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The video below is one of those internet movies that become viral. It shows a fat kid (in Australia) being bullied, punched a few times till he finally decides to fight back. Like most of these viral videos, the viewer can figure out what led to this point in the story. It is obvious that this wasn’t the first time the “fat kid” in this video was bullied, it was simply the first time he stood up to the bully.
This video touched my greatly because, well when I was growing up, I was that fat kid. Please indulge me for a moment and read the story below the video. It tells of the first time this fat kid stood up to a bully.
Fat kid fights back (totse.info) from Steve Douglas on Vimeo.
Growing up I was that fat kid, bullied every day. Once, while walking home from Mrs. Ritter’s third grade class I was attacked by a bully (it was safe for kids to walk home from school alone in those days). I can’t tell you why, maybe someone put something in the mystery meat that was served for lunch) but I chose that day to fight back. As soon the battle was engaged, I learned a fat guy could use his weight to pin a bully to the ground.
There I was, sitting on top of Sheldon (Its sick that I don’t remember what I had for breakfast an hour ago, but that kid’s full name is tattooed on my cerebral cortex). Anyway, yours truly was on top of Sheldon and for the first time in my long nine-year life—fighting back, That’s when Sheldon’s mom came over and kicked me in the nose to get me off her son.
Now, you might think that’s where the story ends, but there’s more. You see, my mom, may she rest in peace, was the typical Jewish mom. The ensuing years have taught me that the only difference between Jewish moms and ones of other backgrounds are the language they use when they don’t the kids to understand what they are saying (in mom’s case it was Yiddish, but Tommy Pellegrino’s mom used Italian). The other difference is the examples they use when they want to sent their child on a guilt trip (how many Jewish moms does it take to screw in a light bulb? “No, don’t bother I will sit here in the dark:)
When I walked through the door and my Jewish Mama Grizzly saw my face, it was time to share with her the humiliation my nose received at the foot of Mrs. K (Sheldon’s mom). Without saying a word, she raced over to the cabinet over the oven and pulled out on of the many yellow-paged phone books, all of them were for the same territory but we never threw one out (hey they may forget to bring us one next year, you never know).
Mom opened the phone book to retrieve Sheldon’s home address then turned in my direction saying very abruptly “Get in the Car! ” When my mom gave an order you followed it without asking questions. She had the fastest back hand In NY. Whenever my mouth would unleash something to anger her she would demonstrate her backhand prowess. If you were there and saw her, you wouldn’t see her hand move, only the tell-tale white (and then red) hand impression on my cheek It happened very often, even back then, the snarky gland in my brain was hyper-active.
Jumping into the car (just following orders) I got in the car as my mom took off to Sheldon’s house. Now some of you might be wondering if I skipped the part about putting on the seat belt. Back there we had an automatic restraint system. When the car was making a jolting stop, mom’s right arm (the one with the back hand) would stretch out in less than 3 microseconds and stop the child passenger from going through the windshield.
When we arrived at Sheldon’s house (back then homes were named after the kids not the parents), I followed mom out of the car and watched as she rang the doorbell. When Mrs. K. opened the door, mom turned to me and said, “Is that her?” Nodding in the affirmative, I knew what was coming next. Using the fastest hand in New York, mom gave Mrs. K a right jab that would have made Muhammed Ali proud.
“Nobody hits my kids except for me,” she snarled at Mrs. K. With that she turned toward me and said “Get back in the car!” Like I said, no one argued with my mom especially when she was angry and nothing made her angrier than someone hurting one of her kids or my dad (in that order).
Dad was lucky, at least he came before the dog. The years brought six grand children and dad moved from 4th to 13th. Her kids moved behind the grandchildren to a 3-way tie for 7th, then came the two daughters-in-law and son-in-law. Of course that never phased dad, he felt then and still feels now the kids come first.
When we were growing up each one of the kids felt we were the favorite child, my older brother because he was the first, my older sister because she was one of only two girls amongst all of the children of my generation of the family, and me because, well…I was the baby. Mom always said to my that even when I was a hundred years old, I would still be her baby.
Mom passed away 17 months ago in mid-October 2009. I don’t know whether it was because of the cancer that was ravaging her body, or the medication to keep her out of pain, but two days before she passed away she was “out of it.” My father was taking one of his very few breaks during those last weeks, down in the hospital coffee shop, and I was sitting next to my mom’s bed watching her sleep when she suddenly called out for my father.
Not knowing if she recognized me, I looked at her and said, “Mom, its me your baby, I will always be your baby.” She looked at me nodded her head and smiled.” that was her last lucid moment before she slipped away.
One-and-a-half-years later I am still my mom’s baby. That’s why that video touched my heart, not because I was the fat kid who was bullied all of the time, but because it reminded me how lucky I was to be raised by two parents who did not have the “Dr. Spock” guide to being a parent, but raised us with one important rule in mind. No one can be the perfect parent, but showing your children love and a hearty supply of hugs is the most important part of raising kids.
Passover is a month away. Like most sacred holidays, this one involves being with family. This will be the second Passover without chopped liver my mom made every year (she made poor dad chop the liver by hand, which may the cause of the bursitis in his shoulder). We would make jokes that we couldn’t eat store-bought liver because it didn’t have the gristle my moms home made liver had. I will miss that liver, but I won’t miss my mom, because she will be there in the pictures, the stories and the jokes about gristle. And should Mrs. K (who is gone also) show up, she better watch out, because I am sure that mom has lost nothing off her backhand especially when it comes to protecting her family.
Please email me at [email protected] to be put onto my mailing list.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com![]()
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
The video below is one of those internet movies that become viral. It shows a fat kid (in Australia) being bullied, punched a few times till he finally decides to fight back. Like most of these viral videos, the viewer can figure out what led to this point in the story. It is obvious that this wasn’t the first time the “fat kid” in this video was bullied, it was simply the first time he stood up to the bully.
This video touched my greatly because, well when I was growing up, I was that fat kid. Please indulge me for a moment and read the story below the video. It tells of the first time this fat kid stood up to a bully.
Fat kid fights back (totse.info) from Steve Douglas on Vimeo.
Growing up I was that fat kid, bullied every day. Once, while walking home from Mrs. Ritter’s third grade class I was attacked by a bully (it was safe for kids to walk home from school alone in those days). I can’t tell you why, maybe someone put something in the mystery meat that was served for lunch) but I chose that day to fight back. As soon the battle was engaged, I learned a fat guy could use his weight to pin a bully to the ground.
There I was, sitting on top of Sheldon (Its sick that I don’t remember what I had for breakfast an hour ago, but that kid’s full name is tattooed on my cerebral cortex). Anyway, yours truly was on top of Sheldon and for the first time in my long nine-year life—fighting back, That’s when Sheldon’s mom came over and kicked me in the nose to get me off her son.
Now, you might think that’s where the story ends, but there’s more. You see, my mom, may she rest in peace, was the typical Jewish mom. The ensuing years have taught me that the only difference between Jewish moms and ones of other backgrounds are the language they use when they don’t the kids to understand what they are saying (in mom’s case it was Yiddish, but Tommy Pellegrino’s mom used Italian). The other difference is the examples they use when they want to sent their child on a guilt trip (how many Jewish moms does it take to screw in a light bulb? “No, don’t bother I will sit here in the dark:)
When I walked through the door and my Jewish Mama Grizzly saw my face, it was time to share with her the humiliation my nose received at the foot of Mrs. K (Sheldon’s mom). Without saying a word, she raced over to the cabinet over the oven and pulled out on of the many yellow-paged phone books, all of them were for the same territory but we never threw one out (hey they may forget to bring us one next year, you never know).
Mom opened the phone book to retrieve Sheldon’s home address then turned in my direction saying very abruptly “Get in the Car! ” When my mom gave an order you followed it without asking questions. She had the fastest back hand In NY. Whenever my mouth would unleash something to anger her she would demonstrate her backhand prowess. If you were there and saw her, you wouldn’t see her hand move, only the tell-tale white (and then red) hand impression on my cheek It happened very often, even back then, the snarky gland in my brain was hyper-active.
Jumping into the car (just following orders) I got in the car as my mom took off to Sheldon’s house. Now some of you might be wondering if I skipped the part about putting on the seat belt. Back there we had an automatic restraint system. When the car was making a jolting stop, mom’s right arm (the one with the back hand) would stretch out in less than 3 microseconds and stop the child passenger from going through the windshield.
When we arrived at Sheldon’s house (back then homes were named after the kids not the parents), I followed mom out of the car and watched as she rang the doorbell. When Mrs. K. opened the door, mom turned to me and said, “Is that her?” Nodding in the affirmative, I knew what was coming next. Using the fastest hand in New York, mom gave Mrs. K a right jab that would have made Muhammed Ali proud.
“Nobody hits my kids except for me,” she snarled at Mrs. K. With that she turned toward me and said “Get back in the car!” Like I said, no one argued with my mom especially when she was angry and nothing made her angrier than someone hurting one of her kids or my dad (in that order).
Dad was lucky, at least he came before the dog. The years brought six grand children and dad moved from 4th to 13th. Her kids moved behind the grandchildren to a 3-way tie for 7th, then came the two daughters-in-law and son-in-law. Of course that never phased dad, he felt then and still feels now the kids come first.
When we were growing up each one of the kids felt we were the favorite child, my older brother because he was the first, my older sister because she was one of only two girls amongst all of the children of my generation of the family, and me because, well…I was the baby. Mom always said to my that even when I was a hundred years old, I would still be her baby.
Mom passed away 17 months ago in mid-October 2009. I don’t know whether it was because of the cancer that was ravaging her body, or the medication to keep her out of pain, but two days before she passed away she was “out of it.” My father was taking one of his very few breaks during those last weeks, down in the hospital coffee shop, and I was sitting next to my mom’s bed watching her sleep when she suddenly called out for my father.
Not knowing if she recognized me, I looked at her and said, “Mom, its me your baby, I will always be your baby.” She looked at me nodded her head and smiled.” that was her last lucid moment before she slipped away.
One-and-a-half-years later I am still my mom’s baby. That’s why that video touched my heart, not because I was the fat kid who was bullied all of the time, but because it reminded me how lucky I was to be raised by two parents who did not have the “Dr. Spock” guide to being a parent, but raised us with one important rule in mind. No one can be the perfect parent, but showing your children love and a hearty supply of hugs is the most important part of raising kids.
Passover is a month away. Like most sacred holidays, this one involves being with family. This will be the second Passover without chopped liver my mom made every year (she made poor dad chop the liver by hand, which may the cause of the bursitis in his shoulder). We would make jokes that we couldn’t eat store-bought liver because it didn’t have the gristle my moms home made liver had. I will miss that liver, but I won’t miss my mom, because she will be there in the pictures, the stories and the jokes about gristle. And should Mrs. K (who is gone also) show up, she better watch out, because I am sure that mom has lost nothing off her backhand especially when it comes to protecting her family.
Please email me at [email protected] to be put onto my mailing list.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com![]()
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
The video below is one of those internet movies that become viral. It shows a fat kid (in Australia) being bullied, punched a few times till he finally decides to fight back. Like most of these viral videos, the viewer can figure out what led to this point in the story. It is obvious that this wasn’t the first time the “fat kid” in this video was bullied, it was simply the first time he stood up to the bully.
This video touched my greatly because, well when I was growing up, I was that fat kid. Please indulge me for a moment and read the story below the video. It tells of the first time this fat kid stood up to a bully.
Fat kid fights back (totse.info) from Steve Douglas on Vimeo.
Growing up I was that fat kid, bullied every day. Once, while walking home from Mrs. Ritter’s third grade class I was attacked by a bully (it was safe for kids to walk home from school alone in those days). I can’t tell you why, maybe someone put something in the mystery meat that was served for lunch) but I chose that day to fight back. As soon the battle was engaged, I learned a fat guy could use his weight to pin a bully to the ground.
There I was, sitting on top of Sheldon (Its sick that I don’t remember what I had for breakfast an hour ago, but that kid’s full name is tattooed on my cerebral cortex). Anyway, yours truly was on top of Sheldon and for the first time in my long nine-year life—fighting back, That’s when Sheldon’s mom came over and kicked me in the nose to get me off her son.
Now, you might think that’s where the story ends, but there’s more. You see, my mom, may she rest in peace, was the typical Jewish mom. The ensuing years have taught me that the only difference between Jewish moms and ones of other backgrounds are the language they use when they don’t the kids to understand what they are saying (in mom’s case it was Yiddish, but Tommy Pellegrino’s mom used Italian). The other difference is the examples they use when they want to sent their child on a guilt trip (how many Jewish moms does it take to screw in a light bulb? “No, don’t bother I will sit here in the dark:)
When I walked through the door and my Jewish Mama Grizzly saw my face, it was time to share with her the humiliation my nose received at the foot of Mrs. K (Sheldon’s mom). Without saying a word, she raced over to the cabinet over the oven and pulled out on of the many yellow-paged phone books, all of them were for the same territory but we never threw one out (hey they may forget to bring us one next year, you never know).
Mom opened the phone book to retrieve Sheldon’s home address then turned in my direction saying very abruptly “Get in the Car! ” When my mom gave an order you followed it without asking questions. She had the fastest back hand In NY. Whenever my mouth would unleash something to anger her she would demonstrate her backhand prowess. If you were there and saw her, you wouldn’t see her hand move, only the tell-tale white (and then red) hand impression on my cheek It happened very often, even back then, the snarky gland in my brain was hyper-active.
Jumping into the car (just following orders) I got in the car as my mom took off to Sheldon’s house. Now some of you might be wondering if I skipped the part about putting on the seat belt. Back there we had an automatic restraint system. When the car was making a jolting stop, mom’s right arm (the one with the back hand) would stretch out in less than 3 microseconds and stop the child passenger from going through the windshield.
When we arrived at Sheldon’s house (back then homes were named after the kids not the parents), I followed mom out of the car and watched as she rang the doorbell. When Mrs. K. opened the door, mom turned to me and said, “Is that her?” Nodding in the affirmative, I knew what was coming next. Using the fastest hand in New York, mom gave Mrs. K a right jab that would have made Muhammed Ali proud.
“Nobody hits my kids except for me,” she snarled at Mrs. K. With that she turned toward me and said “Get back in the car!” Like I said, no one argued with my mom especially when she was angry and nothing made her angrier than someone hurting one of her kids or my dad (in that order).
Dad was lucky, at least he came before the dog. The years brought six grand children and dad moved from 4th to 13th. Her kids moved behind the grandchildren to a 3-way tie for 7th, then came the two daughters-in-law and son-in-law. Of course that never phased dad, he felt then and still feels now the kids come first.
When we were growing up each one of the kids felt we were the favorite child, my older brother because he was the first, my older sister because she was one of only two girls amongst all of the children of my generation of the family, and me because, well…I was the baby. Mom always said to my that even when I was a hundred years old, I would still be her baby.
Mom passed away 17 months ago in mid-October 2009. I don’t know whether it was because of the cancer that was ravaging her body, or the medication to keep her out of pain, but two days before she passed away she was “out of it.” My father was taking one of his very few breaks during those last weeks, down in the hospital coffee shop, and I was sitting next to my mom’s bed watching her sleep when she suddenly called out for my father.
Not knowing if she recognized me, I looked at her and said, “Mom, its me your baby, I will always be your baby.” She looked at me nodded her head and smiled.” that was her last lucid moment before she slipped away.
One-and-a-half-years later I am still my mom’s baby. That’s why that video touched my heart, not because I was the fat kid who was bullied all of the time, but because it reminded me how lucky I was to be raised by two parents who did not have the “Dr. Spock” guide to being a parent, but raised us with one important rule in mind. No one can be the perfect parent, but showing your children love and a hearty supply of hugs is the most important part of raising kids.
Passover is a month away. Like most sacred holidays, this one involves being with family. This will be the second Passover without chopped liver my mom made every year (she made poor dad chop the liver by hand, which may the cause of the bursitis in his shoulder). We would make jokes that we couldn’t eat store-bought liver because it didn’t have the gristle my moms home made liver had. I will miss that liver, but I won’t miss my mom, because she will be there in the pictures, the stories and the jokes about gristle. And should Mrs. K (who is gone also) show up, she better watch out, because I am sure that mom has lost nothing off her backhand especially when it comes to protecting her family.
Please email me at [email protected] to be put onto my mailing list.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com![]()
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
The video below is one of those internet movies that become viral. It shows a fat kid (in Australia) being bullied, punched a few times till he finally decides to fight back. Like most of these viral videos, the viewer can figure out what led to this point in the story. It is obvious that this wasn’t the first time the “fat kid” in this video was bullied, it was simply the first time he stood up to the bully.
This video touched my greatly because, well when I was growing up, I was that fat kid. Please indulge me for a moment and read the story below the video. It tells of the first time this fat kid stood up to a bully.
Fat kid fights back (totse.info) from Steve Douglas on Vimeo.
Growing up I was that fat kid, bullied every day. Once, while walking home from Mrs. Ritter’s third grade class I was attacked by a bully (it was safe for kids to walk home from school alone in those days). I can’t tell you why, maybe someone put something in the mystery meat that was served for lunch) but I chose that day to fight back. As soon the battle was engaged, I learned a fat guy could use his weight to pin a bully to the ground.
There I was, sitting on top of Sheldon (Its sick that I don’t remember what I had for breakfast an hour ago, but that kid’s full name is tattooed on my cerebral cortex). Anyway, yours truly was on top of Sheldon and for the first time in my long nine-year life—fighting back, That’s when Sheldon’s mom came over and kicked me in the nose to get me off her son.
Now, you might think that’s where the story ends, but there’s more. You see, my mom, may she rest in peace, was the typical Jewish mom. The ensuing years have taught me that the only difference between Jewish moms and ones of other backgrounds are the language they use when they don’t the kids to understand what they are saying (in mom’s case it was Yiddish, but Tommy Pellegrino’s mom used Italian). The other difference is the examples they use when they want to sent their child on a guilt trip (how many Jewish moms does it take to screw in a light bulb? “No, don’t bother I will sit here in the dark:)
When I walked through the door and my Jewish Mama Grizzly saw my face, it was time to share with her the humiliation my nose received at the foot of Mrs. K (Sheldon’s mom). Without saying a word, she raced over to the cabinet over the oven and pulled out on of the many yellow-paged phone books, all of them were for the same territory but we never threw one out (hey they may forget to bring us one next year, you never know).
Mom opened the phone book to retrieve Sheldon’s home address then turned in my direction saying very abruptly “Get in the Car! ” When my mom gave an order you followed it without asking questions. She had the fastest back hand In NY. Whenever my mouth would unleash something to anger her she would demonstrate her backhand prowess. If you were there and saw her, you wouldn’t see her hand move, only the tell-tale white (and then red) hand impression on my cheek It happened very often, even back then, the snarky gland in my brain was hyper-active.
Jumping into the car (just following orders) I got in the car as my mom took off to Sheldon’s house. Now some of you might be wondering if I skipped the part about putting on the seat belt. Back there we had an automatic restraint system. When the car was making a jolting stop, mom’s right arm (the one with the back hand) would stretch out in less than 3 microseconds and stop the child passenger from going through the windshield.
When we arrived at Sheldon’s house (back then homes were named after the kids not the parents), I followed mom out of the car and watched as she rang the doorbell. When Mrs. K. opened the door, mom turned to me and said, “Is that her?” Nodding in the affirmative, I knew what was coming next. Using the fastest hand in New York, mom gave Mrs. K a right jab that would have made Muhammed Ali proud.
“Nobody hits my kids except for me,” she snarled at Mrs. K. With that she turned toward me and said “Get back in the car!” Like I said, no one argued with my mom especially when she was angry and nothing made her angrier than someone hurting one of her kids or my dad (in that order).
Dad was lucky, at least he came before the dog. The years brought six grand children and dad moved from 4th to 13th. Her kids moved behind the grandchildren to a 3-way tie for 7th, then came the two daughters-in-law and son-in-law. Of course that never phased dad, he felt then and still feels now the kids come first.
When we were growing up each one of the kids felt we were the favorite child, my older brother because he was the first, my older sister because she was one of only two girls amongst all of the children of my generation of the family, and me because, well…I was the baby. Mom always said to my that even when I was a hundred years old, I would still be her baby.
Mom passed away 17 months ago in mid-October 2009. I don’t know whether it was because of the cancer that was ravaging her body, or the medication to keep her out of pain, but two days before she passed away she was “out of it.” My father was taking one of his very few breaks during those last weeks, down in the hospital coffee shop, and I was sitting next to my mom’s bed watching her sleep when she suddenly called out for my father.
Not knowing if she recognized me, I looked at her and said, “Mom, its me your baby, I will always be your baby.” She looked at me nodded her head and smiled.” that was her last lucid moment before she slipped away.
One-and-a-half-years later I am still my mom’s baby. That’s why that video touched my heart, not because I was the fat kid who was bullied all of the time, but because it reminded me how lucky I was to be raised by two parents who did not have the “Dr. Spock” guide to being a parent, but raised us with one important rule in mind. No one can be the perfect parent, but showing your children love and a hearty supply of hugs is the most important part of raising kids.
Passover is a month away. Like most sacred holidays, this one involves being with family. This will be the second Passover without chopped liver my mom made every year (she made poor dad chop the liver by hand, which may the cause of the bursitis in his shoulder). We would make jokes that we couldn’t eat store-bought liver because it didn’t have the gristle my moms home made liver had. I will miss that liver, but I won’t miss my mom, because she will be there in the pictures, the stories and the jokes about gristle. And should Mrs. K (who is gone also) show up, she better watch out, because I am sure that mom has lost nothing off her backhand especially when it comes to protecting her family.
Please email me at [email protected] to be put onto my mailing list.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com![]()
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
(CNN) - On his radio show Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh defended comments he made Monday about the first lady’s food choices, calling the remarks “highly civil.”
On Monday, he criticized Michelle Obama - who has tackled healthy eating as part of her platform - for a dinner of ribs she consumed on a recent visit to Colorado. The outspoken conservative host said it “doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary, dietary advice.”
But on Tuesday’s show he expressed surprise at the “grief” he’s since received:
“Some people are suggesting that my comments were below the belt,” Limbaugh said. “Well, take a look at some pictures. Given where she wears her belts, I mean she wears them high up there around the bust line. Isn’t just about everything about her below the belt when you look at the fashion sense she has?”
Limbaugh’s comments cap off a week of jabs directed at the first lady over her campaign to fight childhood obesity, taking flak from Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, among others, for encouraging mothers to breast feed their children as a way to keep obesity levels down.
Mrs. Obama was also the subject of a controversial cartoon last week on conservative journalist Andrew Breitbart’s website, in which an over-weight depiction of the first lady is shown telling her husband, “Shut up and pass the bacon!”
A website devoted to Mrs. Obama’s anti-obesity effort lays out how the waistlines of American children have been growing at alarming rates over the last 30 years.
Washington (CNN) - Before he tries to convince voters to put him in the White House, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has a more important audience to sell: his family.
“I think we’re all sort of undecided about it,” First Lady Cheri Daniels told CNN affiliate WSBT before an appearance in Elkhart, Indiana.
It’s not how her husband would do that worries Mrs. Daniels; her concerns are more personal than professional.
“It’s very flattering, of course, to be talked about for that position,” she told the station, “but there are many, many things to consider and it affects our entire family. And it affects us for not just what might be four years or eight years, but for the remainder of our lives as well.”
Mrs. Daniels spoke before the Elkhart Chamber of Commerce Women’s Council luncheon. While public appearances are part of the job, she notes a national campaign would be a whole different level.
“I guess I don’t know how I’d feel about a campaign of that magnitude, because I’ve never experienced anything like that before,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s any secret that politics is not my forte. And even though
I’ve really enjoyed my experience as first lady, I still don’t consider myself a politician.”
Gov. Daniels has said family considerations will be a key factor in his decision, expected in the spring. He received a new wave of national media attention this week after a high profile appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
Earlier this year, he told the Terre Haute Tribune Star that his wife and four grown daughters were not eager for the spotlight media attention would bring.
“It scares them to death,” he said. “And it should.”
But should the family decide a presidential bid is a go, Mrs. Daniels told WSBT, “I think he would make a very good president. I think he, once he makes a decison to do whatever he wants to do, he’s going to go at it 200 percent.”
Gov. Daniels is recovering at home after undergoing outpatient shoulder surgery Thursday. He returns to work next week and will appear at a Cincinnati, Ohio, party dinner Wednesday.
- CNN National Editor Anna Gonzalez contributed to this report.
ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: In a roundtable with print reporters today First Lady Michelle Obama said to consider her husband a former smoker, that he has formally quit smoking. Asked by reporters whether she could say whether the president…
Political Punch
ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: In a roundtable with print reporters today First Lady Michelle Obama said to consider her husband a former smoker, that he has formally quit smoking. Asked by reporters whether she could say whether the president…
Political Punch
ABC News’ Sunlen Miller reports: In a roundtable with print reporters today First Lady Michelle Obama said to consider her husband a former smoker, that he has formally quit smoking. Asked by reporters whether she could say whether the president…
Political Punch
ABC’s Kirit Radia reports: During a March 2, 2009 interview with the Arab television network Al Arabiya in Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about the State Deparment’s annual human rights report, which is perennially critical…
Political Punch
The dots connect between Sarah Palin’s self-absorbed interview on the Tucson shootings and the response of Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother after the death of her son who killed JFK and was gunned down two days later.
In Washington to testify before the Warren Commission investigating the assassination, Mrs. Oswald told reporters she was miffed about not being invited to the White House by Lady Bird Johnson.
“After all,” Mrs. Oswald reasoned, “her husband became President and my son died in the same incident.”
Now Palin tells Fox News, “Peaceful dissent and discussion about ideas, that is what makes America exceptional. We won’t allow that to be stifled by a tragic event in Arizona.”
All this is a kind of eerie reversion to the gruesome old joke, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?”
Mrs. Oswald’s “incident” and Palin’s “tragic event” come from the same egomaniacal cloth in situations where shamed silence might have been more appropriate. Or as Conservative commentator Joe Scarborough puts it:
“We get it, Sarah Palin. You’re not morally culpable for the tragic shooting in Tucson, Ariz….even if we were stunned that you would whine about yourself on Facebook as a shattered family prepared to bury their 9-year-old girl.”
MORE.
SCENE: Mrs. Ginsburg is in the kitchen of her home in Israel, preparing a meal.
The door bursts open and three men in suits enter.
MAN 1: Drop the knife!
MRS. GINSBURG [dropping knife] : What’s wrong? Who are you?
MAN 1: I’m Richard Johnson - Human Rights Police. Step away from the counter!
MRS. G: Oh, dear, what’s wrong?
JOHNSON: Your chemical weapons killed an Arab woman in the next village.
MRS. G, surprised: What did you say?
JOHNSON: Oh, don’t act coy, ma’am. You know what you did.
MRS. G: To be honest, I’m at a loss. I’m just preparing dinner for my family.
JOHNSON: Oh, sure. Dinner. And I suppose that all of your dinners include - onions? [pointing to her chopping board]
MRS. G: Well, some of them do.
MAN 2: Onions contain chemicals. At high concentrations the chemicals can kill someone. And that’s exactly what happened to Mrs. Khalawar.
MAN 3: Propanol S-oxide.
MRS. G: I’m so sorry! I didn’t know!
JOHNSON: Oh, yes you did. Your eyes tear when you chop onions - you know, and so does everyone else. Don’t pretend and lie. You Israelis make me sick.
MRS. G: But if onions are so dangerous,then we have to warn the people in the nursing home down the block!
JOHNSON: Really? [Speaking into walkie talkie] - Whitson, new information about an old age home - check it out for fatalities. [Back to Mrs. Ginsburg] What’s the name of the facility?
MRS. G: Ummm…the Gloria Cohen center, I think.
JOHNSON makes a disgusted face. [back to walkie talkie] Cancel that order, Whitson. [To Mrs. Ginsburg] Stop playing with us, the fumes only kill Arabs. Everyone knows that.
MRS G: I don’t want to hurt anyone, but how can I cook without onions? I always use onions! Onion soup, chopped liver, and tonight I was making pepper steak…
JOHNSON: [Shocked] Did you say pepper?
MRS. G: Yes, pepper steak…
JOHNSON [to walkie talkie] Get the Hazmat suits, stat! We have a full blown case of chemical warfare here!
MRS. G: [sputtering] But…but…
MAN 2: Two lachrymatory agents in one dish! The horror!
MAN 3: Who knows how the S-oxide would combine with the capsaicin in the peppers? It could start World War 3!
JOHNSON: [to walkie talkie] Find out every Arab woman and child who has died in the past six months within a five kilometer radius. [eyeing Mrs. Ginsburg] We think we found the cause. Over. [back to Mrs. Ginsburg] Do you know nothing about human rights of Arabs? Now we have to shut you down.
[Men arrive in hazmat suits, start ripping apart Mrs. Ginsburg's kitchen.]
[Tight shot of a confused Mrs. Ginsburg. Fade out.]
Go read. One of many, many stories, and they’re all the same: Thievery at the executive level disguised as incompetence at the call center, and in the name of the great God, usury.
Oh, yeah, did I mention Mrs. G was enrolled in Obama’s HAMP program? Here’s what Barry said about HAMP on February 1, 2010:
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I knew I was going to be whacked hard, but I didn’t know when.
On Thursday, July 15th, I warned NAACP president Ben Jealous to stop the race-baiting. I directed my ire at Jealous on the Scott Hennen radio show:
“I have tapes, a tape, of racism, and it’s an NAACP dinner. You want to play with fire? I have evidence of racism, and it’s coming from the NAACP.”
This was part of an ongoing defense of the Tea Party, and in particular, a volley back against the NAACP for creating a week-long mainstream media-enabled attack built upon the provably false premise that a “mob” of the Tea Partiers hurled racial epithets at Congressmen Andre Carson (D-In) and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga).
“You are manufacturing this in a summer in which the economy is the No. 1 issue affecting blacks and whites in this country,” I said on Hennen’s show. “This country can ill-afford the schism of race to be exploited the way you are, based upon the false premise of the Tea Party being racist… This is absolutely manufactured for political gain.”
My warning to Jealous was received with modest coverage in the conservative blogosphere.
I strongly believed, and still believe, that I had irrefutable evidence that showed the NAACP caught in an act of racism far worse than anything the media and the Democrat Party had attempted to manufacture in a year and a half of relentlessly trying to destroy the Tea Party.
On Monday, July 19th, all hell broke loose.
My 1400-word article featuring two separate video clips of Shirley Sherrod speaking before the NAACP hit the Internet on Big Government. Before the article and clips were analyzed in their entirety and put into its proper context, President Obama via the USDA chief Tom Vilsack, fired Shirley Sherrod.
The story and the videos perfectly hit their intended target — which was the NAACP, not Shirley Sherrod. Ben Jealous apologized immediately for the NAACP crowd’s positive response to the moment when Sherrod describes one time when she treated a white farmer differently from how she would treat a black one.
My BigGovernment.com story made the target unambiguously clear: “Sherrod’s racist tale is received by the NAACP audience with nodding approval and murmurs of recognition and agreement. Hardly the behavior of the group now holding itself up as the supreme judge of another groups’ racial tolerance.”
“The reaction from many in the audience is disturbing,” Ben Jealous said in an official NAACP statement. “We will be looking into the behavior of NAACP representatives at this local event and take any appropriate action.”
At this stage, Sherrod, too, understood that this was not about her. Before aligning herself with the partisans at the NAACP and the Obama administration, Sherrod rightfully blamed the NAACP saying, “They got into a fight with the Tea Party, and all of this came out as a result of that.”
All of this was put into excruciatingly clear context in a Big Government post, which included the two video clips, both received from an anonymous source who also described in broad strokes that she later sent the farmer to a white lawyer for help.
“Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help,” I wrote. “But she decides that he should get help from ‘one of his own kind.’ She refers him to a white lawyer.”
Jealous and the NAACP had clearly gotten my intended message — those that live in glass houses should not throw stones. And I reveled in knowing that once again I had stopped the media-enabled, venomous, and artificial campaign by the left to destroy the Tea Party on the grounds of alleged racism.
That’s when I got whacked.
The media ignored my 1400-word piece that accompanied the videos and falsely reported over and over (and over and over again, as I recall) that I only “released an intentionally deceptively edited video on the Internet.”
That’s when the activist left and the mainstream media kicked into high gear, falsely framing the story as an intentional hack job meant to hurt Sherrod personally.
The roar of this narrative was almost unanimous although at one point, MSNBC host Chris Matthews came to my defense by pointing out more proof that the media was ignoring the context provided.
Matthews did a segment with guests Howard Dean and Salon editor Joan Walsh where he replayed the clip and focused on Sherrod’s words: “I opened my eyes. I realized it wasn’t about black and white. It was, but it was about other things, about poverty.”
“That part in there about redemptive revelation was actually in the initial tape,” Matthews told Dean, who admitted that he was pontificating on this serious subject without having bothered to have watched the short clip, let alone read the written piece that accompanied it.
Matthews, to his credit, then asked Dean, “Why do you think if this was a complete slime job, why do you think Breitbart kept that in there, Governor? Why did he keep in that part… Why did he put the redemptive part in here at all?”
When that segment aired, news spread and clearly the politically guided producers at MSNBC took notice. Usually “Hardball” airs a repeat of the taped show. In this extraordinary instance, “Hardball” re-taped that one segment with clueless Howard Dean gone. It was an Orwellian moment that affirmed everything I had come to loathe about the Democrat Media Complex. My whacking, facts be damned, was politically and media-wise officially ordained.
Despite the firestorm, there was still an unanswered question — why on God’s green earth was Shirley Sherrod fired?
My 1400-word piece said Sherrod helped the white farmer. The controversial video clip featured the basis for her defense, The President and Tom Vilsack were doubly informed of the whole story by both me and Sherrod herself.
My first clue came, ironically, from the epicenter of Breitbart-hate — MSNBC. It was a week into the controversy. Nation editor Chris Hayes was filling in for Rachel Maddow and reported that I was responsible for black farmers not getting their settlement money.
“Conservative con artist, 1; black farmers, 0,” liberal Journolist Hayes said snarkily.
Black farmers? Settlement money? I had no idea what he was talking about. None.
Later I became aware that on a CNN discussion on “the Sherrod fallout,” April Ryan of Urban Radio Network mentioned the Pigford settlement. Ryan described Pigford as a “litmus test” of the Obama Administration’s relationship with black Americans.
A quick Google search revealed that Ryan and Hayes had been alluding to the incredibly conspicuous news that days after Sherrod was fired by the Obama administration, funding for the $ 1.15 billion Pigford II settlement was pulled out from a supplementary war funding bill.
The Google search also revealed that Senators Obama and Biden had been two of four Pigford legislative sponsors in the Senate.
Even more interesting, Rep. Steve King (R-Ia), who is on the House Agriculture committee, was on AM radio drawing attention to what was previously not known to me, and it was a blockbuster: Shirley Sherrod, and her husband, Charles, along with their decades-long defunct communal farm, New Communities Inc., were set to receive over a whopping $ 13 million in the Pigford settlement, the largest amount of money allocated in the history of the Pigford settlement.
California political legend and African American former mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown, of all people, started to connect the dots for me in the San Francisco Chronicle:
As an old pro, though, I know that you don’t fire someone without at least hearing their side of the story unless you want them gone in the first place. This woman has been a thorn in the side of the Agriculture Department for years. She was part of a class-action lawsuit against the department on behalf of black farmers in the South. For years, she has been operating a community activist organization not unlike ACORN. I think there were those in the Agriculture Department who objected to her being hired in the first place.
All of this led to me to wanting to know more about Pigford. My gut instinct to fight back hard and immediately against the charges that I was a racist who had heavily edited videos to do a hit job on Shirley Sherrod. None of that was true, but now I was seeing there was something larger going on behind the scenes and that it somehow related to Pigford.
I started to research Pigford and the more we looked into it, the more I realized that this was not a story that could be researched and told quickly. In fact, it was still unfolding. And even now, it still is.
This coming Wednesday, President Obama is slated to sign the Pigford II settlement.
But that will not be the end of the story. The American people deserve a full investigation and accounting.
Today, we’re releasing a report called “The Pigford Shakedown: How the Black Farmers’ Cause Was Hijacked by Politicians, Trial Lawyers & Community Organizers — Leaving Us With a Billion Dollar Tab.”
What have we discovered about Pigford so far?
Treasure troves of information from Lexis and Google. USDA whistleblowers. A former FBI agent who was on the verge of indictments. One of the originally discriminated-against black farmers with the goods. All these people paint a very clear picture of widespread fraud, and can testify to a complex web of bad players, including politicians, trial attorneys and community organizers.
I stumbled on the Pigford story in my defense of the Tea Party, so it’s a sweet irony that the Pigford story is exactly the kind of mess that makes the Tea Party so necessary. Politicians and trial attorneys bonded together to rip off the taxpayer, and even those farmers that were discriminated against were royally screwed.
Let me be clear, our investigation convincingly leads us to believe the USDA practiced discrimination against black farmers. Those wrongs must be rectified. But Pigford is wrought with a grotesque amount of fraud, while the truly aggrieved were mostly left high and dry.
The Pigford tale is about government run amok. It is also an indictment of the American media that is so blinded by ideology that it missed the big story yet again because taking out a political enemy was far more expedient. And furthermore it is why the American people need the Tea Party and new media as a checks and balances on corrupt politicians and their corrupt journalist counterparts.
Today will be the first of many days that BigGoverment.com will release information, testimony and documents to make the case that, at the very least, the American taxpayer (and ESPECIALLY those legitimately discriminated-against black farmers) need a full accounting of the Pigford I and II settlements.
