So forgive me if I was the last to hear about the latest: angry parents threatening school administrators and scaring them into not showing the President’s address on September 8.

President Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to public school students on Tuesday has set off a revolt among conservative parents, who have accused the president of trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas and are asking school officials to excuse the children from listening.

The uproar over the speech, in which Mr. Obama intends to urge students to work hard and stay in school, has been particularly acute in Texas, where several major school districts, under pressure from parents, have laid plans to let children opt out of lending the president an ear.

Here’s a particularly choice observation

“The thing that concerned me most about it was it seemed like a direct channel from the president of the United States into the classroom, to my child,” said Brett Curtis, an engineer from Pearland, Tex., who said he would keep his three children home.

“I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.”

Next you know, the same people will be blaming Obama for the Holocaust.  Oh.  Wait.

The sad thing is, these wing nuts have actually managed to succeed in getting school districts to censor (or even ban) the President’s speech.  And not just in Texas.  My sources in Michigan tell me that even in places like Saginaw Township — as much of an upscale suburb as you’re going to find in Saginaw — the administration has been cowed into submission, and has instructed teachers to refrain from showing the speech.

On my planet, we let the President talk, even when we don’t agree with him.  And how a speech from a Democratic president is inherently worse for children than one from a Republican, I have no idea.  I’ll leave it to you, dear readers, to explore your own feelings on this.

But, meanwhile, if you want to do your part to stop the hysteria, why not give the Superintendent of Saginaw Township schools what for?  Here’s their website: Saginaw Township Schools.

And the phone number for the office of the Superintendent: 989-399-8044.

Tell ‘em Matski sent ya’.

* Like any assasin — in this case, an assasin of reason — I refuse to named the Alaskan Abdicator by name.

These people scare me in the way a single rat scares me – there’s always more than one.  And aren’t these the same wingnuts who thought they saw black helicopters over America c. 1994?

Seriously … what in particular creates the kind of low-grade schizophrenia that seems to afflict so many on the right?

… thankfully, Americans are not buying it. In spite of the fact that one can drive by an open field on Saturdays and usually see it filled with young boys and girls playing soccer, the game’s popularity has not moved anywhere toward being a major sport here in the United States.

… For sure, there may be a number of reasons that is the case but my suspicion is that the so-called “beautiful game” is not so beautiful to American sensibilities. We like, as good small “d” democrats, our underdogs for sure but we also still expect folks in the end to get their just desert. And, in sports, that means excellence should prevail. Of course, the fact that is often not the case when it comes to soccer may be precisely the reason the sport is so popular in the countries of Latin America and Europe.

Ah, I get it.  In America, only people who DESERVE to win, win.  People like Bill Gates, who inherited his money honestly before he conned his way to buying DOS.  Or, to use a sports analogy, people like Mark McGuire and Lance Armstrong, who certainly never ever would’ve ever taken any banned substances, no sir.

It’s sad that AEI is so far fallen that they’re reduced to rehashing these tired arguments.  I mean, at least say something original.  Or, better, read Franklin Foer (of Brookings) book How Soccer Explains the World.

That’s right, folks. Instant service. 100% beef.

I could go on, but I got drunk and need to go to bed.

The weird thing about weather is that there’s a pretty simple non-technological way to determine it: look out the window. And if that doesn’t suffice, there’s probably a widget for it. But don’t insult our intelligence by trying to ramp up page views with a paragraph on the weather.

Oh, and Department of Revenue press releases and WDOT advisories aren’t far behind in my book. The worst thing you can do if you have a blog — far worse than if it were a newspaper — is make it boring. You guys just did that.

“Well, baby, we’re out of here,” he said to Louanner Peters, a deputy governor. His entourage hurried him toward his S.U.V. and the airport, reminding him that time might be ticking on those vehicles. He shook hands with workers on the airfield, state troopers and the pilots.

On the plane, he took a front-facing seat on the left side, his regular spot, “for old time’s sake,” he said.

“We should have been more selfish, not selfless,” he said. “It sounds probably perverse for me to say that based on what some people are saying about me. But it’s true. My family, we didn’t take advantage of all these things that people do. My successor has done a whole bunch as the lieutenant governor — taken all kinds of trips all over the world and trade missions — like he’s got anything to do with anything as lieutenant governor.”

THE Constitution’s Treaty Clause has long been seen, rightly, as a bulwark against presidential inclinations to lock the United States into unwise foreign commitments. The clause will likely be tested by Barack Obama’s administration, as the new president and Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, led by the legal academics in whose circles they have long traveled, contemplate binding down American power and interests in a dense web of treaties and international bureaucracies.

Really, John?  Really?  Those damned [cough]liberal[/cough] “academics” and their “knowledge”.  Lord knows all this country needs is good-looking mountain man too proud to ask questions, and everything will be hunky-dory.

Please, will someone in the GOP put a gag on these parrots of yesteryear’s “Old Timey Reagan-Land” policy?  It’s old.  I’m not saying we’ll all agree with everything the Obama team does, but it’s time to move on.

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

Great. Now nationalized health care is screwed.

[via.]

(See also, the Minnesota Historical Society Soul Asylum Record Series Finding Aid)

[Snarky, non-contextual aside: I've still met more heads of state than she has.]

Henry Kissinger was among the grandees brought in to tutor young Liza.

[Snarky, contextual aside: Do we really want an impressionable young lady like Palin to get the entirety of her foreign policy experience at the hands of the Butcher of Hanoi? Maybe Biden can ask her to spell "Realpolitik" during their debate.]

Anyway, best caption for this photo wins:

P.S.:

Actual quote in the NY Times:

… The photographers were ushered out. When Ms. Palin emerged from the building, a news producer asked her how it went, and she mouthed the words, “It was great.”

[C'mon, I can't be the only one who thinks the porn-style commentary is coincidental, now, can I?]

And in case it isn’t obvious, those begging as they cling by their fingertips on the precipice are not in a position to be making any demands or calling any proposals “deal killer.”

Late Update: My instincts tell me that the effort to pretty this up by adding a ’stimulus package’ is equally bogus. That’s not to say it’s not important in itself. But if we blow 700 million or a trillion dollars cleaning up Wall Street’s mess, having also budgeted 25 or 50 billion on helping ordinary people won’t make that trillion dollars any less blown. The focus here needs to be on making sure this bailout makes sense, isn’t going to be farmed out to Neil Bush and provides something for taxpayers in return. Let’s keep the focus on that.

Seriously. How obnoxious do you have to be, after losing trillions of dollars making bad bets and begging for a handout, to have the unmitigated gall to decide what is or isn’t a “deal killer?” Talk about beggars and choosers. It’s like offering a homeless guy a sandwich only to have it thrown back in your face as he says, “hey man, mustard is a deal killer.”

And I absolutely agree on the stimulus package part. Let’s chuck the whole thing and get a deal that’s more equitable and copacetic to our interests.

Now I know how this anonymous Congressman is feeling.

What’s more, they’ve effectively just used the savings of the American middle class to bailout the shareholders of the financial industry — mainly rich white guys, with a few Arab and Chinese sovereign funds thrown in to boot.

We’ve effectively turned into Argentina, only without the great soccer team.

You, and I, and everyone in this country not about to retire will be paying this off for a generation.

Just when I thought Bush couldn’t possibly add to his legacy of corruption, reactionary-ism, and general stupidity, now he’s got a new one — socialism.

The report says that eight officials in the royalty program accepted gifts from energy companies whose value exceeded limits set by ethics rules — including golf, ski and paintball outings; meals and drinks; and tickets to a Toby Keith concert, a Houston Texans football game and a Colorado Rockies baseball game.

The investigation also concluded that several of the officials “frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.”

The investigation separately found that the program’s manager mixed official and personal business. In sometimes lurid detail, the report also accuses him of having intimate relations with two subordinates, one of whom regularly sold him cocaine.

Oy. This is what happens when you’re addicted to oil. I don’t see any wind companies handing out sex and drugs in exchange for wind farm leases! And Bush/McCain want more oil drilling. Man, if Obama can’t make hay out of this, he should just retire right now.

[This being September 11, though, and both campaigns in an effective cease-fire, that may not happen.]

Update: reading to the end of the article, we finally get to why this is a bad thing, aside from the luridness:

On one occasion, the report said, the royalty-in-kind program allowed a Chevron representative who had won a bid to purchase some of the government’s oil to pay taxpayers a lower amount than his winning offer because he said he had made a mistake in his calculations. A report from Mr. Devaney’s office earlier this year found that the program had frequently allowed companies that purchased the oil and gas to revise their bids downward after they won contracts. It documented 118 such occasions that cost taxpayers about $4.4 million in all.

…

[The government officials] said they did not view socializing with oil company representatives and taking gifts as inappropriate because they said they needed to be part of the marketing culture in order to market the program’s oil and gas.

Right, because you need to actually market oil and gas. Not that crap sells itself! Here we get to the fundamental problem with the Bush Administration’s worldview: that all the government has to offer is opportunities to whore itself out. We see this in the crafting of the medicare drug benefit, and even in the war in Iraq, where tens of thousands of Iraqis were left unemployed and pissed off for years while we waited for glorious private industry to take off in Iraq.

When we elected two oilmen president, we probably knew that they were going to be generous to the oil companies. But what we didn’t see coming was an entire worldview based on a life lived in the resource extraction business. To Bush and Cheney, the whole government — the whole country — is a resource to be exploited by industry, and they’ve got an 8-year lease. It’s not the 50- or 100-year leases that oilmen are used to, but it’ll do.

Happy “Patriot Day.”

* Cheney affirms US desire to bring Georgia into NATO

* US Special Ops attack militants inside Pakistan

Thanks, George and Dick!  What, you think Putin’s going to be making googly-eyes at VP Lite and that the Pakistani electorate are too worried about the start of the NFL season to notice?

But I’ve been convinced otherwise.

Reason?  Palin’s values — notably her adamant anti-choice stance and her firm opposition to sex education in schools — are very much central to her candidacy.  Thus, as our listener noted, the fact that Palin’s own personal life (in particular the pregnancy of her teenage daughter) is Exhibit A in the case against those values makes her personal life fair game for criticism.

So, accept Palin’s stance against sex education as a personal decision if you want to.  But then you also have to accept that teenage pregnancy is a well-known consequence of a failure to educate.  Do you really want someone who hews so closely to discredited ideas (ideas that are discredited by HER OWN LIFE EXPERIENCE!) to be your Vice President?

I don’t think so.  But if Palin wins, get ready for four more years of Bush-style “so what if I’m wrong” governance.