I Apologize

I've been quite a busy blogger that I almost forgot about this blog! My other blog, Politics & YouTube In Review, has been quite the haven so far for just under 100 people (83 as of 4:40 PM Central Standard Time).

My biggest viewership day was 26 on November 29th.

I intend to get a viewership quota of 250 by the end of 2006 and a membership quota of at least 10 subscribers by January 15, 2007.

I would appreciate the support of those who read this blog to also support P.Y.I.R. in its early rise to fame online.

If you have a blog or want to send out a bulletin on MySpace, Facebook, etc., please send them this link:
http://politicsandyoutubeinreview.wordpress.com/

Well, that's it for now.

Tom Vilsack Appears on CNN's "The Situation Room" Talks About Presidential Bid

Democratic Governor Tom Vilsack, who Democratic successor Secretary of State Chet Culver takes office in January, talks to host Wolf Blitzer on his run for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

My Stand On Politics

These are my beliefs:

• I am for tax cuts.
• I am against the war in Iraq.
• I am for universal healthcare.
• I am for Social Security.
• I am against abortion and pro-life.
• I am for using alternative means of producing cures for diseases without aborting the fetuses just to get the stem cells.
• I am for supporting the other 98% of people who are not like the top 2% of Americans.
• I am for helping more in funding for faith-based initatives.
• I am not for corruption in any level of government.
• I am not for the legalization of marijuana or any imposition legalizing it for medicinal uses.
• I believe that there needs to be more regulations in the Congressional page program to prevent the mishaps that former Congressman Mark Foley had done to a former page.
• I believe that all people who do business with people like Jack Abramoff should be prevented from being in office again.

So, what political party should I be part of? My family is mainly Democrat, but I'm so damn confused it isn't funny.

And now, the possible 2008 candidates for President....Part 2

Third-Party and Independent Candidate Possibilities

I will not go into much detail in this section as there are several. I am going to name a party line and give you the candidate.

Constitution Party: James Gilchrist (CA)

Green Party: Nan Garrett (GA) and Kat Swift (TX)

Libertarian Party:

Filed Papers:
Steve Kubby (CA)
George Phillies (MA)

Announced candidates:
Christine Smith (CO)
Doug Stanhope (AZ)

Actively pursuing or interested in candidacy:
Lance Brown (CA)
Robert Milnes (NJ)


Prohibition Party: Gene Amondson (WA)

Reform Party, Socialist Party: None at this time of publication.

Independents: Steve Adams (KY), Jon A. Greenspon (CA), Daniel Imperato (FL), David A. Koch (UT) & Ken Goldstein (CA) and Charles T. Maxham (NJ).

Please note: Koch and Goldstein are the only Presidential and Vice-Presidential duo to automatically register to run for office.

And now, the possible 2008 candidates for President....Part 1

Yes, it is about two years until the presidential election in 2008, but there are people that are officially submitting bids with the Federal Elections Commission or conteplating on running for the presidency.

Democratic Party

Soon after 8 years after being governor in the state of Iowa, Tom Vilsack (D-IA) helped Secretary of State Chet Culver retain Democratic power in the Governor's Mansion, win back the Iowa House and Senate, and picking up two Congressional seats. Vilsack succeeded in all in these results: Culver is elected, and Lt. Governor Patty Judge, like most other offices in government are starting to turn into women's hands. Vilsack filed his papers to the FEC on November 9, 2006, only two days after the midterm elections.

Another hopeful is former Alaska senator Mike Gravel (D-AK). Gravel served as U.S. Senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981 and was an active candidate for Vice-President in 1972. He was notable for advocating a guaranteed annual income, which he termed a "citizen's wage," of $5,000 per person, irrespective of whether the person worked. On April 13, 2006, Gravel announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. His policy announcements to date include support for direct democracy, FairTax and withdrawal from Iraq. His is considered a very longshot candidacy since former Sen. Gravel will be 78 years old at the time of the general election and will have been out of federal politics for almost three decades at the time of the election.

Other Democrats who are pending their decision to run for the Presidency or at least expressed serious interest in it: Sen. Evan Bayh (IN), Sen. Joseph Biden (DE), Retired General Wesley Clark (AR), Former First Lady and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Former Sen. and Minority Leader Tom Daschle (S.D.), Sen. Christopher Dodd (CT), Former Sen. and 2004 Vice-Presidential Candidate John Edwards (N.C.), 2004 Presidential Candidate Sen. John Kerry (MA), Sen. Barack Obama (IL), and Gov. Bill Richardson (N.M.)

Republican Party

John H. Cox (R-IL), a Chicago CPA and investor announced in March, 2006, that he is pursuing the Republican nomination for President in 2008. The most interesting thing about Cox is that he has no actual political office history: he ran unsuccessfully in Republican primaries in Illinois, for the House in 2000 and for the Senate in 2002. So far, Cox claims to have visited all 99 counties in Iowa, and according to a schedule posted on his Website, continues to make regular visits there (11 at last count, according to the Website.) The schedule also indicates that he has made nine campaign trips to New Hampshire since March, 2006, most recently in November, 2006, and has toured the early primary state of South Carolina six times since announcing his candidacy.

Michael Charles Smith (R-OR) has announced his intention to run as a "zealous moderate." He considers himself to be Fiscal Conservative, Social libertarian, Parent, Pro State, and was a former linguist for the military. His only governmental experience was being a Village Trustee in Garrett, Illinois. He intends to only campaign in Oregon, hoping that by gaining 5,000 votes he could be put on the ballot and at least attend the Republican National Convention. He has said on his website, "I’m serious about this but I’m a realist about the odds". He is running because of his frustration with the Republican Party being too conservative with diminishing moderate voices.

Other Republicans who have formed exploratory committees in their run for the Presidency: Former New York City mayor Rudolph "Rudy" Guiliani (N.Y.), Rep. Duncan Hunter (CA), and former 2000 and 2004 Republican primary election nominee and Sen. John McCain (AZ).

Other Republicans who are pending or serious considering a run for the presidency: Sen. George Allen (VA, soon to be out of office), Sen. Sam Brownback (KS), Sen. Bill Frist (TN), Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (GA), Sen. Chuck Hagel (NE), Governor Mike Huckabee (AR) , Governor George Pataki (N.Y.) , Governor Mitt Romney (MA) and former Governor Tommy Thompson (WI).

Rush Limbaugh Feels Liberated?

Stupid In America: A 20/20 Special

Stupid in America: How We Cheat Our Kids A Documentary by John Stossel, for ABC’s 20/20
Reviewed by Lee Duigon
April 13, 2006

Dressed like derelicts, teenagers in a public school classroom — with their teacher present — climb on top of their desks, crawl on the floor, turn their backs on the teacher and talk loudly with each other, play cards, or wander around the room. One boy even strips to the waist and “dances” during class.

Everyone who has ever cracked his head against the brick wall of the government school monopoly owes ABC’s John Stossel a vote of thanks for filming these goings-on and broadcasting the images over the nation’s airwaves.

Why? Because the American people don’t believe us when we say that public education is a failure. Even if they grant that “other schools” may be in trouble, they insist that “our schools” are all right.

Parents and taxpayers need to see these images, and Stossel has provided them. But in one 60-minute documentary (with time out for commercials), he is able to reveal only the tip of the iceberg. As bad as the schools fare under his examination, the truth is ever so much worse.

Are American Kids Stupid?
Making the film wasn’t easy. “State after state wouldn’t let us in,” Stossel said. “Washington, D.C., directed us to a few of their best schools, and New York City wouldn’t let us in at all.” In fact, the chaotic classroom described above was in “one of America’s best public schools!” Stossel said.

Why keep out the cameras? What do the schools have to hide? Plenty — but constrained by his time and format, Stossel focused sharply on the academics.

“The longer they stay in school,” he concluded, “the stupider they are.”

Stossel compared a “good” school district in suburban New Jersey to an “average” school in Belgium, administering to the students a general information test. The Belgian students answered 76% of the questions correctly; the New Jersey students, 46%.

“It has to be something with the school,” said a disappointed American child, “’cause I don’t think we’re stupider.”

A recent report by the National Center for Education Statistics reveals that only 31% of American college graduates can read a complex book with good comprehension.[1]

How can that be? Stossel zeroed in on an 18-year-old in South Carolina who could not read, period. School administrators and “education specialists” insisted he was making progress, “doing fine,” etc. — only he still couldn’t read. His mother finally sent him to the local Sylvan Learning Center, where he learned to read in 72 hours.

“South Carolina schools, in 12 years, spent $100,000 on [his] education,” Stossel said, “and left him behind.”

Compared to students in 24 other countries, American children at the age of 10 take a standardized test and place eighth out of 25. At the age of 15, when children from 40 countries take the test, the Americans slip to 25th place. “They do worse than kids from much poorer countries, like Korea and Poland,” Stossel said.

Why are America’s schools so bad?

It’s the Monopoly, Stupid
Ask an “educator,” and he’ll surely tell you that our schools would get better if only we spent more money on them.

“They tell us, ‘There’s nothing wrong that money can’t fix,’” Stossel said. He went on to examine a Kansas City school district where $2 billion was spent on gaudy “improvements” — indoor pool, indoor track, weight rooms, computer labs, and so on. “The kids’ scores got worse, and those schools lost their accreditation.”

“You could give the public schools all the money in America, and it wouldn’t be enough,” said a frustrated reformer.

“Where does the money go?” Stossel asked. To administrative salaries, additional administrative staff, new administration buildings, “consultants,” and “experts,” he answered. Asking a few teachers how much money ought to be spent per child, per year, the teachers replied: “Oh … $10,000 per pupil … maybe $25,000 … or $30,000. The more, the better.”

The money makes no difference, Stossel said, because public education is a government monopoly — immune to competition and under no pressure whatsoever to improve.

Competition and school choice, in the form of vouchers and charter schools, would force the public schools to improve, Stossel said. Stossel is well-known for his libertarian, free-market views. Returning to Belgium, he compared that country’s choice-based school system to America’s government monopoly.

“Belgium has school choice,” he said. “The money for education is attached to the kids, not the schools, and parents have full choice. So if the schools are not good, they’re gone.

“Why should we keep kids in a school that’s not working?”

Why No Reform?
Just before Stossel finished preparing his documentary, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the state’s experimental school choice program — which had already produced positive results — was unconstitutional. Earlier, school choice proposals in South Carolina, backed strongly by the governor, were killed by the state legislature.

In Florida, a public school teacher sued to abolish school choice. “Competition is not for human beings,” she said.

In South Carolina, the state teachers’ union spent millions of dollars on lobbying and television ads to keep school choice from seeing the light of day.

Reform efforts fail, Stossel said, because public school administrators and teachers’ unions do everything in their power to defeat it. To show the political face of the teachers’ unions, Stossel filmed a mass rally by the New York City teachers. “You are heroes!” the union president roared to the crowd; and the crowd roared back.

How strong are the unions? “The monopoly in my town [New York],” Stossel said, “can’t fire a teacher who sends sexual emails to a 16-year-old student.”

That teacher finally was fired, he said, but only after a five-year wrangle with the union.

In a rhetorical coup, Stossel displayed a chart showing the process that must be followed by a New York City principal seeking to fire a teacher for cause. The chart was six feet long and featured enough arrows, boxes, solid and dotted lines to make the schematic for a lunar probe look like a diagram for a balsa wood toy glider. And it’s backed up by a 200-page union contract!

What He Left Out
Unable to dissect a world-class mess in an hour-long documentary, Stossel omitted any reference to the teachers’ unions’ political and cultural agenda. The unions spend tens of millions of dollars a year to support left-wing political candidates and causes. And in most states, if you match up the names of your teachers’ union officers with those on the rosters of the leading homosexual activist groups, you’ll find many of them on both lists.

These are not the persons to whom Christian parents should entrust their children. The unions may not be doing a good job of teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic; but they are teaching promiscuity, abortion, and sodomy.

Stossel also neglected to mention the only real solution to the problem — remove your children from the public schools, and either send them to Christian schools or homeschool them. This has long been Chalcedon’s position.

An evil tree can bear only evil fruit, and public education is an evil tree. R.J. Rushdoony spent decades proving this: see his 1963 book, The Messianic Character of American Education.[2] American public schools rest on a non-Christian, aggressively secularist philosophy that rejects God’s laws and puts man and the state in His place. This is not fruit you want your children to be eating.

Stossel also found no time to explore the rising tide of violence, crime, drug use, and sexual activity in the public schools. Perhaps he will oblige us with a follow-up.

Meanwhile, if he has succeeded in jarring a few parents out of their false sense of educational security and inspiring them to seek an alternative to the public schools, he has done America a service.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] See http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48309.

[2] Ross House Books, Vallecito, CA: 1995 edition.

South Park and the Cure for ADHD

This is so wrong.

Sounds something like the Republicans and possibly a few Democrats would prefer for ADHD treatment.

It Is Time For A Change, And The Democrats Got It!

This was interesting to find this from a source named "The Subway Serenade" (a.k.a. Dave Teller in real life) with the blog of the same name. This is the first video I viewed that was the only current video response to my YouTube Talking Points Challenge, located at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx1eticUnzc. The other two were followups on the first video, marking on former U.S. representative Mark Foley (R-FL). You can view the work and the blog at http://www.teocawki.blogspot.com

"GOPer's Lament" AKA "Why It's Hard To Be A Republican"
When I viewed this video, it was interesting to know that was a parody-like song about the Republicans that was based off of Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA".


"Foleys Follies" also known as "The Fondler"
This coming out of the Mark Foley (R-FL) scandal that costed his seat in Congress and his resignation.


"You're Pitiful" by "Weird Al" done by The Big Cat Daddys
This was easy to determine what this was based off of: James Blunt's "You're Beautiful". Weird Al at his greatest when a scandal comes to an uproar.

R.I.P. Ed Bradley 1941-2006

As you all may know, well-known CBS reporter died Friday, September 10, 2006 at age 65. He broke the barriers that set the pace for future African-American newscasters not only in the United States, but set the pace all over the world.

This video below is a tribute from CBS.

Political Ads That Still Run After The Election....Or So I Think

Talking about being bashed right on the head with the ads that candidates used.....

Democrats Take Congress By Storm!

By the time I finished my film, it was declared nine hours later that the Democrats won control of the Senate.

That means Democrats are in charge of Washington, D.C., despite that Republican president George W. Bush is still leader of the United States of America.

However, he has lost some of his power. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigned and stepped down from his post. Bush nominates Robert Gates, a former employee and major power of the CIA, which roused some questions on why Gates was nominated so quickly.

Why didn't Rumsfeld step down berfore the election? Did he stick around just to be part of the Scandal Club and be a Foley, DeLay, Libby, or Santorum?

As for the film, it is available on the archived article at this page: http://politicalnews-times.blogspot.com/2006_11_05_archive.html

Election 2006: My Analysis

Well, the ballots have been cast and due to natural circumstances that had lied in the states of California and Washington (who are still counting ballots).

The Democrats, for the first time in 12 years, have control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

I made a short film on the 2006 election. They will be in segments, as it takes 9 hours to make it into a feature film....it totals 75 minutes as a final project. And please note that this is in widescreen mode.


Part 1 (3 segments) :

Election 2006

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Election 2006

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Election 2006

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Part 2 (3 segments):

Election 2006

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Election 2006

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Election 2006

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Part 3 (2 segments):

Election 2006

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Election 2006

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Conclusion:

Election 2006

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