Fairness Doctrine Moment – a liberal perspective on American Independence

UPDATE:

This editorial cartoon came across the Designated Conservative’s digital desktop this afternoon.  More from the liberal left who don’t understand America:

Happy 233rd Birthday, America!

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events,

“I therefore solicit for your co-operation….”

The Designated Conservative received this “Urgent” email today.  After reading it, I must admit that this does sound serious, and the author certainly comes across as a sincere public servant……

Video Object Lesson for President Obama

Being President of the United States is a heady experience, and it can be very hard to stay humble and grounded – especially when a President comes into office with an excessively positive opinion of himself to start with…. Hopefully this video, once Homeland Security alerts him to it, will help our President stay more grounded in reality.

Please stay with it – the payoff is at the end:

You are here, Mr. President (on Earth that is – not the Moon!)

An Example of Courage and Leadership…

In case you’ve forgotten that one person can change the world, the Designated Conservative offers the following fun clip from You Tube:

Michigan lawmaker to launch initiative for same-sex marriage

Here we go.  Thanks Pam Byrnes!  Of course, it has to be our fine Ann Arbor area state reps who once again lead the way into the type of chaos and contention visited upon California until Proposition 8 was upheld….  It’s great to see our legislators working hard to stir up trouble and spend more of the state’s bountiful financial resources on stuff we don’t need….  Pam, this is settled law in Michigan, and the 30 or so other states where the voters have actually had the opportunity to vote on the subject.  Please don’t re-open this can of worms….

BVos – My First E-Critic

So the Designated Conservative leaves a comment on a state government blog because the title of the blog posting (”Downtown as a Collective“) caught my eye.  As an American who grew up during the height of the Cold War, terms like “collective” and “social and communal equity” raise Red Flags.  When such terms are applied by state employees to otherwise capitalistic enterprises like downtown businesses, I felt I needed to leave a comment.  

You can read the original post and my comments here.

What do I find in response?   This…

Barack Obama – Reducing Pennies from the Budget

Winning the ‘Race to Witch Mountain’

The Designated Conservative finally saw the (still reasonably) new movie Race to Witch Mountain last night.  With no time to offer up a full review for designated conservative parents out there, all I will say is…

Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor – Super Legislator?

The most important and lasting civil rights-related changes in the U.S. have come through either direct votes of the people, or through their representatives in state legislatures or the U.S. Congress. Examples include the Civil War-era constitutional amendments and Civil Rights Act of 1871, women’s sufferage (19th amendment), Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc.

What offends me as an American and a voter is when unelected judges short-circuit democracy by legislating from the bench.  When judges legislate from the bench we are as likely to get a Dred Scott-like decision as we are a Brown v. Board of Education one.  Anything that has to go through the scrutiny of a public vote or legislative action is more likely to stand the test of time.

I trust the people and our elected representatives far more than I trust our Supreme Court to make good law and public policy.  It is for this reason that I fear for my country and Constitution if…

The White House Issues Order Repealing the First Amendment

Another one bites the dust.  Yes, it’s time for President Obama to “explaniate” and “re-interpretate” the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the Obamanation.  As this Designated Conservative read the official White House blog posting below, I could almost hear the President saying: “It’s necessary in this period of national emergency to take bold action against the forces who would oppose me and what I know to be best for you.…”

Breaking News! – California Marriage Amendment Upheld

From Preserving Marriage for Califronia’s Future:

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will…

Hot Air and Lost

WorldNetDaily posted this bit of Age of Obama/Bush Derangement Syndrome humor on their website this week (excerpt below):

It’s Your Fault, Republicans!

A woman in a hot air balloon realizes she is lost. She reduces her altitude and spots a man fishing from a boat below. She shouts to him, “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man consults his portable GPS and replies, “You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.”

She rolls her eyes and says, “You must be a Republican!”

“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

Letter from a Dodge Dealer

This “letter to the editor” has been making it’s way around the blogosphere from a (soon to be ex-) Dodge dealer (thanks to President Obama’s “change”) .

Click on the picture to see the faces of 50 more fully employed people who will likely soon lose their jobs and associated health benefits, savings, and possibly homes because of the sort of “change” President Obama believes that our country deserves:

My name is George C. Joseph. I am the sole owner of Sunshine Dodge-Isuzu, a family owned and operated business in Melbourne, Florida. My family bought and paid for this automobile franchise 35 years ago in 1974. I am the second generation to manage this business.

We currently employ 50+ people and before the economic slowdown we employed over 70 local people. We are active in the community and the local chamber of commerce. We deal with several dozen local vendors on a day to day basis and many more during a month. All depend on our business for part of their livelihood. We are financially strong with great respect in the market place and community. We have strong local presence and stability.

I work every day the store is open, nine to ten hours a day. I know most of our customers and all our employees. Sunshine Dodge is my life.

On Thursday, May 14, 2009 I was notified that…

Galactic Core of the Milky Way – Time-Lapse View

Wow.

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

Click on the picture to view this awesome time-lapse video sequence.

Details about how it was done can be found here.

UPDATE: Ypsilanti PRIDE…in Ann Arbor?

I will admit that I’m looking forward to the demise of the Ann Arbor News, if only so that I don’t have to read more headlines like this one:

Residents in Ypsilanti, Ann Arbor beautify their cities   

by Leisa Thompson | The Ann Arbor News
Saturday May 16, 2009, 4:20 PM

Only the Ann Arbor News would find it necessary to…

Bailout Nation ][: A Rise in Points Lifts All Students

This had the Designated Conservative rolling on the floor laughing this afternoon (excerpt below -click here to read the whole thing):

The Great Grade Bailout

Posted by Huston

There is a great inequity in justice in our public school systems.  I refer, of course, to the fact that some students have higher grades than others. This can only be the result of institutional disenfranchisement, and must be corrected by government intervention.  Besides, our nation’s future faces catastrophic academic failure if we don’t artificially prop it up now.

By which I mean,…

Eastern Michigan University expels student for religious beliefs

The following piece crossed the Designated Conservative’s digital desk this afternoon (excerpts below – click here to read the whole article).

Julea Ward, a graduate student at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, Michigan, was recently expelled from her counseling program and the University.  EMU initiated disciplinary action after she refused to affirm a client’s homosexual behavior and asked to have the client reassigned, all before any counseling sessions took place (the client had not met with her and was unaware of her request).

I recall reading something about this last month in the local paper , but didn’t realize at the time that the student had actually been expelled from the University.  

When conscience is criminalized

by Joe Coffman

Usually May is the time of the year when students are fitted for the cap and gown, count their credits, pay their school bill and plan the parties. With a firm handshake and a costly piece of paper, they will start their lives in the real world.

That won’t be true for Julea Ward, who used to be a graduate student at Eastern Michigan University until…

The Subprime Marriage Crisis

This piece came across the Designated Conservative’s RSS Feed recently from “Sixteen Small Stones” (excerpt below – click here to read the whole piece).  The author draws a striking parallel between the financial mess the country is in and the oncoming family and marriage train wreck:

An analogy between same-sex marriage and the credit crisis

by J. Max Wilson

In order to draw my analogy, it is important to first look at how this economic crisis came about. As usual, even experts disagree about some of the roots of the crisis, and like the Great Depression, I am sure that they will be arguing about them for decades to come. However, most of the explanations I have seen point to the Housing Market Bubble , Subprime Mortgages and Mortgage Backed Securities as the crux of the crisis.

(T)he credit crisis was incubating for a long time before it actually hit. Laws and policies enacted nearly a decade ago, if not more, did not bear fruit until this last year.

A decade ago I was…

Homeschooling? Mainstream? I’m Shocked!

This piece came across the Designated Conservative’s digital desk this morning (excerpt below – click here to read the whole article).   I hope that the conclusion doesn’t surprise anyone these days….  

The closest I’ve seen to surprise that homeschoolers are everywhere was back in 2002-03 when our (former) Mayor and (former) Police Chief pushed for a “daytime curfew” ordinance to make it a crime for “school-age” children to be out on a public street or in a public place “during school hours.”  After homeschoolers packed a public hearing on the ordinance, the Police Chief backed down and the ordinance died. 

Home Schooling Goes Mainstream

By Milton Gaither

Everybody knows somebody who is teaching a child at home

“I never really told anybody about my music at school, only my really close friends,” Cheyenne Kimball told People Magazine in 2006. “Then [school officials] actually aired the show around the whole entire school, and that caused a lot of problems. I was a straight-A student and all of a sudden I didn’t want to go to school anymore because of the things people were saying. That’s why I’m homeschooled now.”  Cheyenne, winner of NBC’s America’s Most Talented Kid at age 12, recording artist, and star of her own MTV show, is just one of many high-profile Americans whose educational choice is home schooling.

Movie stars Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, married in 1997, home school their two children along with Will’s nephew. Why? “For flexibility,” Pinkett Smith told an Essence reporter, “so they can stay with us when we travel, and also because the school system in this country—public and private—is designed for the industrial age. We’re in a technological age. We don’t want our kids to memorize. We want them to learn.”

While home schooling may have particular appeal to celebrities, over the last decade families of all kinds have embraced the practice for widely varying reasons: no longer is…