Reason says this is a good reminder of why parents need choice when it comes to education. I’d like to remind everyone that the Educational Industrial Complex often argues from the premise that only those who are certified by the state are qualified to properly educate children.

This is one of those who the state said was competent to act as a counselor:

A civil rights organization that has been issuing complaints about the Jefferson Parish school system’s treatment of black and special education students is adding to its grievances by spotlighting racially incendiary comments posted on the Internet by a school psychologist in Jefferson. The comments under scrutiny appeared on NOLA.com and Twitter.

…

The school psychologist, Mark Traina, has worked with alternative schools and in central administration with the process of referring children to those campuses. Traina argued on Monday that his online opinions are well-reasoned and that they do not reflect on the way the school system operates.

“The Southern Poverty Center knows that these allegations are ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE!,” Traina wrote in an education forum on NOLA.com last week, using his own name as he criticized the center’s earlier allegations. “This is just another way to harass the Jefferson Parish Public School System. One only needs to read the Times Picayune to see who the real trouble makers are. Sadly, it is disproportionately young black males. Everyone knows that our jails throughout the United States are disproportionately filled with black people. Why would the rate be any different in an educational environment?”

He cited what he said are statistics about high incarceration rates among African-Americans and high crime in predominantly black neighborhoods.

“Even one of the best known Civil Rights Activists in America recently indicated (I won’t mention any names) that it is MUCH safer to walk through a predominately white neighborhood after dark than in black neighborhood,” he wrote.

“I live in Slidell land I MUST admit it is one of the safest places that I have ever lived in the State of Louisiana,” he wrote. “All I can say is, ‘Thank God for Lake Pontchartrain.’”

His posts on Twitter, also using his real name, are more heated, including a January comment that, “Young Black Thugs who won’t follow the law need to be put down not incarcerated. Put down like the Dogs they are!”

I don’t generally side with the SPLC.  I think they are a liberal organization.  That being said, it’s hard to defend Traina when he tweets such things.  Later in the article, Traina identifies himself as “a Wallace man at heart,” referring to the segregationist Democrat George Wallace.

Traina didn’t even attempt to walk the comments back.  He claimed everything he said was backed up by facts, that he wasn’t racist, but a realist.

Conservatives say parents should be able to pull their kids out of schools that employ such hate and put them in a safer environment.  Liberals would deny parents that right.

Where do you stand?

 Photo Credit:  Bruno Girin

Mitt Romney changed the debate today and focused on education, offering a position, but little details, on how his administration would handle education. He supports a voucher system that would allow parents to unshackle their children from a failed government education system and give them the freedom to choose where their child gets an education:

The plan will allow low-income and disabled students use federal funding to attend public schools, public charter schools and, in some cases, private schools. Federal funds could also be applied to tutors or digital courses.

The plan is in line with GOP reforms aimed at giving students more educational choices. But it’s unclear how schools in areas that depend on the federal funding would fare.

The proposal is not expected to include any new federal money for education.

I’m conflicted on this. I like seeing a candidate come out in support of school choice, but I don’t like the GOP candidate proposing a federal education policy that doesn’t include removing the federal government from the education system.

And Romney has “evolved” on his position regarding the Department of Education:

Romney’s positions on education have evolved over time. He once supported abolishing the Education Department but reversed that position as a presidential candidate in 2007. At the time, he said he came to see the value of the federal government in “holding down the interests of the teachers’ unions” and putting kids and parents first.

I wish he could see the value of not having the federal government operate outside the parameters established in the Constitution.

While I like Romney’s position, it would fit better on a governor’s agenda. The GOP candidate should be about limited government, including reining the government back in where it has strayed in the past. Politically, Romney would have gained points by channeling Reagan, calling for the abolition of the Department of Education and explaining the benefits of leaving education to the states. (However, some suggestion federalism is a second language to Romney, limiting his ability to explain it effectively.)

It would have motivated me a bit more to support Romney had he taken a firmer stance for federalism and education. How about you?

Vice President Joe Biden today blamed the Tea Party for the massive failures of his party’s policies.

Just imagine where we would be if the Tea Party hadn’t taken control in 2010? Well, the good news is, you don’t have to imagine. You can just look at the first two years of the Obama Administration and multiple the bad ideas and failures by two.

Pardon me, Joe, but you do remember the first two years of the Obama Administration, don’t you? Isn’t that a BFD anymore?

You had the House and the Senate. You passed pretty much whatever you wanted.

You got the Stimulus Package, despite the Tea Party’s protestations. How did that work out?

It didn’t. We were told over and over again that in 2010, things would get better because of it.

Heck, you called it the “Summer of Recovery.”

How did the Tea Party taking over the House put the kibosh on all your best laid plans?

The fact is, it didn’t. Your plans failed to deliver and rather than accept the responsibility for your failures, you try to blame someone else. When was the last time a Democratic in the White House took responsibility for a failure? Was it JFK and the Bay of Pigs?

You failed. Your president failed. Your policies failed. Not failed to do what you intended, but failed to do what you claimed they would do, like turn the economy around, create jobs, lift people out of poverty.

And now you have a failure of leadership because you blamed others for your failures.

Pitiful. Just pitiful.

And our overwhelming goal isn’t to defeat Barack Obama this November, it’s to save the country from fiscal collapse.

Defeating Obama is just one of the next actions in that project.

While Breitbart is running their series called, The Vetting, I’m motivated to run my own series titled, “The Plan,” focusing on how Obama’s policies are having the exact impact on the country that he wants.

For example, he nominated Dr. Steven Chu as head of the Department of Energy. Chu specifically wanted the price of gas to reach that of Europe, which would mean $7-8 a gallon gas for us.

Why?

Because if we couldn’t afford to drive, we’d drive less.

From USA Today:

Traffic congestion dropped 30% last year from 2010 in the USA’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, driven largely by higher gas prices and a spotty economic recovery, according to a new study by a Washington-state firm that tracks traffic flows.

That was the largest drop since the nation plunged into recession in December 2007.

…

Bak says the data show that the reduction in gridlock on the nation’s roads stems from rising fuel prices, lackluster gains in employment and modest increases in highway capacity because of construction projects completed under the federal stimulus program.
In some cases, the connection between job growth and increased congestion was clear. Cities that outpaced the national average of 1.5% growth in employment experienced some of the biggest increases in traffic congestion: Miami, 2.3% employment growth; Tampa, up 3%; and Houston, up 3.2%.
Cities that had big drops in congestion often were those that saw road construction slow considerably from 2010 to 2011 and those where gasoline prices were well above the national average at the peak in April 2011.

Romney’s campaign slogan is, “Obama isn’t Working.”

I disagree. I believe…

I hope they had a window open or something at the beginning, because if they don’t, they have some paranormal activity in the waiting room, and they like to read magazines:

Behold the sudden and violent power of the tornado. The only thing more terrifying to me is if some clowns were to start cartwheeling into the maelstrom.

In the early months of 2007, Duane was writing a lot of stuff for Newsvine. He was writing good thoughtful articles which were being crapped on by the horde of liberal commenters that were steadily taking over the site. In my mind, it seemed like the worst possible place for Duane to be publishing his work, and I think I probably told him that on several occasions.

While I’ve got an interest in politics, my first love is building websites. I offered to help him get a blog set up and manage the technical side of things so he could focus on the writing and networking that he’s so good at. We settled on the name “All American Blogger”, bought the domain and I set up a site using a stock WordPress theme to get us started.

Then We Evolved

Duane started writing posts, and I started designing graphics and laying out a custom theme. One of the first things I created was our text logo, which is simple and distinctive. We’ve adjusted and improved it over the years, but it’s basically the same.

In the past five years, we’ve had two basic themes on our website. The early version had a simple black and white masthead with our text logo. In late 2008, we added the circle logo and started using the blue header. Since then, the header (and the site) has slowly evolved while keeping the same basic layout. At the end of this post, I’m including a gallery of snapshots from the last five years.

A couple of months ago, in anticipation of our fifth anniversary, I started building a new version of the website from scratch. Not only did I think it was time for a radical update to the look of the site, I wanted to focus more on the content and make it more user-friendly.

About The New Look

All American Blogger’s new look was designed to make content the focus. Post text is closer to the top of the screen, and it stands out from the rest of the page which is darker.

We also wanted to make the site easier to navigate. The link bar at the top of the site stays at the top of the screen when you scroll. We’ve also added links to new, related and popular posts in the sidebars.

You’ll be able to share any page of the site on Facebook, Twitter or Google Plus with a single click. You’ve always been able to share posts, but now you’ll be able to share any page including the front page of the site, a tag/category page or even a page of search results. And on post pages you’ll also be able to share via LinkedIn, StumbleUpon or Pinterest.

Another new feature is the ability to subscribe to new posts via email right on the front page. Just enter your email address, hit the subscribe button and you’ll get an email within minutes of a new post being published. You can unsubscribe at any time, and we don’t collect any information about subscribers or send any spam.

A lot of work went into creating what is essentially an entirely new All American Blogger website. It will go live next Monday, which is the fifth anniversary of our first post.

We’re pretty excited about it, and we really hope you like it. You can see a screenshot of it at the end of this post.

A Visual History of All American Blogger

2007

This is the stock theme we launched the site with.

Our first custom theme from late 2007 with the first version of our text logo:

2008

2009

2010

2011

The New Site

What was it I said when Ron Paul declared he would not continue campaigning in the primaries? Let’s go back:

If you weren’t going to vote for Ron Paul by now, his campaigning in your state wouldn’t change that. And if you were, you still are.

And for Camp Paul, this campaign hasn’t been about winning primaries, but racking up delegates.

So, yeah, like I was saying:

This past weekend, Paul accomplished that goal, winning 12 of 13 delegates at the state GOP convention.

“Victories in Minnesota and other states demonstrate that Ron Paul supporters possess the adaptability, organizational muscle, and unmatched enthusiasm required to continue winning delegates in upcoming contests,” Paul campaign manager John Tate said in a statement.

Paul’s victory means 32 of Minnesota’s 40 national delegates will now be committed to Paul at this summer’s Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla. The libertarian-leaning GOP candidate is remaining in the presidential race to compete for delegates in the hopes of shaping the convention and influencing the party platform.

He also recently took all of Maine’s delegates.  And who know exactly how many more.

While he may not be campaigning, and while he may not have won a state in the primaries, I still contend this delegate strategy is going to make the GOP convention a national version of the Missouri Caucuses.

I’m not saying his supporters are going to get him the nomination, but they will have an impact on things, and it could get heated.

There have been times I have been walking to a location, preoccupied with something, only to find I have walked somewhere else. But, once there, I never put the boots to the door because I was too drunk to realize I was in the wrong place.

Carlos Rodriquez can’t say the same:

Carlos Rodriquez thought he was home, he later told police, but the apartment door wouldn’t open. So he kicked it in.
He was greeted by a woman with a gun, and he obeyed her order to lie on the ground until police arrived.

…

The woman immediately told Rodriguez she was calling 911, and he headed back toward the door. Instead, she said she had a gun and ordered him to lie on the ground. He was still there, and the gun was sitting on the coffee table, when police arrived, according to the arrest report.

Who knows what happens if she doesn’t have the gun? Maybe Carlos just meanders back out the door, recognizing his mistake. Maybe he believes they have broken into his place and gets violent with them.

The point is, because she had the right to bear arms, we don’t have to deal with maybes.

And neither did she.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, an Obama supporter, surprised quite a few people watching Meet the Press yesterday, especially those working to re-elect “Teh One,” when he said Team Obama’s attacks on Bain Capital made him sick:

Booker is right, but one can only assume the arm twisters with Team Obama were sent out to re-calibrate the mayor because it wasn’t long before he was walking that line back:

As Jim Geraghty pointed out on Twitter, that wasn’t good enough for Obama’s minions, so they cut it up and released a new, more focused version:

Watch again after reading this: “Hostage tape.”

Exactly like a hostage tape. You can just picture Axelrod behind the scenes, cigarette smoke swirling in the air around him, some clueless intern standing behind the camera, looking around nervously as if to wonder if this is normal and in walks Rahm with a black bag of who knows what. His tools to ensure Booker’s reeducation sticks.

Poor Mayor Booker.

Yet another reason to homeschool.

A student in a North Carolina classroom engaged the video function on their cell phone, capturing a scene straight out of the Indoctrination 101 handbook.  While criticizing Mitt Romney for bullying someone decades ago is fine, any criticism of the current president is wholly off limits.

He’s the PRESIDENT, for crying out loud:

How is this woman leading a classroom?

The unions will have you believe that all children should be in government classrooms because only certified teachers should teach children, because they’ve had the education and training.

Do you honestly believe this woman can teach your children about citizenship, government, the Constitution, civics, or anything else for that matter, better than you and a library card could?

Neither do I.

Hat Tip: Breitbart

Update:

She’s been suspended…with pay.  Never have understood how that’s a bad thing.