NEW ORLEANS: Yesterday’s Super Bowl set a record for TV audiences, and also set a record for the most disgusting advertisement in NFL history. It’s hard to chronicle all of the offensive ads through the years, but certainly Motorola’s ad touting it’s new MOTOBLUR software has to be ranked the most offensive. While the commercial was not particularly graphic, it did have its share of innuendo and double entendre. What the NIP finds most offensive is that the commercial legitimizes the practice of sexting.

Sexting, the practice sending pornographic images of one’s self or other via text messaging or email, has been linked to all kinds of problems among youth in this country, even being linked to the suicide of one teenager. Back in 2007 cheerleader coach Victoria Schattauer in Goshen Ohio made history when she photographed herself with a student topless. The photo was sexted and emailed all over the school, and subsequently all over the country. The photos shocked the country because of their graphic nature involving a teacher and a student together, with the teacher taking the photo. Since then apparently lots of other coaches have followed suit, judging by a quick Google search of “coaches sexting.”

Motorola’s commercial shows actress Megan Fox taking a picture of herself in the tub and sending it out. Besides frying the local telephone lines the explicit photo makes the rounds to a teenage boy locking himself in a bathroom, a voyeuristic husband getting slapped by his wife, a gay couple slapping each other, etc., all in good fun, apparently in the judgement of Motorola executives. The trouble is that teens don’t need any more incentive to engage in sexting. This commercial does not help teens understand just how severe the consequences can be: Read more…

Your Stimulus $$ at Work, Vacations for Teachers

DEKALB GA: Georgia teachers this week are staying at the posh Renaissance Hollywood Hotel and Spa for an educator’s conference. Those in attendance from the Dekalb school district include 39 principals, 32 assistant principals, 45 teachers, 50 reading and math coaches, and 20 central office staff. Remember that the Dekalb contingent is just a small part of the national conference attendees. Georgia school district tax payers don’t have to worry though– they are off the hook. This trip is being paid for by Obama stimulus funds.

Stimulus money from Washington is often discussed in terms of “shovel ready,” designated for construction projects that are supposed to create jobs for unemployed Americans.

But the DeKalb County School System has decided to use stimulus money to attend a four-day conference sponsored by America’s Choice, which a schools spokesman calls “a great thing.”…

[Schools spokesman Dale] Davis said the school system will spend $91,500 for conference registrations and another $291,400 for hotels, flights, meals and incidentals. That’s a total of $382,900 in federal tax money. In an email, Davis wrote, “I am happy that you are expressing interesting in this training opportunity for our employees. We are focused on student improvement. America’s Choice is in partnership with the district to help improve the academic success in 40 of our lowest performing schools.” Atlanta WSBRadio

So the school district couldn’t fit them into a gym for an assembly? This is the type of fraud you can expect when you give Congress a credit card with no spending limits. Oh wait… Congress does have a spending limit: $12.394 trillion. But they decided it wasn’t high enough and just gave themselves a $1.9 trillion credit line increase, bringing their limit to $14.3 trillion.

Congress needs to take your money so they can give to folks that will vote for them, and that certainly includes teachers. When they run out of your money, they’ll spend your children’s money, and then your grandchildren’s, all in order to pay back those who got them elected, and you are letting them do it. Read more…

WASHINGTON: Did you watch the swearing in ceremony yesterday of Scott Brown as newly-elected Senator? Just to make sure things haven’t changed the NIP staff watched closely as Joe Biden stumbled his way through administering the oath of office.

We here at the NIP genuinely have been wondering if the oath of office has changed, because of the cavalier way this oath has been treated by our elected representatives. You may remember Nancy Pelosi’s response when asked about the constitutionality of forcing individuals to buy health insurance. Her condescending reply: “Are you serious? Are you serious?”

So we naturally are thinking that the oath must have been changed. So the NIP staff dropped everything yesterday to watch the oath of office as Joe Biden asked Brown:

Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that you take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you am about to enter?

Scott Brown answered in the affirmative. This solemn act is the first taken by any of our representatives. Regardless of what Ted Kennedy’s son Patrick thinks, Scott Brown election was not “a joke.”

The swearing in ceremony is not a trivial act, but one upon which the safety and stability of our country rests. In light of that oath we are disturbed at this administration’s apparent willingness to abandon the rule of law in order to further their political ends. Read more…

BABE HUGGETT: Over the years I’ve always made sure to purchase the September issue of Vogue and did so for more decades than I care to admit. I finally dropped Vogue in favor of Harper’s Bazaar when women of my age started disappearing from Vogue’s acknowledgement as savvy fashion consumers to be replaced with fashion-masquerading pro-leftist commentary. The conspicuous consumption and luxury-addicted Vogue never did catch on that the romance of revolutionary thought was just a façade to hide a grasping, murderous and rapacious political system based on greed and envy. In fact, the editors of Vogue still haven’t figured it out and even Harper’s Bazaar is guilty of it although to a lesser degree. At least with Harper’s, I can still find “women of a certain age” held up as fashionable icons but that’s about it.

However, women’s magazines in general and fashion commentary in particular are a surprisingly accurate means of forecasting who will be the winners in political elections. I’ve often written that if you want to know who will win American elections, look to the catwalk and check out the zeitgeist of the collections. When I saw even Madonna picking up the Wild West vibe of the runways by sporting her cowgirl hat and boots before the November 2000 elections, I knew George W. Bush would win despite the frantic efforts of the Al Gore camp to continue challenging the results until enough fraudulent votes could be manufactured by Democratic operatives.

It didn’t take a genius to discover that Obama was destined to win the 2008 elections either. All you had to do was see all the pro-Obama message tees on the runway to figure that one out. It was so blatant, it was depressing. The runways right now for Fall 2010 are full of Post-Apocalyptic wear featuring rips, tears, disjointed and mismatched patterns, and hard, funnel-necked leather jackets vying with cantilevered, architectural reinterpretations of the human form in such a way that has not been seen since the Mannerist fashions of the first Queen Elizabeth. Read more…

WASHINGTON: Obama, citing his recent decision granting INTERPOL diplomatic immunity announced today that jurisdiction over the fizzled panty bomber Abdul Farouk Mutallab is now being handed over to INTERPOL. This is a stunning reversal from White House secretary Robert Gibbs’ statement on January 25th that the 50 minute interrogation of Mutallab was enough.

There has been harsh criticism of the administration over their handling of the incident. Serious charges have been leveled that the administration, by ignoring the Geneva Convention, has put the USA at risk. Three days after the bomber was captured he warned that there was more to follow. Charges of incompetence have been leveled against Director of Homeland Security who shortly after the failed bombing crowed, “The System Worked.”

Responding to these charges today Obama read this statement during his daily teleprompter briefing:

Our decision to try Abdul Farouk Mutallab in civilian courts was an admirable one. It was intended to show the international community that the US recognizes the rule of law and no longer will conduct “cowboy diplomacy” in handling man-made disasters.

While our intentions were admirable, we did not go far enough. Recent criticism of our actions have made us realize that the proper handling of internationals is best handled by INTERPOL. After all that is why the organization was created.  It was for just such a case as this one that on December 17th I gave INTERPOL diplomatic immunity to operate here in the US. Little did we know just how wise and timely this decision that would prove to be.

For this reason we are now turning Mutallab over to French authorities who are sending over their Chief Inspector who will handle the interrogation and investigation. We are hereby dropping all civilian charges against Mutallab and any subsequent legal action against Mutallab will be at the discretion of INTERPOL.

INTERPOL has extensive experience in handling these types of investigations. Make no mistake– our ceding jurisdiction of this affair to INTERPOL will substantially increase our standing in the world community and will prevent Al-Qaeda from using US involvement in this matter as a recruitment tool.

Read more…

JAMES SIMPSON: Rick Sanchez made a bald-faced lie on CNN yesterday in defense of President Obama’s budget numbers. He was attempting to methodically debunk Republican claims about Obama budgets, arguing that most of the trillions in spending came on Republicans’ watch and Obama just added a little bit.

He started by claiming that Obama came into office facing a $1.2 trillion budget. Obama makes the same claim. Actually, the deficit for 2008, Bush’s last year in office, was $459 billion. Bush does share responsibility for TARP though, so you could say that Obama was only partially responsible for 2009’s deficit, even though his proposals added $787 billion in new spending through the failed “Stimulus,” which was not supported by Republicans.

I know, I know. It was all Bush’s fault, so Obama can’t be blamed even if he had to shell out $800 billion of our dollars to save his Wall Street and union friends. In fact, Bush and the Republicans do share some of the blame for the financial crisis, but it was a sin of omission, not commission. The truth is that the financial crisis was the direct result of a half-century of Democrat meddling with the housing market. Bush and the Republicans failed in that they did not push hard enough for needed reform.

But however you want to argue it for 2009, Obama owns the 2010 and 2011 budgets all alone. FY 2010 included the largest regular budgetary increase in recent history, a whopping 15 percent higher than Bush’s 2009 proposal. According to Obama’s 2011 budget, deficits for 2010 and 2011 are projected to be $1.6 trillion and $1.3 trillion respectively. And while Obama continues to call for health care reform, no spending for it is included in the 2011 budget.

The 2011 budget does, however, include an assumed $150 billion in deficit reduction from passage of healthcare reform. Who is he kidding? This is the same smoke and mirrors game the Senate played in claiming “savings” from overhauling healthcare. Don’t believe it! The true cost will be in the trillions. Read more…

GLENN COUNTY, CA: In a case that received national attention, the Glenn County, Calif., Board of Education on January 22 overturned the expulsion of 17-year-old duck hunter Gary Tudesko, who was expelled from his central California high school after police dogs sniffed out unloaded shotguns in his truck.

The truck was legally parked off-campus, on a public street, and the guns were in the truck because Tudesko had gone hunting that morning before school.  All those factors just show the school’s lack of common sense in enforcing its “zero tolerance” policy; according to guidelines from the California Department of Education, administrators don’t have to recommend expulsion unless a violation is committed at school or at a school activity.  Even that agency’s website notes widespread criticism of “zero tolerance” policies.

On the legal side, the school made many errors, such as confusing its authority to expel students under California’s Education Code with the district attorney’s authority to enforce the state’s “Gun Free School Zones” law.  Both the district attorney and the local police have said Tudesko would face no criminal charges.

Leading California civil rights lawyer Chuck Michel—a longtime advocate for Golden State gun owners—represented Tudesko.  For more information on the Tudesko case, read the article on ESPN or visit Michel’s website at www.calgunlaws.com.

BABE HUGGETT: On the Culture Wars front, the British supermarket chain, Tescos, struck a blow for sartorial dignity in its St. Mellons in Cardiff, Wales branch by posting a “Customer Dress Code Policy” banning shoppers coming in clad in pajamas, barefoot and/or both.

Signs saying, “To avoid causing offence or embarrassment to others we ask that our customers are appropriately dressed when visiting our store (footwear must be worn at all times and no nightwear is permitted).” have been placed at the entrance to the store in what Americans will recognize as a variation on our “No Shoes, no shirt, no service.” domestic stores policy although here in open-carry Arizona, “No weapons allowed” signs give a regional variation that must make the Nervous Nellie crowd feel better.

Back at the St. Mellons Tescos, outraged customer, Elaine Carmody, was actually turned away when she tried to buy cigarettes because of her sloppy and routine PJ bottoms and slippers wear. Read more…