My Beauty Best Teacher

On the right sidebar of my blog (under a 'Donate' button) I have a description of Bizarro World, also known as Htrae, which is a fictional planet in the DC comics universe. Htrae is home to Bizarro and his companions, who are ruled by the Bizarro Code, which states that you should do the opposite of everything.

For example, if a past US President was actually a forward-thinking President who embraced new technology, a resident of Bizarro world would give a speech suggesting that this President was the opposite of that. Like President Obama just did:

President Obama got a laugh out of a Maryland audience on Thursday when he mocked the Republican Party in a speech, comparing their skepticism of alternative energy to the “Flat Earth Society” in Christopher Columbus’ day and President Rutherford B. Hayes’ apparent dismissal of the telephone. But while Obama thinks the GOP is in need of a science lesson, he may need to bone up on history himself.

In mocking the GOP, Obama cited an anecdote about Hayes in which, upon using the telephone for the first time, he said, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?”

But Nan Card, curator of manuscripts at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Ohio, told TPM that the nation’s 19th president was being unfairly tagged as a Luddite.

“He really was the opposite,” she said. “He had the first telephone in the White House. He also had the first typewriter in the White House. Thomas Edison came to the White House as well and displayed the phonograph. Photographing people who came to the White House and visited at dinners and receptions was also very important to him.”...

....“He was pretty technology-oriented for the time,” Card said. “Between the telephone, the telegraph, the phonograph and photography, I think he was pretty much on the cutting edge.”...

President Obama was suggesting that Republicans are anti-technology for opposing windmills and not supporting railroads and and for denying that the globe is rapidly rising in temperature because of actions of mankind, and attempting to make his point by comparing the Republicans of today to past backwardness. But as usual, the reality is the exact opposite of everything that he said.

The reality is that President Obama is pushing for energy sources that are older than modern oil and nuclear which he opposes, that President Obama's attempt to force us to railroads and away from cars it the kind of anti-progress sentiment that one could expect from a Luddite, and that his theories about global warming have long-since been discredited by now, and that his examples of backwardness are in fact either made-up or forward looking in reality.

One has to wonder sometimes if my crazy joke that Bizarro world is real and that residents of this world have been flooding into the United States through some sort of interworld rift is really a joke or just may be true. I struggle to explain how so much of what Obama says is just so sheer the opposite of reality- on so many issues, so many policies, and so many 'statements of fact,' on further research not only is he wrong but he has been proven to be direct opposite of correct.

I call on all good Americans to resist these Bizarro's and their Bizarro agenda, and vote Republican in 2012.

I've been seeing variations of "classroom rules" sign all over Pinterest, and I love it! (I've also seen it's sister sign, family rules, which is equally as cute and catchy.) Most of the signs I see have painted letters on large, wooden boards, but I'm not crafty enough to make one of those. :)

I decided just to create a couple of printables using my handy-dandy PhotoShop software. Here's a black and white version:

Click to enlarge. Feel free to right-click and save a copy! :)

And here's one with more color:

Click to enlarge. Feel free to right-click and save a copy! :)

I have a cheap-o ornate frame (that I got for $1 at a garage sale a while back) that I think I'll spray paint a fun, funky color. Then I can put the black and white print inside the frame and place it on my desk. Other ways you could use this:

• Enlarge it, frame it, and hang it on the wall.
• Laminate it and hang on the wall (or on your door). 
• Print off multiple copies for students to keep in their binders or use as bookmarks.
• Give a print plus a frame to a favorite teacher as a pick-me-up. :)

On the lighter side of things, apparently you and I are working hard right now to help re-elect President Barack Obama, donating millions through taxes to his campaign to help transport security vehicles, armored limousines, and communications gear into cities ahead of his various campaign appearances. President Obama has decided to fly around the nation giving speech after speech instead of working hard to rebuild our economy, right-size government, lower the deficit, bring efficiency to operations, root out waste and fraud, and working to strike the compromises and deals needed to reform our bankrupt entitlement programs- and you're gonna pay for it.

Via The Daily Caller, Obama campaign gets more Air Force aircraft:

The U.S. Air Force is pulling nine cargo aircraft from military operations to support President Barack Obama’s stepped-up visits to campaign events.

The five medium-capacity C-130s and four heavyweight C-17s will be used to ferry security vehicles, armored limousines and communications gear into cities ahead of Obama’s campaign appearances.

In the months before November, the president is expected to fly into multiple cities per week, and speak at multiple sites per day. On Mar. 8, for example, the president will fly to Richmond, and then drive over to a Rolls-Royce aircraft-parts factory. That evening, he’ll fly down to Houston, Texas.

His wife, Vice President Joe Biden and many of his cabinet secretaries are using the Air Force’s fleet of VIP aircraft to visit more states as the election season speeds up.

The nine cargo aircraft will begin operations in April, said Maj. Michelle Lai, communications officer for the Air Force’s 89th Airlift Wing. “They’ll stand down in November 2012,” she said...

...The cargo aircraft have been used to fly troops, weapons and supplies into U.S. bases in Afghanistan, Iraq and other sites in the Middle East during the decade-long operations in Afghanistan and Iraq...

...The squadrons will supplement the existing fleet of VIP passenger aircraft at Andrews. Those aircraft include two giant Boeing 747s — which are tagged Air Force One while they’re carrying the president — as well as five Boeing 757 wide-body passenger jets, and 11 Gulfstream executive jets.

Those passenger aircraft are already helping shuttling cabinet secretaries to their election-related events, many of which are in critical swing-states...

So, to sum up, rather than protecting our nation, or carrying food to poor starving children, or just sitting and not wasting expensive jet fuel, the President has ordered that military assets be used to supplement his already extensive fleet in ferrying people and supplies around the nation, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands.

It's kind of hard for liberals and progressives to argue that President Obama's actions as demonstrated here are anything other than wrong. On the other hand, I kind of feel like this borders on criminal- it's the utter misuse of government resources to support a person's political ambitions and fly friends and family around the nation in taxpayer paid luxury.

I recently got the opportunity to review both of Dr. Erica Warren's Following Directions workbooks, and I wanted to tell you what I think.

Before we begin, let me just say that Dr. Warren gave these workbooks to me for free, asking if I would review them on my blog. I am not getting any more compensation than just the workbooks themselves for writing this post, and I would never endorse any product I didn't fully believe in.

With that said, let's talk specifically about Warren's two Following Directions workbooks. The workbooks I sampled are called Following Directions (An Intermediate Workbook 1) and Following Directions: The Easy Way (A Beginner's Workbook 1).

The concept for both of the workbooks is the same: we want to condition our students to pay closer attention to directions and be able to follow directions quickly but accurately. To an extent, these workbooks somewhat reminded me of those "April Fool's Day" following-directions sheets that teachers sometimes give to play a joke on their students, like this:

This (obviously used) April Fool's Day prank was found here.

But unlike the April Fool's Day sheets like the one featured above, Warren's workbooks will not embarrass any student who do not follow the directions precisely (no one has to yell a sentence about their school pride or clap their hands twice during these workbooks! lol).

To help condition students to follow directions, Warren has created a series of worksheet pages with a grid of pictures, numbers, or letters on it. Above the grid is a set of step-by-step instructions as to what the student should do on the grid. Here is a sneak peak at the example page from her Following Directions: The Fun and Easy Way (A Beginners Workbook 1) book:





This is just a simple grid -- the grids and instructions get larger and more complex as you move through the book.

One thing I like about these books is that these grids aren't just practice on following directions. Sure, these worksheets will help students practice following written directions. But I personally think they will also help students exercise their "critical thinking skills" muscle. You see, the directions aren't always clear when you first read them. For instance, one of the directions I saw said, "I am in one of the rows above the second-to-last row." Even as an adult, I had to stop and think about what that really meant. Another line of directions said, "I am a consonant." For this, not only do students need to know the difference between a consonant and a vowel, but they also have to reason that if our answer is a consonant, our answer cannot be a vowel; therefore, we need to cross out all vowels.

As I'm writing this, I'm reminded of the logic grids my 6th grade science teacher used to give us:

This particular puzzle can be found here.

I, for one, love using logic puzzles in the classroom because I feel that most students need to practice those much-needed critical thinking skills, and these are the perfect way to do so. (By the way, Puzzle Baron has actual books you buy that contain paper copies of all of their logic grids. Find one here
.)

Anyway, I think Warren's "Following Directions" workbooks could help students in a variety of ways. There are directional words in almost every line of directions, so students could practice directions and prepositions. There are math words such as "less than," "odd," "trapezoid" with which students will become familiar. There is even some science in these sheets: "I need water to live," and "Sunlight is my food" are two examples. All in all, I think that if you want to give your students practice at following directions (and a few other things), these workbooks are a good buy.

Warren offers a free sample of a Following Directions book on her Teachers Pay Teachers page.

If you'd like to read the reviews and/or purchase one or both of these books, click the images below to be taken to their product listings on Amazon.





Even if you don't want to use these pages as actual activities in your classroom, I think they could still be useful as bellwork or "what to do when you're done" activities for those early-finishers. If nothing else, the critical thinking skills students would build from doing these pages could probably prepare students to achieve higher test scores on those state-mandated exams!

Here are ten consequences of a victory by President Barack Obama in November 2012 over Mitt Romney:

1. Obamacare will not be repealed. It is already being demonstrated to raise costs of healthcare and as its taxes and regulations sink deeper through the system, it will cause our healthcare system to increasingly be in a crisis, likely resulting in greater and greater government control to 'fix', until we have a massively inefficient and expensive and bad healthcare system.
2. The unprecedented levels of spending in Obama’s first four years will become the new floor, as America continues its experiment in reckless spending and adding up massive debt. The new normal of debt that Obama has established- $1 trillion a year of living beyond our means as a nation- will erode the value of our currency, lead to higher interest rates, lessen our national security, and eventually cause our nation to collapse. Four more years at our current levels might just about do it.
3. Job creators will face massive tax increases and more Americans will come off the tax rolls—resulting in fewer citizens with a stake in keeping taxes low and more with a stake in protecting benefits. The Bush tax cuts and other tax cuts may be allowed to expire while Obama and the Democrats who still support his failing policies will push for more taxes, fees, and fines to pay for the exploding cost of employing more and more government workers and providing ever more 'free' services and products to citizens.
4. Government dependency, already at record levels, will continue to grow. Based on the results of his first 4 years as President in which record numbers of people went on welfare, more people will go on food stamps and bridge cards and lifelong unemployment and other government programs. They will not gain job skills and any skills they have will be eroded by time, rendering them unemployable, unhappy, and dependent on elites above to provide them with what they need to live. They'll become slaves to the state, living in permanent poverty, and I don't think we can afford four more years of accepting this.
5. Four more years that we have already lost in dealing with the looming and inevitable entitlement crisis will become eight. The reforms needed for strong and healthy Social Security and Medicare programs  will need to be in place many years to avoid the collapse that is coming, and the delay of electing Obama on a myth of hope and change has already set our nation back a critical 4 years- another 4 years of Obama might change the conversation from 'implement reforms to keep these programs' to 'its a crisis and we're facing a collapse.'
6. Obama, unworried about the impact of gas and electricity prices on his reelection, will finally wage the regulatory war on fossil fuels the Left demands. As Obama stated in March, no President wanting to win re-election wants high gas prices- but a President not needing to win re-election because he is a lame duck for four years will not need to worry about high gas prices, and he is sure to wage a war to drive up the cost of gas. The cost of gasoline is a very regressive tax, which means when it goes up it hurts the poor more than the rich, and the effects of 4 more years of Obama will be a more unequal society where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
7. He will unleash the Environmental Protection Agency to impose crushing new burdens on U.S. business. Already the EPA is an agency just barely under control, in every way it can waging its green communist war against freedom and liberty and property. Another 4 years of executive orders and ever expanding budgets will make this agency uncontrollable and its regulations and policies will be a corrupting influence on any potential economic growth.
8. President Obama will continue and heighten his administration’s assault on religious freedom, expanding it into other areas in his effort to wipe out the influence of Christians in our nation. Already liberals and progressives speak about removing the 'tax-exempt' status from Churches, closing down all religious schools, and increasing the wall of separation that already exists between church and state. Eventually, once organized religion- mainly Christianity, especially Catholicism-  is walled off and isolated, personalized and demonized, he can finally kill God and replace him with himself or one of his idols.
9. Another 4 more years of Obama will gut the Defense Department, with cuts so deep that America will no longer be a superpower. Already under Obama we have abandoned our long-held policy of fighting two wars; another 4 years of Obama may lead to our inability to fight one war successfully. While the military is cut, Obama as commander-in-chief focuses on making it more gay-friendly and more green, and another four more years of this may result in the US losing its ability to protect its citizens and interests around the globe.
10. Obama could have the opportunity to appoint more Supreme Court justices, and we have seen from President Obama's past two picks for the judicial branch that he does not even pretend to try to appoint moderates and independents, rather fighting hard to advance and appoint the most partisan and extreme judges in our system. If he is given another four more years by winning re-election in November, we could be looking at a majority of the court that agrees with current liberal Justices who argue that the US Constitution is inferior to the constitutions of other states and that we should use international law instead of US law when making decisions for our nation. This extreme and rogue and partisan Court of unaccountable and unelected lawyers will be a great threat to your life, liberty, and property.

You and your family and friends should be opposing President Barack Obama and working to remove him from power because of consequences above, which are all policy options that President Obama freely chooses to engage in. Most of these policies he pushed for when his party controlled all of Congress, and even today his party still controls the Senate. No one forced him to adopt the policies above, which will have the logical and reasonable consequences I detailed. Racism, partisanship, extremism, and dislike for the guy personally are not to be found in my analysis above. Rather my analysis is based on logic, history, reason, and results, from those principles we can see the consequences of President Barack Obama winning re-election in 2012, and knowing this, we should all oppose him and vote for his likely Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

UPDATE: Thank you for linking Right Wing News and Adrienne's Catholic Corner!

Sandra Fluke is not demanding that the government provide free cough drops and viagra to men- but Remy is.

Conservatives are both funnier and more intelligent than liberals, and as evidence I submit the following music video from Remy, in which he crashes Sandra Fluke's Congressional testimony to demand a mandate for his cough drop addiction. Brought to you by Reason.tv and running under 2 minutes, it makes an utter mockery of liberals like President Barack Obama who suggest that taxpayers should provide birth control of any sort to any female on demand and that to question this sort of give-away is to want women to go back to the dark ages.

Laugh and enjoy:

Don't buy the narrative that the main-stream media is selling regarding the Republican Primary- the truth of the matter is that Mitt Romney is not having trouble putting away a weak field of Republicans because he is unlikable and doesn't connect with voters, but rather he is doing pretty much exactly as good a job as other past non-incumbents did in close primary races and is doing a good job of winning over key voters and will soon with the nomination over a highly qualified and determined primary field. Although the liberals and progressives and elites in the media want you to think otherwise, analysis and data (as usual) destroys their uneducated arguments and shallow judgements.

Via Powerlineblog comes this excellent analysis from John Hinderaker called THE MORNING AFTER:

...So Romney has won 56% of all of the delegates that have been chosen so far. Normally that would be considered a strong performance, but Mitt struggles to get respect from the commentariat.... But by historic standards, there is no reason to scoff at Romney’s performance so far. After Super Tuesday in 2008, John McCain had won 740 of the 1,235 delegates that had been selected, or 60%. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama had a hair over 50% of the delegates, leading Hillary Clinton 965-951. Were reporters then talking about the Democratic contest “plodding on” as Obama “failed to land a knockout blow?” Of course not: they thought the contest was a thrilling one, because they liked both candidates.

Or consider 1992, when the Democratic presidential field was considered so weak that the candidates were called the “seven dwarves.” Bill Clinton, who we now know was a politician of genius, won that race. But as of early March 1992, Clinton was running behind “uncommitted” and, of the committed delegates, he had won just 57%. By early April, Clinton had 68% of the committed delegates (a much lower percentage if uncommitted delegates were counted) against some of the weakest competition ever: Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown....

...So by historic standards, Romney is within the ballpark of what one would expect from a non-incumbent candidate who goes on to win his party’s nomination.

The truth of the matter is that Mitt Romney is winning against a very good field of candidates- a two-term Senator who is a gifted speaker and has a solid person life named Rick Santorum (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008), a former Speaker of the House of Representatives named Newt Gingrich (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008), and a long-time Congressman who is a veteran and doctor and has a committed following (a resume that is superior to President Obama in 2008). And Romney has already knocked out of the race several other good candidates- the Governor of booming Texas named Rick Perry (who has a resume that was superior to President Obama in 2008) and a former Governor and Ambassador named John Huntsman (who has a resume that was superior to President Obama in 2008).

This is a strong field, especially at a time period when the Republican Party is transitioning away from the old guard liberal establishment of Bush and McCain and Dole towards the new conservative talent of Paul Ryan and Bobby Jindhal and Sarah Palin and others. The GOP is at an odd place where the Reagan and conservative revolution generation is too old or too discredited and the new tea party generation is too young and untested- and yet a guy like Mitt Romney has a strong resume and background and talents that has enabled him to ably bridge this gap.

Even in a rather down year, the GOP has a wealth of talent and ideas to offer to contrast to the tired and old partisanship and personal attacks that President Obama is offering, and Mitt Romney has connected with voters and fought a national and organized campaign to take a solid and commanding primary lead. This is the narrative, based on an analysis of the resumes of his opponents and the delegate math in comparison to other primaries, and this is the narrative that the media is refusing to tell because of its sloppy reporting, personal bias, and lack of quality research.

Mitt Romney is doing a great job of rising to the top of a group of able Republicans who would all do a better job of being President than Barack Obama. This is the true narrative of the Republican Primary race of 2012.

Full Disclosure: I endorsed Mitt Romney recently. See my post Endorsement: Vote for Mitt Romney for GOP Nominee.

Today's post is brought to you by Adrianne Meldrum from Kids Cog Works. I am so excited for you guys to read this one -- it's such a great idea!

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I am sure you have heard of the show Amazing Race where contestants race all over the world and get clues to their next destination.

Borrowing from this idea, I have come up with The Amazing Word Race! In this game, students would be in groups of two to four. They need to decide the name of their team. The object of this game is to practice or review some phonics that you're students may be missing, but in a super-fun way.

Everyone will be given the first card. It has a phonics sound that they have to hunt for. All books, print, magazines ~ everything is available for their use in this game. They are even allowed to use the dictionary! Players must use at least 5 different resources when making a list. When you say "Go" students will race to get their hands on some print and start hunting for words. If a team fills up their paper, they race back to you and get the next clue.

For an example, on a card it may have the sound /sh/ on it. The card will have a sample of words that start with that sound and have the sound somewhere in the middle. Students may just run to a dictionary and write down all the words that start with /sh/ like "shoot", but if they really get smart they can write down words like "swish" or "fish". You can choose to limit how many words they use that start with the sound on the clue card.

You will continue in this fashion until there is a clear winner. Consider having a winner ceremony and reward all the students in some way for playing the game. I made printables for you to use in this game. Click here to get them. I hope you have fun racing towards better learning!


Adrianne Meldrum has a degree in Elementary Education. She currently tutors struggling readers and middle school math students. She is the author of Kidscogworks.com and creator of Brain Tower . Adrianne is the wife of an engineer and a mother to three very handsome boys.

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Thanks for the fantastic idea, Adrianne! I can't wait to use it!

Thinking of this game makes me wonder if we could tweak it a little to use it for slightly different subjects. For instance, young students could go on an "Amazing Color Race" and try to take pictures of as many, say, green things as possible. Or maybe students could go on a different "Amazing Word Race" and try to hunt the room for other words that fit their spelling words' patterns. 

I wonder if we could even tweak this idea to use it for older students. For instance, when I taught secondary English, I offered extra credit to students that could find examples of what we were learning in real life. I encouraged students to send me music or audio clips recorded from a commercial, pictures of signs or movie posters, etc. that incorporated a vocabulary word or literary concept that we had studied. Could English students could go on an "Amazing Simile Race" or an "Amazing Symbolism Race" with a stack of books or stories?

Or what if geometry students went on an "Amazing Shape Race" and tried to find as many examples of geometric shapes as possible in the classroom or outside?

Really, the possibilities are only limited to your imagination. :) I'd love to hear your ideas and other thoughts in the comments below!

Over the last several years, I have been fighting my own brand of war against those people who are the enemies of freedom and liberty. My style of fighting is to write about freedom and liberty; to discuss and expand on the ideas found in our founding documents; and attempt to apply to modern day policies the principles of protection of life, support of liberty, and protection of property. And those who oppose me have also been fighting me.

But unlike my style of warfare, the thugs who oppose me rely on intimidation, threats, attempts to damage my property, and efforts to silence me. And I am just the sort of target that these thugs like- although elected officials and big-time bloggers are good targets too, they are able to fight back and could become martyrs to the cause, but me and those who support the elected officials and bigger bloggers and private citizens who are attacked are one removed from the dispute and smaller so make much better targets for the thugs and cowards out there who disagree with our views and policy positions.

Although there is no way to compare what I have faced to the attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and others, being a secondary target does not mean that I haven't been attacked too.

In recent years, the worst attacks that I have suffered have come after I have supported and defended those who were attacked by liberal thugs. My defense of the Koch brothers from the President Barack Obama's orchestrated attacks on them caused left-wing fascists to respond by attempting to shut down my blog. The vile creeps even went so far to write a letter to the employer of one of my loyal readers- they thought they were targeting me- as they attempted to respond to differences in views by causing the loss of employment and income. They didn't like the fact that I defended private citizens from slanderous attacks by the President of our nation, and responded to it by engaging in slanderous and personal attacks on me.

Another round of attacks came on me after I defended the tea party on several blogs and forums, responding with reasoning and calls for a more adult discussion to those who called those who supported tea party views and ideas various names. Those who disagreed with my views- those on the left who call themselves progressives or liberals but in reality are simply fascists- responded by filling up the comment sections of all of my posts with their various rants and foul language, and because I didn't want my blog to be a forum for their hate I was forced to disable the comment section on my blog.

One of the most clever attacks on me came after I defended in blogs and in forums and on social media Rocky Raczkowski, who was tea-party favorite and GOP nominee in 2010 for Michigan's 9th District. Someone emailed me pretending to agree with my comments and asked questions about the advertisers on my blog, and the next day my advertisers dropped me and confiscated my money due to what they said was fraud. I'm not going to say exactly what happened (I don't want to give the thugs ammunition), but the result was a loss of income for me and the loss of a good sum of money (Google never responded to my inquiries or pleas for reconsideration).

These attacks on me are not isolated to just me. Over at Legal Insurrection, Will has a story up that rings very close to my own experiences, called Welcome to total political war:

...I’m not talking about the attempt to get advertisers to stop advertising on Rush Limbaugh’s show, or Fox News, although that would be bad enough. I’m talking about the second-tier of the warfare, the attempt to intimidate those removed by one or more degrees of separation from the dispute, and to use them as tools against the target.

We have seen it a number of times in the past couple of years.

When King & Spalding agreed to represent the U.S. House of Representative after Obama changed positions and announced that the Justice Department no longer would defend DOMA in court, there were not only protests against King & Spalding, but threats to picket and protest clients of the firm who had nothing to do with the dispute. The threat that clients of the firm who were completely unconnected to the dispute would be harrasseed was enough to cause the firm to withdraw the representation.

Similarly, when the new Rhode Island Attorney General announced that he would cooperate with the federal goverment in the enforcement of federal immigration laws, protesters not only invaded the lobby of his offices, they picketed his house and confronted neighbors about the issue. Dragging his neighbors into a dispute which had nothing to do with them did not cause the RI AG to back down, although not for lack of trying.

Which brings me to the present dispute with Rush Limbaugh, and radio show host Kim Komando, who has a very well-known computer talk show. What did or does Komando have to do with the dispute? Nothing, except that one or more of the advertisers targeted by the anti-Limbaugh groups also advertises on Komando’s show. Komando received a flood of e-mails demanding that she drop the advertisers....

...What is happening goes beyond Obama’s call for people to argue with their neighbors and get in their faces. It goes far beyond Bill Clinton’s politics of personal destruction directed at accusers, and beyond name-calling by right wing pundits.

This total war, in which no one is allowed to be non-political and neighbors and clients become mere pressure points, is a dangerous development.

This is indeed total war, and that realization has only slowly dawned on me over the years that I have been writing on this blog. It is scary, but not surprising- most of humanity today lives in a state of fear and oppression from tyrants, and for most of human history humanity has lived in fear and oppression from tyrants.

It is in the worst nature of people to attempt to oppress others and use them as slaves- use their labor and intelligence and skills and drive to provide them with things they did not earn- food, clothing, shelter, medicine, drugs, influence, power, money, loans, etc. The worst nature of people is to react to arguments and reasoning with intimidation, threats, and personal attacks. And the worst nature of people is to take that which they did not earn, suppress and lessen the freedom and liberty of others, and if possible choke the very life out of those who oppose them.

It's a total war and it's getting worse as our opponents grow more bold and get closer to winning the war. I can only hope that in 2012, you and your friends and family recognize that we're at war and take the proper steps, because the last time the American people pretended that they weren't at war, we saw the error of that thinking on September 11.

UPDATE: Thank you for linking to this post Conservatives on Fire and Fuzzy Logic!

If you don't already know, I started my own tutoring business this year when I realized I wasn't going to get to teach every day. (Substituting is a wonderful opportunity and allows me to glean so many ideas, but I simply cannot expect to get a sub job every day!) About 80% of my students receive my tutoring services in math.

I saw this phenomenon when I was student teaching in 2nd grade, but it has really stuck out as I have tutored my students in math this year: word problems are a stumbling block for many, many students. There is just something about combining letters with what kids have traditionally known as an "all-number subject" that freaks them out (algebra, anyone?).

I have seen a few school districts use a couple of techniques in particular to help students combat this word-problem fear.

Circle the numbers.
Underline important words.
Box the question.
Eliminate unnecessary information.

Using C.U.B.E. in the classroom helps students focus on the important information and get to the nitty-gritty of what the word problem is actually asking them to do. I have seen several different age groups of elementary students use this method with great success. As students get older, it becomes unnecessary for them to do each of these steps. But if your older students have never been exposed to this method, I would suggest showing it to them, as well! One of my close friends teaches secondary math, and she introduced this concept to her freshmen and sophomores this year! So this isn't something that just works for elementary kids.

Let me give you an example of how this works. Since I don't have the ability to circle things on a Blogger post, I'll bold them. Since I also lack the ability to box things in a Blogger post, I'll italicize them. Here's the sample word problem:

Mr. Johnson's class has 21 students. If the seven of his students are absent due to heavy rainfall on a particular day, how many students does he have in his class on that day?

(I borrowed this practice word problem from Tips 4 TAKS.)  Anyway, this is how it would look if a student applied the C.U.B.E. strategy to this problem:

Mr. Johnson's class has 21 students. If the seven of his students are absent due to heavy rainfall on a particular day, how many students does he have left in his class on that day?

I circled (bolded) the numbers 21 and 7.

I underlined the word "left" because it helps us understand what type of problem we'll be doing. I realize you could classify other words in this word problem as "important," but the students I know only underline the important math words. They might also underline words such as remain, divide, in all, altogether, take away, etc. These are the "telling words" that tell students what kind of action they should perform to those numbers. Lots of teachers post these "key math words" on giant keys (aren't we clever?) on a math bulletin board somewhere in the room.

I boxed (italicized) the question so that we could focus on what answer we're supposed to find.

I crossed out unnecessary information about the teacher's name and why the students were absent so that we could concentrate more easily on important info.

You could do this to any word problem!

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Another, similar strategy is called U.P.S. Check:

Understand the problem.
Plan how to solve the problem.
Solve the problem.
Check your answer.

The most common way I've seen students use this method is to divide their paper into 4 parts. In box #1, students will write "U," in box number #2, students will write "P," and continue until they've labeled all boxes. Then, students go back to each box and perform the task. Let's use the same word problem from above as an example:

Mr. Johnson's class has 21 students. If the seven of his students are absent due to heavy rainfall on a particular day, how many students does he have in his class on that day?

So this is {roughly} what the students' papers should look like if they choose to use the U.P.S. Check method to solve this problem:

The C.U.B.E. method and the U.P.S. Check method are both great strategies for helping students solve word problems! ...And, when I think about it, I think U.P.S. Check could be used with all problem -- not just word problems!

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I decided to create some freebies for you! I created 9 different colored poster sets: blue, green, lime, orange, pink, purple, red, turquoise, and yellow. For each color, I created 3 items: a U.P.S. Check poster, a C.U.B.E. poster, and a page that contains both posters in a smaller size -- suitable for printing one for each student and allowing them to place the page in the front of their binders or math folders. Each document can be printed on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper.

Here's a preview:

Please excuse the watermark!

The color name pertains to the color of border each poster has. All borders have polka dots. Click the color name below to be taken to my Teacher's Pay Teachers shop to download the posters for free!

Blue
Green
Lime
Orange
Pink
Purple
Red
Turquoise
Yellow

If someone has been wronged or there is some sort of problem, a personal phone call from the President of the United States can be an important piece to improved understanding of the problems and can help to get past any sort of communication issues that are out there. The office of the President is one that is filled with prestige and honor, and a phone call from him that carries the weight of that august office can go far in putting pressure on people to overcome problems or calm down inflamed emotions and right wrongs. But the President's time is valuable and important, so it understandable if his personal touch isn't applied to every situation in the form of a personal phone call and it is okay if he sometimes waits several days before talking to people who are important or who have been wronged.

The important quality for the President of the United States to have is the judgement and decision-making skills to determine who he should take the time to call and when he should decide to just sit it out and not get involved. It is important that the President have the sound judgement to focus on the important issues facing our nation and use his office and the power that goes with it to improve situations and smooth past difficult issues. It is important that the President be able to decide when to use his office to bring light to issues and focus public attention on them with a phone call.

President Barack Obama (Democrat) lacks sound judgement and proper decision making when it comes to making personal phone calls and when to make them.

On April 20, 2010, the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded, resulting in a severe oil spill from the ruptured well. BP, which had employed Deepwater Horizon to drill on its Macondo Prospect, immediately began to work with the a range of U.S. federal government agencies and assets to try to reduce the flow of oil into the Gulf, figure out what happened, and try to assess blame and responsibility for the large oil spill. There were a lot of moving and complicated aspects of the US government tied up in this effort, and to coordinate them and make sure that they were used properly at some point the President of the United States should have talked with top level decision makers in BP, including its CEO Tony Hayward.

But for over two months, President Obama did not talk to the CEO of BP and did not make a personal phone call to him to discuss efforts to limit the oil spill, to figure out why the oil spill happened, or to figure out how to overcome the important issues that the spill brought up. This represented an important failure in judgement and a bad decision; a phone call between the President and the CEO of BP could have resulted in more coordination between BP and the US and more understanding of how and why the accident happened, resulting in less oil spilled, less wildlife killed, and a quicker resumption of drilling in the gulf and the lower oil prices and greater economic growth that would have resulted form this. Obama eventually did meet with the CEO, but it took him over two months to do so.

In contrast, two days after radio show host Rush Limbaugh called community activist Sandra Fluke a slut, President Obama took time out of his busy day to make a personal phone call to her to "offer his support to her, he wanted to express his disappointment that she has been the subject of inappropriate personal attacks and to thank her for exercising her rights as a citizen to speak out on an issue of public policy."

The quick personal phone call, especially in light of his two month long wait before calling the CEO of BP after the oil spill earlier, and the fact that he would use the office of the President to call a private citizen and apologize to her for the comments of a private radio host represents a failure of President Barack Obama's judgement and decision making with who receives a personal phone call from the President of the United States. His office phone, rather than being used to coordinate the assets of the United States or figure out how to avoid oil spills in the future, was used instead to make a quick phone call to a private citizen to give official support for their views and to side with her in a controversy between her and a radio host who is trying to generate ratings.

President Obama, rather than following important events around the world and with our economy, clearly is just sitting in the White House listening to talk radio and making phone calls to people mentioned on talk radio stations. The President did not call the CEO of BP earlier about the oil spill, even though he was called many names by bloggers, radio show hosts, and comedians, further demonstrating his poor judgement and poor decision making skills.

Our nation needs someone who understands how and when and why the President of the United States should call people, and these two examples clearly indicate that Barack Obama is lacking in judgement and decision making. We need to- and can- replace him in 2012 with someone with better judgement and decision-making skills, someone who understands that the CEO of BP should have been called in two days and that a private citizen who is called a name by a radio show host should not receive a phone call from the President.

Bizarro World escapee Barack Obama (currently President of the United States) has called for an end to end $4 billion in subsidies for small companies that produce oil and gas for consumers, saying “You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people."

This latest effort to raise the costs of doing business on oil and gas companies is in response to the soaring price of gasoline in the United States, a development that will choke off the feeble recovery this nation has experienced under Obama's leadership.

Despite extensive research, it is still unclear exactly what Obama would cut that adds up to '$4 billion in subsidies', but based on past proposals Obama would likely cut out tax breaks that oil and gas companies receive for buying more efficient refining and industrial equipment, for creating and keeping manufacturing jobs in America, for costs related to repairing wells for safety, for encouraging more environmentally-friendly oil extraction, and for searching out and discovering new sources of oil.

Even though Obama pretends to support all of the stuff that the tax breaks go for, he doesn't like oil companies for some reason, and so he is going to make it more expensive for oil companies to do business in the hopes to lowering the costs of gasoline at the pump. If this makes no sense to you, you just have to think like Barack Obama and remember that up is down, good is bad, successful is wrong, laziness is a virtue, higher costs to produce somehow make a product cheaper, and demonizing others is okay if you're doing it but wrong for others to do.

President Obama though does not demand an end to all subsidies- only for an end for subsidies for companies that he personally does not like. Obama practices crony capitalism, whereby companies that give him political support in the form of campaign contributions get large subsidies, and companies who give money to his opponents (like the Koch brothers) are demonized and attacked. In the game of political power, President Obama intends to win so that he and his family and supporters and friends can benefit financially. Oil and gas companies oppose him because they want to provide cheap energy for poor people and manufacturing while making profits that are then distributed to shareholders and investors and they see Obama's policies as running counter to these ideas, and for their opposition Obama attacks them. So-called 'green companies' on the other hand cough up money to him and so receive substantially greater subsidies.

To wit, from John Hinderaker at Powerlineblog:

As the graph shows, in terms of per unit production, solar and wind companies receive considerably more subsidies than oil and gas, making support for these 'green' industries considerably more expensive, and thus wasting valuable resources like time and money that could have been spent curing cancer or building flying cars. It is not efficient or resource-usage friendly to support solar and wind energy, and yet Obama does, because executives and employees who run and work for these companies provide him with considerable campaign finances, which he then uses to maintain power for himself and redirect greater sums of money to his picked friends in those industries.

In this coming election, the left-wing that has seized control of your parent's Democratic Party is going to try to make this election about how Romney is successful, about how Santorum has good moral values, about how conservatives want people to pay their own way in the world, or about how some people make money providing cheap and efficient energy. They are going to make these things into bad things, and then make you feel bad if you write that they are actually good things, and they are going to pressure companies and individuals to say what the political power wants them to say. You are going to have to ignore all of this, and instead vote against tyranny- you need to vote Republican in the coming election and send Barack Obama back to Bizarro World where he belongs.