Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Obama grandstanded, letting Iran get away with murder
President Obama wants a unified front against Iran, and to that end he stood together with Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown in Pittsburgh on Friday morning to reveal the news about Tehran's secret facility to build bomb-grade fuel. But now we hear that the French and British leaders were quietly seething on stage, annoyed by America's handling of the announcement.
Iran, France and our foolish prince
Iran has been put on notice before. At the G8 meeting in Italy in July, Mr. Obama and other leaders set a "firm deadline" of Sep. 10 for the Iranians to make a serious offer to negotiate about their nuclear program. When the mullahs blew him off, Mr. Obama quietly extended the deadline until December.No wonder Nicolas Sarkozy holds him in contempt.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Me, me, me
I can recall no other major American speech in which the narcissism of a leader has been quite so pronounced. It might be compared to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “I shall return” -- which made it sound like MacArthur intended to reconquer the Philippines single-handedly. But MacArthur, at least, imagined himself as embodying his country, not transcending it. He did not assert that while the Japanese invasion was certainly excessive, America had been guilty of provocations of its own -- and now, in the MacArthur era, things would be finally different.
Twice in his United Nations speech, Obama dares to quote Franklin Roosevelt. I have read quite a bit of Roosevelt’s rhetoric. It is impossible to imagine him, under any circumstances, unfairly criticizing his own country in an international forum in order to make himself look better in comparison. He would have considered such a rhetorical strategy shameful -- as indeed it is.
India laments our presidency
Given the intensely and admirably egalitarian nature of the United States presidential election process, it has always been a theoretical possibility that the country will send to the White House a person inexperienced in global affairs and unequal to the international situation before him. Often this has not been the case, and incumbents have risen to the job. Sixty years ago, Harry S Truman had limited first-hand knowledge of great power bargaining but turned out to be farsighted enough to anticipate the Cold War. Mr Obama is the antithesis of this phenomenon. He is completely out of his depth and will probably leave behind a dangerous and unsure legacy. India could have done without this neophyte.
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Teaching is turning into glorified babysitting
Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams."If your parents are high school dropouts with low literacy levels and reading for pleasure is not hard-wired, it's hard to be a good role model for your children, even if you really want to be," Alexander said.
Extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per-student spending, said Jennifer Davis, a founder of the program. It received more than $17.5 million from the state Legislature last year.
School that posted fawning Obama video also
The drill, aimed at testing the reactions of faculty and first responders during a simulated attack, included an imaginary scenario that has some Christians up in arms.
ACORN leaders milked system
Former ACORN bigwig Dale Rathke racked up a $157,000 American Express bill that he couldn't repay around the time he was caught embezzling from the group founded by his brother Wade, The Post has learned.American Express filed a claim against Rathke in 2003 in Louisiana civil district court.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Keeping your doctor
This flowchart may seem daunting at first, but think of it this way. Could you get a tax return process into a single page and have the font be anything above microscopic? Of course not. Just suck it up, you taxpaying weenies — and don’t forget to hire H&R Block to represent you in the health-care process.
Death panels by proxy
Yes, there are death panels. Its members won't even know whose deaths they are causing. But under the health care bill sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, Montana Democrat, death panels will indeed exist - oh so cleverly disguised as accountants.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Michelle says he is a "lazy fool"
Michelle even described her husband's election to the Senate in their home state of Illinois as a 'costly waste of time' - when he could be earning 'real money' at a major law firm. At the time, she insisted, they were 'as poor as church mice', and she was 'one very unhappy mouse'.He was, his wife maintains, not just 'a fool' but 'a lazy fool'.
Swine flu vaccine concerns
A warning that the new swine flu jab is linked to a deadly nerve disease has been sent by the Government to senior neurologists in a confidential letter.GBS attacks the lining of the nerves, causing paralysis and inability to breathe, and can be fatal.
Don't resent it if you work hard and your $$ go to someone else
(CNSNews.com) - By 2012, nearly $1 trillion from the top 30 percent of American families will be redistributed among the bottom 70 percent if Obama’s proposals on taxes, health care, and climate change become law, according to the Tax Foundation.
“Even if none of Obama’s policies becomes law, the extent of income redistribution is remarkable,” Scott Hodge, president of the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, said. “The top-earning 40 percent of families will transfer $826 billion to the bottom 60 percent in 2012.”
Under the Obama plan, 70 percent of American families as a group -- those earning less than $109,460 -- will receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes, Hodge said.
More fallout on the Obama jungen video
News aggregator DrudgeReport.com is currently linking to a YouTube video of a government schoolteacher instructing young students to praise Obama in song. While this is shocking, there is an even bigger story here. Consider this: the video's "views" counter listed only 363 views as of 1:04 p.m. EST on Sept. 24.
But at the same time it had 2,279 comments.
What's wrong with this picture?
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Ugh...nanny state Michigan has $$ to ruin babysitter
. A West Michigan woman says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors' children.
Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.
The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors' kids, or face the consequences.
The speech
Who wrote President Obama's speech for the start of the UN General As sembly yesterday -- Rodney King? You know, the guy whose videotaped run-in with cops sparked the 1992 LA riots, leading King to ask: "Can't we all just get along?"Except that Obama is supposed to be the wise leader of the Free World.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Obscene
Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe writes to comment on the Obama administration's announced abandoment last week of the so-called Third Site of missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic. Claremont Institute President Brian Kennedy addressed the subject in the Wall Street Journal Asia column "Obama's strategic confusion." Kennedy writes: "The cancellation of the Third Site demonstrates the Obama administration's complete confusion over strategic defense." Professor Rahe argues that it also suggests Obama's peculiar animus against friends of the United States, if not the United States itself:
Ugh. It's unbearable
Then there is the catalogue of Mr. Obama's embarrassing moments on the world stage, a list which includes: giving England's Queen Elizabeth II an iPod with his speeches on it; giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a collection of DVDs that were not formatted to the European standard (by contrast, Mr. Brown gave Mr. Obama an ornamental desk-pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, among other historically significant gifts); calling "Austrian" a language; bowing to the Saudi king; releasing a photo of a conference call with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which the president was showing the soles of his shoes to the camera (an Arab insult); saying "let me be absolutely clear.
Israel is a strong friend of Israel's"; saying the United States was "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world"; suggesting Arabic translators be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan where Arabic is not a native language; sending a letter to French President Jacques Chirac when Nicolas Sarkozy was the president of France; holding a town-hall meeting in France and not calling on a single French citizen; and referring to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when he meant Cinco de Mayo. Also of note was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a "reset" button with the Russian word for "overcharge."
More contradictions
Passing a bill that hasn't been written yet
Senate staffers, the true veterans, are cynical and truly difficult to shock simply because they’ve seen it all — personal and political implosions, outrages, bad behavior and the worst motivations.But this, this shocked even the veterans.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Obama plays while Georgia drowns
It's over four years since Hurricane Katrina and the left is still whining about George W. Bush and FEMA.
Yet as Just a Grunt noted this morning, parts of Georgia have been hit by massive flooding with at least six people killed by surging water.
Barack Obama showed his deep concern for the citizens of Georgia by cracking some lame jokes with the gap-toothed moron last night and playing basketball today.
Massive tax on health care coming
The elderly were the first group to turn against President Obama’s health-care pro posals, alienated by the plans to cut $500 billion cut from Medicare. The young and the uninsured may be the next to jump ship — out of worry over about the huge premiums they’d have to pay.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Another day, another, um, lie
In her speech, Mrs. Obama also told the story of how her daughter Sasha would not stop crying when she was 4 months old. A doctor’s visit revealed she might have meningitis; she ultimately did not, but the illness produced a scare.Obviously a good thing the kid didn't have meningitis.
However, as an sharp-eyed Just a Grunt alerted me to, just last Thursday, Mrs. Obama's husband told a completely different story. Pay attention at the 2:40 mark.
Tucson schools promote race based discipline
The board is calling for a two-tiered form of student discipline. One for Black and Hispanic students; one for everyone else.The happy-face edu-speak notwithstanding, what the Tucson Unified School District board of governors has approved this summer is a race-based system of discipline.
Military waiting for Obama to read report submitted in August
But Obama's deliberative pace — he has held only one meeting of his top national security advisers to discuss McChrystal's report so far — is a source of growing consternation within the military. "Either accept the assessment or correct it, or let's have a discussion," one Pentagon official said. "Will you read it and tell us what you think?" Within the military, this official said, "there is a frustration. A significant frustration. A serious frustration."
The military thinks the White House might want to throw McChrystal under the bus; the White House thinks the military is pushing Obama too hard on troop levels. The next few weeks will be a fraught period for civil-military relations.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Obama stripping weapons from our defense
Barack Obama has demanded the Pentagon conduct a radical review of US nuclear weapons doctrine to prepare the way for deep cuts in the country's arsenal, the Guardian can reveal.Obama has rejected the Pentagon's first draft of the "nuclear posture review" as being too timid, and has called for a range of more far-reaching options consistent with his goal of eventually abolishing nuclear weapons altogether, according to European officials.
Those options include:
• Reconfiguring the US nuclear force to allow for an arsenal measured in hundreds rather than thousands of deployed strategic warheads.
Breibart strikes again?
Andrew Breitbart, a driving force behind the recent revelations of ACORN’s utter lawlessness, is promising a “blockbuster” from “left field” next week. Speculation is rampant: what will it be?Keep reading and it may just become obvious.
Let’s start with Ace, who notes:
Peh. Right
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you're not committing to -- to cut off the federal funding?
Why won't the administration investigate ACORN?
*ACORN is rooted in extreme far-left activism that wants to shut down the US government by overwhelming it with demands for welfare benefits and other forms of assistance.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Madeline Albright: ambassador to the world
Madeleine Albright said during the meeting that America no longer had the intention of being the first nation of the world. [SNIP]
Time magazine schemes
As we noted yesterday when news broke aboutTime Magazine’s cover story on Glenn Beck, the image used is from a photo shoot last year by Jill Greenberg.It’s an interesting choice. Greenberg is known for her liberal views – and she’s being very upfront about her use of this opportunity to take revenge on those who attacked her.
Greenberg brought up the cover on Twitter (she goes by the ironic handle @JillManipulator). Here’s her comment:
exactly a year after my right wing attack, i am retouching one of my attackers for a magazine cover. leaving blemishes of course.