'American Girl' Dolls, Girl Scout Badges Now Common Core-Aligned

Big Government

 

..."The truth, however, is that Common Core is becoming part of every aspect of children’s lives, leaving many American parents concerned about intrusion into privacy and indoctrination.
"A recent post by FreedomWorks at EAGnews.org demonstrates that very young girls are being reminded of the Common Core standards even in their toys and after-school activities.
"The American Girl dolls, long a fun way for little girls to immerse themselves in play associated with American history and culture, have now met Common Core. A new American Girl doll school backpack set comes complete with everything a doll will need in school, including a Common Core-aligned math textbook, published by Common Core industry giant Pearson—the same Pearson whose charitable foundation is paying a settlement of $7 million for allegations of illegally helping its corporate parent develop Common Core-aligned courses.

 

"As a result, the parent backlash against Common Core now extends to American Girl dolls.
"If a young girl doesn’t get enough Common Core in school, she can also be exposed to the new standards at her next Girl Scout meeting. According to the Girl Scouts, “the content of all Girl Scout national proficiency badges and journeys have been correlated by grade level to national Common Core Standards… for all 50 states and the District of Columbia.' ”

Obama gets Sochi right

Tennis champion Billie Jean King
 will be among those representing
 the United States at the Sochi
Winter Olympics.

Jennifer Rubin   "The Post reports: “The White House announced Tuesday that President Obama, Vice President Biden and the first lady will not attend the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, in February, a pointed snub by an
administration that is feuding with Russian leaders on a range of foreign policy and human rights issues. The U.S. delegation will be led by a former Cabinet secretary and a deputy secretary of state, and will include two openly gay athletes — tennis legend Billie Jean King and ice hockey player Caitlin Cahow — in an apparent bid to highlight opposition to Russia’s anti-gay laws.” Well — and you don’t read this often around here — bravo, Mr. President." ...
....
"Did he only see the light when the human rights cause became a favorite cause of the left (gay rights)? You bet. He praised Putin’s stolen election, has been silent about kangaroo court trials and has nary a word to say about the female punk rock band thrown in jail. But you have to start somewhere."

Mental Health Laws are Trouble for Democrats

Ann Coulter  "Instead of always taking incoming fire, how about Republicans start sending some back? It's great that they stopped HillaryCare, but if they had actually fixed health care by forcing health insurance plans to be sold in a competitive free market, there would have been no opportunity for shyster Democrats to foist Obamacare on us."
....
 "Liberals are so determined not to stigmatize anybody that their solution is always to make all of society suffer instead: 

-- To avoid hurting Muslims' feelings, everyone has to strip to his underwear at the airport.
-- So no one feels excluded, we're not allowed to say "Merry Christmas!"
-- To avoid singling out gays, the government and media lied to Americans for a decade about the coming explosion of heterosexual AIDS. (We're still waiting.)
-- To stop people from noticing patterns, the media bend over backward to avoid telling us the race of dangerous criminals on the loose.
-- To prevent hurt feelings, everybody gets an "A."

"And to avoid "stigmatizing" the mentally ill, society has to live with the occasional mass murder."

 

Despicable: Dem group sends gotcha tracker to funeral

Thomas Lifson  "Progressives understand very well that they cannot be honest about their political agenda, and that in order to win they need to demonize Republicans. This systematic program includes generalized propaganda (Republicans are mean! Republicans are racist! Republicans are stupid!) that media allies blanket the public with, in news programming and in popular culture, but it also includes a program called "trackers," which consists of following Republican candidates around and videotaping them, hoping for a gaffe that can be trumpeted throughout the media." More after the break.

Stupid Republicans help out with material like this:

Democratic opposition research organization American Bridge apologized on Monday for sending someone to follow New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte at a funeral this weekend, after a reporter and the New Hampshire Republican party attacked them for the move." ...

Democratic opposition research organization American Bridge apologized on Monday for sending someone to follow New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte at a funeral this weekend, after a reporter and the New Hampshire Republican party attacked them for the move...  Read more:

Democrats have a practice that becomes something more like stalking.  "Republicans whose homes have been videotaped say they understand that politics is a contact sport and that every public utterance they make is fair game. But, they argue, filming a home — and posting actual addresses — ought to be off-limits, if only out of respect for their families and neighbors."

Democratic stalkers; Posting videos of private homes crosses the line

Tech execs disappointed in their meeting with Obama

Thomas Lifson  "As his presidency sinks in popularity faster than George W. Bush's, Barack Obama is discovering that key constituencies are disappointed with him, and in danger of turning against him. Along with the media, high tech played a major role in achieving his two electoral victories. But now there are signs that his once-solid support in Silicon Valley and beyond is crumbling. The Hill reports:"  Read more:

Obama “Hijacks” Meeting With Tech Executives On NSA Surveillance To Make “PR Pitch” On Obamacare Website Fix…  "During a White House meeting called to brief America’s largest tech companies today about government overreach in electronic surveillance, President Barack Obama changed the subject – angering some meeting participants by shifting gears to address the failed launch of healthcare.gov.

" ‘That wasn’t what we came for,’ a vice-president of a company whose CEO attended told MailOnline."

The left's war on American business

Dennis Prager; Coercion in the Name of Tolerance 

" Thus, under penalty of fines and, potentially, jail:
1. Jack Phillips must participate in an event that the Colorado constitution explicitly prohibits.
2. He must do so against deeply held religious convictions.
3. He must do so despite the fact that there are hundreds of other cake makers in the Denver area.
"Those who support this decision argue that religious principles do not apply here — what if, for example, someone’s religious principles prohibited interracial marriages? Should that individual be allowed to deny services to an interracial wedding? Of course not. Here’s why that objection is irrelevant:"...

Hobby Lobby’s Secular Case    "The plight of Hobby Lobby, the arts-and-crafts business whose owners are being forced to compromise their faith, instantly draws the sympathy of religious conservatives. But why should anyone else care?"

A Visit to Woolwich; The trial of the two men who proudly claim they killed British soldier Lee Rigby is drawing to a close.

By John O’Sullivan  "From Green Park station in central London it takes only 15 minutes to get to Greenwich by the Tube. From there a taxi will get you to Woolwich in another 15. I took this journey a few months ago, and I learned from the taxi driver that I was just the latest member of a fairly crowded pilgrimage to see . . . well, what exactly?"

Not where Drummer (Private) Lee Rigby was brutally murdered last May so much as where the English people in their thousands came to lay wreaths, medals, and other mementoes on the weekends following his death. The taxi driver gave me a running commentary: Here was the road where the banks of flowers had spilled over the pavement into the street; they had now been removed by local government authorities, but visitors kept coming; now they usually left flowers at the entrance to the Woolwich Arsenal.
....
"... But the details of the murder — and the video recordings of it — still have the power to shock. Rigby’s mother and sister had to run in tears from the court to avoid seeing him deliberately run down by a car driven by the two defendants before they went on to cut him up with knives and cleavers."

From the UK Daily Mail: '...Muslim converts ran him down before almost decapitating him with meat cleaver and knives'
"There were gasps in Court Two when video footage of the soldier being mown down by a car, dragged into the road and executed was shown."

Drummer Rigby carried away by comrades from his unit.

The 30 second ad that should terrify incumbent Democrats

American Thinker   ... "Best of all, there's no real way to counter. Obamacare is theirs - they own it. And nothing they say will change that."

 

Obama's Obamacare Lie is Politifact's 'Lie of the Year,' Which Is Always About Obamacare   "There were solid odds that some Obamacare "lie" would be the winner, given that six of the 10 finalists selected by the fact-checking organization (which is part of the Tampa Bay Times) involved the law in one way or another. It was also likely to be this particular "pants on fire"-ranked statement given its significance in the public debate over the past few months. Perhaps if Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had sworn under oath that Healthcare.gov would work perfectly on October 1, that might usurp the title. But as the supercut compiled by New York magazine suggests, this was pretty inescapable for Obama."   Yahoo News

Oldie, but a goodie

Alan Caruba; The Power-Mad EPA

Warning Signs

"Barely a week goes by these days without hearing of some new demand by the Environmental Protection Agency that borders on the insane."

....

"The EPA is not about making sense. It is about over-interpreting laws passed by Congress in ways that now continually lead to cases before the Supreme Court. The Court is composed of lawyers, not scientists. In an earlier case, they ruled that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a “pollutant” when it is the one gas that all vegetation requires. Without it, nothing grows and all life on Earth dies."

....

I found this quote particularly interesting:

Dr. Soon and Driessen do not deny that coal-burning power plants emit an estimated 41-to-48 tons of mercury per year, “but U.S. forest fires emit at least 44 tons per year; cremation of human remains discharges 26 tons, Chinese power plants eject 400 tons; and volcanoes, subsea vents, geysers, and other sources spew out 9,000-10,000 additional tons per year.”

Coal Must Embrace All-Out Battle with Eco-Bullies  "Meekly accepting blame for climate change dooms the industry and the greater economy."

Imagine you have been wrongfully arrested, charged with murdering a child. Although the evidence against you is sketchy, the police have no other suspects, and with the government anxious to appease those demanding justice, your case is rushed to trial. Your lawyer decides that with public sentiment strongly against you, the best course of action is to plead guilty and to throw yourself at the mercy of the court.

 

 

  

Chinese navy, we salute you

http://terrellaftermath.com/

 

Interesting and familiar.
We were on the transport USS Rockbridge (APA 228) departing Piraeus, Greece in 1961 when a Soviet freighter cut across our bow, causing our ship to swerve. There were a few curses and one-finger salutes thrown by the marines and sailors. 

 I read some time later that incidents such as this were used to test US Navy seamanship, but tend to think it was their way of challenging our presence in that part of the world.TD 

"The Comical Conservative" posts

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Victor Davis Hanson on A Culture in Ruins

PJ Media

"Lady Gaga reportedly spent $25 million on pop art to jazz up her new and apparently underwhelming album. In contrast, Miley Cyrus’ sexual twerking at the MTV Music Video Awards earned her more millions by exposing her rather unimpressive anatomy. Both make the once vulgar Madonna seem like June Cleaver, but at least raise an existential question: how much lower can we go?"

....

"I think Barack Obama once promised Americans that we would never lose our doctors or preexisting health plans when his Obamacare was enacted. But I am not sure anymore. He has explained that he never said that, and retroactively added that he had long warned us that our plans were in danger if they did not comply with his new guidelines. Maybe I’d forgotten that. Even if the president of the United States is lying about his lie, what difference does it make? Those who cite the lie, not the untruth teller, are those who seek to impose discriminatory standards."