The Race To 'Dumb' - Ongoing...

The estimable John Amato of Crooks and Liars lauds a silly idea without thinking it through:

Digby linked to this excellent piece by Edward Wasserman in the Miami Herald the other day and I just got around to reading it. He basically solves the news problem that we face.

You know, like how bogus claims are repeated endlessly throughout the media (like the health bill contains "death panels") and even though they are debunked---the damage is already done.

And the gist - rather than reporting "false" claims and then debunking them, the media should just ignore the false claim in the first place.

Snort.  Purely as a factual matter, the NBC poll (p. 5 of 6) cited at the link was not asking our woefully ignorant public about the current state of legislative play; the question was, what did people think health care reform would eventually look like.  To say that death panels were not in the current legislation and therefore they could not appear in any subsequent legislation is pure liberal fantasizing (and relies on a very literal interpretation of an obviously hyperbolic metaphor).

But more to the "news judgment" point, the "death panel" charge was lodged by Sarah Palin, one-time Vice-Presidential nominee with a large fan base and an equally enthusiastic hate club.  Maybe this is how the Bash Sarah And Anything She Says media was supposed to cover her death panel allegation:

"Hey, folks, we would report the latest stupidity from the stupidest woman in the world mainly to affirm your belief in your own wonderfulness, but that would only be spreading her lies, so just take our word for it - the stupidest woman in the world was stupid again".

I don't think that would have worked.

The other obvious problem with the "Fingers Firmly In Ears" media strategy is that a golden rule of politics is that the unanswered accusation becomes accepted as truth.  Folks may remember that Obama eventually abandoned his plan to high-mindedly ignore the background noise and set up his Fight The Smears site to fight some of the accusations that emerged during the campaign (they never quite got around to the truth about Bill Ayers, but hey - he won!)

Oh, well.  As someone should have said, Denial - more than a river, less than a media strategy.

AS I NOODLE... Above I have two links to posts wondering whether Obama met Ayers in 1988, when Obama was working "with a citywide coalition in support of school reform" (Dreams of My Father) just before rushing off to Harvard Law.  The group Obama left ended up in a coalition coordinated by Bill Ayers, but that does not prove his group was in that coalition when Obama was there, or that Ayers and Obama met.  Of course, if they did meet in 1988 while working on education reform, that would answer the mystery of why Ayers tapped Obama, a young lawyer he ostensibly did not know and who had no previous education reform background, to head the Chicago Annenberg Challenge in 1995.  Suggestive, but clearly inconclusive - Sarah Palin said Obama palled around with terrorists, so we know he didn't.

Do you suppose historians will resolve this one day?  The current crop of journalists never will.

Comments

[bishop]

That was quite nearly the tone of the coverage, until the sheer number of face book posts, wrestled that to the ground.
It's sad, he used to be good reporter at the Florida Business Review, he's turned
into a lefty hack (a bug not a feature)

[Neo]

Whenever I see a story like this, I tote out this gem ...

It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus. He, like the architects of the federal “food pyramid” telling Americans what to eat, went wrong by listening to everyone else. He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.

[gmax]

I never figured out John Amato, is he a crook or is he just a liar?

[Rob Crawford]

I never figured out John Amato, is he a crook or is he just a liar?

The categories -- and the blog title -- are not mutually exclusive.

[BumperStickerist]

If single payer/universal coverage were important, it would not be necessary to lard up the bill with $10,000,000,000 in payments to unions.

I'll treat it like an unabashed good thing, when the Democrats start doing so.

[matt]

nope, don't let the facts get in the way, and we'll determine what those facts are, thank you very much.....

[Tom Bowler]

The death panels will convene ahead of time laying out the guidelines, not at the point when an elderly patient wants medical care. Martin Feldstein described it in the WSJ.

The president has emphasized the importance of limiting services to "health care that works." To identify such care, he provided more than $1 billion in the fiscal stimulus package to jump-start Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) and to finance a federal CER advisory council to implement that idea. That could morph over time into a cost-control mechanism of the sort proposed by former Sen. Tom Daschle, Mr. Obama's original choice for White House health czar. Comparative effectiveness could become the vehicle for deciding whether each method of treatment provides enough of an improvement in health care to justify its cost.

In the British national health service, a government agency approves only those expensive treatments that add at least one Quality Adjusted Life Year (QALY) per £30,000 (about $49,685) of additional health-care spending. If a treatment costs more per QALY, the health service will not pay for it. The existence of such a program in the United States would not only deny lifesaving care but would also cast a pall over medical researchers who would fear that government experts might reject their discoveries as "too expensive."

Single payer is what Obama very clearly preferred back in 2003 when he was talking to the AFL-CIO -- just like Britain.

It's a diversion to hammer Sarah for equating end of life consultations with death panels. She doesn't.

Of course, it’s not just this one provision that presents a problem. My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” [10] Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

Sorry for the long comment.

[Tom Bowler]

P.S. Anybody going to be in Washington on September 12th?

[clarice]

"Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens.."

How little he knows, his brother's colleaguew regularly sign up and vote for demented patients in nursing homes.

[The alarmists dodged discussion of the CO2 effect in Erice, too.]

Oh, c'mon all you silly asses. They are not 'Death Panels'; they are 'Life Panels'. They decide who lives, see? Life Panels. Now, get it right or cause wonderment, dismay, and re-education, too.
=================================

[Fresh Air]

TM--

The first Chicago school reform was passed in June 1988. I was at the capitol when it happened. "Working with" a "citywide coalition" just means he was blabbering to the elected Democrats about what he/ACORN wanted. This is like a thowaway line from an exaggerated resume; it's totally meaningless.

[Fresh Air]

I never figured out John Amato, is he a crook or is he just a liar?

A goddamned jerk.

[Fresh Air]

You know, it's Zero who opened his fat trap and declared we had to reform healthcare to get the budget under control. When 80 percent of the costs are in the last six months of life or something, doesn't "bending the cost curve" sorta imply a few decisions about end-of-life stuff?

LIberalism is truly a mental disorder. These people won't even admit what a stupid idea the whole "reform" business is, or admit what about 80 percent of the public has now figured out: it's simply a Trojan horse for socialism. Come on, admit it cowards.

[Dave (in MA)]

OT: The next generation of Kennedys seems to be as classy as the ones that gave us the Waitress Sandwich and Bang the Babysitter: link.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

"Hey, folks, we would report the latest stupidity from the stupidest woman in the world mainly to affirm your belief in your own wonderfulness, but that would only be spreading her lies, so just take our word for it - the stupidest woman in the world was stupid again".

You forgot "And besides, it was so stupid that after the stupidest woman in the world said this, we took it out of the Sentate bill, which proves it was all a lie that it was ever there at all, and HEY LOOK! Dick Cheney is a BAD MAN!"

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Sorry for the long comment.

Dude, if you think that was a long comment, you're obviously new here.

[daddy]

I sure hope ">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210334/Alert-new-wave-exploding-fridges-caused-environmentally-friendly-coolant.html"> this isn't the reason we haven't heard from P'UK lately.

[matt]

great one, Dave. I hope Hannity catches it.

[We're all norons, here.]

TB's lurked here for years. The motto here ought to be no comment too long or too short, nor too off topic nor on.
================================

[Steve Diamond]

Fresh Air writes:

"The first Chicago school reform was passed in June 1988. I was at the capitol when it happened. "Working with" a "citywide coalition" just means he was blabbering to the elected Democrats about what he/ACORN wanted. This is like a thowaway line from an exaggerated resume; it's totally meaningless."

The only problem with this defense is that Obama's DCP was a member of ABCs which was THE leading coalition on the Local Schol Council power grab. So for your scenario to be true, then Obama must have joined the ABCs but then run his own parallel effort to lobby for the bill. Not bloody likely and not sensible for a budding politician. Not to mention that DCP was a small fish in a big pond. Far more likely that it and (a very young) Obama tagged along with ABCs in the lead.

[And as anything who knows anything about poetry knows, it also ruined the meter..]

daddy, ammonia is a marvelous refrigerant, but only used commercially and carefully. It like these, is explosive. I was once eight blocks away from a small meathouse with ammonia refrigeration blowing up and destroying the building. It made a big boom. Miraculously, it was Sunday morning, no one was very close and there were only two with minor scratches. Less miraculously, the local natural gas utility had been replacing lines in the alley and into the buildings.
======================================

[Jane]

P.S. Anybody going to be in Washington on September 12th?

Tom,

Lots of us. email me at [email protected] if you want to make contact. I seem to have become the lynch pin.

[Frau Krankenhaus]

"To say that death panels were not in the current legislation and therefore they ..."

Appendectomy, fractures and asthma are not mentioned, either. Does that mean they won't be included? Steyn hit the heart of the matter by saying the tube will not be pulled on Grandma because it will never be inserted to begin with. Pfui!

[Mars vs Hollywood]

The other obvious problem with the "Fingers Firmly In Ears" media strategy is that a golden rule of politics is that the unanswered accusation becomes accepted as truth.

Since that's basically what they did to Bush for eight years, it's odd that they haven't figured it out.

[Tom Bowler]

Quite true, We're. I have lurked here for years, commenting both on and off topic. Mostly off probably.

[Extraneus]

Hey Matt, another cite by Instapundit? You go, man. Your blog must be starting to take off.

[daddy]

Sure Dave,

that link is nice and all, but if you go to ">http://www.adn.com/3437/story/918349.html"> this one at Vanity Fair, in addition to photo's of Kennedy babe's, you also get "Me and Sarah Palin", by Levi Johnston.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

lynch pin.

Golly, have anyone in mind?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Dave, I've got to say, I'm even a member of the media and I can't blame her.

[daddy]

Kim,

Guess I shouldn't worry about P'UK and exploding frigerators since they like their beer at room temp over there anyhow. But if they ever import that model stateside I think me and Hit may be in trouble.

[gmax]

Did you mean Lynch mob? I am sure that is how the statement will be spun by Organizing against Americans ( they already called you domestic terrorists ).

[hit and run]

Not funny, daddy. Now I'll have nightmares.

[Frau Krankenhaus]

Thank you so much, Jane, for becoming the lynch pin. I see oak leaf clusters in your future.

[Fresh Air]

Steve--

My point was simply that there was nothing happening in school reform except a bunch of people trying to carve up the pie in advance. I doubt Zero was even near the kitchen. He certainly didn't have a hand in baking the stupid thing. I'm not sure where the quote about him comes from, but he was not a factor in any way in Chicago school reform, which was largely a Mike Madigan Production.

[TOPSECRETK9]

This reminds me of the 16 words canard and how the media still to this day say Bush said Saddam had acquired WMD and I don't this the stooge at C and L was too torn up about that journalistic lie.

[Jane]

Thank you so much, Jane, for becoming the lynch pin.

Apparently that was a bad phrase. C'est la vie.

All of you who have contacted me should get an email with contact info, times and locations in the next couple of days. If you don't, contact me. I'm juggling a lot of stuff, and not doing it all that well. But I plan to try and get to it tomorrow.

[bishop]

Wasserman, was one of those who dismissed the obvious forgery of the Rathergates memo
as incidental, so that gives you some glimpse of his motivation.

[rse]

Steve-

I agree with you. Bill Ayers was showing Obama how to influence people using rhetoric without anyone perceiving where he was going.

What is your opinion on the Sept 8 broadcast to the schools?

[glenda]

So, what is the Obamaprompter going to say to all the public schools on Sept.8? I think I'll take Colin to the dentist that morning--maybe we all could keep our children home for a couple hours, I'll call the local paper about reporting the absences, and you call yours, and maybe some intelligent wire reader will post it nationally where the MSM can't ignore the "Parents don't approve of Obama having a command performance without a screening"
It's probably harmless, but after that NEA released conference call about code-wording public service stuff through NEA products, I feel a marxist wind blowing through anything Obama.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Steve and FA-

The '88 "school reform" for Chicago was a cash grab from the state for the city. Made the state's tax coffers a pipeline directly to the city, extra-constitutional-like. Not that Harold, Eugene, Tim, David, or Richie would mind that sort of cash flow.

In order; Harold Washington, Eugene Sawyer, David Orr, and Richie Daley.

The actual cash grab occurred under Richie, but started under Eugene.

Good times, good times. I miss "Council Wars" by Aaron Freeman, that was funny stuff (LUN).

[Melinda Romanoff]

Ooops, Shoulda edited out "Tim" Evans.

[Jane]

maybe we all could keep our children home for a couple hours

Glenda,

Tell them you don't think religion should be taught in schools.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Daddy and hit-

The brand of refrigerator you need to be on the lookout for is Servel. Serves a very useful place in the market, you can run it on natural gas, no electricity needed. (LUN)

(And that is an awesome hardware store, serves the Amish, and has stuff that your great-great grandparents used)

[Fresh Air]

Harold was dead then, too. Sawyer was hanging on by a thumbnail. But yeah, it was nothing but $$$ for crooks and the NEA, with a couple of bones tossed to the principals and the neighborhood activists. Unfortunately, ACORN & Co. sold out the neighborhoods they organized, as the local school councils turned out to be less than useless--and just as politicized.

[Original MikeS]

I think this Wasserman guy deserves some credit for coming up with the revolutionary idea that journalist should support the concepts of truth and accuracy. Though he stopped well short of suggesting that journalists should adhere to any such standard, there is no telling what could happen if journalist in general start admitting that there is such a thing as the truth.

Though I doubt any will be surprised, I think Conservatives will recognize that Wasserman's proposed solution demonstrates an abysmal lack of self awareness. Liberals on the other hand will not notice a thing.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Lehman's

LUN.

Shameless placement and promotion that I have no affiliation with other than deep appreciation.

[Dave (in the People's Banana Republic of MA )]

Citizens for Limited Taxation shows us what a faithful Mass. Democrat has been up to. (Hypocrisy unrelated to the vacant Kennedy seat, though it does involve liquor)

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

What is your opinion on the Sept 8 broadcast to the schools?

Blogs for Victory has a post up today urging parents to keep their kids home on the 8th.

BTW, same blog had big announcement today that co-blogger Mark Noonan is going to run for Pasty-face Reid's Senate seat.

[centralcal]

Glenda: One of the CPA's I work with has a daughter in elementary school. She saw the Drudge headline about Obama's speech to the kiddies and said she was definitely keeping her child out of school. She was only moderately concerned about justifying the absence - decided that a headache would be believable for a girl. tee hee.

Schools get worried when attendance numbers are down - impacts funding??? My kids went to private (Catholic) school, so am not sure about that. It would be interesting to see if there is a spike in absences.

[Frau Krankenhaus]

...the lynch pin.
"--Apparently that was a bad phrase. C'est la vie."

Apparently, the best for our mission and in addition, *indispensable*:
"support - something providing immaterial assistance to a person or cause or interest"

[bishop]

BTW, the CLSA gig, ib Hong Kong has been confirmed, in the LUN. Although you almost can't tell with the spin by Romney Central (Fox News). Question, why would they schedule a Republican Women's convention, to coincide with the 9/12 protest, silly thought I know, it must be those sober folk
that Po referenced earlier

[centralcal]

Jane: I like your phrasing just fine, my dear!

[centralcal]

Frau: Just a quick question/clarification - are you in California? For some reason I thought you lived in another state.

[The Democrat Party]

Gosh. If only people were smarter, they'd be all in for having their lives taken over by faceless government bureaucracy.

Note to self: Redouble efforts in the public school system.

[Frau Volksschule]

Centrical, schools in CA get ADA (Average daily attendance) funds for attendance. If a child is excused for illness, the child still counts for funding. Unexcused --a trip to Disneyland, Vegas or Aunt Rhoda in Texas- will not qualify for daily funding. An "excused" absence counts as if the child had been in school when our Ruler in Chief spoke. I would suggest taking an *unexcused* absence, thus depriving the school of income for that day.

[Frau Volksschule]

Centralcal - Smoke from the fire got in my eyes...sorry.

[Frau Volksschule]

Yes, Centralcal - I'm in CA, in the last city in L.A. County, next to Ontario and Upland, CA. My college town was so wonderful when it was Republican and I was Democrat. It turned ugly when things went south 180 degrees.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Jane-

I have to follow up on the bet, was it laid?

If not, you're the hostess with the mostest that's going to receive the largess for lunch. So, we need to talk.

Hit, bad, Stephanie, glenda, clarice, DrJ, and Po, all have my e-mail addy. I will follow up, right now, at fwdaj@...

I still wish I could be there.

[daddy]

"Tell them you don't think religion should be taught in schools."

LOL Jane.

[Extraneus]

OT, but am I the only one who didn't know about Kennedy's 1983 message to Andropov until now? From what I've read lately, this Soviet memo that came to light in 1991 was really beyond the pale, and arguably deserving of prosecution for treason.

I thought I was paying attention in those days and since, but I guess there weren't any blogs when it came to light. Either that or I somehow missed the media coverage. Oh, and I was under the impression that we've had at least one politicized Republican Justice Department since then, which boggles the mind further.

How many other such instances of Democrat perfidy are already known? Somebody should catalog these for reference, just so the less informed among us won't be in the dark until the perpetrators are safely dead.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Oh, and the bishop has it too...

[bgates]

Frau, I spent a couple of years in that little town. Pretty place, on the days when you can see it - I knew a guy who visited the college for a weekend, came back in the fall, and was surprised to learn of the existence of the mountains (8,000' high and 4 miles north of town), since they weren't visible when he was first there.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Extra-

You, of course, know Nancy's familial history. So we don't have to go through that, and it also defines Steny's loyalty.

It's organized just like the mob, in some ways, but just that they're democrats.

Do you want hit to be "secretary" for this organization? He seems to have the goods ;))

[Captain Hate]

OT, but am I the only one who didn't know about Kennedy's 1983 message to Andropov until now?

I can't speak for anybody but myself but I knew about it. Not sure how I found out about it because, as you can well imagine, it didn't fit with the positive Kennedy spin that the MSM has lavished upon the family, so there wasn't the huge derogatory headline that such a traitorous act merited. But yeah, it's been out there for a while.

[Frau Volksschule]

Hah, bgates. A German brother-in-law and family came to visit once in August. One day in September, I called them all out to see the mountains which till then had been obscured from view. Did you mean LaVerne or Claremont? We're in the latter.

Melinda - I remember reading that Nancy's brother said she was the fiercest of the family. Can Steny and the others really fear her that much?

[Melinda Romanoff]

FA-

No, no, no. Acorn was Competition for the tax largess versus the CTU (Chicago Teachers Union). The whole scheme of the School Board take overs was to stuff union favorites on the board so that the admin And the faculty, were "taken care of". Acorn was launched, in Chicago, after that in a mimicking venture to make a larger cash grab from Both businesses and the State/County/City. And they used the courts to pull it off, at first.

Strictly competition.

[bishop]

I heard about the general series of contacts
that the KGB had maintained through the Mitrokhin archive in 1999, but it wasn't till Kengor, published this document in the
epilogue of his Reagan book that it got any
attention.

[Melinda Romanoff]

11 paragraphs down is the Hoyer/Pelosi connection LUN

They've known each other awhile.

And Frau, she's just as nasty as the product of any machine operation, like her old #3, Rahm, who didn't want the spotlight too much back then, and same with now.

[Ignatz]

--A German brother-in-law and family came to visit once in August. One day in September, I called them all out to see the mountains which till then had been obscured from view.--

The most disgusting weather/atmosphere I have ever been in was stepping out of a KC 135 in Riverside when I was in the Air Force in the 80's.
Got down on the tarmac which was shimmering from the heat waves and started burning through the soles of our boots and tried to peer through the smog. Thought we took a wrong turn at Albuquerque and landed in Hades.
Turned around as fast as we could and flossed the air out of our teeth on the way home.

[Melinda Romanoff]

I am going to be stuffed with bodies on the premises tomorrow, so I am going to fade.

G'night all.

And my prayers to those under seige on the West Coast. Keep a bucket full of water near the door, and clean towels next to it, if you have to make a dash.

[Elliott]

I knew a guy who visited the college for a weekend, came back in the fall, and was surprised to learn of the existence of the mountains

A guy I know was nearby once for a wedding. He remains unconvinced of the mountains' existence.

[matt]

Frau, is El Roble Jr. High still there? I remember Griswold's back when it was really something.

[bgates]

Frau, I was in school at Claremont, though I lived in Rancho Cucamonga (to the delight of Jack Benny fans of my acquaintance).

Ignatz, they tell me it's a lot cleaner now than it used to be ("now" was 6 years ago, actually). Still pretty horrifying.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Apparently that was a bad phrase. C'est la vie.

Just bad spelling: you meant "linchpin": the locking pin that keeps the wheel on an axle.

[Rick Ballard]

cc-

Suggest fear of obamatitis (aural inflammation caused by excessive verbal excretory emanations). Parents should say they are awaiting the scheduled introduction of a vaccine in January of 2011 priore to allowing their children to be exposed to such obviously deleterious matter.

[Frau Volksschule]

Thanks, Melinda, for the complete info on Pelosi and Hoyer. What a bunch.

Yes, matt, El Roble ("El Rubbish" to the kids back then) is still in town. We walk past it twice each day on walks. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to see a coyote saunter down the street during the day, slowly enough to read the fliers on missing cats posted on many corners.
Griswold's (the original or the School House?)is a block from my house.
The weather conditions have improved vastly although the fires this week have obliterated the sky and ashes are falling.

[caro]

Jane, Lynch Pin is a great mob name, suitable for the occasion.

[JM Hanes]

Did ya'll see the lesson plan being distributed by the White House, in advance of Obama's teachable moment with America's yout'? Via Gateway Pundit, suggested discussion topics catechism includes:

• Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

During the Speech:

• As the President speaks, teachers can ask students to write down key ideas or phrases that are important or personally meaningful. Students could use a note-taking graphic organizer such as a Cluster Web, or students could record their thoughts on sticky notes. Younger children can draw pictures and write as appropriate.

As students listen to the speech, they could think about the following:

What is the President trying to tell me?
What is the President asking me to do?
What new ideas and actions is the President challenging me to think about?

• Students can record important parts of the speech where the President is asking them to do something.

• Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?

If I could work up the necessary enthusiasm, I'd post the answers as well as the questions. Not to worry, though, the White House will doubtless publish much more precious student efforts which are sure to be collected for transmission to HQ.

[Gabriel Sutherland]

I'm not sure where the quote about him comes from, but he was not a factor in any way in Chicago school reform, which was largely a Mike Madigan Production.

WTF? You don't read this everyday on a national blog like JOM. You're right. Small Schools was an Ayers "get out of hiding free" card. It was his baby. His problem was that all his backers had weaknesses. The establishment could wash their records clean, but the corporate partners in the private-public mini-Lenin structure in Chicago and the suburbs just wouldn't fly. Ayers always knew that if Small Schools tanked the Charter schools with corporate funding were the next of kin.

That's now a reality. Small schools failed for the same reason that Lenin never really trusted Marxism but would use it when necessary. It turns rational people into zombies and kicks the money up to the top of the pyramid. Putin knows the gambit.

Here's the rub. Americans hate lions. We really fucking hate them. We actually hate being led by one animal. In fact, when we've tried to make one animal the leader they refuse. Well played George. Well played.

I've run into Bernadine Dohrn twice since the election. Both times she has declined to answer my question. Did you meet Barack Obama before he left for Harvard? She shrugs. So I ask the same follow up. "Gut any pigs today? Dig it."

This gets her attention. I then just commend her for doing anything she can to liberate innocent men and women in prison. She smiles, but she just won't answer my Obama question.

Hopefully the third time is the charm.

[bgates]

I've run into Bernadine Dohrn twice since the election.

Do you honk first, to give her a sporting chance?

Obama's teachable moment with America's yout'

Well, we know he's not superstitious, going into public school classrooms on the second Tuesday in September of his first year in office.

[JM Hanes]

This one came close to making my day; Obama is, indeed, doubling down!

Aides to President Barack Obama are putting the final touches on a new strategy to help Democrats recover from a brutal August recess by specifying what Obama wants to see in a compromise health care deal and directly confronting other trouble spots, West Wing officials tell POLITICO.

Obama is considering detailing his health-care demands in a major speech as soon as next week, when Congress returns from the August recess. And although House leaders have said their members will demand the inclusion of a public insurance option, Obama has no plans to insist on it himself, the officials said.

“We’re entering a new season,” senior adviser David Axelrod said in a telephone interview. “It’s time to synthesize and harmonize these strands and get this done. We’re confident that we can do that. But obviously it is a different phase. We’re going to approach it in a different way. The president is going to be very active.”

Higher visibility! More "major" speeches! That'll do it! The competition for monumental obtuseness, however, is fierce, and Obama's Health-Care Realism is clearly in the running.

[Ann]

bgates,

I am trying to catch up and I just circled Sept 8, 2009 and thought the same thing!!!! (Well, that and how easy it would be to excuse a child after a holiday.)

Of course, my history shows that I would just send my child to school, well armed, with questions and pictures no one will want to answer!

Let us make it a JOM project to gather 9/12 material for our children to present to class on 9/08!

[daddy]

JMH,

No word from our local school board (yet) about the Presidential Teach-in, but if there is one, my 2 in Middle School are taking the day off. If I want to have them listen to carnies and hucksters's I can always just take them back to the State Fair.

I would love to see millions of kids across this country yanked out of the Classroom on September 8th. My guess is we're going to be hearing lots more about a grassroots "Take Your Kids From School" movement in the next few days.

[daddy]

I don't know if you'ld exactly call him ">http://oauniverse.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/6.jpg"> "handsome", but he is photogenic.

[JM Hanes]

Does anybody know if windansea is in Hurricane Jimena's path? IIRC, that's his Mexican stomping surfing ground, no? If so, stay safe friend!

daddy:

Wish I had some school age kids myself, so I could yank them out. It's the lesson plan that really creeps me out.

[daddy]

And he makes those around him ">http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090901.html"> look better as well.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials, like the mayor, senators, members of congress, or the governor? Why is what they say important?

Kids shouldn't be listening to anyone except their parents and those the parents have told them it is okay to listen to.

This is wrong on so many levels. I do not approve of this at all. If I had school age children, I would not want them to participate in what to me is the president using a captive audience to brainwash kids. No, I don't like this one bit!

[JM Hanes]

Spectacular photo, daddy!

[caro]

It's the lesson plan that really creeps me out.

Me, too, JMH. Leading questions in the hands of Obamabot teachers.

[Fresh Air]

Gabriel--

Wouldn't surprise me at all if Zero had a meet-up with Ayers & Dohrn while he was studying to be a communist at Columbia. I can't remember the timeline exactly, but I believe they had already turned themselves in by the time he arrived in New York.

I don't know if Ayers honestly had much of a clue about real power over the school system. From everything I've read, he pretty much ham-and-egged the whole Annenberg grant into a hate-whitey fest for brown children. Not really a grand scheme kind of thing--more like a "let's see how quickly I can convert young minds into BLT Marxists" scheme.

Not too different from Zero in his ham-handedness, come to think about it. Not Ernst Blofeld; more like Ernest Borgnine.

[daddy]

Not Obama, the other source of light in our Solar System.

[Elliott]

JMH,

I think his advisors realized that school children are his ideal audience, now that he's adopted the vocabulary an 8-year old. It's the Benjamin Button presidency.

[caro]

Daddy, what a beautiful and amazing photo.

[Fresh Air]

Daddy--

That photo reminds me of Bill Whittle's latest Afterburner at PJM. He has the thrusters on full power. If you haven't seen it, it's well worth 15 minutes.

[daddy]

JMH, Caro, Sara,

I really do think this School teach-in is going to explode in his face, just like the Health Care debacle. This is outrageous. I cannot imagine Bush or basically anyone else, excepting some long lost memory of FDR, being so tone deaf about American Liberty as to imagine that in a free society US school-kids should be subject to having to listen to him pontificate about anything. What a pompous dick. He is constantly demonstrating that all he can handle is a captive audience of yes-men or children that are unable to talk back to him. Hope Rush and the A-Teamer's are back on the air tomorrow and in attack mode.

[daddy]

Thanks FA, I'll try to find it.

For Space Freaks, ">http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html"> Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA is wonderful. This archives page is updated daily and goes back years and years with outstanding photos and great links.

[bgates]

Theme song for next Tuesday.

Hey! Obama! Leave our kids alone!

[bgates]

Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials

Why is it important that we listen to the President and other elected officials?

What is the President trying to tell me?

What is the President trying to tell me?

[daddy]

Just caught Glenn Beck's piece tonight on The National Endowment for the Arts doing conference calls with the White House in an organizing effort to push Obama's agendas thru Federal grants to artiste's.

I think the School Teach-In is all of a piece with this same effort at Indoctrination towards the service of the Won.

[daddy]

Thanks FA,

That ">http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/____Bill_Maher%2C_Barack_Obama_and_the_Truth_About_American_Exceptionalism/2378/"> Afterburner was 15 minutes well spent.