Jobs in Japan

Jobs in Japan

Image by Danny Choo
As a Web Manager for Rinkya, you will be working full time in Komae Tokyo where the Rinkya offices are located and will be reporting directly to Heather. This position is open for immediate hire but can wait for folks who need to give notice to their current boss (if any) and move over to Tokyo.
Apart from sponsoring your visa, Rinkya will also be your guarantor which you need when looking for an apartment to stay at. The Japanese Housing post contains useful info that you will need when looking for a place to stay.Technical requirementsYou will need to have hands on experience with PHP, MYSQL, HTML, CSS and JQuery. You will also be seasoned with Photoshop or any other graphic tool to help you produce graphics for the UI.
Your work will involve working with business owners like Heather, customer service and logistics. You are expected to prioritize tasks and execute in order of business priority.
You will be working on all aspects of the website including backend and frontend UI.
You will also be expected to work with packages like OS Commerce (Experience preferred but not necessary).This position does not require any level of Japanese fluency but I recommend that you learn the lingo if you are to live here. Learning the language will help you enrich and enjoy your life in Japan even more.You need to have a previous online profile (not one registered just for the job application) like Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin. An online profile will help potential employers to make a hiring decision - its helped me in the same way previously and if you don't have one then I urge you to create one as soon as possible - it *will* help your career.HomeworkYou do not need to have any previous work experience with an employer but need to give examples of your previous projects that you may have worked on in your own time. I'm helping Heather look for the right person and when I hire I don't care about qualifications at all - its about what you can deliver and not about what a piece of paper says you can deliver.
Some of my previous employers hired MBA's and PHD's who looked good on paper but turned out to be incredibly poor performers.
To judge whether you are good at what you say you can do, we ask candidates to do tests - its the same method that Nature used when I applied for the job. They provided me with a week worth of tests ranging from translating to subscription forecasts - came through with the results and was handed my one way ticket to Japan. Come up with the results and you will be handed your one way ticket too.Your homework is to redesign the top page of Rinkya. Study the site to understand the business needs and proceed to redesign the top page - then create in HTML with separate CSS and JS files. The design task is to have a look at your design and UI capabilities and the HTML coding is to evaluate your coding skills. The design is completely up to you. Use CSS3 for any shadows and don't use tables for layout. You should QA your work in the latest version of IE, Firefox (Windows) and IE, Firefox and Safari (Mac). As a developer you should have access to means to QA on these platforms even if you don't use both.Your work should be in the following folder structure which should be self explanatory:-
rinkya/html
rinkya/css
rinkya/img
rinkya/js
rinkya/php
Once you are done, zip everything up and sent it to us via mail. Once we unzip your files, we should be able to see your work immediately by clicking on index.html.We need to asses your PHP coding skills too.
Create a text field on the top page that allows users to enter some arbitrary text that will be tweeted to an account that you set up - call it twitter.com/rinkya-test-or-something. Use JQuery to post the results through a PHP script and wait for the response - then display a message to the user notifying her that the post was successful. There should also be a counter to let the user know how much of the 140 characters they are using up for the tweet.You also need to be able to work with little direction - nobody wants to micro manage you. This is why the above information should be enough for you to complete the task. You are expected to fill in any gaps though recommendations and make decisions to get the task completed.Send your work zipped up to [jobs at mirai dot fm] and CC [heather at rinkya dot com]. Your mail should contain a text based resume in the body of the mail (not an attachment) introducing yourself and outlining examples of your previous projects ( need to have links to your work online ).
Also include your Facebook or other online profile. You do not need to include previous work experience or list up previous education but bear in mind that you must have a university degree as that is a requirement when it comes to sponsoring your visa.
Please include your address and phone number too.Good LuckI think that's it. While the initial salary range (will depend on your abilities) wont enable you to buy a Nissan GTR in your first year (neither did mine when I first got to Japan), I think its a great opportunity to work with a dynamic international team in Tokyo. You will learn a lot about running a web business in Japan and also learn much about the various business areas involved such as logistics, costumer service, fulfillment and so on. Heather is a great lady who has years of experience at this game and you will learn a lot from her. All you have to do is to show that you can deliver.We will review and consider applications as soon as they arrive. A seasoned developer should be able to do this in no more than 3 days. We will wait a few weeks however and will announce when we have found the right candidate.
Candidates will be contacted by mail and followed up with interviews through video chat on Skype. If you are already in Japan and applying for the position then you would be called into the Rinkya offices at Komae for further interviews.Don't ask when the deadline is - because if you are really interested in the position and want to live and work over here then you will take the initiative to prioritize your time to work on the task and get it in as soon as you can.After I have advised Heather on whether I believe you can do the job, I will hand you over to her and will leave both of you to continue the rest of the interview process - its then up to you ask Heather everything that you want to know and call out any concerns that you may have - I'm sure Heather will do her best to help you. An Interview is a two way process - you must evaluate and make the decision on whether to join a company and you must do that through asking questions so that expectations on both sides are set.And a message for those who are interested in this position but feel they don't have the skills.
Life is very very short indeed. Get out of that comfort zone that you are in and take the initiative to do something for the future you. I took the initiative to learn HTML in my spare time when I was working at Japan Airlines back in London - it was that experience with HTML that helped me get through the tests at Nature and without it I would not have been able to seize the opportunity when I discovered it.
Don't wait for life changing events to happen - make them happen and make them happen now. The Tokyo Photo Walk 4 article should give you a kick start if you need one.

The original article for this image lives at www.dannychoo.com/post/en/25597/Jobs+in+Japan.html

The Spider and its Web

Image by jaseanton
I was hungry and Maccy Ds was calling me. This was the first time I'd been out of the house since I filmed myself being interviewed by West Mercia Police while I was using my smartphone in public, the other day.

'Smartphone Era v Deliverance' (YouTube Video)

This video, while it's quite funny, and the filth didn't seem like bad lads (especially the older one, who seemed - even though we know how that can change around here - quite reflective and receptive to alternative viewpoints), says quite a lot, I think, and reactions to it, from Kidderminster and beyond say quite a lot, too.

While I was filming the video, I referred to a spider and its web that was there. I was going to say something other than what I did say in the video - not to state the obvious about webs, networks, predators and stuff - but I still lack the interpersonal courage around here to be as authentic as I try to be in these Flickr posts, a testimony, in part, of the culture, the supposedly 500 year old mindset and processes of my environment. What I would have liked to have said was that the fact that you can be in an environment which says a lot of things, can have something in it - the slightest thing - that can make all the difference in how you see it and live in it.

The spider and its web felt like a hint to remind me that this environment wasn't always like this and so isn't really as it's designed to appear, even now, and that it's part of a historical and even pre-historical context, which the people here will almost certainly not tap into with the type of approach and culture that could make a huge difference.

There was some quite deep stuff going on when I was talking to the police in that video, which some people who may look at it would pick up. Many others wouldn't. It points to how power is often played out in language, and how it can block off successful outcomes, with all sorts of influences having an effect, before, during and afterwards, with a whole host of potential consequences, potentially shaped by a whole host of preceeding influences.

The fact that it was being videoed affected all of us. Obviously, I was playing up to the camera a bit. The scene, whatever the filth knew before the van pulled up, had already been influenced by events in the town centre that had been taking place for a number of years, starting with a territorially based obsession of a regular of a local coffee shop, who appears to be a sophisticated psychopath, according to conventional definitions. And, if so, a pretty good one, at that. He'd have to be to pull off what he did, although not as good as you might think, when you have a good grasp of how the town, it's people, culture and institutions work within and even beyond its geographical and political boundaries.

The lads tried to set the scene, as you'd expect, according to their training, training which had already failed to protect West Mercia Police from being quite easily manipulated by individuals in the town centre when I was banned from a local coffee shop. They, like the baristas, many other shop workers, customers and other townspeople just didn't have a clue about the psychosocial and historical context they'd been taken in by, along with the methods being used to make it work and continue to work, of what had gradually consumed the area based, determined and directed by, like I say, a possible psychopath, who, I'm told, may well have a history of such behaviour.

The filth called back to base. At the very least, you'd expect them, based on my experience of Sunday's call with a West Mercia Police phone operator based in Shrewsbury to have been vulnerable to faulty information taken by Police Officers when they were manipulated by a number of people in Weaver's Wharf, Kidderminster, in what appears to have been a quite well planned and staged event when I was banned from Kidderminster's branch of Caffe Nero.

If the Police had delved further, they could have tried to verify some of the things I was saying by looking at information connected with my 12 years in the mental health system, which would chime with the now-established, distorted and manipulated information coming out of Weavers Wharf, discrediting what I was saying, not knowing that this was originally based on the vulnerability to and manipulation of local mental health services by a not insignificant number of people in the local community, going on information that was made official by Kidderminster Hospital in 2000, information which was originally framed by a false interpretation born of two people from Stourport in 1996, who had strong links with the local medical community and the local police.

In other words, if you try to check anything I say about the area, good luck to ya, because even when you think of conventional safeguards, checks and balances, originally designed to protect against such things, retaining a healthy degree of skepticism about what you see and hear in your environment is important. Unfortunately, many of the people in the area of Kidderminster lack such abilities, sometimes to quite a shocking degree.

I have actually come terms with the fact that there are two Jason Antoniewicz's in Kidderminster. One is a quite persuasive but heavily distorted reputation that's quite widespread. The other is actually me, a quite healthy me, at that. When I interact, even with family members, now, they've unfortunately been battered by the costume dramas that Kidderminster is so good at getting people to lose much of their consciousness to, and have revolved around me over the years; intensely, at times when I was in the grip of the mental health system.

I remember my cousin coming to the coffee shop, on occasion. In the end, what with the psychosocial toxicity and rigid cultural hierarchy having pretty much consumed the place, along with my boredom with his insecure attempts to play ridiculous power games I just wasn't interested in, I just had to ignore him. There was no other solution. I see this problem with authenticity, that I see with many people in the community, along with a whole host of bizarre strategies protecting so many people's ability to remain psychosocially fucked. Fair play to my cousin. Even though he's very vulnerable to it all, at least, despite his lack of insight, he's going very crazy in the midst of it all. He hasn't fully become one of The Assimilated. He would go along with The Assimilated, but he'd do so because of this vulnerability he has to it. Fair play, I suppose that has to be enough.

Others may not be so lucky. I spoke with a family member last night, still thinking it was worth the effort for old time's sake, but knowing it'd get nowhere. I now know the ideas they have, why they've got them, what that and the methods to protect those ideas can do to people, including themselves, and why it's often wise to come to terms with the fact that, sometimes, you've just got to accept that they have their way of life and, for a number of unnecessary factors, you have to stop trying and concentrate on approaches which may bear more fruit in the long run.

This is one of the things, though, about this duality involving my reputation and myself in the context of most of this environment within the enclosure of Client Hills. Without the Internet, maybe it would have been tougher to have got to the stage I'm at in terms of getting back to some sort of effective functioning, despite the, at times, heavy influence of the psychosocial environment, the residue of which should evaporate after a while.

I wouldn't be surprised if people from the area or people beyond Client Hills attempt to generate an immersive vibe online with the same sort of manipulative techniques that have probably been so finely-tuned by the culture here for, it's said, about 500 years. Like I said, the dodgy processes involved in power, control and information in the area even spread beyond the hills and scuppered my education at Birmingham University in the mid-90s. When there's inefficient safeguards against that, there's people here who wouldn't think twice about trying to pull the same stunts in the net. Good luck to them. Effective as they can be, the Internet's quite big, I retain my confidence in it to have people who do know about such things and choose to make up their own mind.

I dunno. I'm thinking of the interaction I had with people offline and off last night. How it said so very much, without the people involved really understanding, it's clear, what they were really saying. I can hear the counterarguments already. I can see it in the way the West Mercia Police officer in the video reacted to me when I referred to the suggestion of the longevity of the local culture.

It's an approach to what could be crucial information that runs throughout this culture, locally, which often unwittingly 'protects' the individual from challenging and asking key questions about some of the very things which limit them in terms of the self and their environment. I'm thinking of that video again. The older Officer clearly had that ability to doubt and reflect on things. That almost certainly won't come to anything with what's been going on around me for so long and, based on what I see in this environment so consistently, he probably won't have that sense with me, should I ever bump into him, again. But that's a very important quality to have, because it's a bit like looking at that spider and its web in the way I did: there's always an alternative route to things which might prove more constructive, even in the face of an almost even certain belief.

That's something that needs to be done, even in relation to my own family. It's a pity, but we all went through many years living a costume drama. They're still in it, as are many people I know in the area and like many people in the area, effective communication's probably too difficult with them, and wouldn't achieve anything long-term. They've got their ideas and approach to me and what I do that is their business, not mine. Their reactions even to that, now, will be influenced by a set of ideas they've developed and become part of over the years. They'll never see this, but me coming out of all that, and the personal development I'm left with, will almost instinctively be met by the very same ideas that have limited them and contributed in no all part to how we now relate to, communicate with and perceive one another, with potentially unhealthy consequences. Not for me. Effective communication, which would address much of that is highly unlikely and the roles they position themselves in with relation to me are none of my business no longer any of my concern. No big wow - that potential for family division freaked me out when I thought of the consequences of hospitalization in 2000 - but that's just the way things can turn out and have become. I'll concentrate on what I now think is more important. I know how ugly people can get at times. I know how I can get ugly at times.

Fingers crossed that if I do get shit, I'll manage it because that's all I can essentially do around here, like when I had to try and keep my cool for so long and watch a probable psychopath gradually work people around me, in the knowledge that there wasn't any formal or informal approach I could take that would've worked beyond colluding with the denial of my own right to self-determination by sumitting to a bizarre and disturbing control freak and his persuasive yet delusional world view. Well, I managed to chill after that experience, so I should be cool.

There's ideas, theories and approaches out there that are so beyond the enclosure of Client Hills, that are currently so inaccessible to the people and Animals of Kidderminster, that mean that their already clearly damaged and damaging approach to information may get them to try what they pulled off at times between 1996 to 2012, only this time on the Internet. I wouldn't put it past them.

I know that that could potentially put me at risk of some conservative, limiting and, ultimately disabling ideas and their proponents potentially manipulating official mechanisms to try and impose their conservative, limiting and, ultimately disabling beliefs on me in ways we should all know by now they had, it's said, about 500 years to protect.

In that context, I've decided to publicly state what I was thinking last night, when I pandered, even as I was worried about the potential implications, giving it all the 'wisely diplomatic', to conservative, limiting and, ultimately disabling ideas and its proponents.

Such people are having a fucking laugh if they think I'm buying into such ill-informed crap and limiting my output on the basis of that. If I did that, I'd have to write shit children's books with crayons and be on happy pills in a darkened room. It ain't happening. Simple. These hicks can manipulate their 'doctors' and 'legal' mechanisms as much as they like. It simply isn't an option. I've seen the results of any effort made with many people in this community, where it's all about control, a sense of 'know your place or we'll show you your place', whatever arbitrary beliefs that 'place' is based on. Ironically, perhaps, in psychiatry, similar processes are termed 'placement'. It doesn't work and I now know, more objectively than I might sound here, that it doesn't. I've learned too much now to think otherwise.

When you get close to the core of anything, people and institutions can behave in very disturbing ways for a number of often bogus motivations. Not for me, ta. Even though I may make mistakes along the way, I try to learn and develop from them in more liberating ways than I think the Animals of Kidderminster, and their friends online (?) are currently capable of, stuck as they essentially are, in the Middle Ages.

I know with most people, the Animals' potential machinations around what I post will resonate locally and beyond the hills with many. But I also know that the Internet has many people who get what I'm doing and trying to achieve. They'll give me the benefit out the doubt when the wind blows, if it ever does, I think. I wish these people luck, if the Animals from Kidderminster really are let out of the local Safari Park and given Smartphones they might, for a change, start to learn how to use even in a basic manner.

Of course, there are probably many psychopaths (according to conventional definitions) and malicious gossips on the Internet, so that should keep the Animals happy in their potential desires to impose even global influence via the Internet, but they might not even bother, in perhaps deep-rooted fear of that other world beyond Client Hills.

I'll be careful. I don't really want to trash anyone who hasn't got it coming to them and I even have hopes for the Animals of Kidderminster that maybe in me reaching out to the world beyond those hills, that world may one day reach them ultimately, perhaps, in a special humanitarian effort by the United Nations or summat. Maybe then the Animals will be dragged out of the unhealthy distance they have from an effective understanding of self and context in a way where they really do come to terms with the fact that they're quite tragic in believing and maintaining their delusions of sophistication and civilisation, as the worst of them sit back in leather chairs, trying to gloss over those big words in the 'Times of London' while tacky muzak sends them further into the psychosocial, cultural equivalent of a deep-state coma. There's got to be a way to help these people, but now that I'm free of all that, no way am I going back to such disturbing scenes. It's too big a job for me and I so I'll leave it to someone like the UN.

I dunno. I'm sitting up in bed, looking over the Animals' Enclosure, towards Client Hills on the horizon. Maybe before progress ended, supposedly about 500 years ago, in Kidderminster, the progressive people back then looked at those hills and wondered if there were other lifeforms beyond them, something beyond the Animal Kingdom. Something called Humanity.

Maybe. Maybe the Animals just racked the threatening subversives to exorcise their witchcraft and otherworldly dark magic, called independent thought, speech.and action. Maybe the guillotine was the solution they opted for. Maybe summat else, something connected with delusional bloodlust. Maybe the Animals of what is widely considered to be 2012 elsewhere are daydreaming as I write this in bed, while they're in and around Weavers Wharf, Kidderminster, about how to make use of their current tools and weapons to effect the similar constructive and progressive approach they've become ever more embedded in over the past 500 years. Maybe they will try the Internet. I don't know and I don't really care, but there's a very remote chance, that if they do, it might trigger a sequence of events, bringing someone like the UN General Assembly to town. They better be ready for the psychosocial wonder powder The Assimilated keeps in stock for such occasions, that's all I can fucking say.

Anyway, like I say, it's not worth the effort for me and the stuff I'm doing with information and technology might only work out for me. I like what I'm doing. It's disruptive and you can play about with it and, evem though I may get close to going overboard at times, if not completely over, I have a good sense of my boundaries and limitations to keep me grounded even in extreme situations, like the Red Scare that hit Weavers Wharf for so long. I'm cool, and that's the way I like and try to keep it.

The bizarre and damaging logic and approach to their environment and themselves means that most of the Animals and people of Kidderminster are beyond me, now, because the damage I've seen their general approach do is something to think around, rather than get embroiled in.

I'm working on other stuff, even while I'm writing this, taking these pictures and thinking about problem-solving, the core of so many things and the potential of social media in being crucial in what I think are potential solutions to very real problems. I'm also thinking of lifeforms outside Kidderminster and beyond The Enclosure of Client Hills.

There is a lad I met in education in his twenties, working in London. He's incredibly bright, probably the brightest person I've come across at that age. I won't say what he's said about these posts, but he's made all the difference, meaning that I'm going to carry on with them, if for nothing else because I like doing them and because they reach people like him, who sort of get it. I'm chuffed with the praise he gave me. Great guy, that one, in many ways.

Oh, and try to not forget that spider and its web, whatever you do. That's important.

OBAMAS MARXIST ADMINISTRATION ON DISPLAY FOR ALL TO SEE

Image by SS&SS
Ship of Fools: Obama's Intimates and Advisors
By Mac Fuller
The following thumbnails describe a very small sampling of the locust horde of Leftist bureaucrats President Barack Hussein Obama has deliberately chosen to help him grasp the helm of America's ship of state, strip it from the American people, and steer it hard to port.


The Obama Administration is plainly subverting democracy in America, wildly careening our previous 230-year history of democracy so dangerously Leftward that we are in terrible danger of sinking.


In these thumbnails, three dominant themes of the Obama Administration emerge - fanatically uncompromising anti-capitalism, dangerous and blatant anti-Semitism, and the societal inculcation of dogmatic Leftist, Socialist "faith" through indoctrination of American school children beginning with the earliest ages - a practice instituted by Lenin in Communist Russia and now pounding its way into the American academic mainstream through the prolific efforts and influence of self-proclaimed Communist, Obama friend, and likely "autobiography" ghost writer, William Ayers, as well as Obama appointees like Charles Freeman and Kevin Jennings.


Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.


____________________________________________________________



A sampling of President Barack Hussein Obama's morally bankrupt White House "Brain Trust"



1. Valerie Jarrett


2. Patrick Gaspard


3. Eric Holder


4. Cecelia Muñoz


5. Samantha Power(s)


6. Charles Freeman


7. Scott Gration


8. Rahm Emmanuel


9. Ezekiel Emmanuel


10. Cass Sunstein


11. Van Jones


12. Carol Browner


13. John Holdren


14. Kevin Jennings


15. Chai Feldblum


16. William Ayers


---------------------------------------------------------------------------



1. Valerie Jarrett -- Obama Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs. Ms. Jarrett, a product of two decades in rough-and-tumble "Chicago way" politics, and a 17-year friend of the Obama's, is described as "the other side of Barack Obama's brain." Born in Iran, Jarrett, who speaks Persian, moved to the United States as a child. A product of an elite, private, New England boarding school, she is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School.


Jarrett served in the administration of Chicago Mayor Harold Washington (who, prior to his election, failed to file income tax returns for 19 years and during it maintained dubious Socialist ties) as well as in the scandal-ridden, current Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Her step-father, Vernon Jarrett was associated with Frank Marshall Davis, the youthful Barack Obama's mentor from age 10 until college - a Chicago Communist Party (USA) member who moved to Hawaii from Chicago. Frank Marshal Davis is now immortalized in President Barack Hussein Obama's "autobiography" as "Uncle Frank" -- conveniently with no mention of his last name nor who he was.


According to the Washington Post, Ms. Jarrett was for many years both Michelle and Barack Obama's "tutor." Virtually every mainstream media outlet has not only done an over-the-top puff piece on Valerie Jarrett (as they repeatedly have with Mr. Obama and his wife), but all agree that neither the President not Mrs. Obama makes a move without first consulting Ms. Jarrett. Ms. Jarrett was personally responsible for bringing self-described Communist Van Jones into the White House as President Obama's environmental "Green Czar." [1]



2. Patrick Gaspard -- White House Political Director (this is the position Karl Rove held in the Bush Administration). Prior to coming on board as President Obama's right-hand man, Mr. Gaspard was a registered federal lobbyist for the SEIU - the union members (thugs?) called-in by the Administration to run interference (sometimes violent) between Democrat members of Congress who support ObamaCare and their own constituents. Prior to that, Gaspard worked for ACORN - the community organizing front which Barack Obama worked for as a trainer, represented as a lawyer, helped as a politician, and funneled money to as a presidential candidate.


The President Obama is as much a product of ACORN as it is of him. He worked closely with the "community organizing" group for many years, represented them in court, and was a member of the board of Chicago's Woods Fund at the time it funneled 0,000 to an ACORN affiliate. Mr. Obama praised the organization extravagantly both during and after his election, and his campaign "donated" over 0,000 to an offshoot group controlled by ACORN (Citizens Services, Inc.) - to "get out the vote."


Gaspard worked directly for now-ACORN chief Bertha Lewis as her political director for the main ACORN office which is located in New York. ACORN is mired in long-standing as well as new and growing allegations of fraud, voter-registration fraud, corruption, and massive embezzlement of funds - ACORN operative organizations have received tens of millions of dollars in federal grants.


ACORN pledged ,000,000 for voter registration drives in the 2008 election cycle.


In 2004, Patrick Gaspard served as National Field Director for America Coming Together (ACT), a group which was later fined 5,000 in civil penalties by the federal government. ACT hired felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in Missouri and at least two other swing states, and also employed felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio. [2]



3. Eric Holder -- Attorney General of the United States. A handpicked Obama/Jarrett selection, who earlier this year referred to the United States as "a nation of cowards" on race relations, Mr. Holder is a shiningly despicable example of everything wrong when politics and personal ambition dictate the parameters of American justice.


Prior to grasping the brass ring of the department where he'd toiled during the Clinton Administration, Mr. Holder was responsible for these widely-reported miscarriages of justice: (1) He streamlined the Clinton Administration's pardon of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich by steering Rich's representatives to a former White House counsel, then helped lobby the President to pardon Rich ("an unrepentant fugitive wanted on extensive fraud, racketeering, and trading-with-the-enemy charges"). Holder did so for personal gain, later admitting he hoped this would help him become Attorney General in a Gore administration. Mr. Holder concealed the pardon negotiations from other prosecuting and investigative agencies to prevent their opposition. Mr. Rich's wife was a generous donor to both President Clinton's library as well as his legal-defense fund.


(2) "In 1999, over the objections of the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons, and prosecuting attorneys, Holder supported Clinton's commutation of the sentences of 16 FALN conspirators. These pardons - of terrorists who even Holder has conceded had not expressed any remorse - were issued in the months after al-Qaeda's 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.... The commutations were nakedly political, obviously designed by Clinton to assist his wife's impending Senate campaign by appealing to New York's substantial Puerto Rican vote."


(3) Holder was also instrumental in the "stealth pardons" of two Weather Underground terrorists, Susan Rosenberg and Linda Evans (both closely associated with President Obama's terrorist friends, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn). Rosenberg and Evans had been serving decades-long sentences for bombings targeting American government facilities. Again Holder helped circumvent the pardon process and evade objections from prosecutors regarding the terrorists' jail terms.


Just this summer, now-Attorney General Holder dismissed prosecution of an obvious case (it was filmed) of voter intimidation by members of the New Black Panthers, while also instigating prosecutorial investigations into CIA interrogation techniques of terrorist combatants. Attorney General Holder is a strong advocate for the release of the Islamofascist enemy combatants currently held at Guantanamo Bay. [3]



4. Cecelia Muñoz -- White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Prior to being summoned to the White House by President Obama, Ms. Muñoz was Senior Vice President of The National Council of La Raza. La Raza (literally, "The Race") is the largest Hispanic lobbying organization in America, and is committed not merely to a socialist agenda, but, essentially, the return of California, if not larger portions of the American West, to Hispanics. It lobbies heavily for completely open borders with Mexico, as well as amnesty for all illegal aliens. In order to carry out this agenda, the U.S. federal government awarded over .2 million in grants to the organization in 2005 alone.


La Raza is intimately involved with the "the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West." Aztlan's goal is the formation of a Chicano state. The closing two sentences of Atzlan's motto are: La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada": "For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing." Which ought to be as chilling as the idea of the U.S. government funding these people.


President Obama's recent appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has also long been deeply involved with La Raza - a fact which all Democrat Senators ignored during her confirmation hearing.



5. Samantha Power -- Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council. Ms. Power, a professor of public policy at Harvard [who is married to President Obama's Leftist fringe academic Cass Sunstein, the Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs] was only seemingly thrown under the Obama campaign bus for referring to Hillary Clinton as "a monster" during the 2008 Democrat primary. In 2009 President Obama, tapped her to occupy her senior White House foreign policy position.


Ms. Power, a "fierce critic of Israel,... was indisputably Barack Obama's closest foreign policy adviser during the campaign. They go back years." Ms. Power is a notorious acolyte of appeasement-challenged, Neville-Chamberlain-clone Zbigniew Brzezinski (former President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser) who recently stated that the U.S. should shoot down any Israeli planes which, out of self-preservation, might fly through Iraqi air space to destroy Iran's developing nuclear facilities. Ms. Power agrees with the Charles-Freeman-published Walt-Mearsheimer-essay school of thought that America is run and being destroyed by a cabal of Jews. Power promotes the policies of disgraced anti-Semitic, Israeliphobic, pro-PLO, pro-Syria, Obama adviser Robert Malley who advocated not merely talking with Hamas, but funding the terrorist organization because he feels their policies and governance mirror that of Israel. The Obama Administration cut visible ties with Malley shortly after the election.


Power, who stridently criticized the invasion and "occupation" of Iraq, repeatedly calling for the removal of American forces from that nation, curiously advocates that America send armed military forces, "a mammoth protection force" and an "external intervention", to impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. While giving the PLO, Fatah, Hamas and other obviously terrorist Arab state organizations a pass, Ms. Power views Israel, the only democratic and non-totalitarian, nation in the Middle East, as guilty of war crimes. She favors slashing, if not eliminating, United States aid to Israel - which is surrounded by several hundred million Muslims who daily pray for its total annihilation - and, apparently, giving the money to the Palestinians instead.


Ms. Power, and virtually all of her truth-through-force ilk ignore the fact that on the day Israel gained independence it was immediately attacked by the surrounding Arab neighbors who erroneously believed they could destroy the nascent country in a matter of hours. "Palestinians" (there is no such country, nor has there been since Biblical times) who now form the "Palestinian problem" were not forced to leave Israel but instead chose to do so because Israel became a Jewish state. Hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish Arabs remained and now form a large core group of Israeli citizenry. The approximately 750,000 "Palestinians" who left, now number approximately 4,000,000. They constitute a "problem" because of all the Arab countries only Jordan has allowed them to become a part of its society. The other Arab countries bordering Israel keep the "Palestinians" in enormous desert internment camps. And they have done so to their Arab brethren for 60 years. Ms. Power and her comrades exquisitely fail to note that Jews were forced to leave Arab countries and relocate to the newly-formed Israeli state.


Like her pro-Arab "realist" co-religionists Charles Freeman, Robert Malley, Zbigniew Brzezinsk, billionaire George Soros (an influential Obama supporter), and others of their stripe, Powers opposes the "Israel lobby." She, as they, adamantly rejects the participation of American supporters of Israel, including Christians, in foreign policy discussions of the Middle East.


For all Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's public visibility, it may not be much of a conjecture that her job has been outsourced to the alpha female who once referred to Mrs. Clinton as a "monster." [5]



6. Charles Freeman -- Nominated, but not confirmed, as Chairman of the (United States) National Intelligence Council - which is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates for the president and his advisors. Mr. Freeman has a distinguished résumé of long service in both the State and Defense Departments, however, his "distinctive political views and affiliations" include: troubling financial ties to King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia who funds the Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council) which Mr. Freeman heads; organizational support for professors John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt's lengthy, controversial, and essentially anti-Jewish essay, "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy"; his stated viewpoint that "the primary reason America confronts a terrorism problem today is "the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation"; praise for the terrorist organization, Hamas, as the only "democratically-elected" government in the Middle East; and, bizarrely, unabashedly siding with the Chinese government over the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 - Mr. Freeman criticized the Chinese government for being "overly cautious."


Once Leftist liberal, New York Senator Chuck Schumer spoke against Freeman's nomination, the gentleman withdrew - but not without "blaming his own disgrace on a Jewish conspiracy."


During his Congressional investigation, Mr. Freeman was charged with "[p]romoting public schools textbooks which the independent Textbook League describe ‘a vehicle for disseminating disinformation, including a multitude of false, distorted or utterly absurd claims that are presented as historical facts. ...[with] three principal purposes: inducing teachers to embrace Islamic religious beliefs; inducing teachers to embrace political views that are favored by the...Middle East Policy Council (formerly the American Arab Affairs Council)...; and impelling teachers to disseminate those religious beliefs and political views in schools." [6]



7. Scott Gration -- President Obama's Special Envoy to the Sudan. His diplomatic policy is, quite literally the following:


"We've got to think about giving out cookies," said Gration who was appointed in March, "Kids, countries -- they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes, agreements, talk, engagement."


As even that bastion of liberal blather the Washington Post noted, "U.S. diplomacy has remained mostly in the hands of Obama's special envoy to Sudan, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. J. Scott Gration, who is pushing toward normalized relations with the only country in the world led by a president indicted on war-crimes charges."


While President Obama's handpicked "Special Envoy" was tempting genocidal Muslim radicals with "cookies" and "gold stars," marauding bands of guerrillas in the Sudan crucified seven Christians. [7]



8. Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel -- White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Emanuel is the notorious hardball political player from Chicago's North Side which he represented in Congress prior to his current incarnation as President Obama's political henchman and myrmidon. The ironically named Mr. Emanuel ("God with us") is "relentlessly partisan," thereby quite succinctly putting the lie to Mr. Obama's campaign claim to "post-partisanship."


Nicknamed "Rhambo," President Obama's Chief of Staff - the highest ranking office of the Executive Branch of the President of the United States - is well-know for the following accomplishments:


(1) a casual conversation style addictively laced with the most outrageous profanities and gutter language at any and all times;


(2) sending a 2½ foot-long dead and decomposing fish to lobbyist Allen Secrest with whom he was angry;


(3) threatening then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair just prior to a joint appearance with then-President Bill Clinton: "This is important. Don't f--- it up.";


(4) at dinner the night after Bill Clinton was elected President in 1992, "Rhambo" ranted about a long list of people who were the subject of his ire. As he shouted each "enemy's" name, Mr. Emanuel punctuated his rage by forcefully stabbing the dinner table and screaming, "Dead!"



Outside of murdering a Congressional page, it is relatively difficult to improve upon these glowing characteristics of mental stability and leadership. [8]


Rahm Emanuel is Ezekiel Emanuel, "Dr. Death's," brother.



9. Ezekiel Emanuel -- President Obama's Special Advisor for Health Policy to the Office of Management and Budget. Nicknamed in the press "Dr. Death" after former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and former New York Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey pointed out Dr. Emanuel's "healthcare" role assisting the White House in the preparation and administration of federal budget recommendations for guiding healthcare and healthcare initiatives, Dr. Emanuel (again, application of the absurdly ironic name, "God with us") is a "bioethicist." He is also hailed as President Obama's "Rationer-in-Chief." Generally, Emanuel's idea of healthcare rationing is to greatly restrict many treatments, medicines, and procedures to anyone over 40 and more particularly to anyone over 65. Dr. Emanuel feels similarly about the newly born until they have attained several years of age at which time he begins to view them in Malthusian terms of potential communitarian utility.


As Lt. Governor McCaughey noted, "In numerous writings, Dr. Emanuel chastises physicians for thinking only about their own patient's needs." This is the man who was personally tapped to guide ObamaCare health initiatives - not only by President Obama and his Chief of Staff... but also by "the other side of Barack's brain," Valerie Jarrett.


Mr. Emanuel is yet another in a tedious yet frighteningly long line of unqueried, unquestioned, and unvetted Obama advisors and "czars" about whom nothing can be known until pulled from beneath labyrinths of liberal camouflage by interested citizens, conservative Internet bloggers, and the staffs of conservative talk shows. Mainstream media long ago forfeited its credibility as well as its societal role as the fourth estate.


Dr. Emanuel is a member of the President's Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (curiously enough authorized under the dazzling rushed-through and unread by a single Congressman, American Recovery and Investment Act... "the Stimulus Bill") which, if allowed, will make decisions about the validity, "relative strengths and weakness of various medical interventions" as well as give clinicians...information to make decisions that will improve the performance of the U.S. health care system. Not improve medical care much less your medical care, but the "system." It's called "rationing," and it will very likely result in unnecessary and preventable early deaths. On a very large scale.


One final point. Due to the ambiguity of the relevant language in the Stimulus Bill as well as in the various ObamaCare "reform" proposals, there will not only be great latitude for interpretation of various laws' meaning, but these interpretations will require being instituted, oversight, and, of course, regulation. The necessity of regulation allows President Obama's Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs Cass Sunstein carte blanche to regulate whatever he likes.


Mr. Emanuel is the brother of White House Chief of Staff, and former North Side Chicago Congressman (5th District of Illinois) Rahm ("dead fish") Emanuel. [9]



10. Cass Sunstein -- Administrator of the White House Office of Administration and Regulatory Affairs. He is a Harvard Law School professor and newly-minted husband of President Obama's Senior Director, Multilateral Affairs, National Security Council, the Israel-phobic Samantha Power (one of several husband-wife teams in the Obama White House). Mr. Sunstein's belief structure could understandably be called "Leftist kook" or "fringe" if not downright lunatic. Herewith:


In a 2007 speech at Harvard, Sunstein called for banning all hunting in the United States. All. Everywhere.


He actually put in writing, in his 2004 book, Animals that, "Animals should be permitted to bring [law] suit, with human beings as their representatives...."


"[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture."



Mr. Sunstein, who openly argues for bringing socialism to the U.S. and even lends support to communism, wrote, "The absence of a European-style social welfare state is certainly connected with the widespread perception among the white majority that the relevant programs would disproportionately benefit African Americans (and more recently Hispanics)..."


"[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms."


Were Mr. Sunstein to succeed as President Obama's head regulator of all things American, what might happen to those millions of hunting rifles and shotguns he doesn't want gathering dust in your cabinet?


Mr. Sunstein is a reputed "1st Amendment scholar." Having attended law school myself and actually practiced law for a quarter century rather than retreat to the head-swelling-brain-shrinking environs of academia, I can assure you that if he is, America is in very deep trouble. President Obama has made clear his White House Masterregulator is intended to regulate virtually every aspect of American's lives - including the environment, healthcare, finance, and the economy - regardless of your feelings about such matters much less your freedom and liberty. Sunstein has argued in his prolific literary works (one bookstore tour de force was a whopping 84 pages) that the Internet is anti-democratic because of the way users can filter out information of their own choosing. He went on to assert: [10]


A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government... Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name.


As WorldNetDaily noted:


"It's hard to imagine President Obama nominating a more dangerous candidate for regulatory czar than Cass Sunstein....Not only is Sunstein an animal-rights radical, but he also seems to have a serious problem with our First Amendment rights. Sunstein has advocated everything from regulating the content of personal e-mail communications, to forcing nonprofit groups to publish information on their websites that is counter to their beliefs and mission.... If it were up to Obama and Sunstein, everything we read online - right down to our personal e-mail communications - would have to be inspected and approved by the federal government."



11. Van Jones -- President Obama's former White House Environmental Adviser ("Green Jobs Czar"). Mr. Jones remains a self-defined Communist community organizer from the San Francisco Bay area (Oakland, California). He is also an Whites-hating racist with a criminal arrest record, as well as a "9/11 Truther" true believer. The 9/11 Truther organizations proselytize that former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Richard Cheney either planned or knew about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks conducted by 19 Islamofascist members of Al-Qaeda who, aside from slamming a passenger jetliner into the Pentagon, did the same in New York City totally destroying the Twin Towers and killing almost 3,000 Americans.


When Mr. Jones, an ardent racist and Communist, was hired into the White House by "the other half of Barack's brain," Ms. Valerie Jarrett, she expressed overflowing praise in the press and in video-taped interviews for Mr. Jones and his work, noting that "we have been watching him for a long time. [11]



12. Carol M. Browner -- Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy. Ms. Browner is a Socialist sycophant of Al Gore's conclusion that the earth is going to evaporate tomorrow. A former EPA director, Ms. Browner is married to Leftist lobbyist Thomas Downey and remains an ardent Socialist activist. She is one of 14 leaders of Socialist International's, "Commission for a Sustainable World Society," which calls for "global governance."


As Van Jones was an admitted Communist, Ms. Browner is an admitted and very active Socialist. What more really need be said about her with reference to President Obama who has been fully informed of her moral relativity and anti-Americanism for years since she has hardly kept it secret from either her associates, the public, nor the press. [12]



13. John Holdren -- Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Other than Mr. Holdren's well known and oft repeated morally relativistic denial of American exceptionalism, one and only one thing need to be said here about President Obama's "Science" Czar - he is Barack Obama's twin on the matter of abortion and has advocated compulsory abortion. Here it is again: President Obama searched for, reached out, and chose as his chief "science advisor" a plasma physicist who advocates compulsory abortion.


As John Griffing wrote of Holdren in "Enough is Enough," for American Thinker:


...for a true outrage, consider new Czar of Science, John P. Holdren, who, in a stunning display of unabashed evil, has actively advocated "compulsory abortion":


There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society.


If that doesn't send a chill down your spine, consider his words, "All the children who are born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to a desired level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the death of grown persons." Let that sink in: an American official supports forced abortion and the death of "grown persons." We know what that looks like. It has been official policy for years in Communist China.


President Obama quite literally has the single worst record of any elected official on the question of abortion. While in the Illinois legislature he single-handedly prevented that state's Born Alive Infant Protection Act from leaving his committee much less being made into law. As a result, for three more years until legislator Obama became U. S. Senator Obama, Illinois hospitals and doctors were permitted to allow otherwise healthy infants who survived an abortion to receive no medical attention whatsoever until they died. They were simply, and quite literally, "shelved." The evidence of Mr. Obama's actions and callous disregard for the lives of infants is overwhelming. [13]



14. Kevin Jennings -- President Obama's Safe Schools Czar. Jennings is a former schoolteacher who has very successfully advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, unashamedly and vituperatively expressed his utter contempt for religion, and detailed an incident in which he did not report to authorities his knowledge that an underage student told him he was having sex with older men - Jennings instead counseled the boy to "use a condom. " In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, [Jennings] founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education...."


In the past, Mr. Jennings has praised Harry Hay, the frequent and vocal defender of NAMBLA - the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men.


His organization, Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, has successfully prodded some schools into making October the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) Month, as well as established November 28th as "Transgender Day of Remembrance."


None of this belongs in any school anywhere, any time, and the fact that the Obama Administration chooses to support such people with such goals and then put them in positions of great authority and power should make even the most dyed-in-the-wool middle-class liberal Democrats cringe at the depth of either their negligence, uncaring, or stupidity regarding the real Barack Hussein Obama.


And I bet all the teachers in America didn't know this - according to Mr. Jennings (at a New York University "Education Policy Breakfast):


"... you cannot be an effective teacher if you are not aware of how [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] biases can influence how you interact with your students. Pure and simple."


To which Mr. Jennings added,


"It should be impossible to graduate from NYU or any other school of education without coursework - required coursework - that address issues of [LGBT] bias in the classroom and how it might influence your teaching. [It] should be a graduation requirement."


In 1999, Mr. Jennings wrote the foreward for an elementary education instruction book, Queering Elementary Education, the description of which states that it examines "five broadly-defined areas in elementary education: foundational issues; social and sexual development; curriculum; the family; and gay/lesbian educators and their allies. It seeks to provide scholarly insights, pedagogical strategies, and curricular resources for use in schools. At the core of the book is the belief that public school educators have the responsibility to affirm sexual diversity..." In elementary school?


It is Jennings himself, Obama's "Safe-School Czar," who coined the term "safe school" as a euphemism for "pro-homosexual" school. Children's physical safety had nothing and has even less to do now with Mr. Jennings educational background, "expertise," or agenda. "Jennings was obviously chosen for this job because of the safe schools aspect... defining 'safe schools' narrowly in terms of 'safe for homosexuality'," says Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council.


"Safe school" is hardly the only word commandeered by Jennings and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to support propagandizing his model "safe school" into mainstream elementary education. Others include, and parents should be alert to "seemingly innocuous terms as ‘safe school,' ‘anti-bullying,' ‘safe space,' ‘hate-free, ‘tolerance,' ‘respect differences,' ‘be an ally,' ‘no name calling day,' ‘be who you are,' ‘free to be fully me,' ‘day of silence,' and so forth. If these terms are present [in school instructional materials], they are [probably] defined by Jennings, not Webster, and the accompanying curricular material will probably be objectionable. Jennings' jargon and the mythical bullying epidemic even showed-up in the recent Presidential address to school children."


The Obama Administration was certainly aware of these facts long before the President and Ms. Jarrett selected Mr. Jennings, just as they selected Van Jones, and all the other members of the Obama Administration discussed here.


This is the type of colossal lack of judgment the President of The United States has not merely chosen to surround himself with, but in fact personally displays every day.


Feeling any "safer" about your kids? [14]



15. Chai Feldblum - Obama nominee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who signed a manifest seeking, inter alia, to legalize polygamy ("to protect households in which there is more than one conjugal partner"). See, online petition entitled Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships. Feldblum is an outspoken homosexual rights activist and Georgetown University law professor. She is "co-director of Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she described at [a] UCLA symposium as a homosexual rights group that aimed to change ‘the American workplace and revolutionize social mores. This is a war that needs to be fought,'' Feldblum asserted, "'and it's not a war overseas where we are killing people in the name of liberating them." [15]



16. William Ayers -- Obama friend, neighbor, fellow board member, "respected" national educator, virulently anti-American, and dramatically unrepentant radical terrorist bomber. Mr. Ayers famously stated:


"I am a radical, Leftist, small ‘c' Communist...Maybe I'm the last Communist who is willing to admit it.... The ethics of Communism still appeal to me."


Perhaps Mr. Ayers most notable statement was made to the New York Times in a story released on September 11, 2001:


"I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough,"


It has gradually come to light that Mr. Ayers, far from the casual acquaintance President Obama made him out to be during the 2008 election, is quite likely the real author of Mr. Obama's "autobiography," Dreams of My Father. [16]


Mr. Ayers approach to education is as authoritarian as is his approach to society as a whole - otherwise he would not have planted terrorist bombs in an effort to compel his personal beliefs upon the rest of society. As Sol Stern of City Journal wrote:


Ayers's influence on what is taught in the nation's public schools is likely to grow in the future. Last month, he was elected vice president for curriculum of the 25,000-member American Educational Research Association (AERA), the nation's largest organization of education-school professors and researchers. Ayers won the election handily, and there is no doubt that his fellow education professors knew whom they were voting for. In the short biographical statement distributed to prospective voters beforehand, Ayers listed among his scholarly books Fugitive Days, an unapologetic memoir about his ten years in the Weather Underground. The book includes dramatic accounts of how he bombed the Pentagon and other public buildings.


....


Ayers's politics have hardly changed since his Weatherman days. He still boasts about working full-time to bring down American capitalism and imperialism. This time, however, he does it from his tenured perch as Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Instead of planting bombs in public buildings, Ayers now works to indoctrinate America's future teachers in the revolutionary cause, urging them to pass on the lessons to their public school students. [17]


The Ayers-Obama Socialist-conversion mission carried out with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's 0,000,000 was a total failure, producing zero results in student learning, but succeeded in massive transfers of wealth to Leftist, Socialist, and even the Communist causes of long-time Ayers ally, Mike Klonsky, a former S.D. S. leader, college professor and Director of the Small Schools Workshop. However, neither Mr. Ayers nor President Obama have given up on their radical Leftist agenda. [18]


Ayers is married to unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist Bernadine Dohrn who was once jailed for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members' robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed. Like her husband, she remains involved and influential in school programs.


For Mr. Ayers, Mr. Freeman, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Chu, and President Obama's Secretary of Education, yet another Chicagoan, Arne Duncan - and far too many others in the Obama Administration - education is solely about pursuing then mandating the radicalization of children through indoctrination in Leftist policies, "social justice" curricula, and Socialism itself in public schools.


____________________________________________________________



The Obama Administration is currently making thousands of federal bureaucratic appointments.


Make no mistake. These people are about Socialism, and they are about power. Their power.

www.americanthinker.com/

U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Sports Program - Team Roping - 10 May 2008 - Las Cruces - New Mexico - FMWRC

Image by familymwr
www.armymwr.com

PHOTO CAPTION: Spc. Jake Lowery (RIGHT) of Fort Richardson, Alaska, competes May 10 in a Troy Shelley Affiliate team roping at Denny Calhoun Arena in Las Cruces, N.M., as part of the Army's new Wounded Warrior Sports Program designed to give active-duty Soldiers with life-altering injuries an opportunity to compete in sporting events.

Cowboy-Soldier Launches Army's Wounded Warrior Sports Program

Photos and story by Tim Hipps, FMWRC Public Affairs (cleared for public release)
LAS CRUCES, N.M.—Purple Heart recipient Spc. Jake Lowery officially launched the U.S. Army Wounded Warrior Sports Program with an inspirational team-roping performance at Denny Calhoun Arena on May 10–11.
Lowery, 26, of Fort Richardson, Alaska, lost his right eye and sustained massive head injuries when he was hit by an improvised explosive device that killed a fellow Soldier in Fallujah, Iraq, on Feb. 11, 2007.
Less than a year later, Lowery, a lifelong cowboy, was back aboard a horse and roping steers despite suffering from a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.
"This pretty much keeps me going—it's the only thing that does," he said. "Without it, I'd just be hanging out in my room somewhere."
The Wounded Warrior Sports Program was designed to give active-duty Soldiers with life-altering injuries an opportunity to compete in sporting events by paying for their athletic attire, registration fees, transportation, lodging and per diem.
Lowery travelled from Alaska to El Paso, Texas, and connected with family for a ride home to Silver City, N.M., where he, stepfather John Escobedo and grandfather Pete Escobedo loaded a trailer with horses and drove to Las Cruces for a weekend of roping.
All three competed in the Troy Shelley Affiliate event.
"This is one of the best things the Armed Forces could have done because it's just therapy for these guys who feel like 'I lost this. I lost that,'" said Sgt. 1st Class (ret.) Pete Escobedo, 83, who served 27 years in the Army. "If you really want to do something with yourself...Jacob is a prime example. He's really trying.
"We're thankful for the Army for doing everything it can for him."
Lowery teamed with different partners to successfully rope two of six steers in the first round of competition on Saturday. After roping two more in the second round and another in the third, he was sitting in third place entering the final short round. But when prize money came into play, his steer got away.
"It looked good to me," Lowery said of his final toss. "I'm not sure how he got out of it. I guess it happens that way sometimes, especially in this sport. Maybe I roped him a little too low. If not, I don't know."
Despite struggling with limited depth perception, Lowery is encouraged that his roping skills will continue to improve. He already bounced back to win an all-around crown in Alaska and teamed with his stepfather to capture the team-roping title at the Professional Armed Forces Rodeo Association's 2007 World Finals in Fort Worth, Texas.
"I'm not back to where I was, by any means," Lowery said. "I just keep practicing and hope it eventually comes back."
Lowery's first run of 8.43 seconds was one of the fastest of the morning among 450 cowboys in Las Cruces. He posted another quality time of 8.69.
"Yeah, it was good, but it could have been better," he said of the full day of roping. "It was awesome just to come down and get out of the cold weather for awhile. I really enjoyed it."
Pete has faith that Jake eventually will overcome TBI and PTSD. Putting him on a horse is the best therapy he knows.
"I have been roping with Jacob since he was knee high to a grasshopper," granddad said. "I just don't have words to explain the love that we have for Jacob and how much we enjoy ourselves doing what we do. He's worked very hard. I'm sorry that he had to be injured the way that he was, but we're doing the best that we can.
"He has taken his injury and forgotten it, to a degree, while he is doing what he loves the most. If you go to our house, this is all you'll find: horses and cattle. If we're not roping today, we're roping tomorrow."
On this weekend, they were roping both days—three generations of cowboys taking turns roping steers in 100-degree desert heat.
"Jake has done remarkably well in coping with his injury," Pete said. "Instead of saying: 'Well, I'm injured,' he says: 'I'm going to do what I can. The Good Lord handed me this hand, so I'm going to do with what he dealt me the best that I can.'"
John, too, is proud of how Jake has dealt with adversity, but he's also experienced the aftereffects firsthand.
"Sometimes he gets those debilitating headaches and they just knock him smooth out," John said. "And then he just doesn't feel like doing anything. And if he does feel like it, his head is hurting so bad that he's not able to.
"There's a lot of stuff in your head after you go to war and get blown up that you just can't throw away. Me, I don't have a clue because I've never been, but I can just imagine. A good friend of mine was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam and he got blown up big-time, and the guy's got the best attitude of anybody I ever met.
"Jake wasn't hit for ten minutes and he was on the phone asking: 'What can I do?'" John said. "We got him cycled through (the recovery process) and once he started getting right, he called me up and said: 'It's not the events in your life that matter; it's what you do with those events. If you want to lie around and be a crybaby, be a crybaby. If you want to jump up and do something...'"
That call made John proud.
"I told him before he left: 'When you sign (enlistment papers with the Army), I can't come and get you.' And he said: 'I ain't worried.' He's never regretted his decision to go, not at all. He's never got on the 'Poor me, I wish I hadn't' and stuff like that. We hand him a lot and don't give him the opportunity to lie around and have his own personal pity party. It's like: 'Hey, get up, let's go do something.'"
Then another curious moment comes along.
"At to the world finals last year, he was sitting up at the top of the coliseum by himself," John recalled. "He just couldn't stand the confinement of having people all around him. It's just the little things, like he'll forget to shut the gate (after riding the horse through)."
The affects also can be seen in Jake's prolonged moments of silence.
"If we can ever get him to where he'll just start talking again and intermingling with people and not being paranoid, I think life will be good," John said. "When he's on horseback or working out, he's a normal guy. But we'll be sitting at the house watching TV or something and it ain't the same guy. We drove six- or seven-hundred miles to the world finals—14 hours of drive time—and he probably said three words.
"But you stick him on a horse or in the gym, where his comfort zone is, and he's fine."
At age 83, Pete derives inspiration from his injured grandson.
"His motivation is the love for this sport, and that keeps him wanting to get better instead of finding excuses as to why he can't do something," he said. "He's finding ways and reasons to do whatever he can. We really don't worry too much about him, especially when we see how he's progressing and conducting himself with his injury. He's just not letting it get him down."
Jake believes that sets him apart from some of his fellow injured troops, whom he says "don't seem to want to do anything." He couldn't wait to get active again.
"Some of the Morale, Welfare and Recreation people told me about it when I was at the Warrior Transition Unit," Lowery said of the Wounded Warrior Sports Program. "About two days later, I sent in the paperwork. I sent them about four or five events they could pick from."
"This was the perfect venue for this particular guy," said Army sports specialist Mark Dunivan, who expects more applicants to follow. "I have been contacted by an amputee who wants to run in the USA Triathlon Physically Challenged National Championships in New York in July. I think it's just a matter of getting the word out a little bit more."
Instructions for the application process to participate in the Wounded Warrior Sports Program are available at www.ArmyMWR.com. For more details, contact Dunivan at mark.dunivan@us.army.mil or 719-526-3908 or Peggy Hutchinson at peggy.hutchinson@us.army.mil or 703-681-7211.

To learn more about the Wounded Warrior Program, visit the U.S. Army online at: www.armymwr.com

LAST.FM ~ back in black

Image by draggin
www.last.fm/user/draggin/ just keeps getting better and better. This summer they over hauled the site completely , streamlinging the user experince, putting more emphasis on tagging and just generally 'chroming' the place up. Yessss, black baybee!