1.  The best campaign ad ever from Carly Fiorina.  HT Michelle Malkin.  Seriously, it's got demon sheep.  Ain't nothing wrong with a sheep with red eyes.  Chuck Devore is smiling right now.

That's a Demon Sheep, not Nancy Pelosi.

2.  Pelosi says she'll cut waste -- but she won't say how much waste will actually be cut.  According to The Hill:

Pressed for details, the Speaker’s office this week declined to specify what recommendations Pelosi received from the various committees; whether every committee submitted a list of proposed budget cuts; how the recommendations she did receive were selected or ignored; and how much in savings was identified.

3.  How much was Katie Couric airbrushed in this photo shoot?  And yes, she's wearing diamonds, even as her network lays off reporters.

4.  House agrees to $1.9 trillion more in debt.  Because, as they put it in Finian's Rainbow, "We got something better than money! It's credit!"

5.  Via @andylevy on Twitter, the best Facebook status ever: "I wish my lawn were emo so it would cut itself."

6.  And while we're on the sheep theme, the quote of the day comes from Alexander the Great: "An army composed of sheep but led by a lion is more powerful than an army of lions led by a sheep."  Unfortunately, America has become the latter.  Europe is recognizing that, and moving to deal with Iran, China, and Russia instead of us.

As has been amply demonstrated by others, Howard Zinn was an anti-American secular humanist with heavily Marxist leanings.  As I have already written, teaching the Zinn Education Project in public schools likely violates the California education code.  It discriminates against particular races (namely, non-minorities) and all traditional religion (particularly with regard to its view of homosexuality).  Zinn himself called for violating the education codes wherever possible:

“Don’t obey the rules… you have to play a kind of guerrilla warfare with the establishment in which you try not to be fired… You have to depart from the curriculum… outside the lines that are set for us by the school administration, or the politicians.”

Howard Zinn

Of course, that doesn’t stop schoolteachers everywhere from teaching Zinn.  According to the Oxnard Union High School District, Zinn’s on the California Department of Education Recommended Reading List.

He’s taught at the San Lorenzo Unified School District Re-Entry Intervention Program, which targets kids coming back to school after being expelled, students with ten or more days of suspension who are on track for expulsion, students coming back to school from Juvenile Hall – in short, the worst of the worst.  This makes perfect sense – after all, what better way is there to teach borderline-criminal kids about good citizenship than pillorying America and giving them delusions of victimhood?

He’s taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District, at the Stern Math and Science School, where teacher Benjamin Weber’s curriculum is designed to focus on various minority groups struggling against the repressive evil of the American system.

He’s taught throughout the Seattle School District; in 2002, pressure from liberal interest groups forced the school district to adopt Zinn’s work in a stated attempt to include “cultural diversity” in the curriculum.  Not coincidentally, the district came up with an action plan that included “more aggressive recruitment of minority teachers, better training of teachers about students’ varied cultural backgrounds, and racially proportionate admissions of students to special education and ‘highly capable’ programs.”  He’s also taught in the Philadelphia School District, which recommends all of his books.

The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Our public schools can’t get kids to read, write or do math.  But they can teach them to be victims, to hate religion, and to despise America’s history.

There’s no question that teaching Zinn violates school codes all over the country.  The truth is that it should also violate current understanding of the First Amendment Establishment Clause.

First, the Establishment Clause.  The Establishment Clause provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  The original meaning of this clear dictate has been obscured by a century of bad Supreme Court law, so there’s no reason to go into it.  Instead, let’s focus on what the Supreme Court currently says the Establishment Clause means.  Under Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), state and federal governments have no business participating in any activity unless (1) the action has a secular legislative purpose; or (2) it does not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; or (3) it does not result in “excessive government entanglement” with religion.  The easy argument here is that Zinn’s Education Project has a primary effect of inhibiting religion – as I’ve explained in the past, the Project targets religion in particularly pernicious ways.

But there’s another argument that deserves an airing here.  That is the argument that Zinn’s form of propaganda truly amounts to religious proselytizing.  Read the rest of the piece at BigHollywood.

There sure is something different about President Obama. Usually, the State of the Union address is a laundry list of proposals spiced with sycophantic applause and dipped in an admixture of boredom and bravado. It is rarely a statement of basic philosophy.

Not for President Obama.

President Obama's State of the Union address was the greatest American rhetorical embrace of fascist trope since the days of Woodrow Wilson. I am not suggesting Obama is a Nazi; he isn't. I am not suggesting that he is a jackbooted thug; he isn't (even if we could be forgiven for mistaking Rahm Emanuel for one).

President Obama is, however, a man who embodies all the personal characteristics of a fascist leader, right down to the arrogant chin-up head tilt he utilizes when waiting for applause. He sees democracy as a filthy process that can be cured only by the centralized power of bureaucrats. He sees his presidency as a Hegelian synthesis marking the end of political conflict. He sees himself as embodiment of the collective will. No president should speak in these terms -- not in a representative republic. Obama does it habitually.

It would be pointless to discuss at length the dictatorial, demagogic nature of much of Obama's address -- the attacks on the banking system; the unprecedented personal assault on the Supreme Court justices; the dictatorial demands ("I want a jobs bill on my desk without delay"); the scornful looks and high-handed put-downs directed at his political opponents. It would be even more pointless to discuss the incomprehensible stupidity of Obama's policy proposals. (Export more of our goods? Why didn't anyone else think of that?)

It is worth examining, however, the deeper philosophy evident from Obama's address. From the outset, his speech was an ode to himself. He opened, bizarrely, by comparing this moment in history to past American crises: "when the Union was turned back at Bull Run …" He suggested that "America prevailed because we chose to move forward as one nation, as one people." This, of course, is unmitigated, self-serving rubbish -- 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War because we didn't move forward as one nation. But that is irrelevant to Obama -- in his mind, today's crisis is just like the Civil War. He is a modern-day Lincoln, and those who oppose him are benighted rebels. What's more, only his powerful leadership can lead us through.

Then it was on to his critique of American politics. It should be noted at the outset that American politics is designed to produce gridlock. The governmental structure was carefully calibrated to thwart grand, ambitious programs like Obama's socialist remolding of America; the founders deliberately shackled government by pitting interest against interest. Obama does not accept that, and so he despises the American system of republicanism. He acknowledged that political debate is deeply entrenched: "These disagreements, about the role of government in our lives, about our national priorities and our national security, they've been taking place for over 200 years. They're the very essence of democracy." Then he dismissed the very essence of democracy in a single stroke: "But we still need to govern."

Obama's alternative is government as a single blunt instrument wielded by him. To read more, click here.

Friday, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League did what he’s most fond of doing: he focused his ire on a friend of Israel rather than an enemy in order to protect his allies in the Democratic Party. This time, he’s attacked staunch philo-Semite and pro-Israel bulwark Rush Limbaugh. Here’s Rush’s statement:

"To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there."

Here’s the relevant portion of the ADL press release:

"Rush Limbaugh reached a new low with his borderline anti-Semitic comments about Jews as bankers, their supposed influence on Wall Street, and how they vote … While the age-old stereotype about Jews and money has a long and sordid history, it also remains one of the main pillars of anti-Semitism and is widely accepted by many Americans. His notion that Jews vote based on their religion, rather than on their interests as Americans, plays into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists."

I am an Orthodox Jew, so I feel quite free to speak out on this. Abe Foxman’s statements are ridiculous, insulting, and wrongheaded. He should apologize to Rush immediately. Here’s why:

Read Full Article at Bigjournalism.com