Archive for October 4th, 2010
Bristol Palin Dancing with the Stars Watch Thread
Bristol Palin will be on Dancing with the Stars again tonight.
None of us will be able to watch, as we’re working an event tonight…so we need those of you who can watch to chime in here with how she does.
As soon as video of her performance becomes available, we want you to add that to this thread.
Remember to vote for Bristol over at the ABC Dancing with the Stars page: you can vote a total of 10 times per email address you have registered. Vote to keep Bristol in the competition, so we can continue to give this remarkable young lady additional weeks to have fun up there on the stage learning new dance moves and making all of Alaska — and all of America really — so very proud.
This is our next First Daughter up there, dancing with the stars.
Let’s not let her down!
UPDATE from CtH: I was yapping with Mama Buzz, who looooves Dancing with the Stars, and she said the dances and songs are assigned to, not chosen by each couple, and the choreography and outfits are done by each of the professional dance partners. Since the partners have to spend the week teaching non-dancers the steps and sewing takes time, I’m thinking maybe a lot of the costume design is done way ahead so mostly only final fittings happen the week before the show. But that’s just a guess. Anyway, Mama Buzz said that one of the weeks later on, there is supposed to be a “payback week” for the guest dancers when they design the outfits. Just thought you might like to know.
New film "Waiting for Superman" is stunning indictment of unions
After lunch today, we went to the movies with our friend Althea and her two kids, Lil’ TJ and Niblet.
Althea homeschools her kids because she can’t afford to put them in private schools in Chicago (close to $10,000 a year, for each, when factoring in all the supplies, the transportation costs (not free busing, like with public school, the activities, the uniforms, the books, etc.) and the CPS system (run by party-boy and Mayor Daley’s pet, Ron Huberman). Our friend Abbey back in Ohio also homeschools her son, Lil’ Remy, and both of them run their own businesses from home so that they can educate their children much better than what the public schools would provide.
Every once in a while, some of us here do little freelance projects in CPS schools, where we conduct surveys for various companies that need market research done on the youth market. While we are in the schools, we are stunned by the opulence of the buildings (a $100,000 mural here…a $25,000 sculpture there…skylights, marble floors, holographic light displays, auditoriums that would make some Broadway theaters jealous) and the ineptitude of almost every member of the teaching staff we’ve met.
There are a lot of stupid people in this world — people who seem, to us anyway, that they’re in danger of drowning every time it rains. A good many of these fools work in the Chicago Public School system, as educators. All of them are tenured. None of them can ever be fired. Watching them teach classes is like watching Texas Instruments speak-n-says from the 80s lecture to a class. They are robotic, with their verbiage programmed to be as politically correct as possible, praising everything the students do as “excellent” so as not to hurt Deante, DerNoshante, and Jamertankpte’s feelings.
When everything is “excellent”, nothing is.
“Waiting for Superman” is a film about how terrible the American school system has been since the 1970s, when two things happened:
(1) Teachers unions took over
(2) Politically correctness and the Leftist agenda infiltrated the education system
We’ll add a third item: the 1970s was when conservatives ceded the school boards in every state to the Left, because conservatives “had jobs, had families, and were just too busy to sit on a board”.
Fools.
In the film, an educator named Geoggrey Canada narrates a thorough look at the problems facing every school district in the country. They can be traced to two sources:
(1) The Department of Education, which should be abolished
(2) Teachers’ Unions, which should be abolished
The reason the unions must go is because they protect bad teachers.
Canada calls this “the lemonhead dance”, which is named “the turkey trot”, “the idiot switch”, and “pass the trash” in other states. This is where tenured teachers can never be fired, so one school just moves the worst teacher to another school at the end of the year, and that school has to take “a lemon” from somewhere else for a year. These people can’t be fired, but the principals get to trade their failures for what they hope is a less-terrible teacher.
The unions prevent these firings.
In New York City, the teachers’ unions cost the city $100 million a year because teachers who are so bad that they are not allowed in classrooms get to receive 100% of their pay and benefits if they spend 7 hours a day in what amounts to adult day care: it’s called “the rubber room” and it’s a place where they go to read newspapers, draw in coloring books, tell stories, play cards, and sleep while their cases are waiting review by the union. The union keeps a three year backlog on hearings, so that their dues-paying members continue to pay those dues while the cases against them are decided.
By the time they are up for review, whatever students were involved in complaints against them have graduated, moved on, disappeared, or forgotten about whatever the complaint was about in the first place. Then, after this stint in “the rubber room”, these clowns are put back into the system at another school, where most likely the same thing will happen again.
Only 1/2500 teachers ever lose their accredidation. Compare that to 1/57 doctors or 1/97 lawyers (like the Obamas) who lose their professional licenses for one reason or another (including gross incompetence).
There are, in fact, only 38 teachers in the state of Illinois who have been fired since the 1970s. The unions are responsible for that.
The film deals a lot with Michelle Rhee in the DC public school system, who was brought in as superintendent after her predecessors all gave up because the unions made reform impossible. One of these former superintendents was a former Marine Lt. General who surrendered after 18 months because he said dealing with the unions was “a living Hell”.
The unions prevented Rhee from firing bad teachers and principals and cracking the system so she could make the changes that were necessary.
This happens in every school district across the country.
Because the teachers’ unions give 90% of their contribution to the Democrat Party, Democrats use the Department of Education to strengthen the teachers’ unions and to hamper efforts on the state and local level to bring about the changes the students need.
It’s just one of myriad reasons the Department of Education needs to be abolished — the way President Reagan wanted to do in the 1980s (it was Jimmy Carter who created this beast).
People, please go see this movie…in theaters. It’s just heartbreaking.
The schools in some cities, like Chicago, are so terrible that families have to pin their hopes on winning a lottery to score a seat in a school that’s not run by people who are completely inept.
No one should have to stake a child’s future on luck.
Charter schools work much better than public ones because the teachers there are not unionized, so bad teachers can actually be fired, and good teachers can receive merit pay for high performance (merit pay is NOT allowed in the unionized public schools).
One of the goals of the Tea Party movement should be to destroy the labor unions. All of them.
They are the single greatest reason the public school system is such a disaster.
We believe they are a similar disaster in every sector of our lives where unions are prevalent.
Unions are also the hired muscle and the financial lifeblood of the Democrat Party, so taking the unions down means dealing a death blow to the DNC.
Can this ever happen?
We don’t really know — because the unions are so entrenched and so powerful.
But, if ever there was a time for it, it’s right now.
With so many people struggling, the unions’ complaints and demands are now falling on deaf ears, especially when peopel see what a cushy life union members enjoy…and feel entitled to.
Chris Christie has declared war on the teacher’s union in New Jersey. We’d love to see Jan Brewer do the same in Arizona, and Nikki Haley get on this when she’s elected Governor of South Carolina. Every single Republican Governor nationwide should go Chris Christie on their state’s labor unions.
There is no downside to this.
The unions back the Democrats anyway, so it’s not like the Republicans are going to alienate anyone by doing this.
Highlighting the graft, corruption, and incompetence of the unions is a winning strategy for Republicans because it shows parents the GOP is ready and able to do something — SOMETHING — to try to improve education for their children. The unions care about cushy protections for incompetent adults…it’s time conservatives branded themselves as champions for the children.
We need someone to do to the teachers’ unions what Upton Sinclair did to the meat industry in The Jungle.
We really need the horrors of the unions exposed…especially since the unions are so in bed with the communist and socialist agitators in this country, as they proved they were this past Saturday with that “One Nation” march.
We’re just sick and tired of this garbage…and we want to make this an issue HillBuzz pushes in the weeks, months, and years ahead. Not only will it be a winning one for conservatives, but any success we have will further harm Democrats at their fundraising and goon squad cores…all while HELPING CHILDREN GET BETTER EDUCATIONS.
Not every parent can run their own businesses from home like Althea and Abbey, and not everyone can send their children to private schools the way our own parents did.
But ALL OF US, every regular daily reader here, can DO SOMETHING to become an everliving thorn in the unions’ sides.
Together we can eventually stir up our own local communities against the unions…and maybe even get a good number of you elected to school boards so you can bust unions in a bureaucratic capacity.
What think you?
Will Rahm Emanuel need "The Man's Country Gambit" after all? Legal challenge to his mayoral candidacy is already in the works
We wanted to do a little recon today on the Southside to see what the black community is saying about Rahm Emanuel’s run for Mayor of Chicago. It’s also a very good excuse to head down to Bronzeville and meet Althea and her two kids for sandwiches at Munchie’s (jerk chicken with extra bodacious sauce, and a little pot roast pizza as an appetizer).
It’s exactly as we thought: walking the neighborhood, stopping people on the street, and popping in to chat with some local politically-connected Southsiders, everyone is saying the same thing, and it’s: “F*** Rahm Emanuel. F*** him good”.
There is no love for this man with blacks — nor should there be. Emanuel seems to think the Obama love the black community has would rub off on him, but it doesn’t. At all.
Blacks want a black Mayor…either Tim King (head of a very successful charter school) or Reverand James Meeks (who is very popular, but is a watered down version of Jeremiah Wright, at the end of the day). Carol Mosely Braun is running too, but she’s largely irrelevant. “Miss Fancy” is what she’s called by a lot of the people we talked to this morning.
Jews are not backing Rahm Emanuel either, because of his foul mouth.
How depraved and vile do you have to be for Chicagoans — of all people — to literally cringe at the sound of your name because you are considered too ill-mannered and caustic to be Mayor of this city?
The only way we can describe the reaction to Emanuel’s candidacy is it’s the same as if Andrew Dice Clay was in the running. No one we know, or have ever spoken to, wants this man to win.
Then there’s the issue of his legal eligibility to run, which many lawyers say is impossible since he has not been a legal Chicago resident since 2009…and he had to be a resident of Chicago from February 22nd 2010 through February 22nd, 2011 to qualify to run for Mayor of Chicago.
People we talked to today in the black community are already beginning the prep work to file lawsuits and challenges against Emanuel’s candidacy.
Republicans need to get on the ball and get the very best law firms in Chicagoland to file challenges as well — do not sit back and let Democrats do this on their own, because for the right bribes Dems will always drop their suits and let Emanuel have a clear path.
REMEMBER: Barach Obama got all of his opponents on the ballot running against him for state senator in 1996 tossed out by filing legal challenges against their eligibility. That’s how he won.
Republicans like to say “we’re going to take the high road” — to their own doom — and “not go there”, but the fools need to start going there because this is a terrific opportunity to cause immense chaos for Democrats in this city.
Emanuel has such a temper, ego, and insane streak within him that if he’s barred from running we can realistically see him sabotaging whoever DOES get to be the Democrat nominee. There will not be enough popcorn in the country to satisfy the hunger for those watching this circus of a race to succeed Daley.
And, most bizarre of all, the idea we had for Emanuel — “The Man’s Country Gambit” — now seems to be his best argument for getting on the ballot. Because of his lifetime membership in the men’s bathhouse Man’s Country in Andersonville, Emanuel has been “maintaining” a place to sleep, shower, change, roustabout, and “hang up his jacket” whenever in town, because there is always a room (or at bare minimum a locker) at Man’s Country waiting for him whenever he comes to town. It’s almost like renting a room in town, with rent due whenever he chooses to use it ($20 for an 8 hour play date).
All Emanuel has to do is admit he frequents Man’s Country, and he resolves his residency problem.
It’s really funny to us that this man’s personal greed is causing him so much grief. He just HAD to rent out his Chicago house, instead of maintaining it as a Chicago residence of his own while he was in Washington. He just HAD to have that extra $3,000/month that he’s getting renting that place out.
If he didn’t insist on renting it to make that extra cash, he’d be able to claim he was a Chicago resident all along.
Without having to ever talk about Man’s Country or use that gambit to get around the eligibility issue.
Too funny.
Rahm Emanuel starts campaigning for Chicago Mayor today. We're going to do all we can to thwart him. Will you help us?
This is actually going to be a lot of fun, folks, because Rahm Emanuel thinks he is beloved in Chicago and the city is just going to hand him the Mayor’s office after all the people he’s stepped on, screamed at, belittled, and terrorized through the years.
We have an inside source in his nascent campaign who describes the attitude of the staff Emanuel already has as “delusional”.
We also happen to know people working on some of the other Mayoral campaigns, so we’re going to get a lot of inside scoop on all of this…and will try to go to as many of Emanuel’s events as possible to report live from the ground on how crazy he is, and how stupid the national media is for declaring Emanuel to be the next Mayor.
Chicagoans don’t like or want him.
His abrasive, toxic, and emotionally unbalanced personality is not what this city needs. And people know that.
We’ve had a benign-tyrant in the Mayor’s office for 21 years, with one family controlling Chicago for all but 15 of the last 60-some years. The last thing people are going to want is another dictator — least of all one whose mouth is so filthy there isn’t enough soap in all of Illinois to wash it out.
After the November elections are over, we’d like all of you nationally to commit to helping us thwart Rahm Emanuel’s Mayoral ambitions.
Though, honestly, he’s pretty much going to do that himself, just by being Rahm Emanuel.
It’s going to get really fun, though…especially since the Mayoral election is February 22nd…and the Blagojevich trial begins again in January…and if Blago is the Blago we all know and love, this time he’s going to call Emanuel to the stand…so there’s a very real possibility that Emanuel could be a material witness in a corruption trial asked about his own dirty dealings while trying to become Mayor of Chicago.
How fun will THAT be to watch?
The Communists and Socialists had a rally on Saturday, and the Democrat Party fully embraced them
There’s a great comparison between the number of people who turned up for the Glenn Beck Restoring Honor rally in August and the crowd Democrats achieved by busing in union members and embracing Communists and Socialists, who turned up in strong numbers with their posters and signs heralding the Democrats’ strong embrace of Leftism.
Since everyone who came to the Glenn Beck rally was unpaid, and it cost quite a bit to go to this, and everyone covered their own costs, those two images should send chills of terror down the backs of everyone at the DNC. Their union muscle is dwarfed by the hardworking and patriotic Americans who are standing up to them.
But, Saturday’s “One Nation” rally, which the Democrat party and the current president embraced and encouraged fully, should terrify Democrats for another reason: as it’s being reported on all other sites we look at, the Communist and Socialist elements of the Democrat party have never been on prouder display.
Since 2008, these people have really come out of the woodwork and are no longer working in the shadows. No one at the DNC is keeping them in the closet anymore, or hiding them in the basement. They feel like they own the DNC now, and in fact the Left really does. They have taken off their masks and have revealed themselves for who they really are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, anti-everything the majority of this country believes in.
Independents in particular need to take a long, hard look at who was at this “One Nation” rally, because they will not like what they see.
There has never been a stronger argument for voting these lunatics and radicals out of office.
If these are the people who support what Democrats are doing, and the majority of Americans disagree firmly with these people, then the choice is pretty damn clear what Americans need to do on November 2nd.
Addendum from CtH:
Click to embiggen.
New survey highlights black racism, bodes badly for Democrat prospects in the fall
91% of surveyed blacks wildly support the job (or number, really) that Obama is doing to this country.
91% of non-black people have never been found to all support ANYTHING in this country, at any given moment at time, in the nation’s history.
This is a country where a survey of “Do you like ice cream” yields 8% that says “I don’t know”, because on average there is 5-8% of the public who answers “I don’t know” to everything, for whatever reason. It seems to be the way these people exert their individuality…with a defiant “I don’t know” that refuses to comply with a Yes or No answer to whatever they are being asked.
Considering this, let’s take a look at that 91% support for Obama amongst blacks again.
If 91% support him, then that leaves 9% that must be shared amongst the “I don’t know” crowd and those that would not support Obama.
Have you ever seen a survey, on any other topic, where “I don’t know” and “don’t support” would be as close together as 4% and 5%, however those numbers shaked out?
The reason all of this spells greater doom for Democrats nationally is that this blind race-support coming from the black community is inflating Obama’s, and Democrats’, national support numbers greatly.
Blacks are telling pollsters they support Obama at the rate of 91%, but we don’t believe that’s going to translate into blacks showing up at the polls in November for Democrat candidates. They traditionally don’t vote in massive numbers in off-year elections already. Without Obama on the ballot, or another black person they can vote for, these race-voters are going to find other things they can do on November 2nd.
When Democrats look at the support numbers they are receiving, they need to be mindful of the fact that blacks included in the survey are RSVPS in the affirmative for a party they don’t intend to really show up for next month. So, don’t make all that extra potato salad and bean dip, Democrats, because it’s all going to go to waste.
Those of you who are great at analyzing numbers should take a look at the survey linked above and let us know what else you can find of interest in the numbers. The numbers games aren’t our particularly speciality, but we know some of you could find further interesting nuggets in there to relate to the coming doom for Democrats.
What we’d love to see someone do is factor this 91% black support into a more informed perception of Obama’s current national approval rating…and then compare THAT number (re-adjusted to reflect the race-voting that’s artificially increasing it) to previous presidents during off-year elections, where in the past a president below 50% approval suffered devastating losses in Congress.
Our gut is that Obama’s 42% current approval rating would be 38% or so without the blacks and Liberal voters giving him a pass because his skin is black.
That same break won’t be given to non-blacks on the Democrat ticket…so these race-voters in the survey are making Democrats feel more comfortable about November 2nd than they otherwise should be.
Monday Open Thread: October 4th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Monday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
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Halloween 2010 costume ideas
Here are two great Halloween 2010 costume ideas — to go as various kinds of clowns. The traditional clown (right) or the spoiled and privileged clown (left). Either way, you can make an ass of yourself on Halloween and give people precisely what they expect from you.
