim cleric to their children’s funeral in 2011 — an imam who they claim “disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen.” Three families of fallen Navy SEAL Team 6 special forces members and one family of an Army National Guardsman held the event at the National Press Club. Their children perished during the fatal Chinook helicopter crash that occurred in Afghanistan on August 6, 2011. The presser was an effort, as noted in a press release, to corroborate the notion that the U.S. government is “as much responsible for the deaths of their sons as is the Taliban.”
They question the type of helicopter being flown; why so many elite members of the military were in one helicopter at a given time; why command switched out members of the Afghani forces at the last minute; and why other procedures they considered protocol did not seem to have been followed.
A Chinook from 1989 is unacceptable for many of the Boeing CH-47 Chinook the men were flying in that day. 93 days after killing bin Laden no one would have though you put 22 members of SEAL Team 6 in a Chinook.
The helicopter didn’t have an escort on its night mission to the Tangi Valley in an area that had already seen hours of hostility. This violates standard protocol.
Most importantly, the Islamist attempted to intentionally sully the memory of their sons by “damning them as infidels to Allah.” The group showed video of the prayer to prove their contentions, complete with translation.
The imam stated: “That the fallen seals should be damned and go to hell as infidels.”
An attorney for the families offered a translation along with a video of the prayer:
“Amen I shelter in Allah from the devil who has been cast with stones. In the name of Allah the merciful giver. The companions of the fire are not equal with the companions of heaven. The companions of heaven are the winners. Had we sent this Koran to a mountain, you would have seen the mountain prostrated in fear of Allah. Such examples are what we present to the people; to the people, so that they would think. Blessings are to your God, the God of glory of what they describe. And peace be upon the messengers and thanks be to Allah the lord of both universes.”
Another translation that was commissioned by Islam expert Stephen Coughlin is somewhat less pointed:
“I announce the evil by all-aha. By the name of the merciful all-aha. People of hell and people of heaven are not equal (even, not the same), people of heaven are the winners, if we [unintelligible word] the Koran on the mountain, you will see, you will see him in submission and humble of alla-aha’s fear. Those (who are in submission) are examples for the people (the public) may these people (the public) remember, praise alla-aha. Alla-aha God of glory, of the people behaviors (he is wondering or questioning the people’s behaviors). And peace to the Prophets, thanks to alla-aha, please (asking alla-aha) to forgive him, comfort him and accept him in paradise. [The prayer ends, however this subject was talking to some audience he was telling them I LOVE TO....then the audio ended].”
Here’s another version of the imam’s comments without subtitles and in Arabic:
Most standard Muslim prayers are offensive by nature because they arise from a book of the Koran or a chapter of the Koran that is about defeating the infidels. None of this should lessen the outrage, and should be clearly a reason why inter-religious services should not be performed. Islamist prayers are inflammatory even when they’re not trying to do so because it centers on the issue of the fundamental and irreconcilable difference between Islamic orientation and a non-Muslim orientation. None of the SEAL team members were Muslim so politically correctness be damned, no imam should speak at American troop funerals.
Biden had ratted out the Seal Team 6 initially.
The parents of Aaron Vaughn, Billy and Karen, who spoke at the presser Thursday began voicing of their discontent regarding the SEALs being identified last year:
Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for counterterrorism; Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer in Libya.
Thompson plans to testify Wednesday that Clinton attempted to cut out the counterterrorism bureau from communications about the attack - a charge that would likely cripple her pristine record as secretary, as well as any chance that she'll mount a presidential bid in 2016.
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A tax on toilet paper; I kid you not. According to the sponsor, "the Water Protection and Reinvestment Act will be financed broadly by small fees on such things as . . . products disposed of in waste water." Congress wants to tax what you do in the privacy of your bathroom.