“His Q&A w/ 6th-graders just before this was behind closed doors. Seriously.”
Jammie says the TelePrompters were set up in the classroom for the press not the kids.
And why was that?
Because he was introducing a program that paves the way for a Federal curriculum, as Dan Riehl’s commenter poiinted out:
What is even more disturbing than the need to whip TOTUS out to talk to school kids is the purpose of Obama’s visit to that school. He was announcing his desire to put billions more into his program “Race to the Top” (RttT in Obamaland cutespeak) and also create a means for school districts to bypass the authority of their State Boards of Education in order to apply for federal RttT funds. What is so disturbing about this? One of the requirements of winning this federal grant money is that local school districts must contractually agree to adopt federal curriculum guidelines, even those that have not yet been defined by the Obama Administration. Yup….the federal core curriculum issue rears its ugly head again. Obama created the local school district bypass to these federal dollars in response to Rick Perry’s decision for Texas to opt out. Obama can’t stand Perry and the State of Texas….and was not about yield the chess board.
Big Guy is actually thinking that now that he’s won the Nobel, he might take a call from the Dalai Lama now that theDalai is his almost his equal. I say “almost” because, the Lama won his for bringing world attention to the plight of the Tibetan people. That’s not quite as great an effort as the one Big Guy exerted to draw world attention to himself.
Chicago Out of Running to Host 2016 Olympics
COPENHAGEN, Oct. 2 – Chicago was eliminated after the first round of voting on contenders to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, leaving Rio, Madrid and Tokyo to contend for the bid.
Chicago was hoping to become the first U.S. city to host the Summer Games since Atlanta in 1996 and the first to host any Olympics since Salt Lake City hosted the Winter Games in 2002.
The city of Chicago was eliminated in the first round of voting for the 2016 Summer Games, in a blow to President Barack Obama.
President Obama lent the full force of the White House to the effort and flew to Copenhagen overnight to deliver a 7-minute speech to the IOC Friday morning. In addition, Michelle Obama spent much of this week in Copenhagen personally lobbying IOC members.
Tokyo was eliminated in the second round of voting. Its elimination was not unexpected, since the IOC was unlikely too return the Games to Asia so soon after Beijing. Tokyo’s bid received high technical marks in an evaluation, but lacked widespread public support during the bid process.
Madrid and Rio remain. The winner must receive 51% of the 100-plus votes.
Chicago’s boosters spent $48 million on the four-year campaign but, as always faced the obstacle of geographical loyalty. More than 40% of the IOC is European, and with competition from Rio, the U.S. could not count on support of members from South America, who were trying to bring the Olympics to their continent for the first time. Chicago2016′s budget also relied on some $4.8 billion in funding from the private sector, while other candidate cities had promises of billions of dollars of financial guarantees.
I wonder how Obama, Michelle and Oprah are going to spin this one while they wipe the egg off their faces.
(My bet is that Rio will get it. We’ll see.)
Here’s a photo from last evening: POTUS, FLOTUS, TOTUS,
I am in the process of writing an extended article on one of the most depressing news: Chavez is not only raiding the the home of Globovision president Guillermo Zuloaga but is closing the last independent TV station left in the country. This increases the likelihood that true news reporting will soon come to an end in Venezuela.
In the meantime, here are some very interesting articles,
Larry Kudlow speech: “One man, one woman, can make a huge difference.”
9. “It’s worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the president himself. President Obama has used his declassification authority to reveal what happens in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials.”
Cheney is pushing Obama to declassify documeents relating to the information gained from terrorist suspects who were subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. This puts Obama in a bind. If he does so, it prolongs an argument he wants to move on from and prolongs the Obama vs Cheney meme that is distracting and doesn’t really help him. if he doesn’t, he looks like he has something to hide.
How about that idea of sending the Gitmo detainees to supermax prisons? Supermax too full
Supermax’s approximately 480 concrete cells already are jammed with the likes of Oklahoma City bombing co-conspirator Terry Nichols, Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph and other notorious domestic criminals. There also are 33 international terrorists, including Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef and failed airline shoe bomber Richard Reid.
Only one bed was not filled Thursday at Supermax, U.S. Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Tracy Billingsley said.
So getting any more than a handful of detainees from Guantanamo to Florence would require considerable logistical maneuvers to clear room or an even longer-term solution through prison expansion.
Why has America been so foolishly complacent about—nay, even complicit–in the recruitment of jailed African-American men by radical Islamists? Perhaps, for a variety of reasons, this particular prison population may already have been brainwashed to hate Jews, Israel, and America. `
Why has America failed to understand that, just as Islamists routinely prey upon the poor, the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the vulnerable–and on women and children in Muslim countries–to become human bombs, that Islamists will surely, inevitably, prey upon their counterparts in America?
Victor Davis Hanson is touring Europe and observing Euroamericans:
If heaven is retiring at 55, leaving the apartment each mid-morning to sit in the local coffee shop, and then protesting on weekends about my lower than anticipated pension cost of living increase, then I would prefer hell.
My feelings exactly.
How to hurt the economy: Hiking taxes, failing to kill the AMT, and preserving the death tax, among other things.
Prime Minister Netanyahu declared, “The flag that flies over the Kotel is the Israeli flag… Our holy places, the Temple Mount — will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.”
Via Maria, the “smart car” comes short on mileage. There are a few of these scooters with a big chassis driving around The Principality and all I can think of is what would happen to the passengers if someone with a larger vehicle ran into them.
I’ll be driving my Volvo until the duck tape doesn’t hold it together anymore, thank you.
In shoe news, the Bernardo folks are celebrating. I spent most of my teens in Puerto Rico wearing that brand of sandals and still own a pair (bought new a couple of years ago) that I wear frequently in the summer. They are also offering good money for 1940s, 50s and 60s Bernardos, if you have any at home.
Today, we were treated to another set-piece Obama speech, and my didn’t he go on a bit? The crowd in Prague was huge, and initially wildly enthusiastic, but what he served up was not any more impressive than his damp squib in Berlin last year. Is there a computer which churns this stuff out for him?
Behold, the TOTUS:
Ian continues (emphasis added),
“Few people would have predicted that an American President would one day be permitted to speak to an audience like this in Prague. And few would have imagined that the Czech Republic would become a free nation, a member of NATO, and a leader of a united Europe. Those ideas would have been dismissed as dreams”. (Not by Ronald Reagan they wouldn’t have been, when most of Obama’s Democrat friends thought the then US President’s robust approach to the Cold War made him a loony on the loose).
It is my hope that the steps I am announcing today will go a long way towards answering many of the questions people may have about the future of GM and Chrysler. But just in case there are still nagging doubts, let me say it as plainly as I can — if you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your car serviced and repaired, just like always. Your warrantee (sic) will be safe.
In fact, it will be safer than it’s ever been. Because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warrantee.
The TOTUS has spoken. Doesn’t that ease your mind, if you own a Chrysler or anything from GM?
I mean, Gerard is so confident in this bit of news he’s even quoting scriptures!
