Barack's Ed pick Arne Duncan's Chicago Public Schools misspent $67,000 on cappuccino machines. Sun Times:

In the case of the cappuccino machines, central office administrators split the order among 21 vocational schools to avoid competitive bidding required for purchases over $10,000. As a result CPS paid about $12,000 too much, according to Inspector General James Sullivan. "We were able to find the same machines cheaper online," he said.

"We also look at it as a waste of money because the schools didn't even know they were getting the equipment, schools didn't know how to use the machines and weren't prepared to implement them into the curriculum," Sullivan said.

Um. Well. I'm kind of speechless at this last one.

Does this give you an idea how much they already probably stretch the curriculum to include all manner of useless (but convenient for them) "instruction", like movie-watching and making endless origami doves or something. This in a pervasively failing school system. Another audit discovery was tampering with grades. (There's been some improvement, but even Mayor Daley damns with faint praise.)

Let's see--a study of Capuchin monks? Nah, we can't have that--these are the public schools. They grow an awful lot of coffee in Brazil? Maybe a class on the Chicago Way.

P.S. A one-time auditor of the CPS from some years ago tells me at least it wasn't homemade Kahlua in the Mr. Coffee, which was their biggest worry. Vodka instead of water.

--crossposted at BackyardConservative

Breaking self-imposed blogger silence during the Obama anointing:

Obama's Terrorist Pal Bill Ayers Turned Away at Canadian Border

(The) One man's freedom fighter is another one's terrorist. Bill Ayers, too terrorist even for those mild-mannered Canadians who accepted our draft dodgers back in the day.

But he's welcome in Floridastan.

P.S. How come he's not at the inauguration? Security concerns?

--crossposted at BackyardConservative

When I say it, I'm a right-wing nut. Howabout when a "left-wing nut" says it?

Obama's approach to the establishment media -- the TV and radio networks, wire services, newspapers and magazines that still cover the White House -- doesn't differ all that much from George W. Bush's. As in, their correspondents are not getting much access. They are tightly managed. The White House press office doesn't say very much, and what it says isn't very revealing. What's more, it's signaling that past press rituals will not necessarily be observed. The Obama team declined to give the New York Times a pre-inauguration interview. Yesterday, the White House didn't even let press photographers in to get some shots of Obama working in the Oval Office, provoking an AP announcement that it would not distribute what amounted to "visual press releases."

I find it almost amusing that people who marched in the street because they were lied to, are shrugging their shoulders now that "their guy" is in office. With Clinton it was "just sex", now with Obama its "just lies".

The implications of the policy of deception are very interesting. In the short term, it bridges the gap between the unreasonable expectations of his political supporters and the practical requirements of national security and other considerations.

In the long term it will prove amazingly corrosive.

Well, it's warm and sunny in the Windy City this morning but I know what they're talking about. Tribune:

Chicago is third on the list of America's most miserable cities, according to Forbes Magazine, trailing only Stockton, Calif., and Memphis.

Why? Says Forbes: "Lousy weather, long commutes, rising unemployment and the highest sales tax rate in the country are to blame for the Windy City being near the top of our list. High rates of corruption by public officials didn't help either."

Last night, the lovely bunny and I watched a cute little film called Lars and the Real Girl. Nobody saw this film if its 10 million worldwide gross is any indication.

Lars is a strange but harmless and even likable man. He holds down a job, goes to church but isolates himself to a pathological degree. Needless to say, he can't talk to girls. He ends up buying an anatomically correct sex doll, but his intentions aren't carnal. The doll becomes his girlfriend, betraying mental illness on his part far beyond the extreme shyness he's always displayed.

This is where the film gets interesting.

The small town greets this development with the expected incredulity and gossip, but unexpectedly begins to play into his delusion, treating Lars "girlfriend" as if she was real for his benefit. Hilarity ensures. Well, not exactly hilarity, but mildly amusing situations nonetheless.

A strange movie--or is it?

Society asks us to play along with obvious delusions all the time, to treat the metaphorical sex doll as if she was real. The Flight 93 memorial is a perfect example. The memorial design, even in its modified form, is an east (towards Mecca) facing cresent. Officials are arguing that its not a cresent , that its just a "broken circle", but its completely besides the point--the perception of this memorial, particularly in the Arab world, is that the U.S. built a memorial to Islam's victory over the west.

Why even go there?

Among bloggers, a recent topic of fascination concerns the question--"who is Ellie Light?"

Miss Light managed to get her letter to the editor published in 65 newspapers to date, each featuring a local address, which makes Ellie Light a property owner of the same rank as Oprah or Cindy McCain, or a sock puppet for the Obama administration.

If you read the letter, and her responses to reporter questions (by email), you get the growing sense that the latter case is the likely one.

You can read her letter here, and subsequent followups here and here.

The initial letter is the crystallization of a product from the Obama administration rhetoric factory--a logical fallacy called a complex question. A complex question is two conjoined propositions, one which is eminently reasonable, and the other dubious, controversial or just plain crazy. If you agree with the reasonable proposition then you are by implication, agreeing with the dubious one as well, which is how you get poll results that say that 53% of Utahns think we don't pay enough taxes. If you disagree, then your opposition is characterized as being contrary to the reasonable proposition rather than the crazy stuff.

In the Ellie Light (lightbringer--get it?) letter, that proposition is structured this way:

During his campaign, Obama clearly said that an economy that took eight years to break couldn't be fixed in a year...

1. Bush spent his presidency wrecking the economy. 2. It can't be fixed overnight. Those are two propositions, one which is complete bullshit, and the other a reasonable argument.

This kind of political dirty trick isn't the casual product of a concerned citizen writing the 'local' paper to express their views. Its the deliberate construct of political operatives.

Spin is simply an argument that favors your position. the "it can't be fixed overnight' argument is spin. The other is just garden variety deception, and in my view, that is the real heart of the matter with Barack Obama and the Democrats.

Scott Brown's act of political jiu jitsu occurred in under sixty days, during which we saw the administration and the Democrat Congress engage in some of the most egregious, anti-democratic and just plain immoral behavior that I can ever recall during my lifetime. The payoff of Ben Nelson, the creation of unions as a special class of citizen immune to a tax that applies broadly to the rest of Americans, the flat out lies of Janet Napolitano in the wake of an attempted terrorist attack.

As bad as the proposed policies of this administration have been, its the sleaze that has really destroyed their political capitol, and the Ellie Light episode illustrates how deeply entrenched that culture is. The decision to engaged in wicked behavior has become a reflex for these people.

That is why Ellie Light's little prank has become a story worth paying attention to.

A kooky wingnut freelance operation gone wrong.

Patterico:

When I first read a news story about this yesterday, it sounded to me like O’Keefe and company were being accused of an attempt to wiretap or bug Landrieu’s phones. Indeed, that’s the way I characterized the Government’s claim in my post based on a news story. But now I have had a chance to review the affidavit. And it doesn’t say that.

The link to the affidavit is here. I challenge you to find me the language that accuses O’Keefe et al. of a “plot to bug” Landrieu’s office, or an “alleged wiretap scheme.”

It isn’t there.

I saw this video and didn't laugh. I felt bad for Barack Obama, perhaps for the first time. Not so bad though that I could resist a snide title for the post.