Moonbat protester at Walter Reed: “My union made me come here;” Plus: Revolt against Code Pinkos in the Bay Area…and SF mayor Gavin Newsom goes on the attack

By Michelle Malkin • October 7, 2007 08:20 AM

Update: Cinnamon Stillwell reflects on Fleet Week and panicked SF peaceniks:

Getting to watch the Blue Angels practice throughout the week is another perk for patriots living in the vicinity. There’s nothing quite like the beauty of jets flying silently in formation, that sonic boom as they pass overhead, or the thrill of a jet zooming past one’s very window.But for local liberals unaccustomed to such icky displays of militarism and residents annoyed that their daily lives of leisure are interrupted by those who, in reality, make those daily lives of leisure possible, Fleet Week is a time of terror.

I know of one such fellow who was in a virtual panic last weekend to, as he put it, “get out of town before the Blue Angels arrived!” Others remained in the war zone, but their grumbling can be overheard at the corner store, the gym, and anywhere else that San Franciscans choose to emote about their political inclinations.

The truth is San Francisco is a city that likes to pretend its favored existence has nothing to do with the generations of fighting forces that have shed blood, sweat, and tears on America’s behalf. When Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval foolishly stated on “Hannity and Colmes” in 2006 that “the United States should not have a military,” that pretty much said it all…

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of joining folks from the Gathering of Eagles and Free Republic for the weekly pro-troops rally at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Who’s on the other side of the street with the tiny contingent of Code Pinkos protesting the war? Look for the union label!

According to FR’s Albion Wilde, at least one of them is a union worker who was told to show up. The Code Pink protest outside Walter Reed is led by one Bruce Wolf, chair of the “Social Justice Committee” of the AFL-CIO-affiliated union O.P.E.I.U. Local 2, who has referred to soldiers as “scabs:”

Mr. Wolf has written numerous wistful letters to lefty sites over the last several years, claiming his demonstration is not political, trying to increase participation — alas, without credibility, nor success. As the DC Chapter’s extensive documentation shows, their numbers have fallen off and stayed lower than the number of Free Republic troop supporters for years now, while DC Chapter’s numbers continue to grow. It’s a really hard sell, even for lefties, to protest the war in the faces of volunteer soldiers who are wounded, and Mr. Wolf is not doing well at it.

This week, in fact, the Reuters news organization ran an article headlined, “U.S. Protests Shrink While Antiwar Sentiment Grows.” Anti-war organizers feud among themselves, reporter Andy Sullivan said, “and participants question the effectiveness of the street protests.” Astonishingly, this mainstream media article at last pointed up the so-called “peace” movement leadership’s ties to the communist Worker’s World Party and its splinter, Party for Socialism and Liberation. What it doesn’t mention is the dedicated counterprotest presence of FReepers, Gathering of Eagles, Protest Warriors, Vets for Victory, MoveAmericaForward and hundreds of other grassroots groups determined not to allow another war to be won on the ground but lost by the media and Congress, as had happened in the Vietnam era.

On a related note, counterprotesters in the San Francisco Bay area are incensed by Code Pink’s vandalism and harassment at the military recruiting station in Berkeley. My friend Melanie Morgan of KSFO and MoveAmericaForward e-mails me about efforts to counterprotest the Pinko thugs:

I am posting your Lead Story on my website(s), with a call to action for the Bay Area supporters of our military men and women who are sacrificing every single day for our country.

I’m going to alert the KSFO audience on Monday when I return to the airwaves and read the deeply moving letter of response from Captain Richard Lund who is a fine example of the caliber of troops we have guarding our backs in this country and in Iraq.

After this disgusting attack at the Marine office in Shattuck Square, Captain Lund issued an open letter to the Berkeley City Council. This quote from your website touched me deeply:

"Recruiters are Traitors.” Please explain this one. How exactly am I a traitor? Was I a traitor when I joined the Marine Corps all those years ago? Is every Marine, therefore, a traitor? Was I a traitor during my two stints in Iraq? Was I a traitor when I was delivering humanitarian aid to the victims of the tsunami in Sumatra? Or do you only consider me a traitor while I am on this job?

Um, Captain Lund, the anti-war lunatics DO consider you a traitor. The rest of the world does not.

I am going to petition the City Council to enforce rules and regulation regarding criminal trespass and vandalism.

I am going to go there myself, personally, to draw attention to this hateful action by a fringe group who has absolutely NO moral authority –whose members include Susan (Medea) Benjamin, who engaged in anarchy at the WTO in Seattle, in between organizing her Code Pink Pepto-Bismol crowd who like to get naked for peace.

I do not hold out much hope from the Berkeley City Council. It is comprised of left-over Hippies from the Sixties who still think it’s the Summer of Love.

However, Mayor Tom Bates, has a distinctly different view of free speech that our military has fought valiantly for –he was convicted of stealing one thousand copies of the a conservative student-run newspaper.

According to the Stanford Daily newspaper…

“Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has decided to plead guilty for the theft and subsequent disposal of 1,000 copies of the Nov. 4 issue of the Daily Californian, which contained an endorsement of his opponent, Shirley Dean. A month after the incident, Bates is developing legislation to prevent this type of theft from reoccurring.

Regardless of the power structure in Berkeley, we will NOT let this insult to our troops remain unanswered. Not now. Not ever.

Poor Leftists it just seems to be getting worse and worse for you all the time. Bwaahahahahahaha

See Source Here at Michelle Malkin

Inside a Mosque

View The Video From Point Of Origin

Obama stops wearing flag pin

By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer

Fri Oct 5, 11:38 AM ET

WATERLOO, Iowa - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says he no longer wears an American flag lapel pin because it has become a substitute for "true patriotism" since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He commented on the pin in a television interview Wednesday and then again on Thursday at a campaign appearance in Independence, Iowa.

Noting the TV interview, he told the campaign crowd, "I said, you know what, I probably haven't worn a flag pin in a very long time. After a while I noticed people wearing a lapel pin and not acting very patriotic."

"My attitude is that I'm less concerned about what you're wearing on your lapel than what's in your heart. You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. You show your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals. That's what we have to lead with is our values and our ideals."

Barak Obama is getting things all mixed up feeling versus being patriot is not the same thing. Either your with us or your against us plain and simple.

(Please see the Source Here)

Code Pink defaces Berkeley military recruitment office; Update: Attacks will continue, support needed
(Source at Michelle Malkins please read)

Well it looks as if the Stalinists Marxist group are back at it again. Just goes to show that the Leftists don't belong here in the United States ship them to Russia or China where they can live in a happy dictatorship that they love so much.

By Michelle Malkin • October 5, 2007 10:03 AM

Update: I noted below that it would be nice if folks could show up and show some support for the targeted recruitment office. Reader Sandy e-mails:

I called the USMC Officer Recruiting Office at Berkeley and expressed my support to one of the recruiters. He asked how I knew about the situation, and I told him your blog was my source. He said the Pinkos vowed they would be back on the weekends and during the week, every week, until the office is shut down. They went to the landlord of the building and have been harassing him, and he may complain to the city/mayor about it, as other building tenants do not appreciate their antics since it interferes with their businesses. The recruiter hoped that more support would come in and that the word would be spread. He said earlier this week, some Gold Star and Blue Star family members came to the office to show support. One of the family members was a father whose Marine son had died in Fallujah. A man with the Pinkos said to him, “How does it feel to have your son die for oil?” Tensions, of course, were very high and there was almost a fight. I know that I could not hold my temper (and tongue) as these Marines are doing. I despise what these harridans are doing. Question their patriotism? There’s no question about their patriotism.

This is just gone too far and if the Left ever thinks about ever getting into office they better control these leftist lunatics of their party.

Please read the rest at Michelle Malkin

Getting Rid of American Holidays in Public Schools

By Warner Todd Huston

At the end of September the school district in Oak Lawn, Illinois announced it was considering eliminating holiday celebrations like Christmas in its schools. Oak Lawn has seen increasing numbers of residents that identify with the Muslim faith who are naturally sending their children to the public schools there and school board members are afraid that Christian holidays are “offensive” to Muslim students.

This move follows a recent decision to eliminate pork products from the school menu.

Unsurprisingly, these cultural clashing decisions by the school board have caused acrimony among parents of the district. Stating the painfully obvious, Columbus Manor Principal Sandy Robertson said of the controversy, “It’s difficult when you change the school’s culture.”

Elizabeth Zahdan, a parent of Muslim faith who took her case to the school board wanting the school to be “more inclusive” during holiday activities, however, adamantly denied she wanted to eliminate any American styled holiday observances. “I only wanted them modified to represent everyone,” she told the Chicago Sun-Times. Zahdan disclaimed to reporters, “Now the kids are not being educated about other people.”

Unfortunately for Mrs. Zahdan, a “modified” holiday is no longer the same holiday. It becomes something else once altered. So, whatever her motives, she was effectively advocating for their elimination.

Superintendent Tom Smyth said that the reason they were eliminating or trying to “tone down” holiday celebrations was one of wasting allotted teaching time. There isn’t time enough in the day to “celebrate every holiday,” Smyth claimed. “We have to think about our purpose. Are we about teaching reading, writing and math or for parties or fund-raising during the day?”

Conservatives will, of course, be offended by the elimination of standard, Christian American holidays and having them “modified” to be “more inclusive.” Many are upset that these purported outsiders are forcing the local schools to make such changes for Muslims and rightfully so, to be sure.

But, this anger from conservatives is hard to square with their ideas of local control of the school systems. The usual conservative policy prescription for what ails public education in America is local — as opposed to Federal — control. In general, this is absolutely correct as who better to control what sort of school a community wants than the community itself, one not encumbered by meddling control from the Federal government or state officers?

This local control ideal, though, invites the very sort of situation that the Oak Lawn schools are dealing with currently. Half the kids in some schools there are of the Muslim faith at this time. So, if local control is de rigeur, then the schools will naturally begin to react to such factors as changing demographics.

This fact makes the claim of complete local control a tad embarrassing for conservatives who would be upset at a school district that might change policies to reflect the desires of the local population. After all, isn’t that the effects of the market place, the base model for most conservative thinking? With complete local control, the schools will take on the interests and desires of the local population. That is the very essence of “local control.”

But, is it good to allow these sorts of forces to affect schools without careful consideration? Should we eliminate all things Christian in an American school district if the parents in that district are majority Muslim? In this climate of a wishy-washiness on American first principles infesting our country today, here is one instance where all control should not be at the smallest, local level.

School curricula must stay a state controlled issue. Though the Federal government should be entirely out of the picture, from funding to designing the curriculum, returning all schooling decisions to the smallest, local entity will result in exactly the sort of problematic de-Americanizing of our schools that we are witnessing in Oak Lawn. Whether it be overly Mexicanized, Muslim-centric, or what have you, we will assure that American influences will be replaced by the culture du jour if the locals have as much control as some conservatives by rote advocate for.

The solution to a loss of American ideals in local schools is to continue to have the school curriculum controlled by the state governments. This control, and a homogeneous statewide curriculum will offset the effect of pressures by small communities that fill with immigrant populations who might be apt to instill on our American schools the cultures and ideas from whence they, the parents, came.

What to do with the ire of parents who want their Muslim faith (or Mexican heritage in other instances) regarded in policy decisions is definitely something we will see more need to contend with in the days to come. It is a sticky question, of course. Since we have become a culture that won’t back a homogeneous observance of being an American, how do we address this issue? How do we serve local communities that are made up mostly of immigrants?

As the Sun-Times reported, Oak Lawn parent Elizabeth Zahdan moaned that eliminating all holidays would stop children from “being educated about other people?”

This issue is emotionally charged, of course, but for all the wrong decisions Supt. Tom Smyth has made here, he is correct on one issue. When he said that the schools didn’t have the time to celebrate every holiday on Earth to be “inclusive” of them all, he was correct. His answer to the problem is not so smart, however. Getting rid of all holidays is both the coward’s way out and completely unamerican, to boot.

But, here’s the thing. Our schools shouldn’t be about educating our children about “other people.” That they can learn in college or in life. Our schools should be teaching about OUR people. And our schools are failing miserably to do this effectively.

It is agreed that we shouldn’t be celebrating every holiday under the sun in our schools. The Supt. is completely correct that we haven’t the time in our busy school days to do so. In fact, we shouldn’t be celebrating ANY other holidays but American holidays. American holidays reflect our national culture. Christmas and Halloween as we celebrate them are American holidays. The Holidays and traditions of other cultures deserve to remain at home, not in the halls of our schools.

By NOT indulging their desires to obviate American influences replacing them with ideas antithetical to our American first principles, we would be doing a far better service to our children than to re-draw every district to a different standard to placate foreign influences. We became a great country in the first place because of our culture, not by bending and warping every ideal to suit immigrant’s wishes in every small community across this great land.

So, conservatives should realize that “local control” is not the panacea they imagine it to be in every last instance. Certainly we should look to have some aspects of our schools controlled by the local school boards, but too much local control could backfire on erstwhile conservatives. We will surely begin to find schools becoming less and less American if the locals are allowed too much direct influence.

Do we want our schools taught in Spanish as a first language? Do we want the Koran to replace textbooks in others? Do we want our children taught that America is an evil empire?

I would hope not.

To avoid that, however, we need to teach Americanism. We should be allowing kids to celebrate holidays. There is no harm in that. But they MUST be America’s holidays.

Anything else and we are no longer America and are teaching our children that there is nothing out there especially American to teach them.