[The teacher] planned to base final exams on the Michael Moore film, “Sicko“.

A single conservative student objected and also says that her teacher called her a “teabagger” earlier in the year, during a different controversy. But what manages, incredibly, to bother me even more than the choice of movie and the public insult of a student by her teacher, is this:

…Blessman distributed to students in her Senior Literature and Composition class…

So for a Literature and Composition class, the final was … a movie.

The teacher should have been fired before anybody discovered she was pushing her odious political bias on her students. She should have been fired when it was discovered she is not a teacher of literature and composition. Good luck getting that done now.

Never daunted, we cannot falter
In the battle, we’re tried and true
Indiana, our Indiana,
Indiana, we’re proud of you.

Me: “Who’s calling, please?”

Female drone: “May I please speak to Anwyn?”

Me: “Speaking.”

Female drone: “Mrs. Anwyn, I’m calling on behalf of the Republican Party. Generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Republican or a Democrat?”

Me: “I’m a Republican.”

Her: “Mrs. Anwyn, I’m very glad to hear that. This is a critical time right now for the blah blah blah Obama blah blah health care–”

Me: “I’m sorry–” This would have been followed by “but are you with the national Republican organization or the local one?” had you not HUNG UP the second the words “I’m sorry” were out of my mouth.

That’s right. YOU called ME and then HUNG UP when I wouldn’t go along with your script. You are not interested in me beyond my money. That’s just reality, but at least learn how to disguise it.

Republican Party, quit relying on idiots to represent you. Stop sucking the suck.

Next up: They will try to ban phones while driving altogether, handheld or hands-free.

Via The Daily Caller.

Now they’re coming for the light bulbs, and most people seem completely insensible to the danger.

Yet about 75 percent said they are not aware of the impending federal requirement for greater energy efficiency that will lead to the phaseout of less efficient lighting.

“Less efficient” by a standard of raw energy consumed, perhaps. “Less efficient” by a standard of, you know, actually lighting things to a visible spectrum and being safe to handle around your toddler, not so much: Incandescents are far more efficient than flourescents on both counts. And there’s this ill-considered boilerplate from GE:

“We’re not sensing a rush by consumers to comply with the looming federal standards,” Kathy Sterio, GE Lighting’s general manager of consumer marketing said in a prepared statement.

“There’s a major shift to CFLs but it’s clearly is a matter of educated consumers choosing CFLs for their strengths,” she said. “Our marketing, advertising and packaging have espoused the value of energy-efficient CFLs for over a decade.”

Such a charming implication, that those of us who still prefer incandescents are uneducated yokels.

H/t J.

“You guys … are not only not talking about a second stimulus, you’re talking about trying to cut … the budget,” Maddow said. “I have to tell you, it sounds completely, completely insane.”

["Top economic adviser to the president" Jared] Bernstein vowed “there`s going to be no stupid Hooverism around here, to use your, I think, very apt term.”

“Spending programs, in order to generate the kind of job growth that we need to offset this — the impact of what was the deepest recession since the Great Depression — generally will fall outside of this freeze,” he said.

But Michael Linden, associate director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress, argued a week ago that this kind of a freeze would make only a dent in the country’s structural problems.

“The federal government spent a bit more than $625 billion on non-defense discretionary programs in 2009. The Congressional Budget Office projects that, in five years, the federal government will spend about $660 billion on the same programs,” he wrote.

“Freezing non-defense discretionary spending at current levels would therefore only produce a total savings of $35 billion in 2015. That year, the budget deficit is expected to be around $760 billion. Saving $35 billion would solve less than 5 percent of the problem. There may be some savings to be found in non-defense discretionary programs, but a spending freeze would accomplish extremely little in the way of measurable deficit reduction.”

Food stamp programs? Education programs? College loan programs? Even … spit … health care “reform” programs? No. Spending programs. Spending programs that will in no way be affected by a “spending freeze.”

Well, hell. Gotta admire a person who calls it what it is in defiance of his own political interest, right? Go ahead, keep stating your real goal out loud till everybody understands that spending was the real goal all along. Kthxbai.

The man’s 70 years old and made this, and while I don’t know that he necessarily came out of retirement to do so ([to me it seems that way, but that might be just because] I haven’t followed him in a while, though when I was little, “Mississippi Squirrel Revival” was the funniest thing I had ever heard), I say … you go, Ray. I particularly like the embrace of the “yokel” image to make the point that the ones Obama et. al. would like to write off as “yokels” are quite capable of “yokeling” him et. al. right out of office. Seriously–I know a lot of people of my parents’ age who look a lot like the Ray playing the plunger, except they play real guitars–extremely well. His point is real and well made.

Next best line: “You might want to start looking for another line of work. How about the medical profession? Yeah, they’re going to need everybody they can get who will put up with the red tape and the pay cut.”

H/t See-Dubya.

H/t Hot Air headlines.

“I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer. For ultimately, the buck stops with me. … When the system fails, it is my responsibility.”

He would pass the blame, but he’s more interested in something else, so, sure, he’ll grant that the buck can stop with him, if you’ll grant that we can talk now about how to learn and correct.

Second … it’s just the same old jerky Obama pattern that’s been evident since the beginning. He can’t disown Jeremiah Wright … until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that disowning is the winning position. He must close Gitmo … until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that not closing it is the winning position. He must end our involvement in Iraq immediately … except things are better there and abrupt pull-out would be silly, so not ending it immediately is the winning position. He says nothing about the underwear bomber … until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that he must say something. He says, and Janet Napolitano says, idiotic things about the underwear bomber until the growing unrest of the voters makes it clear that he must say something more forceful and definite. So he does.

For a guy with, as used to be said about Chamberlain, his wetted forefinger in the wind, he sure doesn’t seem to know which way it’s blowing until it ruffles his hair.