How's That "Common Core" Working Out In New York City? Ask The Crying Kindergartners...

What is the "Common Core"?  It's a new, far-left curriculum being forced down the nation's throat by - you guessed it - the Obama administration.  Michelle Malkin is doing a multi-part series on the radical realignment of America's schools; she gives us a little background here:

Common Core was enabled by Obama’s federal stimulus law and his Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” gimmickry. The administration bribed cash-starved states into adopting unseen instructional standards as a condition of winning billions of dollars in grants. Even states that lost their bids for Race to the Top money were required to commit to a dumbed-down and amorphous curricular “alignment.”

In practice, Common Core’s dubious “college- and career”-ready standards undermine local control of education, usurp state autonomy over curricular materials, and foist untested, mediocre and incoherent pedagogical theories on America’s schoolchildren.

In Part II,  Malkin offers some specifics:

The Common Core English/language arts criteria call for students to spend only half of their class time studying literature, and only 30 percent of their class time by their junior and senior years in high school.

Under Common Core, classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” are of no more academic value than the pages of the Federal Register or the Federal Reserve archives — or a pro-Obamacare opinion essay in The New Yorker. Audio and video transcripts, along with “alternative literacies” that are more “relevant” to today’s students (pop song lyrics, for example), are on par with Shakespeare.


I actually wrote about this a few weeks back:

Out:  Huck Finn, and other "easily read" nonfiction

In:  “Executive Order 13423: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management,” published by the General Services Administration. [Literally.  Follow the link]

Sheridan Blau, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, said teachers across the country have told him their principals are insisting that English teachers make 70 percent of their readings nonfiction. “The effect of the new standards is to drive literature out of the English classroom,” he said.


What's that. Lefty?  Unsubstantiated scare tactics, you say?  OK, let's go to New York City, where Common Core is in full effect:

Kindergarten has come a long way, baby — too far, some say.

Way beyond the ABCs, crayons and building blocks, the city Department of Education now wants 4- and 5-year-olds to write “informative/explanatory reports” and demonstrate “algebraic thinking.”

Children who barely know how to write the alphabet or add 2 and 2 are expected to write topic sentences and use diagrams to illustrate math equations.

“For the most part, it’s way over their heads,” a Brooklyn teacher said. “It’s too much for them. They’re babies!”

In a kindergarten class in Red Hook, Brooklyn, three children broke down and sobbed on separate days last week, another teacher told The Post.

When one girl cried, “I can’t do it,” classmates rubbed her back, telling her, “That’s OK.”

The city has adopted national standards called the Common Core...



There, there, little girl. We're from the government, and we're hear to help:

DOE spokeswoman Erin Hughes said, “These are the types of activities and exercises that students need to work on to acquire the skills they need to be ready for middle school, high school, college and careers.”


No, not really.  Kindergarten is a time for acclimation to school, learning the social norms that go with classroom interaction, and the acquisition of basic skills - ABC's, simple writing, 2+2.  Not essays and Venn diagrams, you sick bastards.


What's this all about?  I wrote about that, too - same link:

Part and parcel of political indoctrination throughout history. As China moved from "The Seven Chinese Brothers" to Chairman Mao's "Red Book", as Iran migrated from Western fashion magazines to the Koran, dynastic authoritarian regimes always alter the thought patterns of their population by forcing their subjects to become expert in the prevailing political philosophy. With failure being punishable by the ultimate "D" - Death.

They call it re-education. Obama's bureaucrats call their program "Common Cure"...

Think about the road we're on, when your kid comes home trying to decipher the fine print of Section 2521 of Obamacare...

In Which I Reluctantly Support Anonymous & Femen...

Not a fan of Anonymous.  But I am a fan of citizen action against government over-reach.  Alas, as we the people sit and home and fret about our freedoms, the only ones who are actually doing something about it are anarchists.  And while I am loathe to support them, in this case the Anonymous counter-action to the suicide of Reddit founder Aaron Schwartz -  allegedly driven to take his own life by the hyper-aggressive tactics of  federal prosecutors - is appropriate and just:


The hacker-activist group Anonymous says it hijacked the website of the U.S. Sentencing Commission to avenge the death of Aaron Swartz, an Internet activist who committed suicide.

The website of the commission, an independent agency of the judicial branch, was taken over early Saturday and replaced with a message warning that when Swartz killed himself two weeks ago "a line was crossed."

The hackers say they've infiltrated several government computer systems and copied secret information that they now threaten to make public.


Anonymous is not an admirable group, with attacks against Israeli information infrastructure, possibly obstructing justice in the Steubenville rape case, and deep involvement in the Occupy protests.  But anything is preferable to sitting back and allowing our government to mutate into something akin to South American socialism.  And yet I wonder - is this not the same mindset held at one point by the Egyptian people, who rode the Muslim Brotherhood's shoulders as they tossed out the cruel Hosni Mubarak, only to find that the new boss is the same (or worse) than the old boss?

The fact that I am pleased by the actions of mask-wearing vigilantes against our government is troubling to me.  Does it say something about what I am turning into, or simply how badly the state of our nation has deteriorated?

On a slightly lighter but related note, there were less successful protests at the elitist circle-jerk known as the Davos Forum, where the world's rich and famous go to see and be seen crying crocodile tears over the world's problems, only to exacerbate it with private jets, huge mansions, and lavish booze-filled soirees.

They should be mocked mercilessly, but only three brave women showed up to protest this perversion:

Three women angry over sexism and male domination of the world economy ripped off their shirts and tried to force their way into a gathering of corporate elites in a Swiss resort.

The women, from Ukrainian feminist activist group Femen, scaled a fence and set off pink flares in the protest Saturday. Their chests were painted with "SOS Davos," as they sought to call attention to poverty of women around the world.

Critics of the Davos forum say the business and political leaders at the gathering spend too little time doing concrete things to solve the world's problems and help the needy.

The fact I support both of these protests sends a chill up my spine.  Makes me feel a bit lost, to be honest.  I am reminded of Hank Rearden's confusion when he meets Ragnar Danneskjöld for the first time -  the ultimate re-possessor:

...Rearden drew back and, for a moment, kept his lips closed tight to utter no sound. When the moment was over, he said quietly, his voice firm and dead, "Take that gold of yours and get away from here. I won't accept the help of a criminal."

"I don't want your help and I don't intend to protect you....

I can't damn you or anyone else. There are no standards left for men to live by, so I don't care to judge anything they do today or in what manner they attempt to endure the unendurable. If this is your manner, I will let you go to hell in your own way, but I want no part of it.

"You wanted to help me in my most hopeless hour?" said Rearden. "If I am brought to where my only defender is a pirate, then I don't care to be defended any longer. You speak some remnant of a human language, so in the name of that, I'll tell you that I have no hope left, but I have the knowledge that when the end comes, I will have lived by my own standards, even while I was the only one to whom they remained valid. I will have lived in the world in which I started and J will go down with the last of it...


Rearden, of course, winds up protecting Danneskjöld.  Will I do the same for our less-moral 21st centruy equivalents?

Senator Menendez Loves Him Some Teenage Whores...

It was bad enough, when we first reported on this story, to find out that Senator Bob Menendez (D-La Raza) was cheating Dominican prostitutes out of money:

Two women from the Dominican Republic told The Daily Caller that Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez paid them for sex earlier this year.

In interviews, the two women said they met Menendez around Easter at Casa de Campo, an expensive 7,000 acre resort in the Dominican Republic. They claimed Menendez agreed to pay them $500 for sex acts, but in the end they each received only $100.

One woman said Menendez wooed her with compliments like “beautiful” before they slept together. The other woman recounted, with apparent bitterness, receiving from an intermediary only $100 of the $500 she had been promised.

“He lies,” she said of Menendez. “He says one thing and does another.”


But is seems as if - to quote the Beastie Boys - that  the girlies he likes are underage, which got the FBI interested as well:

Documents published online for the first time Thursday indicate that the FBI opened an inquiry into New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez on August 1, 2012, focusing on repeated trips he took to the Dominican Republic with longtime campaign contributor and Miami eye doctor Salomon Melgen. TheDC reported in November that Menendez purchased the service of prostitutes in that Caribbean nation at a series of alcohol-fueled sex parties.

Information made available to (ABC News senior investigative producer) Rhonda Schwartz and Carrie Levine (research director at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) at that time included allegations that some of Menendez’s prostitutes were as young as 16. The source also alleged that Sen. Menendez was taking “non-authorized trips” to the Dominican Republic, suggesting that he may have been evading Senate Ethics committee rules covering disclosures when third parties pay for a senator’s travel.

On Sept. 11, 2012, the documents indicate, the same source who provided information to Levine and Schwartz also sent an FBI Special Agent in Miami what he described as “the testimony of one of the girls.”

“I have in my possession the original written in her own hand,” the source wrote. “She’s 19 now, but took part in private parties with Senator Menendez being only 16.”


Here's a piece of that transcript, as our now 19 year old prostitute is shown a picture of Bob Menendez:

So Bob screws teenage whores - and not only when they are provided to him by his pimp.  Seems like he just picks up the phone and rings them up whenever he is in the Dominican Republic.

Sorry, darling,  I hope he at least paid you in full.

It's a shameful act by a public servant  one that in times of greater honor and valor would have forced a man to resign in shame.  But these are no longer those times.

Need another example?  The Newark Star-ledger, the newspaper with the largest circulation in the state of New Jersey, has not even reported on these allegations, not even once.

Gee, I wonder why.

Sigh...as long as we keep electing scumbag Democrats like Bob Menendez (D-Illegal Immigrants), we'll always be....Dirty Jersey:

( hat tip to I'm 41)

John Kerry Contradicts Hillary, Rice on Benghazi

The headlines would be screaming the above if the aforementioned trio were Republicans.  Alas, the screaming is left to me and my lonely roadside blogstand...

Elana Johnson on Hillary's Benghazi testimony:

Secretary Clinton yesterday said that, perhaps out of an “abundance of caution,” the administration “did not conclude finally that there were no protests at all until days after the attack.” Susan Rice, however, was not so cautious when she told five Sunday news shows that, according to the best information available, the Benghazi attack was the result of a “spontaneous reaction” to a YouTube video.


And what did John Kerry say yesterday to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, during his confirmation hearing for (sigh) Secretary of State?

“...the intel that I got, and that I was told by people, is that there were no protests in Benghazi.”






Were he a Republican, the talking heads would be apoplectic, as they demanded more testimony from Senator Kerry, as well as a re-appearance of Hillary Clinton before Congress.  But the media's driving interest here is to bury the scandal, so as to protect Hillary's ascension to the throne in 2016 and to allow John Kerry to finally get some payback for 2008.

Kerry wil be a perfect fit for the Obama administration, by the way.  He has already promised to do his best to implement "President Obama's vision for the world" (shudder), and has quickly adapted the position of never admitting to error, even when it is staring you in the face:  Jennifer Rubin:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) still insists he was right about Bashar al-Assad. “Kerry developed a relationship with Mr. Assad, saying as recently as March 2011, “My judgment is that Syria will move, Syria will change, as it embraces a legitimate relationship with the United States and the West. Kerry addressed his past views on Assad, saying he is convinced the Syrian leader ‘did want to move’ his country forward. But ‘since then he had made a set of judgments that are inexcusable and reprehensible,’ Kerry said, adding he now believes that ‘time is ticking’ on Assad’s time in power.” Good grief — and he might be the strongest part of the national security B Team.


Gonna be a hell of a four years, folks...

Maybe it's time for Mitt "Nostradamus" Romney to say, "I told you so!"

I've been meaning to write a post about Mitt for some time now.   An extremely harsh one, in fact.  Almost 59 million people voted for Mitt Romney for president on November 6th, 2012, and where has he been since losing?

Hiding out in his mansion in La Jolla, California.  While Obama roars triumphantly and flings his feces, as the media watches and masturbates furiously to their master's wickedness, 59 million people have no spokesman, and can only look on in horror.  What better time for Mitt to take the gloves off, without a vote left to win, and say what he really feels about the whole socialist regime now being forced down America's gagging throat?

The fact that he sulks silently, refusing to fight for what he claimed to believe in (see McCain, John and Ryan, Paul) makes me believe that Romney was no more than a fair-weather candidate, a man who wanted to be president to be president, and who had no real fire or passion for fixing what ails the nation.  In other words, a man who was not fit for the moment, and who perhaps should not have been elected president, regardless of the evil that now threatens to envelop us all.

But I am willing to cut Romney a break, if - IF - he comes out now, to say I told you so.  Over at Ricochet  Rob Long points out the many eerie "Prophecies of the Mormon" that have since come to pass:

On Jan. 14, Chrysler’s CEO acknowledged that Jeeps would be built in China, confirming a statement that unfairly earned Romney the moniker “liar of the year.”

Score one.

Then, when forces linked to al-Qaida captured the government-held town of Konna, Mali, on Jan. 10, they drove home a statement Romney made during the second presidential debate in Boca Raton, nearly three months earlier.

“With the Arab Spring came a great deal of hope that there would be a change towards more moderation and opportunity for greater participation on the part of women and — and public life and in economic life in the Middle East,” he said then. “But instead we’ve seen in nation after nation a number of disturbing events.”

Score two.

This week saw another Romney prediction come to pass — that a re-elected Obama would infringe on our Second Amendment rights.

“In a second term, he would be unrestrained by the demands of re-election,” Romney said at an April 2012 National Rifle Association convention in St. Louis, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Referring to the right to bear arms, Romney told convention-goers, “If we are going to safeguard our Second Amendment, it is time to elect a president who will defend the rights President Obama ignores or minimizes. I will.”

Score three.

Finally, Romney was ridiculed for using “binders of women” to describe what a Romney Cabinet would look like. Instead of mocking the poorly worded phrase, we should have listened to the words themselves.

The president’s announcement of his second-term Cabinet prompted ABC’s George Stephanopoulos to ask on Jan. 10, “Where are the women?” Apparently, they’re all still in Romney’s binders.

Score four.

This is the time for Mitt to step out of his little suburban enclave, and stand up to the bullying Barack and his partisan pit bulls in the mainstream media, and say "Told you so! You were lied to by the media, mislead by Obama, and manipulated by crass commercials! And boy of boy, if you think things suck today, just wait until tomorrow!"

Force people to face the truth of their choices. Stand up for the 59 million who supported you. And make the media explain how and why they constantly misrepresented his positions, and Barack's.

But the most important thing Mitt would accomplish is to...foster mistrust. Mistrust of the media, and mistrust of the president. Simultaneously, people may actually give the Republican position a more neutral hearing, knowing that the last candidate turned out to be a prophet (of doom).

For all this to happen, Mitt's gotta open his mouth. Because the media is not going to point out how wrong (and biased) they were, and how right the Republican candidate was.

And if he doesn't accept the responsibility that he took upon himself when accepting the nomination...he will have proven himself to be a loser, and not worthy of the post he campaigned so half-heartedly for.

Man up and stand up, Mitt. Or disappear completely.

Obama Executes Another General

First General Petraeus gets offed in a honey-pot "scandal", then we learn that Obama ordered the immediate removal of Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette from his command of the powerful Carrier Strike Group Three (CSG-3)in the Middle East, while Army General Carter Ham, commander of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), was abruptly relieved, for perhaps giving the order to "assist and provide intelligence for” American military forces prepping to assist the Libyan consulate on September 11th, 2012.  (See here for more information on these three dismissals).

But there was still dissent in the ranks, so the bloodshed must continue.  Obama, who values yes-men above all else, just axed one of America's few remaining highly-respected generals for...asking too many of the wrong questions. General James Mattis, time to be a good soldier and place your head in this here noose:

...it was announced that Gen. Mattis would be leaving his post in March, well short of what would be expected of a combatant commander whose has acquitted himself well in the position. Most observers were stunned. There seemed to be no logical reason for his being replaced early. But according to Tom Ricks’s blog, The Best Defense, at FP online:

Word on the national security street is that General James Mattis is being given the bum's rush out of his job as commander of Central Command, and is being told to vacate his office several months earlier than planned.

Why the hurry? Pentagon insiders say that he rubbed civilian officials the wrong way -- not because he went all "mad dog," which is his public image, and the view at the White House, but rather because he pushed the civilians so hard on considering the second- and third-order consequences of military action against Iran. Some of those questions apparently were uncomfortable. Like, what do you do with Iran once the nuclear issue is resolved and it remains a foe? What do you do if Iran then develops conventional capabilities that could make it hazardous for U.S. Navy ships to operate in the Persian Gulf? He kept saying, "And then what?"

Inquiry along these lines apparently was not welcomed -- at least in the CENTCOM view. The White House view, apparently, is that Mattis was too hawkish, which is not something I believe, having seen him in the field over the years. I'd call him a tough-minded realist, someone who'd rather have tea with you than shoot you, but is happy to end the conversation either way.

A particular point of disagreement was what to do about mischief Iran is exporting to other countries. Mattis is indeed more hawkish on this than the White House was.

National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in particular was irked by Mattis's insistence on being heard. I cringe when I hear about civilians shutting down strategic discussions...

The White House responded to Ricks’s blog post on Mattis but Ricks was unimpressed: The response “strike[s] me as politicized, defensive and narrow. These are people who will not recognize it when they screw up, and will treat as enemies anyone who tells them they are doing that. And that is how things like Vietnam get repeated.” Ricks, a supporter of the president, claims to be worried.

"King Xerxes is displeased with his generals...

...he disciplines them"

Boy, that Barack Obama certainly seems to only want generals who are answerable to him - not their nation, not it's people, nor it's constitution.

I wonder why?

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner: The Ultimate Green Fail?

Did you know that the 787 Dreamliner - recently grounded by the FAA due to unexplained battery fires - uses a lithium battery, a larger version of the little button battery that powers watches, calculators, and other inexpensive electronics?

I didn't know that either.  I also didn't know that Obama had designated the lithium battery as the energy source of choice in his future-world of  all-electric vehicles (somebody check his donor list!).  Which is why it is not surprising, given that everything Obama touches turns to sh-t, that Dreamliners are bursting into flames everywhere

Technologists and safety experts had long warned of problems with the lithium ion battery when in 2009 the president began betting billions of tax dollars that it should be the green power of choice for cars, trucks, and even aircraft.

Just three years before that, a UPS cargo plane made an emergency landing when a shipment of lithium ion batteries it was carrying caught fire. The plane landed safely but was destroyed by the ensuing conflagration.


Not the first time we've seen this...let us not forget the Chevy Volt:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said a Volt battery pack that was being monitored caught fire on Thursday, a week after it was hit in a side-impact crash test. The agency said another battery that was crash-tested recently gave off smoke and sparks. The latest fires are in addition to a battery fire at a test facility in Wisconsin back in June.


The NHTS cleared the Volt after six weeks. One wonders if they would have been so cavalier if they didn't own the company...

More:

"Lithium ion batteries just won't do the trick in the kind of mass vehicle applications that the environmental community is pushing for," said Jon Entine, founder of ESG Media Metrics, a Cincinnati-based environmental consulting firm.

"It's kind of glib environmentalism or kind of enviro-romanticism," said Entine, who is also a senior fellow at George Mason University's Center for Health and Risk.


A romantic fantasy that our president has lavished with over $1B of taxpayer money (detailed at the link).  Like squandering your inheritance - and your children's - on a whore.  It's too embarrassing to explain it, so you deny it, while secretly going into hock to get just a little more...

Me?  The next time I get on a plane, I'm gonna ask what they've got under the hood...

The Worst Line In Obama's Inaugural Speech Yesterday...

There are many candidates, but this one just sends a chill down my spine:

For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

Freedom in collectivism? Which is always - always - a result of coercion?  Even Obama realizes this, with the use of the word "requires"...

It rings a bell, doesn't it?  First, I though of the sign over Auschwitz:

"Arbeit Macht Frei” — “work sets you free”

Geez, Obama sure seems to working off the playbook of a certain ideology, doesn't he?

But perhaps it was a jarring reminder that it is, in fact, 1984:  Freedom is slavery, indeed...

Obama's holy trinity

I believe the totalitarian overtones to Obama's speech were intentional, by the way.  He has four years to rule, with no more elections to concern himself with.  He has all the flexibility he needs to fundamentally transform America into...well, see above.

People kicked themselves after World War II, when they realized Hitler laid out exactly what he was planning to unleash in Mein Kampf.  And while Obama won't be unleashing a Holocaust, he's about to unleash something which contains the roots of the same evil:  Dependence on, and worship of, The State.   Government uber alles...

Obama has warned us.  We'll have no excuses....


(If you want to read about the president's second-worst line, click the link.  Or if you want to read about the most factually ignorant thing Obama uttered yesterday, try here)

Stay Classy, Bitch: Michelle Obama Rolls Eyes At John Boehner

Starts around :06 mark...Boehner reportedly was telling the president a joke at the post-inauguration luncheon, and apparently said something that rubbed 'ol rabbit ears the wrong way:

Mmmmm...3,000 calories....

Not sure what it was that the Speaker said, but he could have been giving the weather report, and no doubt Michelle would have had the same reaction.

All of that civility talk coming from the Left? It's for the rubes. And unless we ignore the rhetoric and start responding to every toe-crunch with a ball-kick, well..then we are the rubes.

Not me, though.  As if you didn't notice the title of the post...

Inaugural 2012: Obama Babbles About Climate Change, Again...

Here's the cretin-in-chief in his Second Inaugural Address:

"We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity," Obama declared. "We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms."


Alas for those who still believe in the president's intellect, the examples he provides as evidence of climate change are the very ones that prove the opposite.

Let's look at Obama's "raging fires".  While most forest fires are started by natural causes - lightning is the biggest culprit - it is government-decreed environmental laws that have turned standard replenishing fires into infernos.  The inability of citizens or the government to clear  out dead underbrush creates a ton of dry kindling that serves as an endless supply of fire fuel, while the policy of afforestation — the establishment of trees or tree stands where none previously existed- is creating a situation known as water depletion, leading to dried out woods (and lower water supplies to fight the very same fires they cause).

Better to blame global warming, than to change deadly policy.

"Crippling drought"?  Here's a chart that will scare you:

Too bad, when put in historical context, it seems as if conditions are actually better than they were 100 years ago:

As reported by the Telegraph UK (because the US media will no longer report truths that are harmful to the liberal agenda):

According to a commonly used model of drought patterns, researchers had previously assumed that higher global temperatures were causing greater evaporation of water, and therefore more droughts.

But a more detailed analysis of weather data, including wind speed, humidity and radiation levels, found that in fact there has been "little change" in drought over the past 60 years.

Researchers from Princeton University and the Australian National University said drought was "expected to increase in frequency and severity" in the future, but added that currently used prediction methods are inaccurate.


Finally, the "powerful storms", as Obama once again tries to use Hurricane Sandy as a political prop.  Again, the overwhelming judgement of science is that we are merely in an upswing cycle, and nohing close to the frequency of storms seen back in the mid 1950's:

From Real Science, more charts that prove conclusively:

If there is a correlation between CO2 and hurricanes making landfall in the US, it is the opposite of what is predicted. As CO2 has increased, hurricanes have decreased.


Barack Obama said long ago that if elected, he would return science to its "rightful place". It seems as if he believes the proper place for science is in service of the Democratic party and the liberal agenda.  And the media, for its part, seems to agree.

It's gonna be a long four years.  If we make it that far....

Because - Before Obama - America Never Was That Type Of Place...

The article from the AP - which the villainous Yahoo! could not wait to give top billing - is a sanctimonious suck-off of the president:

What Obama wants written in the first paragraph of history is that he helped deliver a better life for the people struggling in the richest nation on earth.
His second-term agenda amounts to a wish list in support of that core idea, and this time, he is freer to define the issues...


It gets worse, as our intrepid AP reporter paints a picture even some of the president's most loyal blowjob queens would have a hard time, er, swallowing...

By the time he is sworn in again, Obama will have sworn off some of the problems he inherited.
The recession is over.


Sigh. If you say so....



(More on the unhinged bias and animosity of Yahoo News can be found here, here, here, here and here, andhere and here...and here. Oh, and here...here too...)

Ode To The Welfare State

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Via the great Michael Yon....

NYC's School Bus Strike: Illuminating, To Say The Least...

New York City spends $1.1 billion a year transporting kids to school.  That's $7K per kid.  You can probably get daily door-to-door limo service for that kind of scratch.

And with the city's revenue base shrinking (thanks to the liberal polices that its residents hold so dear), New York is trying -  justifiably -  to lower these costs, the highest in the nation,

The result? Steeeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike!

But for a change, the school bus drivers aren't claiming their doing it for the kids, they are admitting that the children of NYC are there to serve them.  Actions speak louder than words:

So much for standing up for the kids.

Not satisfied with creating hardships for scores of city children and parents by idling thousands of school buses with a strike, this Local 1181 loyalist tried to stop a different union’s bus — by diving in front of it.

Diogenes Ortiz, among dozens of Amalgamated Transit Union workers who blocked a Consolidated Bus Co. lot in The Bronx, flopped down on his back on Zerega Avenue just feet away from a departing school bus early yesterday.


Sigh.  This ugliness, too, shall pass.

But really....why even bother?

That's not me asking, by the way, that's the New York Post:

Striking bus drivers are making it hard for kids to get to school, even resorting to thuggery to stop them — but why even go, when they’re bound to find lousy teachers waiting for them when they get there?


Who once served us, we now serve.

But that was the liberal game plan all along, wasn't it?

Secret Video: Obama Meets With Advisers Prior To Issuing Gun-Control Blueprint...

Exactly as it went down:

When The Police Are The Only Ones Armed, We Become A Police State...

Paraphrased from a most excellent post by Milton Wolf, who talks about easily smashing what he calls the Democrat's dumbest gun control argument, the old "the Framers didn't write the Second Amendment with AR-15's in mind" canard.

Bang-bang, this argument is, ahem, shot down:

First of all, remind Democrats that the Framers didn't write the First Amendment with cable television, Internet communications or even the telegraph in mind. Should we limit the press's freedom of speech to the movable type printing press which was the primary means of mass communication at the time of the Framers?

The limits of the Second Amendment is a fair question that deserves an answer. It's simple: Law-abiding, free people should have the right to arm themselves with whatever weapons their government would use against them.

And pictures do speak louder than words:

More:

In fact, are not the citizens -- not the police -- always the first ones who are forced to face those dangers?

There is no justification for the public servant police to be more heavily armed than the law-abiding public they serve ... unless ... the government's intention is to be more powerful than the people.


Which brings us to the title of this post. And this:

“When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

Hitler Did Lots Of Photo Ops With Kids, Too...

Sorry, but it was the first thing that came to mind when I saw that Barack Obama surrounded himself with children of mixed races, ages, and genders as a prop to validate his use of executive power to bypass Congress  - and the Constitution  - en route to overturning the Second Amendment, and leaving all Americans disarmed before an ever-more aggressive government:

From left to right: Hinna Zeejah, 8, Taejah Goode, 10, Julia Stokes, 11, and Grant Fritz, 8, who wrote letters to President Barack Obama about the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., watch as Obama signs executive orders outlining proposals to reduce gun violence...



The AP seems to be unaware that orders aren't proposals, they're...orders.  Yid with Lid has the list of all 23, should you be interested in detailing the erosion of your freedom...

Mollie Hemingway at Ricochet is more than a bit offended:

Exploiting children for political ends is not something done by only one political party, but it's something I abhor. Today's example comes from the esteemed White House, which is not even trying to be subtle about it.

When President Obama engages in his latest bit of political theater today, he will be surrounded by KinderProps. Apparently there are adults in this world who have no problem allowing their own children to be exploited by politicians. Ugh.

And as part of the KinderProp Campaign, the White House gave the Associated Press letters from little kids pleading for gun control. Is that narrative clear enough for you?


Using kids to put a gentle face on evil is old hat (like much of what comes out of the Obama White House).  It's been done before:

Peas in a pod....

UPDATE: Ann Althouse:

...Obama is using a form of propaganda that should be considered not merely ridiculous but repulsive. For us today to see Hitler and Stalin using children is to easily perceive the absurdity of promoting a political agenda juxtaposing it to a lovely, innocent child...

I Can't Wait To See the Real Chuck Hagel !!

Jewish Democrats, and Democrats who represent Jews, are coming around to the idea of supporting the anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.  For it seems as if he has done what it necessary for him to earn Senate confirmation: he has rejected every past position he has ever held.  All neatly done in a letter to Barbara Boxer, as reported by Jonathan Tobin:

In it, he didn’t merely apologize for his bragging about standing up to the “Jewish lobby,” but also backtracked from previous stands on the U.S.-Israel alliance, the threat from Iran and even specified that he now considers Hamas and Hezbollah to be terrorist groups.

As expected, Hagel flipped on his anti-gay stance as well as his opposition to abortion rights for members of the armed services—issues that are important to the liberal Boxer. But by explicitly reversing his positions on Middle East issues that he had held throughout his years in the Senate and after he left Congress, Hagel has made it clear that he is willing to say anything necessary to win the approval of pro-Israel Democrats without whom he cannot win confirmation.


Jen Rubin feels there is a lot left unsaid:

Then there is his apology for his “Jewish lobby” remark, which his supporters have either denied or dubbed trivial. Hagel now says he apologizes for a “poor choice of words.” But Boxer apparently neglected to ask him about his even more noxious declaration that he is not the senator for Israel. Was that also a poor choice of words? Moreover, this is not a mere choice of words. Hagel said that the Jewish lobby “intimidates” lawmakers. Which lawmakers? Was he intimidated?

None of this hangs together. Nor does it answer the many questions surrounding Hagel, among them his comments warning against “isolating” Iran, his refusal to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, his belief that Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians is at the root of all the Middle East’s problems or his call for direct negotiations with Hamas.

Jen is right, of course, but it doesn't matter.  Chuck Schumer has already endorsed Hagel based on the Boxer letter refuting every past position he ever held.  Luckily for Hagel, he never tied a dog carried to the roof of his car on a road trip 20-odd years ago.  Then, he would have been disqualified.

Me, I like the fact Hagel did not apologize for his belief in a "Jewish lobby", but simply regrets his phrasing.  Expect to hear a lot about the "Zionist lobby" once Hagel is given the job to take apart America's defenses...

Here's where Jonathan Tobin is dead wrong, by the way:

There’s good reason to believe that Hagel was chosen precisely because the president privately shares some of those views that the nominee is now disavowing. But this is also a president who understands that his political capital is finite and can’t be squandered on anti-Israel grudges when there are much larger and more important battles to be fought in the next four years. The campaign against Hagel may not succeed in stopping his confirmation. But by forcing him to start talking like a neoconservative on Israel, it has demonstrated that there is a limit to how far even a re-elected Obama can go when it comes to straying from the foreign policy mainstream.

On so many levels, wrong. There is no limit to how far out of the mainstream Barack Obama can go; he's been given his "flexibility" by the American people, and the media won't hold him to account. Furthermore, this is a president who believes his political capital is infinite, and can count on the media to morph every one of his hissy fits into a story about his strong leadership and benign countenance.

Just as Obama ran on "One America" and has been the most strident partisan president in American history, Hagel is saying whatever it takes to get the Secretary of Defense post, and will freely go back on his word afterwards. Again, no one will hold him to account - not the media, not the Democrats, not the Jews.

Ah, my fellow Jews. For them it is that I want Chuck Hagel to be elevated to Secretary of Defense. Because he's gonna fustigate Israel, and defenestrate the Jews.

And it is look past time for the Jews to be protected from their continual poor choices...

Obama Dispenses, Decries "Fear"....

Barack Obama, at his press conference earlier today, talks about gun control:

Asked about the surge in gun and ammunition sales, Obama blamed "a fear that's been fanned" by opponents of gun control.

“We’ve seen—for some time now—that those who oppose any common-sense gun control or gun-safety measures have a pretty effective way of ginning up fear on the part of gun owners that somehow the federal government’s about to take all your guns away," he said.


Same press conference, different topic - the upcoming debt ceiling battle:

President Barack Obama ratcheted up pressure on congressional Republicans to authorize an increase in the nation’s debt limit, warning of potentially catastrophic results for many Americans and the overall economy if the U.S. were to default on its obligations.

“The issue here is whether or not America pays its bills,” Obama said at a press conference on Monday, the last of his first term in office. “We are not a deadbeat nation.”

And the president sought to frame the risks of default in stark terms. He warned markets would go “haywire” if Congress would not act; Obama said that interest rates would rise, and checks to Social Security beneficiaries and military veterans would cease...

I don't expect outrage at this type of mean-spirited double-talk by Barack Obama - hey, he got re-elected with it, so give the people what they want, right?

But I still find it disheartening to note that not one eyebrow is raised, not one eye is rolled, not one sigh is heaved by the political cognoscenti at this affront to basic decency, as well as to the intelligence of the American people.

Hey, I realize most of them are liberals, and most of them voted for Obama.  But an "ends justifies the means" type of shrug to this callus, indifferent behavior towards the truth only emboldens those in power further   And that, as history has proven again and again, never turns out well for anyone...




UPDATE: R.S. McCain's take on the Obama presser:

What the press corps loves about President Obama is the astonishing audacity of his lies. He doesn’t bother with tiny fibs or slight misrepresentations. No, by God, he tells massive whoppers that everyone understands to be false, but which he knows he can get away with because — like the favorite child of an over-indulgent mother — he has the smug sense of entitlement necessary to erupt in indignation if he is ever called on his lies: “How dare you notice my self-serving deceptions!”

Lady Gaga: Gun Nut? Or Dumb Slut?

Maybe this is her subtle way of telling bullied kids (her cause de jour) that the Second Amendment protects their rights to fight back?

Lady Gaga brazenly gave a whole new meaning to the term “gun rack” this weekend when the provocative pop star wore an “assault rifle” bra during a show in Canada — despite the sensitive debate over such weapons gripping the US in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.


While I am quite the strong supporter of gun rights, I think that wearing automatic weaponry as frivolous sexual accessory is a bit tasteless, especially at this date and time.  

I would understand if Lady Gaga was trying to play an anti-hero here, or throwing around some punk rock-style rebellion in an attempt to piss people off, or shake up the system.  But is seems as if  Gaga apparently signed a petition a few weeks ago demanding greater gun control.  It reads in part:

“The time has come for courage. The Courage to make our schools and workplaces, our shopping malls and movie theaters -- all the places we share every day -- safe from gun violence. The courage to stand up to the NRA -- to put human life ahead of extreme ideology. The courage to ban weapons of mass murder that at anytime, anywhere, can turn America into a killing field."


Seems like Gaga is sending mixed messages.  Or perhaps has revealed herself as a standard vacuous celebrity, paying lip service to popular causes but refuses to sacrifice anything of value to support them.  Even if that something of value is a Tommy-gun brassiere.

If the time is here for "courage", well...Lady Gaga just proved she has none.

No taste, either.

"No justice at all, except poetic justice..."

Oh - and that "poetic justice" is about to be served upon the citizens of the United States of America.  Over at the Belmont Club, we get a preview of the chaos that is coming to a 'burg near you...

...people who voted for Obama, from Alan Dershowitz to the unions on down, are feeling betrayed. They thought they were going to get the special treatment. But the system has run out of “other people’s money” already. So now it is going after their money. With the Constitution disabled — and which the supporters helped disable in the first place in the mistaken belief the raids would always be on other people — there is nothing left to protect them.

No justice at all except poetic justice.

What the future holds may be foreshadowed by events in Venezuela. Roger Noriega, writing for Foreign Policy notes that in Venezuela, the hyenas and the buzzards are now fighting over the country’s bones. “With cancer-stricken Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez clinging to life in a Havana hospital, an intense struggle for power is under way in Caracas, pitting Cuban-backed ideologues against narcogenerals.” This is where socialism, taken to its limit goes. Gangsterism.

What’s to stop them? The Venezuelan constitution is now about as unenforceable as Oliver Cromwell’s enactment of 1657 making it illegal to eat mince pies anywhere in England on Christmas Day.

Socialism is a fairy tale they tell chumps but the insiders know that money rules the roost....


And when the money runs out, there is nothing left to do but fight over what remains.  Perhaps Barack Obama is being shrewd in his constant attempts to enforce redistribution upon the American people - he knows where his policies will take us.

The president believes, however, that he & his will be safe when the streets are left to the jackals.  But Karma tends to be cruel, is immune to social status and conventional wisdom, and offers no guarantees to anyone...

Once, Dissent Was Patriotic. Now, You're A "Total Jerkface"...

Read the note, check out the headline, and skim the inane paragraph that accompanies it:

The MSN commentoriat are largely supportive, with most echoing the refrain that if you can't afford the tip, skip the trip.

But liberals are, by and large  economic illiterates.  If everyone who decided they weren't going to leave a tip, or could only afford a meager one, stayed home, a lot of these restaurants would be closing up shop.  If they are specifically asking conservatives not to eat out, then you are by and large telling 50% of the public to keep out of their establishments.  50% at least, as I am not sure the better establishments take food stamps (yet.  Perhaps, for self-esteem purposes, we can get the "poor" a monthly surf & turf allowance?)

Which would put a lot of these waiters and waitresses out of work entirely, leaving them totally unemployed instead of being stiffed out of one or two tips a shift (more likely by the "chew & screw" bunch than you average law-abiding Tea Partier).

Where this done in support of a liberal position - say, a note left in a church collection plate in lieu of cash, condemning their refusal to perform perverted nuptials - the media would be squealing in delight, instead of squealing like pigs.

But they squeal, like most animals do, out of fear.  Fear that the message sent will be received   So they label it the work of "jerkfaces", in the hope of condemning the messenger (while not actually acknowledging the message).

That's a big fail, media.  You'd don't like what I have to say, so you're gonna call me names, in the hope of shaming me into silence?

 Fuck you.

In fact, it's attacks like these that refuel my urge to continue blogging in the first place.  So the more you try to shut me up, the louder I'm gonna scream.

Bring it, bitches.  Bring it.