Mark Twain wrote, “Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” Michelle obviously has never read Twain or else she figures Affirmative Action is a free-pass on international journalism as well.

At first glance, I thought the article was a hoax, but US News & World Report, doesn’t have the personality or wit to do satire. The article was real, Michelle was making an appeal for teachers and trying to explain the importance of quality instruction in the classroom. Fair enough, this is simple, how could anyone screw this up. Everyone knows we need good teachers, it is commonly referred to as a “no brainer.” Unfortunately, Michelle took the distinction literally.

The first sentence that caught my attention was: “My girls are making new friends, tackling challenging new subjects, and moving closer to becoming the strong, confident women I knew they could be.” Hmm, interesting complex sentence structure, there are several errors, “tackling challenging,” a common error. Overuse and misuse of the comma, oh well, another common error. The phrase, “confident women I knew they could be,” oh well, she would have flunked the journalism assignment for that week, but hardly worth becoming excited.

I read on with an open mind, was I in for a surprise. I was about to read creative writing or perhaps I should say creative punctuation, syntax, and grammar that is unique to the English language. Read the rest of this entry »

Ward Churchill (remember him?) references the book, Smallpox and the American Indian, during his testimony in his civil suit against the University of Colorado at the City and County Building in Denver, Colorado March 23, 2009. Churchill is suing the University of Colorado for wrongful termination.
AP photo.

Today, I picked up 2 kids I carpool to the gymnastics club from their magnet school, as I do every Monday. Apparently, there was no mention about Columbus Day. Nada. Zippo. Nothing negative or positive. But they did watch a performance by dancers dressed like Mayan/Aztec Indians; and the older one said it was “Latino Heritage month”.

This school was closed for Yom Kippur (where 99% of the kids are black and Hispanic). But they were open today, with no mention of Columbus, but did celebrate “Latino heritage”. Oooookaaay…..

I’m recognizing my country, less and less, as time wears on…. Read the rest of this entry »

From Lorie Byrd:

Not like “the Chin” didn’t get a Rush free market 101 lesson earlier this year:

Lorie writes in her post:

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So the Obama Administration has prepared what can only be described as a liberal propaganda video, tempered with some vaguer platitudes yet sprinkled with every color in the ethnic rainbow, and spiced with sage wisdom about “the united funk of funkadelica”, trading in “obnoxious” cars for hybrids, and not flushing after going pee-pee.  And our kids will be forced to view it during school next week.

It also includes Obama-mantras about “being the change” (whatever that means).  Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers actually pledges “my service to Barack [kisses one bicep] Obama [kisses the other bicep].”  The video ends with the group of celebs pledging to be “a servant to the president and to all mankind.”  All the celeb video screens then morph into the iconic poster of President Obama.

For the custodians’ sake, let’s hope they show the video before lunch.

Truth be told, buried in the 4-minute video are some good things about being nice and helping neighbors and the needy in our communities.  But to my knowledge, no one has asked for equal time to present alternatives.

So I will fill the void.  If I knew how to work the equipment, I’d make my own video.  Since I don’t, here is a pledge that I’d prefer our children take: Read the rest of this entry »

We have known for many many years that the left has infiltrated our schools, especially at the university level, and have made life difficult for kids…or for that matter teachers…who have a conservative bent. But this is just creepy. It’s a letter from the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan letting our K6 and under kids know that Obama will be speaking to them on September 8th:

The President will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning. He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens.

Millions of kids will be stopping their day to sit down and listen to this speech.

Now that, in itself, is not THAT creepy, well kinda…but this is:

Things get downright disconcerting when one eyeballs the federally approved lesson plans that the Department of Education has cooked up to support the president’s speech. The preK-6 lesson plans, which were developed with federal funds, devised on taxpayer time, and made available on the Department of Education’s website, exhort teachers to extend the impact of the president’s speech by having students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” This clumsy bit of cheerleading shows no awareness that ”help[ing] the president” might be construed as an invitation to engage in advocacy rather than instruction or that it might worry those who are not Obama partisans. What’s truly remarkable, however, given recent concerns about intrusive federal government this past month, is the lesson plan’s directive that “these [letters] would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.” Read the rest of this entry »

Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt

Future National Service Volunteers:

Michelle Malkin and Glen Beck dissect this volunteer debacle that comes with a 6 BILLION dollar price tag. That is in addition to the 7.3 Trillion tax payer tab:

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VOTE FOR CHANGE (vote for the same people who controlled Congress, but ‘change’ somehow…still).

I know I’ve joked that people who voted for Obama were misguided, duped, or even delusional (bent on denying reality in favor of irrational aspirations). I’ve said that people expect Democrats to “turn the clouds to cotton candy, the rivers will flow with chocolate, and groves of gumdrop trees will blanket the good green Earth.” To all those who thought I was reaching with that analogy, rest assured people actually HOPE for it still. They hope rather than face the reality that Barack Obama and the modern Democratic Party have played on people’s fears far worse than Bush ever did, and they’ve deliberately misled people with pie-in-the-sky dreams/delusions. Now, to be fair, Obama never specifically promised cotton candy clouds, or an end to war, or whatever, but gosh…where DID people get those ideas? From Obama’s opponents? Yeah, that’s it. Some new grand Haliburton/Jolly Rancher C-O-N-Spiracy!

End war, forever. Make the planet greener. Please help my dad find work. Make it rain candy!
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Once again the GOP is licking it’s wounds from another election loss. Recovering from this loss has been the focus of conservative politicians and pundits. But what many pundits do not realize is that there is another battle raging in the country that the GOP has been losing for decades. The battle has been over the culture of America. And if you think the two battles are not linked, think again.

Conservativism and the Religious Right has been effectively demonized in the popular culture while liberalism has effectively been mainstreamed into our TV sets and newspapers. And politics is nothing but perception. The real battle is not in the polls but in the courts, schools, media, and popular culture. And the Republican party has surrendered too many of these battlefields to the enemy. This does nothing but help us to lose elections.

The Problem: Politics vs. Perception

To the surprise of many conservative Catholics, twice of many Catholics voted for obama then McCain, despite Obama’s very pro-abortion record. This trend, if it continues, could spell death for the Conservative movement. And why is this the case? Well, the image of conservatives have defectively suffered. It’s leadership has lacked the ability to define itself, and thus allowed the liberals to do it for them in a negative light and thus claim the moral high ground, This is relatively the same as having Saddam Hussein sit in the Human Rights commission. (which is not too far off from others that have been in that seat) So what is a good conservative to do? Read the rest of this entry »

Education spending went up- way up- since this president took Oval Office (much to the consternation of this center-right blogger)…but are the more “Books not Bombs” liberals happy about his dramatic increased spending and bipartisan attempts at education reform through No Child Left Behind and Reading First Program? Do they hold Ted Kennedy accountable for any of their derision? Noooooo. Senator Kennedy, by the way, as the ranking minority member of the education committee and later chairman, opposed Bush’s idea of giving publicly-funded school vouchers for children to attend private schools (and have the same opportunities as Malia and Sasha).

President Bush in good faith has attempted to help all children of all stripes and colors (I’m sure that’s what MLK would have wanted, right?); but most especially, his No Child Left Behind and faith-based initiatives were aimed to benefit those underprivileged and impoverished.

I want to make sure I don’t leave any liberal behind; although I am hampered here, by a soft bigotry of low expectations regarding the ability of any BDSer to lift the wool over their eyes:

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“Author and Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago.” is how they describe this terrorist.

Imagine the outrage if a conservative rag gave space to say a abortion clinic bomber. Oh boy, the skies would of been lit up. But hey, throw up a Weather Underground member who once spoke about bringing this country to its knees via terrorism and its no problem.

Looking at the piece you read how the terrorist rails against Bush for daring to institute some kind of testing of school qualification. My favorite part has to be when he muses on who he would pick for cabinet positions in a Obama Presidency:

So I would have picked Darling-Hammond, but then again I would have picked Noam Chomsky for state, Naomi Klein for defense, Bernardine Dohrn for Attorney General, Bill Fletcher for commerce, James Thindwa for labor, Barbara Ransby for human services, Paul Krugman for treasury, and Amy Goodman for press secretary. So what do I know?

Real winner eh?

It’s basically the same old tired screed of needing more taxpayers money, grades are bad, and tests are evil:

Educators, students, and citizens must press now for an education worthy of a democracy, including an end to sorting people into winners and losers through expensive standardized tests which act as pseudo-scientific forms of surveillance; an end to starving schools of needed resources and then blaming teachers and their unions for dismal outcomes; and an end to the rapidly accumulating “educational debt,” the resources due to communities historically segregated, under-funded and under-served. All children and youth in a democracy, regardless of economic circumstance, deserve full access to richly-resourced classrooms led by caring, qualified and generously compensated teachers.

Well, I guess we can welcome in the era of Obama where terrorists have influence in the White House and society formally recognizes and legitimizes them enough to accept media coverage and commentary from them.

Barack Obama…the gift that keeps on giving:

During the just-concluded campaign, Mr. Obama spoke dismissively of the federally funded voucher program that gives poor D.C. families access to the kind of educational opportunities his family is fortunate to have. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program gives low-income families up to $7,500 per child for their children to escape failed public schools and attend private schools. Some 1,900 children receive vouchers, and many more are clamoring to join the program. Democrats, and their allies in public school teachers unions, oppose the vouchers and, with the party soon to control Congress and the White House, supporters of the program are right to worry.

“Spoke dismissively of the federal funded voucher program,” a program that would allow those too poor to send their kids to private schools a chance at getting their kids out of a public school that does a better job of teaching kids that they need to be in a gang rather then out of one.

And as all good liberals do, they tell us all to do as they say, not as I do:

ABC News can report that the Obamas have selected Sidwell Friends for their daughters Sasha and Malia to attend.

Sidwell is where Chelsea Clinton attended school during the Clinton administration.

“A number of great schools were considered,” said Obama Transition Team aide Katie McCormick Lelyveld. “In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now.”

Hey, not knocking them for wanting the best for their kids. I mean for a man who has written a few books and made lots of money off of them….accomplished next to nothing in the political world until he found that using the color of his skin and some oratory skills got him the White House, he deserves to send those kids to best schools available right?

But what about those poor folks he likes to talk about? Why is it they can’t be allowed to make the same choice? Spread the wealth and all…..

Nope…no wealth spreading here. The regular, bitter, folks don’t get to choose the schools to send their kids to. But he does. And what does the press, Democrat’s, and the teachers unions do for him? they say its all a-ok because well, its a special case, him being a President and all.

Democratic Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack echoed Weingarten’s comments at the conference, telling CNSNews.com… that “it’s a very personal decision” that the president-elect and his wife need to make and the issue “should not be subject to criticism or comment.”

~~~

The AFT endorsed Obama for president in July. On the campaign trail, Obama spoke out against school choice and vouchers for children in households of any income level. Still, when asked if the Obamas should send their children to public school, Weingarden said “none of us” can relate to being in the position of president of the United States.

“Look, none of us knows what it’s like to be a president of the United States of America or a president-elect,” she said. “I think Senator Obama and his wife have every right to make a decision that works for their family and their kids, and none of us should criticize it.”

Feel the love yet?

But hey, at least he is being consistent. He has hired pretty much every Clinton associate on the planet, might as well send his kids to the same school as the Clinton’s kid.

In the weeks before the election, I noticed a growing number of my fellow citizens wearing Obama’s face on their t-shirts, usually in the spirit of socialist realism art. There’s not a politician alive who I admire enough to the point of worshipful adoration that I’d sport his likeness on my clothing or plaster it all over the wordsmobile (I do, however, wear my FA t-shirts with pride and enthusiastically tell people it’s a right-wing website when asked).

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