Sarasota Bus Driver

"Strong allegations against a Sarasota school bus driver Friday night. An elementary student says the bus driver embarrassed and offended him with a racial slur.
The student says he couldn't help but hear the curse words come from the bus drivers mouth. The school district is aware of the accusations and looking into what exactly is going on.
"It didn't make me feel any good. Strong allegations against a Sarasota school bus driver Friday night. An elementary student says the bus driver embarrassed and offended him with a racial slur.
The student says he couldn't help but hear the curse words come from the bus drivers mouth. The school district is aware of the accusations and looking into what exactly is going on.
"It didn't make me feel any good..not at all."
Eight-year-old Jordan Blyden is a student at Tatum Ridge Elementary School. He says last week's bus ride home is one he doesn't want to experience again. "Mr. Mike was yelling at the substitute driver and because the substitute driver said that he didn't like the way how he was yelling at all the other little kindergarteners."
Jordan says the bus driver was yelling the "f" word to the assistant bus driver... in front of all the kids on the bus. "With all the little kindergartners sitting right behind him and me sitting all the way in the back being able to hear it."
When he got home, he told his dad what had happened.
"The language is certainly a concern in front of 8-year-olds. It's inappropriate on any school bus whether it be 8-years-old or high school." Jordan's step-father, Art Horn, called Sarasota School District transportation officials to issue a complaint.
Gary Leatherman is the school district communications director. He says if the allegations are true there will be consequences. "We do everything possible to ensure that our students are safe and comfortable in our schools and particularly as regards there cultural or ethnic background."
Horn isn't going to allow his son back on that bus with the driver he says offended and embarrassed his son.
"I'm really concerned that Jordan was singled out and made to feel bad to his friends why they had to change seats and the racial undertones that came into are absolutely unacceptable."
Jordan tells me when he got back on the bus the next day the driver used racial slurs. "And then I told him he was using foul language and I didn't really want to be around it and then he said and then he called me a big black piece of chocolate."
Jordan says he just wants a different driver taking him to school, and Horn is planning on meeting with school officials and the bus driver Monday.
Eight-year-old Jordan Blyden is a student at Tatum Ridge Elementary School. He says last week's bus ride home is one he doesn't want to experience again. "Mr. Mike was yelling at the substitute driver and because the substitute driver said that he didn't like the way how he was yelling at all the other little kindergarteners."
Jordan says the bus driver was yelling the "f" word to the assistant bus driver... in front of all the kids on the bus. "With all the little kindergartners sitting right behind him and me sitting all the way in the back being able to hear it."
When he got home, he told his dad what had happened.
"The language is certainly a concern in front of 8-year-olds. It's inappropriate on any school bus whether it be 8-years-old or high school." Jordan's step-father, Art Horn, called Sarasota School District transportation officials to issue a complaint.
Gary Leatherman is the school district communications director. He says if the allegations are true there will be consequences. "We do everything possible to ensure that our students are safe and comfortable in our schools and particularly as regards there cultural or ethnic background."
Horn isn't going to allow his son back on that bus with the driver he says offended and embarrassed his son.
"I'm really concerned that Jordan was singled out and made to feel bad to his friends why they had to change seats and the racial undertones that came into are absolutely unacceptable."
Jordan tells me when he got back on the bus the next day the driver used racial slurs. "And then I told him he was using foul language and I didn't really want to be around it and then he said and then he called me a big black piece of chocolate."
Jordan says he just wants a different driver taking him to school, and Horn is planning on meeting with school officials and the bus driver Monday."

Breakdown

I recently finished a book entitled Breakdown written by William Johnstone. It basically was about Conservatives nearly overthrowing the USA government over grievances such the right to bear arms, homophobia and racism. In the end, there was compromise amongst liberals and conservatives. The liberals who were in charge of the government did not anticipate the scope of divisions within the nation until civil war had already broken loose. A vast majority of the nation literally were apathetic to whom controlled the nation politically; proceeding along with their normal lives while the nation was being ripped apart.

One would think ideas of real change in American are unrealistic conversation. Ideas however can bring about real change. America was built on the shoulders of a revolution and this method maybe the sole means for correcting countless broken systems.

Fundamental changes in to addition to reversals of certain governmental and political conditions in healthcare, education, military & defense, and the hypothetical glass ceiling are required. In 2006 alone $500 Billion federal dollars was spent on Military and Defense, $67 Billion on Health & Human Services and $56 Billion on Education. These facts are taking directly from the White House

(http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/budget.html).

The first change I am calling for is a permanent cut in U.S. military spending.

Random Thoughts: Budarin

• W gave up alcohol and turned to faith. Now he is a faithoholic.
• Treason is not failure to support the President. Treason is supporting the President above the Constitution.
• I can point out my wife’s mistakes and love my wife. I can point out my country’s mistakes and love my country.
• Moral absolutism makes one a sinner and a hypocrite.
• You can’t make a foreign policy out of “kicking ass”. There are simply too many asses.
• I am not a socialist. I am a social-regulation-ist.
• Never base decisions on your “gut”, like W. Your “gut” is never as smart as your brain.
• Abstinence is just another contraceptive.
• Conservatism is defined by its inhumanity.
• If God is loving and just and concerned for all our welfare, God is not a conservative.

Alex Budarin

Advice for Republicans

For the past 6 years, Republicans have been very generous in giving advice to us Democrats. They said we should, for our own good, line up behind the President and support the war in Iraq. They warned us that we were out of the mainstream with respect to social policies. And they told us that our failure to heed their advice would cause us to continue to lose elections.

Surprisingly, from their perspective, Democrats gained the advantage in the elections of 2006. And the Republican Party - the Party of God! - has been hit with a number of scandals relating to sex offenses, bribery and fraud. I believe it is now our responsibility, as Democrats, to offer Republicans sympathetic words of political advice. So here are some things I suggest Republicans do for the good of their party during their time of trial.

• Keep Larry Craig in the Senate as long as possible. It’s important to demonstrate loyalty and resolve whatever the circumstances. Remind the public that he is a man of God whose worst curse is, “Jiminy!”
• Look for cases where the government can intervene in private lives for the sake of conservative values, like the Schiavo case. The American public will appreciate your invasion of their privacy for the sake of righteousness.
• Repeatedly remind the American public that George W. Bush is our “Commander Guy”, and what happens in Iraq happens under his command. Like that stuff at Abu Ghraib.
• IOKIYAR – “it’s OK if you are a Republican.” When we Democrats are involved in sex scandals or financial scandals, that’s a reflection of our permissive culture and moral relativism. Point out that it’s different when Republicans get caught up in a sex scandal or financial scandal. Then it’s a private lapse, and any attention the media gives it is a partisan attack by Democrats and proof that the media is run by liberals.
• Why defend steep tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich? Just declare, like John Jay, “Those who own the country ought to govern it.”
  
• What the terrorists want is for our population to be constantly terrified. You’ve been doing that instead. Keep it up. You’ll rob the terrorists of their objective.
• You know that the worst problems our country faces are homosexuals, Spanish-speakers, liberals, Democrats, stem cell research, and folks who disagree with you about the Iraq War. The voting public needs to be told this, as often as possible.

That’s all I can think of for now. No need to thank me. I’m just returning a favor.

ALEX BUDARIN

Bush Jr. Vetoes Child Health Care Bill

“There certainly does seem to be a legitimate argument that the president only objects to new spending when Democrats are doing it, because he certainly wasn't objecting when Republicans controlled Congress.” Dan Mitchell, Cato Institute

"Morning Edition, October 3, 2007 · President Bush on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance, after saying the legislation was too costly and had strayed from its original intent.

It was only the fourth veto of Bush's presidency, and one that some Republicans feared could be used against them in next year's elections. The Senate approved the bill with enough votes to override the veto, but the margin in the House fell short of the required number.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, is a joint state-federal effort that subsidizes health coverage for 6.6 million people, mostly children, from families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford their own private coverage.

The Democrats who control Congress, with significant support from Republicans, passed the legislation to add $35 billion over five years, allowing an additional 4 million children into the program. It would be funded by raising the federal cigarette tax by 61 cents to $1 per pack.
The president had promised to veto it, saying the Democratic bill was too costly, took the program too far from its original intent of helping the poor, and would entice people now covered in the private sector to switch to government coverage. He wants only a $5 billion increase in funding. Bush argued that the congressional plan would be a move toward socialized medicine by expanding the program to higher-income families.
The president faces a possible rebellion by Republican lawmakers who back the bill. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) berated Bush on the Senate floor for having labeled the legislation "irresponsible" in his radio address Saturday.

"If you want to talk about the word responsible and whether Congress is responsible or not in this bill, I would say that anybody that wants to leave the program the way it is — and that's what's going to happen with a veto — that's an irresponsible position to take," Grassley said.
House Democratic leaders have said they will wait until next week or later to try to override a veto. They are hoping by then to peel off some 15 Republicans to get the two-thirds majority they need for an override. Texas A&M presidential scholar George Edwards says that lawmakers who stick with the president could pay for it in next year's elections.

"I think in a widely supported policy like the SCHIP bill, that the risks are substantial for Republicans," Edwards said. "It's difficult to take the case to the voters on something specific like that when we're talking about health care for children and explain the complex rationale for opposition."
Asked why the president has also issued veto threats against almost all the spending bills this year, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the president has a role to play in the legislative debate.

"One of the things the president can do is say, 'I'm not going to sign a bill that comes to me with extraneous spending. I'm not going to sign a bill that has policies in it that should not be a part of the United States policy,'" Perino said. "And so I would hope that we wouldn't have to do veto threats, but I think that the Democrats have shown that these are the types of legislative angles that they're going to take, and that's why the president has to send some veto threats up."

At issue is the fact that, added together, the spending bills exceed the president's own budget by some $23 billion.
But Dan Mitchell of the libertarian Cato Institute says that amount is paltry compared with the amount of excess spending that Bush signed during the Republicans' control of Congress.

"There certainly does seem to be a legitimate argument that the president only objects to new spending when Democrats are doing it, because he certainly wasn't objecting when Republicans controlled Congress," Mitchell said.

On Tuesday, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said that if there is a spending problem, it is the White House asking for nearly $200 billion in war funding.

"If the president is really concerned about stopping red ink, we are prepared to introduce legislation that will provide for a war surtax for that portion of military costs related to our military action in Iraq," Rep. David Obey (D-WI) proposed.
If President Bush does not like that cost, he added, he can shut down the war.

Most Republicans derided the idea of a war surtax.
"You pay for the war by winning the war," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). "This is not an accounting exercise. How did we pay for World War II? Everybody rolled up their sleeves and did the best they could."
They also paid a war surtax.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the idea a thumbs down; so did Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
"The speaker said that is not what she wants," Reid explained. "That's good enough for me."

Facing a spate of veto threats, Democratic leaders show little appetite for a separate fight over raising taxes.
With additional reporting from The Associated Press"

Cultural misconceptions empirically verified

Black Students Face Harsher Discipline

"Government data shows black students face much harsher discipline and are out of school more often than any other ethnic group for the similar offenses. Chicago Tribune reporter Howard Witt analyzes the report. Witt speaks with Andrea Seabrook."