News, Entertainment, Enlightenment
Ferde Grofe was born in 1892 in New York City and is one of the world’s great composers.
Among his works is the Grand Canyon Suite.
In 1950, he scored Rocketship X-M, a B movie starring Lloyd Bridges and Noah Beery Jr., that would one day be mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
San Diego Teachers Betray Students
By Joe Guzzardi
Under the guise of “This is not who we are. America is better than this,” familiar elitist-speak currently spoken to excuse admitting thousands of Northern Triangle migrants, no accommodation is too generous for them. President Biden is the latest political potentate to unconvincingly utter the America-is-better-than-this refrain. But Biden has a long way to go before he matches former President Obama in his thinly disguised admonition of average Americans. Obama uttered the backhanded insult 46 times on issues ranging from the Affordable Care Act, voting and national security to immigration.
To gauge how much taxpayers are required to tolerate while underwriting an endless stream of affirmative benefits offered to recently arrived migrant noncitizens as they’re forced to play second fiddle, turn to San Diego, Calif. For more than a year, some 130,000 children enrolled in the San Diego Unified School District have been relegated to remote, online education. School administrators blame the COVID-19 pandemic, and have insisted that for the teachers’ personal safety, and in the best interests of their students, remote learning is mandatory.
Imagine, then, the shock parents must have experienced when they learned that SDUSD teachers would be instructing young migrants in person at the San Diego Convention Center where they’re currently housed. In other words, teaching in person is okay, but only if the students are foreign nationals and not San Diego’s kids. During his interview with the national media, Reopen California Schools founder Jonathan Zachreson said that the confirmed COVID-19 infection rate among the alien children the SDUSD teachers will be instructing is 9 percent. But among the San Diego students the teachers have betrayed, the infection rate is a microscopic .0018 percent.
In its statement to the press, the San Diego County Office of Education wrote, “We also have a moral obligation to ensure a bright future for our children,” an apparent reference to the migrants. The SDCOE didn’t mention concern for the San Diego students whose futures have been harmed, perhaps irreparably, by the county’s year-long stay-at-home order.
On April 12, San Diego schools will – tentatively – shift to hybrid learning while the in-person migrant program will remain active through July. Shortly after SDUSD officials confirmed the April 12 return date, teachers immediately pushed back. An internal union email that Voice of San Diegoobtained showed the teachers are hedging on the April 12 date, and suggested that classroom conditions are not yet safe for returning. The email read, in part, “Any date for a required return is a projection and not set in stone.” To restate the obvious: the teachers and their union throw up flimsy objections to educating San Diego’s citizen children, but don’t hesitate to sign up to instruct Mexican and Central American migrants.
The SDCOE stressed that its illegal immigrant education program will emphasize English as a Second Language and social-emotional learning opportunities, a direct slap in the face to San Diego’s enrolled thousands of limited English speakers and special needs students.
Statewide, California’s quality of education has been in freefall for decades. Within living memory, the 1960s, California had the nation’s most efficient and most admired K-12 public school system. But in 1978, Proposition 13cut property taxes and, as a result, slashed counties’ available funds for school construction and upkeep. Today, California has more than 6.1 million students enrolled in nearly 11,000 campuses. For more than a year, the majority have been denied an in-person public education, a lost school year that can never be recovered. But for frustrated, furious parents to realize that SDUSD teachers’ priority is educating unaccompanied, illegally present foreign national asylum seekers while their children’s academic needs are neglected is a burdensome reality to cope with.
In his press release, California U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R) sided with the parents. Said Issa: “The decision to provide in-person instruction to illegal migrants is outrageous and parents have every right to be angry.”
Summarizing, SDUSD teachers refused to return to their contracted jobs until, first, they were vaccinated; second, they received more money, and third, COVID cases fell. The teachers have been vaccinated; they and their California’s K-12 peers got $15.3 billion as their part of the American Rescue Plan Act, and cases have plunged. Yet, the teachers brazenly refuse to go back to their San Diego classrooms, but willingly will provide education to illegally present minors. Such is the state of things in California, and in today’s Washington, D.C., where the illegal immigrant is preferred to the citizen.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.
Humans are amphibians William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 4-6-21
N tbbq yvr svaqf zber oryvriref guna n onq gehgu.
Nzrevpna Sbyx Fnlvat
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit puzzle: Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.
C. S. Lewis
Groupon Selling Nike, Which Means Nike Is Not Selling — Groupon, the website that lets merchants move underselling merchandise, is offering Nike products. Just do it? Just sayin.
We will not do it, for what it’s worth. Nike uses slave labor. Nike — and Coca Cola for that matter — support slavery.
Slavery is a bad thing.
Simon Peter came along William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 4-5-21
Tgymze mdq mybtunumze – tmxr ebuduf mzp tmxr mzuymx. Me ebudufe ftqk nqxazs fa ftq qfqdzmx iadxp, ngf me mzuymxe ftqk uztmnuf fuyq.
O. E. Xqiue
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit puzzle: Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head.
John 20:6-7
Christos Voskrese 2021 — Christos voskrese, which means Christ has Risen, is the Easter greeting in Church Slavonic which brings the response Voistinu voskrese or Indeed, He has risen.
Easter, of course, celebrates the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the salvation of Man. The date for Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is always reckoned, regardless of astronomical observations, to be March 21 as per the Western churches that use the Gregorian calendar, so Easter always falls between March 22 and April 25.
The dating for Easter correlates with the means the Jews once used to set the date for Passover, which correlates with Scripture since Scripture indicates that the Crucifixion of the Lord occurred as the lambs were being slaughtered for the celebration of that holiday. In fact, in most Western languages the name for the day is a cognate of the Pesach which is the Hebrew name for Passover. In Latin it would be Pascha so Paschal lamb would be Passover lamb.
In English and German, the word comes from Eostre month, which was basically April, and which the pagans who spoke Germanic languages had named for the goddess Eostre much as our own March and April are named for the Greek god and goddess Mars and Aphrodite, respectively. In Slavic, the holiday is called “Great Night” (Velikonoce in Slovak) or “Great Day” (Velikden in Ukrainian). There are some caveats regarding the date. The Eastern churches that use the Julian calendar set the equinox at April 3, and, of course, the spring equinox is based on that of the Northern Hemisphere.
So, Christos Voskrese 2021.
Promote justice William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 4-4-21
Espy Dtxzy Apepc nlxp lwzyr mpstyo stx lyo hpye decltrse tyez esp ezxm. Sp dlh esp dectad zq wtypy wjtyr espcp, ld hpww ld esp nwzes esle slo mppy hclaapo lczfyo Updfd’ splo.
Uzsy
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit puzzle: Next to religion, let your care be to promote justice.
Francis Bacon
The first chocolate Easter egg was produced in 1873 by legendary British confectioner Fry’s.
Day of sorrow William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit 4-3-21
Xohd dy bovsqsyx, vod iyeb mkbo lo dy zbywydo tecdsmo.
Pbkxmsc Lkmyx
Answer to yesterday’s William Lawrence Sr Cryptowit puzzle: Good Friday is a day of sorrow mingled with joy. It is a time to grieve over the sin of man and to meditate and rejoice upon God’s love in giving His only Son for the redemption of sin.
David Katski
Texas Lawsuit Demands Border Control
By Joe Guzzardi
While justified criticism about President Biden’s border fiasco rages on, an interesting and significant legal action has gone largely unnoticed. Texan Brian Harrison, formerly President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services chief of staff, and co-plaintiff Steven Pace filed a 20-page brief in an Amarillo federal court which seeks to resume the Trump-era, no exception practice of returning unaccompanied minors to their home country.
The suit argues that the Biden administration hasn’t given a legal defense for ending the policy which was intended to protect Americans’ health and well-being during the coronavirus pandemic. Named as defendants are Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.
In his legal filing, Harrison, who is on the May 1 special election ballot for the vacant U.S. House of Representatives’ seat that recently deceased Ron Wright held, has submitted a two-prong argument. First, in March 2020, the CDC invoked Title 42 which allows the federal government to bar migrants from entering the U.S. during a health crisis. But on February 2, Biden ordered a CDC review which quickly resulted in the agency’s February 17 notice that Title 42 would be suspended as it pertained to returning unaccompanied alien minors. And second, Harrison’s filing claims that the Biden administration didn’t follow the Administrative Procedure Act protocols which require federal agencies to justify any policy changes.
Since February, the inflow of unaccompanied minors has continued unabated. Worse, a space shortage at border holding facilities has forced the Biden administration to release the migrants, some COVID-infected, into the U.S. interior without a notice to appear at a later date in immigration court. The most recent federal data showed that among 11,300 child and teen illegal immigrants in HHS care, 2,900 are laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 positive. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki made Biden’s policy clear when she confirmed that “we have been letting unaccompanied minors stay.” In an effort to curb negative publicity, Biden’s Office of Personnel Management sent a memo to several government agency department heads requesting volunteer deployments for as long as four months to help Customs and Border Protection (CBP) deal with the unaccompanied minors’ border surge. More border re-enforcements will be needed during the summer months when, traditionally, migration peaks.
Within a 24-hour period last week, CBP took in 111 individuals smuggled north in three separate trucks. CBP officials identified the perpetrators as possible human smugglers and said those in custody were foreign nationals from Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. None were wearing masks or other protective gear. Being forced to deal with the uptick in human trafficking detracts the CBP, as one of its officials said, from its “enduring mission priorities of countering terrorism, combating transnational crime, securing the border, facilitating lawful trade, protecting revenue and facilitating lawful travel.”
Americans just now are seeing the flickering light at the end of the year-long COVID-19 lockdown tunnel, and are increasingly concerned that the border releases could spark another round of stay-at-home-orders. Released asylum seekers who tested COVID-positive at a Brownsville, Texas, bus station told local reporters that their destinations included North Carolina, Maryland and New Jersey. Documents leaked to the media predict that the surge will last more than seven months. Consequently, other states will soon be receiving COVID-positive migrants.
Testing after Customs and Protection releases migrants gives the illegal aliens freedom to travel unrestricted throughout the U.S., an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who lost their jobs and businesses. Also taken away during the government-imposed lockdown was personal choice for Americans to educate their children in public schools, and individuals’ constitutional rights to worship at churches, synagogues and mosques.
The question that the Biden administration should answer is what happens after the illegal aliens settle in the U.S. interior. On his border fact-finding mission, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned directly from the adults that their main reason for coming to the U.S. is to find a job. The under-18 population will require public education in already overcrowded and largely failing K-12 classrooms. Many among both the minor and adult population will need taxpayer-funded health care, and will have access to other affirmative benefits.
Although Americans take pride in their humanitarianism, the nation has been through a grueling year-plus of lockdowns and employment furloughs. Putting Americans first until normalcy returns is the course of action that the Biden administration should be ethically obligated to pursue.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.