It’s Official: “WTF” Is Now In The Dictionary….

Example: WTF were Americans thinking when they elected President Pantywaist in 2008 and again in 2012?

(CNN) – It’s official: WTF is in the dictionary. It’s short for an informal phrase that starts with “what the …” and is “used especially to express or describe outraged surprise, recklessness, confusion, or bemusement.”

WTF joins emoji, NSFW, net neutrality, clickbait, click fraud, photobomb and other words reflecting modern life among the latest entries in Merriam-Webster’s unabridged dictionary. Some 1,700 words have been included, along with 3,200 new examples to add context.

The new entries speak to what’s current in the English language today, touching on technology, food, the worldwide food supply and the sharing economy.

In the world of food, we have crema: “a layer of tan creamy froth that forms on the top of freshly made espresso.”

And what’s not to love about chilaquiles, “a Mexican dish of fried corn tortilla pieces simmered with salsa or mole and typically topped with cheese and other accompaniments”?

Not all the dictionary’s additions are that delicious.

There’s colony collapse disorder, “a disorder of honeybees (Apis mellifera) that is characterized by sudden colony death due to the disappearance of all adult worker bees in a hive while immature bees, the queen bee and the honey remain and that is of unknown cause.”

Via: Weasel Zippers

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Common Core lessons blasted for sneaking politics into elementary classrooms

It's exactly what critics of the Common Core school curriculum warned about: Partisan political statements masquerading as English lessons finding their way into elementary school classrooms.

Teaching materials aligned with the controversial national educational standards ask fifth-graders to edit such sentences as “(The president) makes sure the laws of the country are fair,” “The wants of an individual are less important than the well-being of the nation” and “the commands of government officials must be obeyed by all.” The sentences, which appear in worksheets published by New Jersey-based Pearson Education, are presented not only for their substance, but also to teach children how to streamline bulky writing.

“We are doing a terrible disservice to this generation and the next if we only present them with one side of the argument and bombard them with ideas contrary to the American ideal."

- Glyn Wright, Eagle Forum

 “Parents should insist on reviewing their children’s school assignments,” said Glyn Wright, executive director of the Eagle Forum, a think tank that opposes implementation of Common Core. “Many parents will be shocked to find that some ‘Common Core-approved’ curriculum is full of inappropriate left-wing notions, disinformation, and fails to teach the truth of American exceptionalism and opportunity.”

The politically charged lesson appears in a worksheet titled “Hold the Flag High,” in which students are taught about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. The assignment asks students to make examples of sentences; “less wordy by replacing the underlined words with a possessive noun phrase.” They are then presented with a half-dozen sentences describing the job duties of a U.S. president.

Via: Fox News

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Report: Unions Pressuring Non-Citizens To Vote In Nevada…

Voter registration fraud is not a groundless conspiracy. It is not a hypothetical threat to election integrity.

In Nevada, a battleground state that could decide the presidency and control of the U.S. Senate, it is real.

Last week, I met with two immigrant noncitizens who are not eligible to vote, but who nonetheless are active registered voters for Tuesday's election. They said they were signed up by Culinary Local 226.

They speak and understand enough English to get by. But they don't read English especially well. They say the Culinary official who registered them to vote didn't tell them what they were signing and didn't ask whether they were citizens. The immigrants said they trusted that the union official's request was routine, thought nothing of it and went about their work.

Then the election drew closer. Then the Culinary canvassers started seeking them out and ordering them to go vote.

One of the immigrants was visited at home by a Culinary representative and said the operative made threats of deportation if no ballot was cast.

They didn't understand how, as noncitizens, they could be registered to vote if it's illegal for them to vote in a U.S. election. They didn't understand that, upon being signed up, not only is their registration public record, but the record of whether they've voted is public as well.

After a few days of early voting, the union knew the immigrants still hadn't voted. So union canvassers kept visiting.

One day, when a Culinary representative was told the immigrant wasn't a citizen and wouldn't vote, things got testy. The immigrant was "in so much trouble," the Culinary operative said, according to Brenda Moraine, a local immigrant advocate who was there.

The immigrants spoke with me on the condition that I provide no identifying information about them beyond their membership in the Culinary. They're afraid of reprisals from the union, they're afraid of losing their jobs, and they're concerned that their signatures are on a government document that says, in part, "I swear or affirm I am a U.S. citizen. I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct."

Via: Las Vegas Review-Journal

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IS VOTER FRAUD BEING COMMITTED IN OHIO?

Somali's Invade Polling Stations in OHIO accompanied by Democratic Interpreters.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Two volunteer poll workers at an Ohio voting station told Human Events that they observed van loads of Ohio residents born in Somalia — the state is home to the second-largest Somali population in the United States — being driven to the voting station and guided by Democratic interpreters on the voting process. No Republican interpreters were present, according to these volunteers.

While it’s not unusual for get-out-the-vote groups to help voters get to the polls, the volunteers who talked to Human Events observed a number of troubling and questionable activities.

A source, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a volunteer outside the Morse Road polling center.  She has witnessed Somalis who cannot speak English come to the polling center. They are brought in groups, by van or bus. The Democrats hand them a slate card and say, “vote Brown all the way down.” Given that Sherrod Brown is the incumbent Democrat Senator in Ohio, one can assume that this is the reference.

Non-English speaking voters may use an interpreter. The interpreters are permitted by law to interpret for the individual voting; however, they are forbidden from influencing their vote in any way. Another source who also wishes to remain anonymous has seen Democrat interpreters show the non-English speaking Somalis how to vote the Democrat slate that they were handed outside. According to this second source, there are not any Republican Somali interpreters available.

The logical follow-up question is whether a non-English speaking person is an American citizen. Although Republican leadership in Ohio passed a voting reform law, it was repealed by the legislature itself after the Democrats threatened a referendum. According to the Ohio Secretary of State’s web site, someone wanting to vote early in Ohio must supply one of the following in writing on the absentee ballot form, whether voting early by mail or in person: an Ohio driver’s license number; the last four digits of the social security number; or a copy of a current and valid photo identification, military identification, or a current — within the last 12 months — utility bill, including cell phone bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the person’s name and address in addition to the voter registration acknowledgement.

Via: Human Events

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Dick Morris: Why The Polls Understate Romney Vote

Republicans are getting depressed under an avalanche of polling suggesting that an Obama victory is in the offing. They, in fact, suggest no such thing! Here’s why:

1. All of the polling out there uses some variant of the 2008 election turnout as its model for weighting respondents and this overstates the Democratic vote by a huge margin.

In English, this means that when you do a poll you ask people if they are likely to vote. But any telephone survey always has too few blacks, Latinos, and young people and too many elderly in its sample. That’s because some don’t have landlines or are rarely at home or don’t speak English well enough to be interviewed or don’t have time to talk. Elderly are overstated because they tend to be home and to have time. So you need to increase the weight given to interviews with young people, blacks and Latinos and count those with seniors a bit less.

Normally, this task is not difficult. Over the years, the black, Latino, young, and elderly proportion of the electorate has been fairly constant from election to election, except for a gradual increase in the Hispanic vote. You just need to look back at the last election to weight your polling numbers for this one.

Via: Dick Morris

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