Content by mikeleader
Posted at 7:03pm on Jan. 1, 2008 I'm Gone
By mikeleader
I will miss Red State much more than it will miss me..In the year or so I've been here I've written perhaps 3 or 4 diaries, offered a dozen or so comments.
Like Gamecock, (whom I greatly admire) until my Conserative epiphany I was a dedicated Democrat,with a very liberal upbringing who was elected to a Dem Party position of great influence. Lots of the Democrat politicians whose names appear in these pages are people whom I know, and who know me, and in whose circles I traveled in.
Posted in Policy — Comments (33) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:23pm on Dec. 28, 2007 The Jewish-Mormon controversy that won't go away [Closed and annotated.]
By mikeleader
[I am taking the position that the author of this piece has temporarily allowed his personal objections to the practice mentioned below to overwhelm his good sense over what is and is not acceptable political commentary at RedState. I sincerely hope that this will end the matter. - Moe Lane]
The Catholic uneasiness over Mormonism is well known and will be a factor if Romney becomes our standard bearer. There is also a little known but MAJOR PROBLEM between the LDS(Latter Day Saints) and the American (also world wide) Jewish community.
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Posted at 11:02am on Oct. 11, 2007 Rudy Schism and the tale of the Chinese Monk
By mikeleader
mikeleader
Chin-Ning Chu in her superb book on the Asian mind set,"Thick Face Black Heart" tells the story of the Chinese Holy Man...
He sat under a tree meditating when a boy ran to him..The boy said he was accused of being a thief and there was a mob after him, and they would cut off his hands if they caught him.He claimed he was innocent and in his heart, the Holy Man knew he was telling the truth.The boy climbed up and hid in a near by tree. When the mob approached and asked the Monk if he had seen the boy he hesitated. He knew the boy was innocent, but years before he had taken a vow to always tell the truth..He kept his vow and revealed the boy's hiding place . the boy had his hands cut off and he died.
Posted in Elections — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:52pm on May 27, 2007 Governor Richardson, touted as a moderate, exposed as a moron
By mikeleader
The usually sensible Larry Kudlow heard on ABC radio in new york and msnbc on cable did a riff on Richardson.
He read his bio, governor, diplomat, hispanic, a moderating voice in the light of Hill and Oba..He said unlike the other dems. he's a businessman and pro capitalist.he's not a raise taxes governor, and he resonates with the latino community...
Kudlow can see him as a possible VP candidate.....
Posted in The White House — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:36am on Apr. 24, 2007 phony union mantra
By mikeleader
In n.y. everyone seems to have bought into the teacher's union nonsense that all we need to do to educate kids is throw more money into the schools, and lower class size..This mantra is repeated ad nauseum..ignoring the fact that nyc spends 14 billion a year on education....more than the gnp of most countries in the UN...,and places like Singapore, Thailand,Kong Kong and others on the asian rim have up to 170 kids in a class and that class has all grades from the 4th through 12th...and how do these kids do when they come here with out knowing a word of English? walk by Stuyvesant H>S>, Bronx Science,Brooklyn Tech...and all the specialized schools and note the predominance of Asians...
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Posted at 8:16pm on Apr. 20, 2007 Reid:Redstate must act!
By mikeleader
Fellow Redstaters....we talk, we lament, we wring our hands, we shake our heads in disbelief...we blog ..and we wait for someone,or something to happen to flush out the fools and cowards who now head both houses of govt.
Our President (whom I admire and respect)and his administration haven't a clue about public relations .Yes the 5th column, known as the msm , have wrapped up public opinion in a little bow, but for god sake where are our elected Republican collective voices? Where is the righteous anger and indignation? Who will immediately fashion a strategy to compel Pelosi and Reid to resign!!
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Posted at 2:55pm on Feb. 11, 2007 Conservatives helping liberals straighten theTitanic's deck chairs
By mikeleader
Question: What do you call a conservative who is so consumed with the abortion issue he will refuse to vote for anyone who disagrees with him, even if that person has little to do with affecting that specific policy?
Answer: A friend of Hillary.
I’m Jewish, so after four millennia of oppression, paranoia is in my genes. I speak to two very old people with faded number tattoos on their forearms who tell me that America today is like they remembered Europe in the thirties. Someone in our crowd says “It can never happen here,” and the two survivors look at each other, look away, and say nothing. Their silence speaks louder than any words they can utter.
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Posted at 5:00pm on Feb. 10, 2007 My Friend Rudy
By mikeleader
In 1993 it became obvious that if Rudy was to avenge his narrow defeat for Mayor four years earlier, he would need more Democratic voters to cross party lines and support him. His campaign strategists knew I was disenchanted with the incumbent and put a full court press on me to meet with Giuliani. I was the elected head of the Democratic Party in a large Democratic district whose vote could be pivotal if it turned out for the non Democrat challenger.
I met him and we talked for about an hour. He impressed me then as he does now with his intelligence, humor, and vision. I agreed to publicly support him, and shortly thereafter I stood on the steps of City Hall with Rudy in a far reaching press conference where the press corps did everything they could to dig up a nefarious motive for my sacrilege of becoming the first Democratic Party Leader to endorse Rudy. I felt then he was the best candidate for my city .Though I was a Democrat, and an unpaid Party official, I had to choose reason and conscience over Party. The “man bites dog twist” made for a good story and it was picked up by all the city papers, and went national when the Associated Press picked it up.
Read on . . .
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Posted at 2:16pm on Jul. 16, 2006 Ed Rogers Republican strategist on Israel (what????)
By mikeleader
Fox had Rogers on this morning to give a fair and balanced response to the Irael- islamafascist conflict.. this guy's a repub. strategist...he sells out our ally..he sells out our president..
then I google this:
Republican Ed Rogers Calls Feingold "Thoughtful"
"... Russ Feingold is thoughtful opposition. He voted against (the war in Iraq). He's been principled about the whole thing. He's been matter of fact. I don't have any problem with his position. ... He's consistent and thoughtful." - Ed Rogers, Republican strategist (source: "Hardball")
who is this guy? who uses him for strategy? I told Fox the next time he's on I'm dropping the channel from my xm package..
Posted in User Blogs — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:56am on Jun. 19, 2006 A Modest Proposal for Education and Welfare Reform
By mikeleader
Pat Cleary brings up a very good point in her exscellent diary..The answser is Parental Involvement!
For years NYC has been spending between 11 and 14 bilion dollars on city schools with negligible results...
that enormous amount of money dwarfs the Gross National Product of most of the countries on the planet..
A very significant study I remember reading in the Daily News a few years back discussed how statisticians rated a plethora of factors in order to see which were analogous to student performance...The one correlation which held true universally was that the schools which served the most free lunches and breakfasts had the distinction of poorest student performance...
Mandated food in school occurs in neighborhoods where most of the parents are below the poverty levels...These parents because of a myriad of circumstances albeit some beyond their control might not be equipped to instill the love of learning, or provide the proper pre school preparation enjoyed by more affluent parents...
For example, most of the pre schoolers I know have been taught the alphabet, colors, shapes, and have learned to read along with mommy and daddy every night in a "bedtime" book.
On the other hand...I've taught in schools where the majority of 4th graders in my class could not spell their own names.
The idea of throwing money at schools doesn't make sense the way it is done now. The refrain of lower class sizes, and higher teacher pay is in the words of a well known exotic dancer, "A crock."...Compare the way Asian schools along the Pacific rim have done...Students there have 70 kids in a class...Subjects are taught to children from the ages of ten to sixteen in the same class!
and how do they do...Go to the specialized schools of nyc...Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech...you see an enormous preponderance of Asian students..far more than their demographics would suggest.
In fact, take a poll of the next Korean grocer when you shop and ask what school their kids are going to...count how many MIT's, John Hopkins and Stamfords you come up with.
The answer is parental involvement to combat educational woes..and the way to involve parents is to use the money municipalities pay to welfare recipients... to clean the parks, and remove grafiti, and pay those parents to work for their kids.
a structure should be put in place to pay an increased benefit (5% increments)to welfare recipients when their (in school) children achieve certain benchmarks..i.e. 90% attendance , 0 lates, grade level over 80%, all homework assignments completed. Parents would get a bonus by attending all parent teacher conferences, participating on school trips, and being members of the parent-teacher associations.
Many parents would like to participate in their children's education yet they don't have the skills...Some of that 14 billion should be used for remedial training for those parents, once again using money as an incentive...Teachers could earn the extra dollars as tutors, training parents to master the skills necessary to work with their elementary school children...In one generation...we can both make our kids better students...and wipe out welfare..breaking the chain of poverty and misery which replicates itself again and again.