Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Obama brings teleprompter to 6th grade

obamasixthgraders

Show and tell?

Sad. Obama Brings TelePrompter to Speak to 6th Grade Class.

The Blog Prof posted the video on YouTube,

Patterico‘s running a caption contest. Nicholas (via email) proposes

Is Obama smarter than a fifth grader?
Unfortunately, we’ve discovered the answer is: “No.”

Instapundit‘s reader wrote to say

“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.

Show and tell, for sure.

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The best summation of the Nobel Prize

From – who else! – the TOTUS

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.

Ouchy.

Via Larwyn, of course.

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BREAKING: Chicago Out of Running to Host 2016 Olympics

This just in:
The Washington Post reports that

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.

Drudge‘s headline:

WORLD REJECTS OBAMA: CHICAGO OUT IN FIRST ROUND
THE EGO HAS LANDED

The WSJ: Chicago Eliminated for 2016 Olympics; Rio, Madrid Remain

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,
6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a60b81d6970c-600wi

Snark, and more snark,

I’m sure that Obama will be a lot more persuasive with the Iranians.

Update
International Olympic Committee staffed by racists, which just named Rio as the host.

CNN announcer flips out,

The Anchoress asks, Did the IOC recognise a weak horse?

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Kudlow’s graduation address, cars, shoes and Gitmo

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.”

The kindergarteners were locked out of the White House, but the Steelers got in.

The 10 punches Dick Cheney landed on Barack Obama’s jaw Number nine:

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.

Phyllis Chesler writes on The Fatherless Sons of Jihad: Bigger Than the Bronx Four

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?

In Argentina, Judge Refuses Bail to Buenos Aires Antisemites

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.

Via Soccer dad, Bibi Rejects Obama’s ‘UN Flag at Kotel’; Star of David to Remain

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.

Speaking of cars, Scott Ott, only a day or two ahead of the headlines: GM says no problem for new drone in meeting emissions, fuel standards.

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.

UPDATE
First the TOTUS, now Biden’s Bunker. What next, Hillary’s pantsuit?

Where is Hillary, anyway?

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Iain Martin wonders about the TOTUS

Barack Obama really does go on a bit

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:

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).

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