It’s all coming into focus now. When Socialist-for-Life Barack Obama indoctrinates America’s schoolchildren on Tuesday, he’ll hold up a giant Queen of Diamonds and set off the national tyranny everyone’s been warning about:

According to the Global Times English-language edition, the national flag of the communist People’s Republic of China on Sept. 20 will be raised for the first time on the White House’s south lawn — a secured area seldom available for public events — in recognition of the Chinese anniversary.

Or, if you prefer your hysteria in screaming email style:

WHITE HOUSE TO FLY RED CHINESE FLAG!!!1!

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From Florida this week comes news of what should be an instant urban legend:

An FDA test shows that either a frog or a toad was in a Florida man’s soda can. The Food and Drug Administration test confirmed that the remains of an animal were in Fred Denegri’s can of Diet Pepsi. Denegri popped the can open July 23 as he was grilling dinner outdoors in Ormond Beach.

Imagine: Desperately anticipating cool refreshment after being parched for ages, only to discover that not only does what you selected not quench your thirst, but it makes you feel kind of sick.

House Progressives and the White House on a Collision Course Over Public Option [TPM]

With all those firearms at town halls, we have to admit an indecent pleasure that the latest report of violence is very old school:

A 65-year-old man had his finger bitten off Wednesday evening at a health care rally in Thousand Oaks, according to the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department…

A witness from the scene says a man was walking through the anti-reform group to get to the pro-reform side when he got into an altercation with the 65-year-old, who opposes health care reform.

The 65-year-old was apparently aggressive and hit the other man, who then retaliated by biting off his attacker’s pinky, according to Karoli from DrumsnWhistles, who attended the rally.

But all’s well that ends well: Doctors reattached the pinky.* The anti-reformer had Medicare.

Man’s Finger Bitten Off in Scuffle at Health Care Rally [KTLA, via TPM]

Update: Oops, he lost half a pinky after all. We’re undecided whether that remains good news.

Trying to determine when Glenn Beck jumps the shark is an exercise in futility, since his entire show is a crowd-pleasing demonstration of aquatic gymnastics. Instead, we find ourselves wondering whether at any given moment he’s going to peel off his chubby face and reveal Sacha Baron Cohen underneath. Or Andy Kaufman.

Moments such as Wednesday, when he advocated bringing back DDT.

Now wait — before you reach for the thalidomide, hear him out:

Any harmful link to humans from DDT has never been found. Bruce N. Ames, a world renowned biochemist and professor of molecular biology, and Thomas H. Jukes, professor of biophysics and a foremost expert on DDT, from the University of California at Berkeley — yes, that “right-wing kook tank” U.C. Berkeley — said of the attack on DDT: “This is nonsense.”

And if you’re wondering where the hell he’s getting that from — turns out the American Enterprise Institute published a paper lauding DDT in 2007.

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We don’t care if he’s going to do for Playgirl what he did for GQ — Levi Johnston strikes us as the only decent human in the Wasilla Funhouse. Especially if you’re grading on a curve:

Sarah told me she had a great idea: we would keep it a secret — nobody would know that Bristol was pregnant. She told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him. That way, she said, Bristol and I didn’t have to worry about anything. Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was nagging — she wouldn’t give up. She would say, “So, are you gonna let me adopt him?” We both kept telling her we were definitely not going to let her adopt the baby. I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn’t want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid.

Imagine, if you will, the dramatic scene some twenty years from now:

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Left largely unremarked during this week’s episode of Dancing with the Torturers is a curious dispute over whether soul-mortgager John McCain agreed that techniques good enough for the Viet Cong are good enough for us. A 2007 memo from the Justice department’s Office of Legal Counsel reports the CIA saying he signed off on enhanced ghoulishness:

“[S]everal Members of Congress, including the full memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and Senator McCain, were briefed by General Michael Hayden, Director of the CIA, on the six techniques that we discuss herein. In those classified and private conversations, none of the Members expressed the view that the CIA detention and interrogation program should be stopped, or that the techniques at issue were inappropriate.”

But a McCain spokesbot said Monday that — are you sitting down? — the CIA got it wrong:

“Senator McCain clearly made the case that he was opposed to unduly coercive techniques, especially when used in combination or taken too far — including sleep deprivation.”

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Say, did you hear that President Obama is going to speak directly to classrooms via the Internet on September 8? What a wonderful idea!

• Free Republic: “He’s recruiting his civilian army. His ‘Hitler’ youth brigade.”
• All American Blogger: “Hitler knew that if you control the youth, you control the future. I wrote about him in ‘The Threats to Homeschooling: From Hitler to the NEA.'”
• AmericanElephant: “Totalitarian regimes around the world have sought to spread their propaganda and entrench their power by brainwashing the children. I guess it’s easier to indoctrinate a six-year-old instead of fighting a 26-year-old or being challenged by a 46-year-old in the voting booth”

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