Pi Day Special: Common Core for the Common Man

As a special Pi ("π") Day tribute to Common Core math, I’ve developed a little CC story problem for you to solve:

Air Force Won leaves Washington D.C., flying west at 540 miles/hour. On board are Big Guy, TOTUS, twenty-one (21) SS Storm Troopers and the Beast (not that one, the car).

Thirty (30) minutes later, Air Force Won Too leaves Washington D.C. flying west also at 540 miles/hour. Air Force Won Too is carrying the other Beast, 2 Hollywood makeup/hair artists, six (6) frock changes, three (3) MILSPEC containment structures and a baker’s dozen SS Storm Troopers.

If Lady M dresses for her appearance on the Ellen show forty-one (41) minutes prior to landing, how many CO² number bonds will it take to convince the rightwing global warming deniers that

the earth is not flat and that the Iranian Nukes for Peace deal is a good idea?

Hint: don’t forget to use pi ("π") in calculating your answer.

My test question is based on an assumed fact: that Air Force Won isn’t large enough to accommodate the entire First Family and their respective entourages.

h/t Wingnuts Workings

So it took two planes to get POTUS and FLOTUS  to their respective TV gigs; Big Guy to kibitz (can I still say that?) on Jimmy Kimmel:

And Lady M to dance with Ellen Degeneres (thanks, DeniseVB, for ruining everyone’s Friday evening with this yesterday):

The dancing begins at 3:00, butt it’s fun to hear Lady M pretend that she doesn’t have “people” – “You think I have ‘people!?’”

And here’s a bonus Pi Day Common Core math for the common man question:

At the current cost of $228,288 per hour to operate Air Force Won, calculate the “cool” factor of BO and MO, respectively, based on their comings and goings for the past 6 years, 2 months and 14 days.

       

Hint: be sure to subtract the cost of the flight over the Statue of Liberty, in number bonds, as that was strictly for official public relations purposes. And again, don’t forget to use pi ("π")  in your calculation.

And here’s today’s historical footnote: with his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, BO has now officially done more TV talk shows than press conferences.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

Warning: disturbing image ahead

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary! Will this never end? It’s all about Hillary. I’m beginning to know exactly how Jan Brady felt: 

NOW we find out that nobody even read Hills’ deleted emails? They just deemed them to be personal? Since when can you even do that?

Naturally, that prompted the inevitable comparisons like this, from Big Fur Hat at iOTWREPORT:

And the accompanying commentary is even worse; like this, from “Tim”

Nixon was an American.
Nixon loved America.
Nixon strove to get America out of Vietnam.
Nixon GOT us out of Vietnam.
Nixon didn’t enrich himself at American expense.
Nixon didn’t sell American largess for cash.
Nixon OPENED China, he didn’t COLLUDE with China.
Nixon never imported narcotics.
Nixon didn’t murder his friends and colleagues.
Nixon didn’t have his Ambassadors murdered.
Nixon didn’t run weapons to the mozlem bruthahs.
Nixon didn’t give material support to America’s enemies.

It might actually be time to shift our attention back to something we’re all more, well, used to; Lady M, celebrating another foreign holiday, this time the Persian New Year:

Any chance to crack open another bottle of the Dom is okay with me

“Hello everyone!  Nowruzetan Mobarak!”

“For more than 3,000 years, families and communities in the Middle East, Asia, and all around the world, including here in the United States, have celebrated this holiday to mark the renewal of the earth in springtime -- and we’re finally feeling spring!  Yay for that!  (Applause.)…”

Only we used to call it “Easter.”

“And just like in many of your homes, we have created our own White House Haft-Seen.  As you all know, Haft-Seen essentially means “Seven S’s,” and each “S” represents a different hope for the New Year -- a hope for blessings like patience and love and sweetness.  For example, we’ve got grass sprouts that represent rebirth and renewal of nature.  We’ve got an apple for health and beauty.  We have crushed berry spice that represents the sunrise and the spice of life.”

That sounds just like the new school lunches, minus the symbolism.

“So I hope that you guys will make yourselves at home.” 

And now, a message from one of the guys who made himself at home:

If you don’t read Persian, I think it says something like “Happy New Year youse guys! Make yourselves at home, we’ll talk nukes after dessert.” 

Linked By: BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

The Answer Hit Me Like a .44 Slug

Do you remember acting up as a youngster and - after being told repeatedly to knock it off – being shocked when the inevitable disaster occurred? And do you remember your mother, having warned you a dozen times, shouting in exasperation, “I hope you’re happy now young lady/man!”? Well, I’d just like to say to Ricky: “I hope you’re happy now, young man!”

Because even a 6 year old knows that if you keep poking a hornet’s nest with a stick, bad things are going to happen.

Unfortunately the hornets attacked the good guys, not the idiots with the stick.

Since Calvin and Hobbes have informed us on many current issues in the past I thought I would look a little deeper into the wisdom of Bill Watterson’s genius. I found this article, “Calvin and Hobbes: America’s Most Profound Comic Strip” and was struck by this part:

The late political scientist James Q. Wilson described “Calvin and Hobbes” as “our only popular explication of the moral philosophy of Aristotle.” Wilson meant that the social order is founded on self-control and delayed gratification—and that Calvin is hopeless at these things. Calvin thinks that “life should be more like TV” and that he is “destined for greatness” whether he does his homework or not. His favorite sport is “Calvinball,” in which he is entitled to make up the rules as he goes along.

Thinks he’s “destined for greatness,” “entitled to make up the rules as he goes along” – for a minute I forgot we were talking about Calvin and thought perhaps we were talking about Big Guy. Butt that’s silly; Calvin is a lovable little 6 year old living in his own world of make believe and Barry is an unlovable 50-something living in his own world of make believe.

The article doesn’t exactly explain why Mr. Watterson decided to put an end to Calvin and Hobbes after a 10 year run, butt perhaps it has something to do with the “subversiveness of creativity” and his sense that it wouldn’t be tolerated in the future:

“Calvin and Hobbes” would have faced big challenges if Mr. Watterson had decided to carry on…today’s cultural climate might have made it more difficult for him to render a boy’s imaginative life in a realistic way. Calvin fantasizes not just about dinosaurs flying F-14s but also about shooting up his school with a tank.

At one point, he tells Susie Derkins—his neighbor, rival and secret crush—“I’m sure it’s frustrating knowing that men are bigger, stronger and better at abstract thought than women.” That these are all jokes matters little. Enforcers of taste are not known for their humor.

Boy! Tell me about it! Enforcers of everything are not known for their humor.

So maybe Bill Watterson realized, as the 21st approached, that Calvin was becoming an anachronism, a paean of political incorrectness that simply would not be permitted in the future. I must say, his “creative subversion” would surely have been seen as a threat in the Age of Obama. With a thin-skinned leader who thinks everything is about him, a comic strip about a delusional child, living in a fantasy world, throwing tantrums and smiting his enemies at will would not be tolerated.

For example, Big Guy would have assumed that this week-long illustrated series was making fun of his Common Core Curriculum – even though it was written 2 decades before anyone codified fuzzy math into Common Core story problems and number bonds. That’s your reality when you’re a delusional, narcissistic megalomaniac

Butt, hey, I’ll play along; Calvin Does Common Core Math Story Problems. Enjoy.

 

The answer hits all of us like a .44 slug, eventually.

That’s right, I need another $18 trillion. Got it? Good.

Linked By: Adrienne’s Corner, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

How the Smart Phone Outsmarted the Smartest Woman

I hate to make this so superficial…

Butt seriously: what sort of statement was Hillary trying to make with this bizarre coat/jacket/tunic/dress/slack outfit? Was it a nod to her transgender/confused coalition? A sort of sartorial stonewalling? Or just another fashion misstep?

The coat/jacket/tunic/dress sits worse than it stands

I hate to make this all about fashion, butt if you’re going to ask people to “trust me” when you’ve never done anything to warrant it (h/t Carly Fiorina) you need to at least dress the part. Perhaps something dark and serious without bringing to mind the Cold War era or an International Evil Empire.

Especially when you are about to tell us a bunch of whoppers and admit to having deleted thousands of emails related to “wedding plans, yoga, vacations”  and other “personal stuff” (like Benghazi). And then tell us that the only reason you used a private email server (that provides you with complete control over what gets deleted) was to simplify your very, very complicated internationalist life.

Note to Hillary: it’s not going to be less complicated if you’re president.

Butt since she may be our president some day I would like to say something nice about the smartest woman in the world: yesterday’s get up was an improvement over a similar look she sported in 2011:

She clearly learned that a patterned, double-breasted coat featuring black piping makes you appear wider. So that’s a good sign: she does do learning. Maybe she can learn how to load two different email accounts to one smart phone. That way we won’t have to hand the reins of the Internet over to the One World Order so they can establish a One World email server.

Oh, I almost forgot! There are apparently some legitimate reasons why you don’t want your Secretary of State “opting for convenience” when it comes to their email – from GeekWire:

1. The Secretary of State is a very “high value target” from the standpoint of nation-state threat actors. The President, Secretary of Defense and the head of the CIA would also qualify in this top tier. These individuals handle the most important, most sensitive, most dangerous and therefore most interesting information to foreign intelligence.
2. Nation-state threat actors represent the top of the food chain in terms of adversaries in information security. Nation-states can bring the most talent and resources to bear in this arena. For all the worry about cybercriminals and terrorists, everyone in information security looks at nation-state threat actors as the most advanced and sophisticated threat to defend against.
3. Take #1 and #2 together and you have a situation where the very high value targets are threatened by the most advanced and sophisticated offensive information security capabilities out there. Put another way, the best of the best are gunning for those people to get their information.

You can liken this to the CFO of Chase taking billions of dollars in cash home and storing it in the mattress. It’s so inadequate to meeting the risks that it would be laughable if it weren’t so serious.

If Hillary really didn’t comprehend the meaning and intent of the Department of State cybersecurity protocols perhaps we need to reassess Hill’s designation of “smartest woman in the world” status. And if Big Guy, who I guess actually did know that Hillary was using her private email, didn’t think that was a problem either maybe he’s not “the smartest man ever to be elected to the presidency” either.

All I know for sure is that at this point Gucifer knows more about Hillary’s emails than Congress does.

Yeah, you two deserve each other; butt we don’t.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

“Truth Is What You Can Make the Voter Think It Is.”–James Carville

“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes” - MacBeth

What we know so far:

The Clinton Conflicts of Interest Foundation did indeed receive contributions from foreign governments and corporations while Hills was conducting d’affaires of state.

Hillary did in fact have her own private email system and server and her official, and possibly classified, correspondence were not archived, as required by federal law and State Department rules. Also, they were not, as required by federal law and court orders, included in State Department responses to requests from Congress and several FOIAs.

Big Guy misremembered first finding out about the private email on the news - like everybody else - before he re-remembered knowing about it all along.

 

Valarie Jarrett “did not have email communications with that woman, Ms. Clinton. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never.”

Really? Not a single time? Never? Nope?

Huma Abedin-Wiener, deputy chief of staff to Hills during the time period in question, also used a private email run through the Clinton server in her communications with the boss. Butt that has nothing to do with Huma’s family having some disturbing ties to the Muslim Brotherhood:

Her father is said to be close with the Saudi government's Muslim World League, and her mother is said to be a member of the Muslim Sisterhood.

Causing Andrew McCarty to research and report:

"The ties of Ms. Abedin's father, mother and brother to the Muslim Brotherhood are both specific and substantiated."

So why that would make people wonder what was in those clandestine emails I can’t imagine. I suppose they might want to know who benefited politically and financially from their relationship with Clinton and/or Abedin. Or maybe they just want to know generally what Hillary knew and when she know it.

Butt clearly this is all an extension of the rightwing conspiracy that has been at working against the Clinton’s for over 20 years, right, James?

When you call the ragin’ Cajun back to cover your back, things must be getting pretty hot.

It’s not surprising to find that Carville, the old reliable Clinton apologist, is back on the payroll considering the seriousness of the charges currently hovering around Hillary. Watch how a consummate leftist defends the defenseless with timeless liberal logic and straw men: 

Andrea Mitchell: “Why should she be the person deciding, or her circle, decide which e-mails to turn over? Isn’t that the problem with a private e-mail system that isn’t government archived?”

James Carville: “Are you saying that she’s a crook? Because if she does not turn over relevant stuff, that’s against the law. So is that what we’re really gonna say here? I don’t think we really want to say that.”

Well played! Does anyone do faux outrage as well as James Carville? So far he’s the only thing completely transparent in the Hillary camp. Like they say: "If you drag a hundred dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find." In this case a low-class political hustler who will do stupid people tricks for food.

The Immutable Wisdom of a charlatan: it takes one to work for one 

So buckle your seatbelts: Hillary will be taking to the mic this afternoon to further explain the unexplainable and defend the defenseless. Also, to declare that she is not a crook.

“People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got.”

Linked By: American Digest, and Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

The Lint is Piling Up

The Clintons have always attracted scandals like black gabardine trousers attract lint from cheap white napkins. They’ve hosted two doozies in just the last few weeks:

• The Clinton Foundation continual receipt of donations from countries that then Secretary of State Hills was negotiating with on behalf of the U.S. government.

Makes you wonder what the real “Clinton global initiative” is all about

• The private email server of Hillary Rodham Clinton while conducting official, “transparent” U.S. government business.

Don’t worry though, if you were planning on Hillary being our historic, first female president, Bubba has established a new ethical standard against which all behavior can now be measured: did it do more good than harm?

And he’ll be the judge.

“You’ve got to decide, when you do this work whether it’ll do more good than harm if someone helps you from another country” he stated. And “my theory about all this is disclose everything, and then let people make their judgments. But I think there are more than 300,000 people, you should know this, who in some form or fashion have contributed money to the work we’ve done over the years, and I believe we’ve done a lot more good than harm.”

By utilizing this handy “ends justifies the means” standard, I believe both Bill and Hill will be exonerated of any wrongdoing in both of the current scandals generated by the vast right wing conspiracy, as well as most of the old ones as well:

• Whitewater (a sticky wicket because more harm than good seems to have occurred here)
• Cattle Futuresgate (insider trading; butt everybody does it)
• Travelgate (employees fired for political reasons, what’s wrong with that?)
• Chinagate (Clinton/Gore campaign taking illegal contributions from Communist China: is that a problem for you?)
• Bimbogate 1, 2, 3 and 4. Note: not technically illegal
• Rose Law Firmgate (missing subpoenaed documents mysteriously appearing years later on WH table)
• Fostergate (who really killed Vince Foster and why? See “Whitewater” above) 
• Pantsgate (Clinton confidante Sandy Berger’s steals classified documents, stuffs in pants.)

None of this is likely to sidetrack the intractable Clintons as long as everyone understands exactly what they’re signing on for:

The Clinton Restoration will require routinely defending the indefensible. It will require recalibrating all legal and ethical standards to suit the personal and financial interests of the Clintons. It will require a willingness to use these phrases with a shameless abandon: “old news,” “everybody does it” and “not technically illegal.”

“I parse words; what’s your super power?”

Honestly though, does America want to elect the one woman in the country who didn’t learn the lesson of Watergate?

But Mrs. Clinton seems to have missed the most important lesson that everyone else learned from the Watergate scandal: The cover up is worse than the crime.

Of all people you would think Hillary would have got that, as she worked on the prosecution side of the Watergate case! Although her motives seemed to have been something beyond lesson learning:

When the Watergate probe concluded, Zeifman said, he fired Clinton from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation. She was one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career, Calabrese pointed out.

Zeifman told the columnist he fired Clinton because she was a liar.

“She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer,” Zeifman said. “She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”   – WND

What difference, at this point, does it make!!

I don’t know how things will shape up for Hills in the long run, butt since the White House has unofficially weighed in and actively gone to work to take out two democrats in just the last week alone it looks like the Clintons aren’t the only Wons willing to take out their political enemies any more.

If Bill and Hill are committed to hanging in for the long game, I have a couple of indispensible campaign-trail aids they should perhaps order by the gross and keep at the ready:

 

Lint rollers and black napkins: to keep all those inconvenient truths from sticking

Remember: Only You Can Prevent Lint Fires

Linked By: iOWNTHEWORLDREPORT’s Cardigan, and Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network

“Entrepreneurs and Hucksters…That’s Who We Are.”

We finally managed to make it back home after an exciting day, and a wardrobe change, in Selma.

It was quite a day, Big Guy gave a moving speech and explained again how We are the Wons we’ve been waiting for:

"Look at our history. We are Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea, pioneers who braved the unfamiliar, followed by a stampede of farmers

 

Black “farmer” Shirley Sherrod is consoled by Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack as she learns her share of the entrepreneurial Pigford Settlement is only $13 million.

and miners, and entrepreneurs and hucksters. That’s our spirit. That’s who we are.”

No kidding.

"We are Sojourner Truth and Fannie Lou Hamer, women who could do as much as any man and then some. And we’re Susan B. Anthony, who shook the system until the law reflected that truth. That is our character.”

Shakin’ her lady parts till they reflected the truth

"We’re the immigrants who stowed away on ships to reach these shores, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free –- Holocaust survivors, Soviet defectors, the Lost Boys of Sudan. We’re the hopeful strivers who cross the Rio Grande because we want our kids to know a better life. That’s how we came to be.”

Well, maybe this is not exactly how we came to be.

(Applause.)

"We’re the slaves who built the White House and the economy of the South. (Applause.) We’re the ranch hands and cowboys who opened up the West, and countless laborers who laid rail, and raised skyscrapers, and organized for workers’ rights.”

"We’re the fresh-faced GIs who fought to liberate a continent. And we’re the Tuskeegee Airmen, and the Navajo code-talkers, and the Japanese Americans who fought for this country even as their own liberty had been denied.

"We’re the firefighters who rushed into those buildings on 9/11, the volunteers who signed up to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’re the gay Americans whose blood ran in the streets of San Francisco and New York, just as blood ran down this bridge.” (Applause.)

“And I’m just the guy whose thoughts on gay marriage evolved.”

"We are storytellers,

writers, poets, artists who abhor unfairness,

and despise hypocrisy,

and give voice to the voiceless,

and tell truths that need to be told.”

Just not out loud, and not to anybody that might actually be interested.

I think Big Guy pretty much nailed it. You can read/watch the rest here if you’d like. Although I can’t imagine why you would.

Linked By: BlogsLucianneLoves, and Free Republic, Thanks!

Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network