Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Repeat after me, children: 'I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama'


Michelle Malkin points us to another story of student indoctrination by leftist drones. In Salt Lake City, parents are up in arms.

Children at Eagle Bay Elementary School in Farmington were shown a short video called “I pledge” on Aug. 28. The video opens with an image of President Barack Obama and part of a speech in which he says, “Let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.” The video then features celebrities making pledges about how they will help the president and the world — and that’s where some say the problem lies...

...Gayle Ruzicka, president of conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said the video was blatantly political. She said other offensive pledges included, “I pledge to be of service to Barack Obama,” “I pledge allegiance to the funk, to the united funk of funkadelica,” and pledges to not use plastic grocery bags and not flush the toilet after urinating.

“It’s very inappropriate to show a radical, leftist propaganda piece that political to children,” Ruzicka said...

No more inappropriate than Obama's bizarre, post-election use of ubiquitous iconography... his collection of "fishy" information on citizens... his administration's insistence on student indoctrination by teachers and peers...

And Democrats claim there is no cult of personality?

Child, please.


Divine Harley


Papa B with a classic:

A man was riding his Harley along a California beach when suddenly the sky clouded above his head....

In a booming voice, the Lord said, "Because you have tried to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish." The biker pulled over and said, "Build a bridge to Hawaii so I can ride over anytime I want." The Lord said, "Your request is materialistic. Think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking; the supports required to reach to bottom of the Pacific and the concrete and steel it would take! It will nearly exhaust several natural resources. I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time, and think of something that could possibly help mankind."

The biker thought about it for a long time. Finally, he said, "Lord, I wish that I, and all men, could understand our wives; I want to know how she feels inside, what she's thinking when she gives me the silent treatment, why she cries, what she means when she says nothing's wrong, and how I can make my woman truly HAPPY."

And the Lord replied......

"You want two lanes or four on that bridge?"


Why women live longer than men: a photo essay, part II


Window cleaning... made simple!

It's the Do-it-yourself Diving Board Kit, from Blam-O!

Nothing can possibly go wrong with sharp pointy objects used as fasteners.

Spotless bathrooms are overrated.

Danger: Hard-sombrero zone!

Human bungee cords are smart bungee cords!

Pickup trucks? We don't need no steenkin' pickup trucks!

The serenity of a cool, shady spot -- a place to relax and decompress.

Joe's Discount Construction: Quality in Every Inferior Job We Do!


Related: The original "Why women live longer than men: a photo essay."

I've got mail!


In reference to this post:


"We're sorry": Obama voters have regrets

K writes:

I figured I should probably send in my apology as well. I'm 19 so it was my first time voting for anyone. And OH how it blew up in my face.


Thanks for the note, K. And remember: vote the straight Republican ticket until Democrats throw out the anti-American, hard left Soros-ites and return to the party of JFK*.



* Pro-defense, supply-side Democrats.

Larwyn's Linx: Behold the Power of 'Redistributive Change'!

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

Obama’s classroom campaign: No junior lobbyist left behind: Malkin
Obama and ‘Redistributive Change’: Hanson
The Re-Framing of 9/11: SIGIS

Obama campaign plans to fight “Right Wing Domestic Terrorists": STACLU
Stupidity, Schooling, and the Take-Over of America’s Culture: Sayet
Why liberals use insults and illogic: BigPic

About that public option...: Hewitt
Disrupting Town Halls for ObamaCare: AT (Lifson)
Daily Kos has uplifiting news... for GOP: Powers

Economy

Dems behind the decline of manufacturing: PJM (Pope)
Murthaville, the city that pork built: TNR
Another brain-dead idea from the AFL-CIO: PJM (Kimball)

Author: U.S. will take 'a long time' to recover: Stacy McCain
Solitaire-playing lawmakers defend their “momentary diversion”: Malkin
Quote of the day: Hot Air

Media

Beware of the Bogus MSM Health Care Bashing Studies : AIP (Hoft)
State-Run Media Hypocrisy Alert: Suddenly a Politician's College Thesis Becomes Important Issue: GWP
ABC Glamorizes German City With No Cars; Model for America? : NewsBusters

Media Stunned as ObamaCare Unravels: PJM (Rubin)
What Dear Leader asks of every student: Exurban

Climate & Energy

Kerry: Global Warming is the next 9/11: BlogProf
Harmony: Steam Valve
Pass John Kerry's Cap-and-Tax Bill or Your Puppy Will Die: LegalIns

CarbonGate: Britain facing blackouts for first time since 1970s: Telegraph
The Math don't lie: Only nuclear power will suffice: GRW
Boxer, Kennedy delay bill to stop "next 9/11": BlogProf

The Growing Need for Nuclear Energy: JPC

World

Suicide of the West: Sowell
Prisoners have a better diet than Health Service hospital patients, scientists warn: Daily Mail (UK)
Eric Holder Had No Comment: INN

SciTech

Global Mobile Vendors Face Stringent Security Testing: TMCnet

Cornucopia

What to do in an emergency: SafeNow
Auto-Tune the News #6: Barely Political

Students should ask "themselves about what they can do to help the president"


President Obama plans to give a speech on September 8th to all schoolchildren in the country. Michelle Malkin:

ServiceWire has the announcement and broadcast schedule for the speech... [and] teachers’ manuals pegged to Obama’s address, which have now been linked on Drudge... have a heavy activist bent...

The document is eerie. Entitled, "Obama's speech to K-12, PreK-6 Menu of Classroom Activities", it includes the following missives:

Extension of the Speech: Teachers can extend learning by having students

Create posters of their goals. Posters could be formatted in quadrants or puzzle pieces or trails marked with the labels: personal, academic, community, country. Each area could be labeled with three steps for achieving goals in those areas. It might make sense to focus on personal and academic so community and country goals come more readily.

Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals.

...Interview and share about their goals with one another to create a supportive community.

...Participate in School wide incentive programs or contests for students who achieve their goals.

...Write about their goals in a variety of genres, i.e. poems, songs, personal essays.

...Create artistic projects based on the themes of their goals.

...Graph student progress toward goals.

In other words, have teachers and peers judge students based upon their conformance to the President's instructions.

Funny, I don't remember moving to Venezuela.


Updates: "Children's Crusade" and "We don't need no thought control."


Tuesday, September 01, 2009

RED ALERT: White House plans massive spidering operation of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. looking for detractors


Yesterday, The National Legal and Policy Center discovered an extremely troubling solicitation from the White House.

As if the administration's media specialists aren't in enough trouble -- collecting "fishy" email information on citizens, for instance -- a recent RFQ raises new and troubling questions.

NLPC has uncovered a plan by the White House New Media operation to hire a technology vendor to conduct a massive, secret effort to harvest personal information on millions of Americans from social networking websites... The targeted sites include Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others – any space where the White House “maintains a presence.”

Note that this is the third troubling development related to White House new media operations. The first controversy erupted after the administration began collecting information on critics of the Obama health care transformation program. The second related to spam emails sent by David Axelrod, an Obama senior adviser.

Now the White House intends to harvest vast amounts of data on American citizens who use social networking sites. The scope of the program as described in the RFQ is astounding:

Capture of comments by detractors and supporters of Obama: the RFQ specifies that the White House will capture "comments by both Obama critics and supporters, with no restriction as to how the White House would use the information."

Transparency: there is none. The RFQ includes "extremely broad secrecy terms preventing the vendor from disclosing to the public or the media what information is being captured and archived (page 7, “Restriction Against Disclosure”)";

Collection of data on citizens: the RFQ prescribes a massive data collection effort including capturing of comments on any website or social networking service;

Collection of any and all types of content: text, markup, graphics, video, audio, etc.

Think the NLPC is overstating things? Read the salient details in the request for quote (RFQ) and judge for yourself:

The contractor shall provide the necessary services to capture, store, extract to approved formats, and transfer content published by EOP on publicly-accessible web sites, along with information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP offices under PRA maintains a presence, throughout the term of the contract.... The contractor shall include in the information posted by non-EOP persons on publicly-accessible web sites where the EOP maintains a presence both comments posted on pages created by EOP and messages sent to EOP accounts on those web sites. Publicly-accessible sites may include, but are not limited to social networking sites. The contractor shall provide a user-friendly way of organizing and searching captured information...

...Capture of comments and publicly-visible tags posted by users on publicly-accessible websites on which an EOP component subject to the PRA maintains a presence. Vendor must be able to either:
(i) Capture all comments posted to a list of websites provided to vendor; or
(ii) Capture a sample of comments posted to a list of websites provided to vendor, according to a sampling methodology that will be provided to vendor and approved by EOP.

This RFQ is an outrage.

And this administration appears to be completely out of control.

Obama makes Nixon look like a rank amateur.


Update: "Back in the USSA" and "If the Bush White House had let a contract like this one."

Update II: AlinskyRules describes why this is such a big deal. Specifically, the White House is legally prohibited from collecting this information. Period.

...specifically, the The Privacy Act of 1974 prohibits any Federal Agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) and the Coalition for Urban Renewal and Education (CURE) have filed suit in the District of Columbia Federal Court against the White House over flag@whitehouse.gov and its successor, the linked "reality check" internet reporting Form...

...[It] was passed after the Nixon administration used federal agencies to illegally investigate individuals for political purposes. Enacted after Richard Nixon's resignation in the Watergate scandal, the statute prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.

Hat tip: Mitchell Blatt. Linked by: Memeorandum, Double-plus Undead, Fausta, Nice Deb and MediaSplatters. Thanks!

August Nominees for the 2009 Contractor Awards

















Related: 2008 Contractor Awards.
January 2009 Nominees
February 2009 Nominees
March 2009 Nominees
June 2009 Nominees
July 2009 Nominees

West Hollywood, California -- Circa 2019


By 2019, I figure the environmental nutjobs running California will have gotten their way:
  • Brownouts and blackouts as the electric grid falters under cap-and-trade restrictions on energy production
  • No pollution from automobiles as the few remaining cars -- electric, mind you -- take the fragile grid down
  • a state government bankrupted by illegal immigration and unchecked salaries and benefits forpublic sector union employees can't help the neediest citizens
So this is how I see things turning out:


Look on the bright side: we'll all be very thin from our diets of grass and leaves.

Obama slashes Medicare in 2010 for Heart, Cancer Docs -- Media Silent


You didn't read this in your local paper, but 2010 could be a catastrophic year for elderly heart and cancer patients. Bloomberg News reports that President Obama has proposed cutting $1.4 billion in Medicare payments to heart and cancer specialists.

An Obama administration plan to cut Medicare payments to heart and cancer doctors by $1.4 billion next year is generating a backlash that’s undermining the president’s health-care overhaul.

...The proposal by Medicare, the government insurer for the elderly and disabled, is an effort by Obama to focus U.S. medicine on preventive care.

...The cuts could have the unintended consequence of rationing care, especially in rural regions with a large number of Medicare patients, doctors said...

Some oncologists in rural areas may stop offering chemotherapy in the office, forcing patients to travel to more- distant hospitals...

Gee, grandpa, I sure hope President Obama's Politburo-style, central planning commission gets all of these delicate decisions right.

And while Obama and his Democrat allies in Congress try to ram a multi-trillion, socialized medicine program down the throats of the American people, the separate 2010 Medicare spending proposal has received almost no media attention. Announced July 1, it proposes to slash reimbursements to cardiologists and oncologists by more than 10% each.

Consider, for a moment, that the number of American senior citizens (65 and over) is soaring and medical specialists were already projected to be in short supply. In fact, the Census Bureau predicts that the number of seniors will more than double from 40.2 million in 2010 to 81.2 million in 2040.

These disastrous government policies are certain to hurt seniors.

It's a real pity that the mainstream media couldn't find time to cover this story, although I'm sure Ezekiel Emanuel is pleased.



Hat tip: Mark Levin. Linked by: Gateway Pundit and Hot Air. Thanks!

Larwyn's Linx: Death of the Individual

Have a great link you'd like me to review? Drop me an email or reply via Twitter.

Nation

The Death of the Individual: Doc Zero
Rationing Czar Ezekiel Emanuel: U.S. has too much health care: BlogProf
Chris Dodd continues to hide his health care bill: WSJ

Obama's Next Big Push: AT (Cary)
Why Dems don't dare cross the trial lawyers: Examiner
HR3200 - Day 2 (Enhanced Penalties): LegalIns

White House sued for fishy email program: AT
Retail Health Clinics: Free Market Bending the Cost Curve: Verum
Prince of Lies: AT (Griffing)

Economy

I'm not sure whether this is right...: Power Line
Obama's lobbyist curbs are political, watchdog told: Times
Health Care Bill's $10 Billion Union Health Care Subsidy: BizzyBlog

Media

American Royalty: Crittenden
Profit is Theft: Double Plus Undead
The end to two grim fairy tales: Lucianne

Sunday Times: TigerHawk
MSNBC Hosts Can't Defend Krazy Keith: JWF
Top Ten Other Reasons David Brooks So Enthuses Over Obama: Ace

Two sides of Hope and Change: Wizbang
Taking Conor Freakin'Dork To A Higher Level: Riehl

Climate & Energy

$3 million bribery scheme in the Chevron-Ecuador Environmental Lawsuit: BMW
Cap-and-trade can’t bridge gap between unions and enviros: Examiner
Boston Globe: Kennedy's Gone, So Hurry Up With That Cape Cod Wind Farm: BlogProf

World

A Heroic Death, Without the Headlines: WaPo
Trading a Terrorist for Oil: What Did Barack Obama Know?: PJM (Radosh)
Naomi Wolf Discovers That Shrouds Are Sexy: PJM (Chesler)

Syria Responds To Obama Outreach By Lighting Up Iraq: MereRhetoric
What 100,000 Hamas Campers Did This Summer: Learn To Kill: Elder
'We need more helicopters': Yon

SciTech

Don't let a president turn off the Internet.: Examiner

Cornucopia

Carrie Prejean sues Miss California pageant for religious discrimination: GWP
Extreme Car Stunts: IZI
We Should Train Our Politicians Like We Train Our Dogs: PJM (Fleming)

Monday, August 31, 2009

Party of Hope, Change and Beatdowns


So it begins. President Obama's paid thugs are now routinely assaulting taxpayers as directed by their leader. Remember?

Obama to ACORN: "They Bring a Knife...We Bring a Gun"

Obama to his organizers: "Get in Their Faces!"

Obama's Alabama-area OFA organizer: "We're not looking for a fight. That will come later, when we have an army."

Obama discussing ACORN support: "I don't want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I'm angry!"

Obama to his paid ACORN mercenaries (on the taxpayer dime, no less): "Hit Back Twice As Hard"

In Tucson, over 1,000 anti-socialized medicine protesters peacefully assembled, quietly listening to speakers until an anti-free speech thug disrupted the meeting.

The man entered the meeting shouting, screaming and shaking a sign.

The crowd was shocked.

When a man asked him to stop shouting and leave, the thug elbowed him in the face.

It looks like a clear-cut case of assault and battery to me.

A police officer removed the man from the meeting.

In Georgia, another pro-ObamaCare thug had to be threatened with a taser by police before he was arrested for threatening senior citizens peacefully protesting against socialized medicine.





Consider: this is happening now, a little more than a year before the midterm elections and three years from the Presidential election.

And the precedent for tolerating voter intimidation at the polls has been set.

Folks, I'll be frank.

I don't have a good feeling about this.